Lattimore, Owen

Lattimore, Owen, 1900–1989, American author and educator, b. Washington, D.C. He was educated (1915–19) at St. Bees School, Cumberland, England, and did graduate research (1928–29) at Harvard. From 1920 to 1926 he was engaged in business and newspaper work in China. Afterward he traveled and did research for various organizations in China, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkistan, writing such books as Manchuria: Cradle of Conflict (1932) and The Mongols of Manchuria (1934). He was (1938–50) director of the Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins. In 1950 he was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being the Soviet Union's top espionage agent in the United States, but subsequent investigation cleared him of the charges. In 1952, Lattimore was indicted for perjury on seven counts by a federal grand jury on the charge that he had lied when he told a Senate internal security subcommittee earlier in 1952 that he had not promoted Communism and Communist interests; by 1955 all charges against him had been dismissed. He was lecturer in history at Johns Hopkins until 1963. From 1963–70 he was professor of Chinese studies at Leeds Univ., England. Among his other books are America and Asia (1943), The Situation in Asia (1949), Pivot of Asia (1950), Ordeal by Slander (1950), Studies in Asian Frontier History (1962), and Silks, Spices and Empire (ed., with Eleanor Lattimore, 1968).

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Lattimore, Owen (1900–89) scholar; born in Washington, D.C. He spent his boyhood in China and was educated in Europe before returning to China (1919–27), primarily to inner Asia, the subject of many of his later books. He edited Pacific Affairs (1934–41) (resulting in the charge by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950 that he had "lost" China) and taught at the Johns Hopkins University (1938–63) and the University of Leeds, England (1963–75).