Denis C. Twitchett | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | (1925-09-23)23 September 1925 | ||||||||||||||
| Died | 24 February 2006(2006-02-24) (aged 80) | ||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge | ||||||||||||||
| Known for | Medieval Chinese history | ||||||||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||||||||
| Fields | Chinese history | ||||||||||||||
| Institutions | University of London,Cambridge,Princeton | ||||||||||||||
| Notable students | Wang Gungwu | ||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 杜希德 | ||||||||||||||
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Denis Crispin Twitchett (23 September 1925 – 24 February 2006) was a BritishSinologist and historian, and is well known as one of the co-editors ofThe Cambridge History of China.
Denis Twitchett was born on 23 September 1925 inLondon, England, the son of an architectural draughtsman, and attended Isleworth County Grammar School. DuringWorld War II he took a crash course in Japanese, and for the remainder of the war he was part of theBletchley Park operations acting as a listener at one of the forward listening stations inSri Lanka. He also spent a great deal of time inJapan, and was able to learn from the best Japanese historians of China (who tended to focus onTang China, a period which became his field of expertise also). Following demobilisation he read Modern Chinese at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies at theUniversity of London for a year (1946–47). Having won a scholarship to read Geography in 1943 while still a school pupil, he then took up his place atSt Catharine's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated with a first-class degree in Oriental Studies in 1950.[1]
He was a lecturer at theUniversity of London (1954–56) andCambridge (1956–60), the Chair of Chinese at the universities of London (1960–68) and Cambridge (1968–80), and the Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies atPrinceton University (1980–94). He was a fellow of theBritish Academy from 1967. He greatly expanded the role of Chinese studies in Western intellectual circles.
He married Umeko Ichikawa in 1956. Together they had two children.
Starting in 1966, Professor Twitchett and historianJohn K. Fairbank (who taught atHarvard) began plans for the first comprehensive history of China to be published in the English language. Originally expected to be a six volume set of books, the series expanded as time passed and eventually grew to the currently planned 15 volumes. While he was at Princeton, Twitchett worked closely with fellow SinologistFrederick W. Mote (who had a related wartime experience).
Drawing upon the most respected living historians for individual chapters of the books, the series (though still missing one volume as of 2022) is very highly regarded as an authoritative history of China. Twitchett wrote many sections and guided the creation of the whole series from the start until his death.
Twitchett deliberately held off creating a book on China before theCh'in dynasty because, as Twitchett put it in the preface to Volume 7, there was still so much work to be done on the period. Since that time the history has become better understood and in 1999 a companion volumeThe Cambridge History of Ancient China, From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC edited byMichael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy was published.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Twitchett was the expert who helped create the China maps forThe Times Atlas of World History (first published in 1979).
