Ernest Batson Price (born Henzada, Burma, October 13, 1890; died Los Gatos, California, October 20, 1973) was an American diplomat, university professor, military officer, and businessman. He spent over twenty years in China and witnessed first-hand warlord power struggles, the growth of Japanese militarism, America’s post-war diplomacy, China’s civil war, and the profound social change that followed. As a result of this first-hand experience, Pr...
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Ernest Batson Price (born Henzada, Burma, October 13, 1890; died Los Gatos, California, October 20, 1973) was an American diplomat, university professor, military officer, and businessman. He spent over twenty years in China and witnessed first-hand warlord power struggles, the growth of Japanese militarism, America’s post-war diplomacy, China’s civil war, and the profound social change that followed. As a result of this first-hand experience, Price was one of America’s foremost authorities on Chinese languages, culture, and politics from the early nineteen twenties through the mid nineteen fifties.
Price was the son of Baptist missionaries, and the youngest of four children. After his father died in 1899, he was sent to school at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. After high school, he taught in a small, rural school in a German speaking community in North Dakota. While there, he learned to speak, read and write German. His fluent German helped him get into college, and later...
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