Miner Searle Bates

Miner Searle Bates (Chinese name: Bei Deshi, 贝德士; 1897–1978) was an American scholar. He was an advisor to the Republic of China government.

Life

Bates was educated at numerous prestigious institutions such as the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; Yale University, where he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese history; and Hiram College, in Ohio. He worked with YMCA in India and Mesopotamia (then part of the Ottoman Empire) before finally beginning work at the University of Nanking sponsored by American churches, where he taught history from 1920 to 1950. In 1923 he married Lilliath Robbins, a teacher at nearby Ginling College.

In 1950, shortly after the Chinese Communist Party were victorious in the Chinese Civil War, the University of Nanking was merged with Nanjing University and Bates returned to the United States and was appointed Professor of Missions at Union Theological Seminary, where he taught until 1965. He wrote Religious Liberty: An Inquiry (1945), a study of religious freedoms and persecution across the globe.

Nanking Massacre

In the summer of 1937, Bates travelled with his family to Japan, returning to Nanjing alone. He was thus present in Nanjing during the Battle of Nanking and in the subsequent period known as the Rape of Nanking. During this time, he became one of the leaders of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone and worked to secure the safety of the remaining population of Nanking who were mostly those who were too poor to evacuate in advance of the Japanese assault on the city.