¹ Frederick T. Gates, “Tentative Suggestions as to World Strategy in Medicine (1924),” Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 79, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC).

² The most overwhelming praise for the China Medical Board comes from Raymond B. Fosdick's history of the Rockefeller Foundation, in which he calls the CMB and its work “the best that Western civilization had to offer to a people whom it profoundly admired and in whose future it deeply believed. It was a gift inspired by no motive other than a desire to promote the welfare of men.” Fosdick, Raymond B., The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, 1952), 91.Google Scholar The strongest critique of the China Medical Board comes from E. Richard Brown, who argues that Gates had “unabashed imperialist motivations” for supporting the introduction of Western medicine in China, which would help “convert and colonize the heathen” and thus pave the way for Western industrial capitalism. Brown, E. Richard, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America (Berkeley, 1979), 122Google Scholar and “Rockefeller Medicine in China: Professionalism and Imperialism,” in Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed., Robert Amove (Boston, 1980): 123–46. Much of the scholarship on the China Medical Board also glosses over the complex story of its creation, instead focusing on its most heavily-funded and highest-profile venture, the Peking Union Medical College. Bowers, John Z., Western Medicine in a Chinese Palace: Peking Union Medical College, 1917–1951 (Philadelphia, 1972)Google Scholar; Bullock, Mary Brown, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College (Berkeley, 1980)Google Scholar; Chen, Kaiyi, “Quality Versus Quantity: The Rockefeller Foundation and Nurses' Training in China,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 5 (Spring 1996): 77–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferguson, Mary E., China Medical Board and Peking Union Medical College: A Chronicle of Fruitful Collaboration, 1914–1951 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Ma, Qiusha, “The Rockefeller Foundation and Modern Medical Education in China, 1915–1951” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1995).Google Scholar

³ For the purposes of this paper, the capital of China in the Republican period will be referred to as Peking rather than Beijing.

⁴ Frederick T. Gates, “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation”; CMB Actions, Rockefeller Foundation, Box 24, Series 601, RG 1, Folder 233 A, Appendix 3, RAC.

⁵ For a general discussion of the agenda of the Rockefeller Foundation and other American philanthropic foundations see Amove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism; Berman, Edward H., The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany, NY, 1983)Google Scholar; Cueto, Marcus, ed., Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America (Bloomington, IN, 1994)Google Scholar; Hewa, Soma, Colonialism, Tropical Disease, and Imperial Medicine: Rockefeller Philanthropy in Sri Lanka (Lanham, MD, 1995)Google Scholar; Ninkovich, Frank, “The Rockefeller Foundation, China, and Cultural Change,” Journal of American History 70 (March 1984): 799–820.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁶ Kenneth Prewitt, Social Sciences and Private Philanthropy: The Quest for Social Relevance, Essays on Philanthropy, Number 15: Series on Foundations and Their Role In American Life (Indianapolis, IN, 1995), 12.

⁷ Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown, CT, 1989)Google Scholar; Karl, Barry D. and Katz, Stanley N., “Donors, Trustees, Staffs: An Historical View, 1890–1930,” The Art of Giving: Four Views on American Philanthropy: Proceedings of the Third Rockefeller Archive Center Conference (Tarrytown, NY, 1979): 3–13.Google Scholar

⁸ Gates, Frederick Taylor, Chapters in My Life (New York, 1977), 2–33, 125.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., 48.

¹⁰ Ibid., 49.

¹¹ Ibid., 56–72.

¹² Ibid., 71–77.

¹³ Ibid., 80, 83.

¹⁴ Ibid., 179–80.

¹⁵ Ibid., 83.

¹⁶ Ibid., 88–92.

¹⁷ Ibid., 85–96; Chemow, Ron, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeiler, Sr. (New York, 1998), 361–65.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Curtis, Susan, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore, 1991)Google Scholar; May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Gates, , Chapters, 160.Google Scholar

²⁰ Chernow, , Titan, 263–64.Google Scholar

²¹ Gates, , Chapters, 160–61.Google Scholar

²² Chandler, Alfred, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA, 1977).Google Scholar

²³ Berliner, Howard S., A System of Scientific Medicine: Philanthropic Foundations in the FlexnerEra (New York, 1985), 28.Google Scholar

²⁴ Fell, James E. Jr, “Rockefeller's Right-Hand Man: Frederick T. Gates and the Northwestern Mining Investments,” Business History Review 52 (Winter 1978): 537–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chernow, , Titan, 364Google Scholar, 367–74.

