John Van Antwerp MacMurray
Man in suit and crushed fedora looks off to his right.
MacMurray in November 1924
9th United States Ambassador to Turkey
In office
March 16, 1936 – November 28, 1941
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byRobert Peet Skinner
Succeeded byLaurence Steinhardt
United States Minister to Lithuania
In office
January 4, 1934 – February 12, 1936
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byRobert Peet Skinner
Succeeded byArthur Bliss Lane
United States Minister to Estonia
In office
January 4, 1934 – February 12, 1936
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byRobert Peet Skinner
Succeeded byArthur Bliss Lane
United States Minister to Latvia
In office
December 13, 1933 – February 12, 1936
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byRobert Peet Skinner
Succeeded byArthur Bliss Lane
United States Minister to China
In office
July 15, 1925 – November 22, 1929
PresidentCalvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Preceded byJacob Gould Schurman
Succeeded byNelson Trusler Johnson
United States Assistant Secretary of State
In office
November 19, 1924 – May 19, 1925
Personal details
BornOctober 6, 1881 (1881-10-06)
Schenectady, New York, United States
DiedSeptember 25, 1960(1960-09-25) (aged 78)
Norfolk, Connecticut
SpouseLois R. Goodnow
Children3
EducationPrinceton University (B.A., M.A.)
Columbia University Law School (LL.B.)
OccupationDiplomat

John Van Antwerp MacMurray (October 6, 1881 – September 25, 1960) was an American attorney, author and diplomat best known as one of the leading China experts in the U.S. government. He served as Assistant Secretary of State from November 1924 to May 1925, and was subsequently appointed Minister to China in 1925. Although MacMurray had coveted the China post, he soon fell into disagreement with the State Department over U.S. policy towards the ruling Kuomintang government. He resigned the position in 1929 and briefly left the foreign service. Following several years in academia, MacMurray returned to the State Department to become Minister to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1933 to 1936. He later served as ambassador to Turkey from 1936 to 1941, and then was made a special assistant to the Secretary of State until his retirement in 1944.

In 1935, MacMurray was commissioned to write a memorandum on the conflict between China and Japan. In it, he suggested that the United States, China, and Great Britain were partly to blame for Japan's invasion of China, and argued that unless the United States stopped opposing Japanese domination of China, a war between the two powers was likely. Japan later attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, drawing the US into World War II.

Early life

MacMurray was born in Schenectady, New York to Junius Wilson MacMurray and Henrietta MacMurray (née Van Antwerp). His father was a career soldier, serving as a captain in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and later joining the regular army. MacMurray's father also taught military tactics at the University of Missouri and Cornell University, and was the author of several books.[1] His mother, Henrietta Wiswall Van Antwerp, was the daughter of a bank president.[2]

In 1892, at the age of eleven, MacMurray attended his father's boarding school near Princeton, New Jersey. Later, while he was attending the nearby Lawrenceville School, his father's death dealt a "deep emotional blow", according to historian Arthur Waldron.[2] After graduating in 1898, MacMurray enrolled at Princeton University. The school's president, Woodrow Wilson, encouraged him to pursue a career in academia, noting his aptitude for language and literature. MacMurray was also said to display an independent nature, declining to participate in eating clubs or attend chapel.[3]

In 1903, MacMurray was admitted to the Columbia University Law School, and gained admission to the New York State Bar Association in 1906. He concurrently pursued a master of arts degree in Elizabethan drama at Princeton University, which he received in 1907.[1]

Career

John V.A. MacMurray sitting at his desk in the U.S. Department of State
John Van Antwerp MacMurray as Assistant Secretary of State

Following his admission to the New York Bar, MacMurray sought a career in government. A letter of commendation from Woodrow Wilson helped MacMurray secure an opportunity to take the foreign service examination.[3] In 1907, he was appointed as Consul-General and Secretary of Legation in Bangkok, Siam,[4] and then became second secretary at the U.S. embassy in St. Petersburg. There he worked under ambassador William Woodville Rockhill, who was credited with helping to shape the United States' open door policy towards China.[3]

Upon returning to Washington in 1911, MacMurray was made chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, a position he held until 1913.[1] He then had several appointments in East Asia: from 1913 to 1917, he was secretary of Legation in Peking, China, and from 1917 to 1919, he was counselor of the embassy in Tokyo. He had been offered a post as Minister to Siam in 1913, but declined in order to pursue the position in Peking.[5] He again returned to the State Department in 1919 to serve as Chief of Division for Far Eastern Affairs from 1919 to 1924. During that time, MacMurray was involved as an observer to negotiations between China and Japan concerning the status of the Shandong Peninsula, and authored a book titled Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China.[1] The book was a compilation of all treaties and agreements with China from 1894 to 1919, and was published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[6]

