John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question

TLDR: In the early twentieth century, two famous American international lawyers had a China connection that was either unknown or has long since been forgotten by scholars as mentioned in this paper, and one of those lawyers was John Bassett Moore, who was an adviser to the Chinese legation in the United States as well as to Chinese delegates to the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations.

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, two famous American international lawyers had a China connection that was either unknown or has long since been forgotten by scholars. One of those lawyers was John Bassett Moore, adviser to the Chinese legation in the United States as well as to the Chinese delegates to the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations. In 1921, Robert Lansing succeeded Moore as counselor to China's Washington legation, and he also proffered his own ideas to the Chinese delegation at the Washington Disarmament Conference. Moore's and Lansing's advice to the Chinese reveals not only their profound disagreements with the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson, but also the limitations of their approaches in trying to help China win back the Shandong (Shantung) region-a hotly contested area that had been leased to Germany under duress in 1898 and then occupied by Japan in 1914. At one time, according to political scientist John Millett, "the study of international relations" and "the name of John Bassett Moore" were synonymous. Born and raised in Delaware, Moore studied law at the University of Virginia before drop-

Full text

Publications
5-1997
John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question
Stephen Craft
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
, crafts@erau.edu
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.erau.edu/publication
Part of the Diplomatic History Commons
Scholarly Commons Citation Scholarly Commons Citation
Craft, S. (1997). John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question.
Paci;c Historical
Review, LXVI
(2). Retrieved from https://commons.erau.edu/publication/407
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
commons@erau.edu.