²⁵ Although he acknowledged that his autobiography was “not a medical treatise,” he frequently returned in it to his refrain of attacking the practice of medicine in America in his autobiography. Gates, , Chapters, 26–27Google Scholar, 79–80.

²⁶ Ibid., 180.

²⁷ Ibid., 179–84; Chernow, , Titan, 470–76.Google Scholar

²⁸ Cheraow, , Titan, 404.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gates, , Chapters, 179–84Google Scholar; Chernow, , Titan, 470–76Google Scholar; Harr, John Ensor and Johnson, Peter J., The Rockefeller Century (New York, 1988), 66.Google Scholar

³⁰ Gates, , Chapters, 198–201.Google Scholar

³¹ Indeed, Gates morosely called the term a “deathless phrase.” Gates, , Chapters, 201–02Google Scholar; Harr, and Johnson, , Rockefeller Century, 84.Google Scholar

³² Gates, , Chapters, 202–04.Google Scholar

³³ Of course, the same can be said today.

³⁴ For the most comprehensive discussion of America's interest in China in this period, see Hunt, Michael H., The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar and Young, Marilyn B., The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901 (Cambridge, MA, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Gates, , Chapters, 63–64.Google Scholar Gates spends over ten pages of his autobiography — the longest single chapter — describing the lessons he learned from Rochester's Dr. Anderson. Most of these lessons are general matters of personal conduct and morality, but Gates spends almost a full page on China.

³⁶ Ernest Burton, Harry Pratt Judson, Eri Hulbert, Alonzo Parker, and Albion Small to Frederick T. Gates, December 31, 1906, Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC; Storr, Richard J., Harper's University: The Beginnings: A History of the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1966), 74Google Scholar, 366; Lewerth, Catherine, Rockefeller Foundation History, vol. 3, pt. VII, “Creation of the China Medical Board (1914–1921),” (Unpublished, Rockefeller Foundation institutional history, 1949), 522.Google Scholar

³⁷ William K. McKibben to Edward Burton, December 31, 1906, Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

³⁸ Gates, , Chapters, 131.Google Scholar

³⁹ Frederick T. Gates to Edward Burton, et al., January 7, 1907. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

⁴⁰ Gates to R.F. Fitch, March 6, 1907; Rockefeller Family Archives, RG ?, 2, O, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC. R.F. Fitch was head of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in New York.

⁴¹ Gates continued making inquiries and contacts among missionaries, but he was always careful to emphasize that no plans or financial commitments had been made. News of Gates' activities circulated quickly, if inaccurately. In March of 1907, a few months after Burton first suggested a Christian university in China, Burton excitedly wrote to Gates about a rumored Rockefeller pledge of $50 million to advance “education and civilization in China.” Burton was mistaken, but his letter is clear evidence of how carefully Gates was being watched. Burton to Gates, March 16, 1907; Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2,0, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

⁴² This meeting has also been called the China Centenary Conference. Bates, M. Searle, “The Theology of American Missionaries in China, 1900–1950,” in The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, ed., Fairbank, John K. (Cambridge, MA, 1974), 143.Google Scholar

⁴³ Gates to Reverend Arthur H. Smith, 1907; Smith to Gates, June 8, 1907; Smith to Gates, July 29, 1907; Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

⁴⁴ Henry C. Mabie to Gates, January 30, 1908, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

⁴⁵ Gates arranged for $20,000 to be given to support the commission, with the provision that the source of the gift not be publicized. The subsequent President's report for the University of Chicago listed the gift as “from a friend for Oriental Investigation — $20,000.” Lewerth, , Rockefeller Foundation History, 524–25Google Scholar; Bullock, , An American Transplant, 33–34.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Gates, “The China Medical Board,” 1. Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10.