MacMurray briefly served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1924 to 1925. In 1925, he was appointed Minister to China under President Calvin Coolidge, who described him as "our top China expert".[7] He assumed the post in July 1925. MacMurray was well regarded within the diplomatic community in Peking; Sir Ronald Macleay with the British delegation described him as friendly and agreeable, and relatively unburdened by the preconceived ideas and sentimentality towards China that afflicted several of his predecessors. Macleay noted that MacMurray could express himself well and forcefully in diplomatic meetings, but that he was "rather academic", and may have lacked confidence in himself. "I imagine that he allows himself very little freedom of action and refers to Washington on every possible occasion," wrote Macleay.[8] Another British diplomat, Sir Miles W. Lampson, recorded MacMurray's complaints that Washington allowed him little initiative, and seldom adopted his proposals.[8]

Soon after arriving in China, MacMurray fell into disagreement with Washington over U.S. policy towards the ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist) government, which had been demanding immediate revisions to or a cessation of the treaty system in place between the two countries.[2][9] Whereas Washington wished to make concessions to the Nationalist government, MacMurray favored the enforcement of existing treaties.[6] These differences of opinion led him to resign in November 1929, whereupon he became a professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University.[1][10] In 1930, he became the first director of that university's Walter Hines Page School of International Relations.[11]

In 1933, MacMurray returned to the foreign service. On September 9 of that year, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—a position he held until 1936.[12][13] From 1936 to 1941, MacMurray served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Turkey.[12] He returned to Washington in 1942 and worked as a special assistant to the Secretary of State until his retirement in 1944.[1]

1935 Memorandum

In 1935, as tensions in East Asia were mounting, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, Stanley Hornbeck, commissioned MacMurray to write a memorandum on the situation. The memorandum, "Developments Affecting American Policy in the Far East", challenged many of the underlying assumptions of U.S. policy towards Japan.[14] The conventional wisdom held that Japan was the unprovoked aggressor in the brewing conflict with China. However, MacMurray posited that Chinese and American policies were partly to blame for Japan's actions; whereas Japan had closely adhered to the treaties and agreements brokered during the Washington Disarmament Conference, the United States, Great Britain and China frequently undermined them. Up until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the "Japanese Government ... was endeavoring in unimpeachable good faith to live up to its undertakings", wrote MacMurray. "The issue of success or failure for the policies evolved at the Washington Conference was actually in the hands of China herself, of Great Britain, and of the United States."[15]

According to Arthur Waldron, MacMurray found that China in particular "systematically flouted the legal framework that alone guaranteed her international position, and by so doing invited Japan's wrath." MacMurray believed that the United States should have valued Japan's efforts to comply with the treaty agreements, and suggested that the United States should accept Japanese aggression against China, rather than aligning ever more closely with China. Barring that, he wrote, an American war with Japan was likely:[14]

To oppose the Japanese domination of China and actively take all available means and occasions to frustrate it ... would, if pursued consistently and determinedly, almost inevitably mean war with Japan ... Such a war would be a major misfortune for us, even assuming our victory ... It would be a hideously long and costly process ... Even the elimination of Japan, if it were possible, would be no blessing to the Far East or to the world. It would merely create a new set of stresses, and substitute for Japan the USSR as the successor of Imperial Russia as a contestant (and at least an equally unscrupulous and dangerous one) for mastery of the East. Nobody except perhaps Russia would gain from our victory in such a war.[16]

MacMurray's classified memorandum was immediately shelved by the State Department. Following the Second World War, it was available only in select archives. In 1992, the memorandum was published for first time with an introduction by University of Pennsylvania historian Arthur Waldron.

