When Cultures Collide: How Primitive Masculinity and Class Conflict Derailed the Patrick J. Hurley Diplomatic Mission to China, 1944-1945
Abstract
Historians often criticize Patrick J. Hurley for the failure of his diplomatic mission to
China in 1944-1945. Instead of acting as an impartial mediator during the negotiations
between the Guomindang (GMD) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hurley aligned U.S.
policy with the GMD’s leader, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), who would come to lose the
civil war against the Chinese Communists. Hurley’s unique position to create foreign policy
resulted in the implementation of what became the established long-term policy in China.
This policy eventually alienated the CCP and lead to the severing of diplomatic relations
between the U.S. and China for decades.
Although historians have long since blamed Hurley’s personality and lack of
understanding for the mission’s failure, no one has studied the role cultural influences had in
shaping his attitudes and decisions. Hurley’s perception of China’s key actors and his own
American colleagues, along with his subsequent behaviors, grew out of his life experiences,
especially his cultural understandings of gender and class. Working-class men in the United
States from the early-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century often fostered an aggressive
model of manhood that opposed the Victorian values of the middle and upper classes. Instead
of valuing restraint and respectability, social norms which governed behavior in modern
business offices and in respectable middle-class family life, these men valued the display of
passion and physical assertiveness. Hurley was largely influenced by this form of
masculinity, which has been labeled “primitive manhood.”
Constructions of gender and class can also be interconnected. Different socioeconomic
classes often embrace varying ideals of proper gender roles. Hurley’s working-class origins
and values would clash with the middle and upper-class backgrounds of the various State
Department Foreign Service officers who counseled compromise with the CCP. His
assimilation of these cultural constructs negatively affected his relationships with these
diplomats and the CCP, resulting in his expulsion of all China experts who disagreed with his
policy. No one was left to voice alternative viewpoints to Hurley’s successor, George
Marshall, who ultimately continued Hurley’s misguided policy of upholding Jiang’s regime.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- A review of the scholarly literature on Sino-American relations -- Gender and class and Hurley's developing years -- The Guomindang, the Communists, and the China Hands -- Hurley's arrives in China and cleans house -- Hurley: he-man diplomacy -- Opposition silences, Hurley's policy wins vii, 50 pages
Degree
M.A.