⁴⁷ Gates, , “The China Medical Board,” 4.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Spence, Jonathan D., To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Hunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, 1984), 1–11Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, “The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Imperialism,” in Fairbank, , The Missionary Enterprise in Chin a and America, 336–73.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Forsythe, Sidney A., An American Missionary Community in China, 1895–1905 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ Gates, , “The China Medical Board,” 3.Google Scholar

⁵² Lagemann, , The Politics of Knowledge, 203Google Scholar; Wheatley, Steven C., The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and Medical Education (Madison, WI, 1988).Google Scholar

⁵³ Amove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism; Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy; Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men; Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation.

⁵⁴ Karl, and Katz, , “Donors, Trustees, Staffs,” 7Google Scholar; Gates to Rockefeller, Jr., January 23, 1907, Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC; Chernow, , Titan, 566.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Indeed, by the late 1890s, Rockefeller, Sr. was largely absent from the day-to-day operations of his financial and charitable efforts, with Gates claiming a great share of these duties. Rockefeller, Jr. gradually assumed his share of this work. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to John D. Rockefeller, Sr., December 31, 1906; Gates to Jr., January 23, 1907. Rockefeller Family Archives, RG III, 2, O. Folder: Proposed Foreign Mission Fund, 1906–1909, RAC.

⁵⁶ Gates had two “attacks of heart palpitations” in 1909. In addition, although he would not know it for years, he was probably suffering from diabetes from 1909–23. Gates to “Mont,” June 4, 1909, Gates Collection, Box 2, Folder 31, RAC; Gates, “My Resignation,” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 78: Gates Papers 1916–17, RAC.

⁵⁷ Chernow, , Titan, 567.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation,” Rockefeller Family Archives, RG 2, Series O, Box 11, Folder 88, RAC. Gates had been planning this conference since at least 1910, when he asked the University of Chicago's Burton and Judson, who had first raised the subject of Rockefeller philanthropy in China, to draw a list of those “would best serve the purposes which you know we want to serve, viz. as eyes, ears and brains for us in what we may wish to do for China and the Orient.” Gates to Judson, March 4, 1910, Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC.

⁵⁹ Buck, Peter, American Science and Modern China, 1876–1936 (New York, 1980), 55–57Google Scholar; Fosdick, , The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 24–25.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”

⁶¹ Eliot's interest in China was especially strong after his visit to East Asia in 1912 on behalf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His observations and opinions, including the need for medical education in China, were published in his study Some Roads Toward Peace (Washington, DC, 1913). Eliot asked Gates on several occasions to help support the Harvard Medical School of Shanghai, which Eliot had helped found in 1911, and which despite its name was an independent entity. Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 21: Charles W. Eliot 1910–1914, RAC; “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”

⁶² In his 1900 tract “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation,” Mott expressed concern with social causes, but emphasized that the salvation of souls was still “the chief business of the Church.” Gorrell, Donald K., The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Macon, GA, 1988), 84Google Scholar; “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”

⁶³ “China Conference of the Rockefeller Foundation.”

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Chernow, , Titan, 362.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Gates, , “The China Medical Board,” 4, 9.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Boyer, Paul, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 198.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Frederick T. Gates, “Gates on Rockefeller,” Gates Collection, Folder 57: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. 1892–1927; Chernow, , Titan, 506–11Google Scholar; Collier, Peter and Horowitz, David, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York, 1976), 87–88.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Karl, and Katz, , “Donors, Trustees, Staffs,” 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Chernow, , Titan, 511.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development of a Comprehensive and Efficient System of Medicine in China,” 1914, Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC.

⁷² Roger Greene to Jerome Greene, March 1, 1914, August 4, 1914; Rockefeller Foundation, RG 1, Series 601, Box 26, Folder 239, RAC; Cohen, Warren I., The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas W. Lament, George E. Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ Lewerth, , Rockefeller Foundation History, 565Google Scholar; Harr, and Johnson, , The Rockefeller Century, 61, 68Google Scholar; Pugach, Noel, “Embarrassed Monarchist: Frank J. Goodnow and Constitutional Development in China, 1913–1915,” Pacific Historical Review 42 (November 1973): 499–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁵ Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development.”

