Frederick Wells Williams

Frederick Wells Williams was one of the highest authorities on Oriental history and institutions. Himself born in China, son of a well-known writer on Chinese civilization, Professor Williams devoted his life to pursuit of that interesting but so often elusive study, which he taught for thirty-five years at Yale and which he made the subject of many books and monographs. He knew intimately the Chinese character and mentality, he understood the country’s background in ancient and modern history. In some respects his expectations of a generation ago for China’s political and social future, were strikingly fulfilled by the event; other and very specific predictions curiously missed the mark.

“The Middle Kingdom,” which his father wrote originally but in whose revision Williams collaborated many years later, correctly foreshadowed present-day conditions by warning that the chief danger to the Chinese people was of “going too fast in schemes of reform and correction, demolishing the fabric before its elements are ready for reconstruction.” It may be said to have anticipated the underlying factors in the recent break-down of Bolshevist intrigue, when remarking that the safeguard against such disintegration of the Chinese character was the population’s “want of enthusiasm and dislike of change.” But the conclusion that “there is little cause to apprehend retrograde steps,” and that elements existed in the national character which were bound to raise the country “to a rank among the foremost nations,” could hardly have foreseen the political chaos of today. Professor Williams lived to see China partitioned between bandit chiefs, and to hear the bullets strike the steamer on which he was revisiting Shanghai harbor.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1929 Century Association Yearbook