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China scholar who witnessed Communist takeover dies

Posted 2/26/2008

Howard L. Boorman, a noted scholar of the modern political and social history of China and United States-China relations, died Feb. 17 in Nashville. He was 87.

Boorman was professor of history, emeritus, at Vanderbilt and the first director of the university’s East Asian Studies program. He earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1941 and served in the Department of State and the Navy during World War II. He was in the Pacific Ocean theater as a Japanese-language translator and radio intelligence officer stationed in Pearl Harbor and Guam. He was later assigned to the First Marine Division in Tientsin, China, during the surrender of Japanese forces.

In 1946 Boorman enrolled in graduate school at Yale University and wrote a pioneering study of the politics of the Sinkiang Province. He entered the American Foreign Service a year later and was assigned to Peking, where he observed the first stage of the Chinese civil war, the consolidation of Chinese Communist control in North China and the formal establishment of the People’s Republic of China. He later moved to Hong Kong where he was the first officer in charge of a unit responsible for monitoring and translating the mainland China press for the American Consulate General.

In 1954 Boorman received a Rockefeller Public Service Award for studies on Chinese communism at Princeton University. He then moved to New York to be general editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, which included some 600 biographical articles on Chinese individuals prominent during the first half of the 20th century and was described as “the most important reference work on modern China since World War II.”

In 1967 he joined the Vanderbilt faculty as a professor of history and taught courses that included 20th Century China, History of Modern Japan and World War II in the Pacific.  Boorman launched Vanderbilt’s East Asian Studies program and authored numerous books and publications, such as Moscow-Peking Axis: Strengths and Strains and Mao Tse-tung: The Lacquered Image.
   
Boorman was widely quoted by the national press around the time of President Nixon’s historic visit to China about the significance of the trip for United States-China relations and a heightened interest on many American campuses in China in general. While based in New York, Boorman was active in the Council on Foreign Relations and frequently lectured on contemporary China.

Boorman retired in 1984. He became active in the early development of Retirement Learning at Vanderbilt and taught some classes during the 1990s. 

Boorman was predeceased by his first wife, Margaret Echlin Boorman, and his second wife, Mary Houghton Boorman. He is survived by a son by his first marriage, Scott A. Boorman of New Haven, Conn. He is also survived by children and grandchildren from his second wife’s family.             

Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens: (615) 322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu    

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