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Gates, “Thoughts on Medical Missions and the Spirit and Teaching of Jesus by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.”

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² The friend was Francis Peabody, father of Francis Weld Peabody of the Judson Commission. Peabody had heard about the details of the meeting and wrote to Gates out of concern. Francis Peabody to Gates, December 15, 1914, Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 14, RAC.

⁸³ Minutes of the First Meeting of the China Medical Board — December 11, 1914; Rockefeller Foundation, Box 24, Series 601 — China, RG 1 — Projects, Folder 233 A, RAC.

⁸⁴ “Press Release of the Peking Union Medical College,” Rockefeller Foundation, Box 26, Series 601, RG 1, 601 A, Folder 239, RAC.

⁸⁵ Gates, “The Gradual and Orderly Development.”

⁸⁶ Besides never comprehending why he was chosen, he also noted ruefully that he was actually chosen director while on a trip through the Southern states for the General Education Board, “and when I got back to New York I found that I had a new job with a whole set of duties mapped out.” Lewerth, , Rockefeller Foundation History, 522Google Scholar, 568, 573.

⁸⁷ Gates, “The China Medical Board,” Frederick T. Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC; Fosdick, , The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 83–85.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Chandler, , The Visible Hand, 327.Google ScholarChernow, , Titan, 568.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Gates, “Shanghai — A Review of Facts,” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 65, RAC.

⁹⁰ Gates occasionally antagonized missionaries, yet he was also willing to give them enough financial support to keep them off balance as to his motives. He therefore authorized grants to missionary societies, hospitals, and so forth to demonstrate CMB support. Although these gifts — usually in the thousands of dollars — were not substantial when compared to the millions that Gates was investing in the PUMC, they did help keep missionary resistance in check.

⁹¹ Abraham Flexner helped provide Buttrick with a quick overview of medical education, but acknowledged that Buttrick's importance lay in his “superb diplomacy” with missionary societies. Flexner, Abraham, Abraham Flexner: An Autobiography (New York, 1960), 141–42.Google Scholar

⁹² Chernow, , Titan, 569.Google Scholar

⁹³ Gates, “Shanghai — A Review of Facts.”

⁹⁴ Gates and Buttrick to Roger Greene, November 13, 1916; Rockefeller Archives, RG 1, Series 601, Box 33, Folder 261, RAC.

⁹⁵ Karl, and Katz, , “Donors, Trastees, Staffs,” 10.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Gates, “The China Medical Board,” Gates Collection, Box 1, Folder 10, RAC.

⁹⁷ Gates, “Tentative Suggestions as to World Strategy in Medicine (1924),” Gates Collection, Box 4, Folder 79, RAC.

⁹⁸ Gates, , “The China Medical Board,” 11.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Ibid., 4.

¹⁰⁰ Bullock, , An American Transplant, 35.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Besides, by this time John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had come under the guidance of Mackenzie King and Ivy Lee, who helped the Rockefeller family carve out a more favorable public image. Chernow, , Titan, 581–86.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Brown, , Rockefeller Medicine Men, 124.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁴ Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 12.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Despite his crucial role in advancing medical research, Gates reserved for himself many Victorian and pre-Victorian attitudes, and in his biography he smugly noted that the large size of his family was due to the “Puritan ancestral blood of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without the least degeneration or dilution. Since 1685 there had been no intermarriage on either side with later arrivals from abroad.” If Gates saw 1685 as an appropriately safe date for the walling off of his family from “later arrivals,” his attitude toward eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century immigrants can be easily inferred. Gates, , Chapters, 64–65, 125.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ One must also consider how many others like Gates might be lurking in the margins of the nebulous Progressive Era. If he managed to reorient the Calvinist imperatives of his ancestors in service to the Rockefellers, his ambitions were far from realized. How many other foundation officers, advisors, and experts lent their vision and passion into ventures that were sanitized for public consumption? An excellent recent collection of essays suggests that the history of philanthropy is entering a new phase of development that might consider such questions. Friedman, Lawrence J. and McGarvie, Mark D., eds., Chanty, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History (Cambridge, UK, 2003).Google Scholar