Jerome Ch'en

Ch'en was born as Ch'en Chih-jang in Chengdu, Sichuan, Republic of China in October 1919. He was educated at Tianjin Nankai University, National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming during the Anti-Japanese War and at the London School of Economics (LSE), which he attended funded by a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and where he studied under Friedrich Hayek.

In the 1950s, Ch'en worked for the Chinese Service of the BBC. Before emigrating to Canada he was a Reader in history at the University of Leeds for a number of years. He was Professor of Chinese History at York University in Toronto, Canada from 1971 to 1987. He was the director of the University of Toronto/York University Joint Centre of Asia Pacific Studies (JCAPS) from 1983 to 1985.[1]

Ch'en was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1981. In 1984, he was named Distinguished Research Professor at York.[2]

Ch'en died in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada in June 2019 at the age of 99.[3]

• Yuan Shih-ka̕i, 1859-1916: Brutus Assumes the Purple (George Allen & Unwin, 1961).
• The Highlanders of Central China: a History 1895 – 1937
• Mao and the Chinese Revolution
• The Military-Gentry coalition—the Warlords Period in Modern Chinese History
• China and the West: Society and Culture 1815 – 1937 (Hutchinson, 1979)

Ch'en also edited:

• Great Lives Observed: Mao

Some of his works have been translated into Chinese or Japanese.

• Lary, Diana. "Jerome Ch’en obituary: Historian of modern China, cut off from his roots, who rued the rise of the military and the Communist conquest" The Guardian 18 July 2019. online

• Jerome Ch'en archives at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University Libraries, Toronto, Ontario
• Jerome Ch'en Resource Centre for East Asian Studies