Films and photography

A black and white image of two men walking down a street in Kalgan, China, circa 1929.
A still from one of MacMurray's films of China

Throughout his diplomatic tours in China, MacMurray captured thousands of photographs and recorded hours of footage of everyday life. A collection consisting of more than 1,600 of MacMurray's photographs taken in rural China between 1913 and 1917 is held by the Princeton University library.[17]

In 1925, just two years after the advent of the Cine-Kodak motion picture camera, MacMurray began making amateur films of life and travels in China, such as his trips to the Great Wall of China and a journey down the Yangtze River.[6] One film depicted the procession of Sun Yat-sen's body from its original burial place in Peking to a new mausoleum in Nanking.[18] Another film recorded in April 1928 captured scenes of daily life in Kalgan, north of Peking. MacMurray, along with his wife and sister, had traveled to Kalgan and Changpeh with Roy Chapman Andrews, an American explorer and naturalist who made multiple expeditions to the Gobi desert. During the civil war in 1928, however, rogue brigands and soldiers had made travel difficult in the region. To secure passage between Kalgan and Changpeh, MacMurray enlisted the aid of local warlord Zhang Zuolin, who provided an escort of 50 cavalry, 8 cars, and 150 camels.[19][20]

Family

In 1916, MacMurray married Lois R. Goodnow, the daughter of Frank Johnson Goodnow—a legal scholar, president of Johns Hopkins University, and a former advisor to the government of the Republic of China. Goodnow had been one of MacMurray's professors at Columbia University.[6] The couple had three children: Joan Goodnow MacMurray, Frank Goodnow MacMurray, and Lois Van Antwerp MacMurray.[1]

Later life

MacMurray died in September 1960, in Norfolk, Connecticut.[21]

Works

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Princeton University Library, John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers, 1715–1988 Archived August 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 08-31-2012.
  2. 1 2 3 John Van Antwerp MacMurray, "How the Peace was Lost: The 1935 Memorandum, Developments Affecting American Policy in the Far East", Arthur Waldron (ed.), (Stanford, CA: Hoover Press, 1992), ISBN 0-8179-9151-4, p. 9.
  3. 1 2 3 MacMurray, “How the Peace was Lost", p. 10.
  4. ↑ "List of Consular Officers of the United States Corrected to July 23, 1907", The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 1, No. 3, Supplement: Official Documents (July 1907), p. 344. Accessed 01-15-2013.
  5. ↑ MacMurray, “How the Peace was Lost", p. 12.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Helene van Rossum, "Capturing China, 1913–1929: Photographs, Films, and Letters of American Diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray", The East Asian Library Journal, 13, no. 1 (2008), pp. xviii-6. Accessed 01-15-2013.
  7. ↑ Howard H. Quint and Robert H. Ferrell (eds), "The Talkative President: Calvin Coolidge", (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964), ASIN: B0006BM8AS, pp. 257-258.
  8. 1 2 James S. Pacy, "British Views of American Diplomats in China", Asian Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 4 (March–April 1981), pp. 252–253. Accessed 01-15-2013.
  9. ↑ Helene Van Rossum, Escape to the Diamond Mountains in Korea, 1928, Princeton University, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library blog (21 September 2010). Accessed 01-15-2013.
  10. ↑ "Resignation of United States Ambassador", Pacific Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 12 (December 1929), p. 796. Accessed 01-15-2013.
  11. ↑ "MacMurray Explains Mission of Walter Hines Page School". The Sun. Baltimore. October 5, 1930. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 U.S. Department of State, Department History > John Van Antwerp MacMurray. Accessed 08-31-2012.
  13. ↑ Frederic A. Ogg, "Personal and Miscellaneous", The American Political Science Review, Vol. 27, No. 5 (October 1933), p. 816. Accessed 01-15-2013.
  14. 1 2 MacMurray, “How the Peace was Lost", pp. 1-2.
  15. ↑ MacMurray, “How the Peace was Lost", p. 68.
  16. ↑ MacMurray, “How the Peace was Lost", pp. 127–129.
  17. ↑ Princeton University, "Exhibition Features Diplomat's Photos from Rural China" Archived April 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Press release (27 September 2007). Accessed 01-15-2013.
  18. ↑ Helene van Rossum, Trip to attend the re-interment of Sun Yat-sen, 1929, Princeton University, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library blog (3 August 2010). Accessed 01-15-2013.
  19. ↑ Helene van Rossum, MacMurray’s films of China, 1925–1929, Princeton University, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library blog (27 July 2010). Accessed 01-15-2013.
  20. ↑ Charles Gallenkamp, "Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions", (New York, NY: Viking, 2001), ISBN 978-0-670-89093-4, pp. 133-134.
  21. ↑ "JOHN M'MURRAY, EX-DIPLOMAT, 78". The New York Times. September 26, 1960. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
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