Carl Crow (1884–1945) was a

Highland, Missouri Highland is an unincorporated community in Cinque Hommes Township in Perry County, Missouri, United States. History Highland's name is topographical and was named after a nearby creek. It is located in the north-central part of Cinque Homm ...

-born newspaperman, businessman, and writer who managed several newspapers and then opened the first

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

advertising agency An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China. He ran the agency for 19 years, creating calendar advertisements and the so-called sexy China Girl poster. He was also the founding editor of the ''

Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury The ''Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury'' was an English language newspaper in Shanghai, China, published by the Post-Mercury Co. The newspaper represented the point of view of Shanghai's American business community.Tucker, p124 The newspaper office ...

''.

Career

Carl Crow arrived in Shanghai in 1911 and for a quarter of a century worked there as a journalist, newspaper proprietor, and ad-man. He also did stints as a hostage negotiator, emergency police sergeant, gentleman farmer, go-between for the American government, and propagandist. As his career progressed, so did the fortunes of Shanghai. The city transformed itself from a colonial backwater when Crow arrived, to the cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1930s when Crow wrote his pioneering book ''400 Million Customers'', which encouraged a flood of business into China. In 1935, the Shanghai Municipal Council published a map for visitors to the city which they commissioned Crow to produce. A reproduction of the map was printed in 2005 to help fund the copying of the archive of Crow's unpublished works, diaries and correspondence held at the University of Missouri. Among Crow's exploits were attending the negotiations in Peking which led to the fall of the

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

, getting a scoop on the Japanese interference in China during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, negotiating the release of a group of western hostages from mountain bandits, and being one of the first westerners to journey up the

Burma Road The Burma Road () was a road linking Burma (now known as Myanmar) with southwest China. Its terminals were Kunming, Yunnan, and Lashio, Burma. It was built while Burma was a British colony to convey supplies to China during the Second Sino ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. He met and interviewed most of the major figures of the time, including Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek,

the Soong sisters The Soong sisters () were Soong Ai-ling, Soong Ching-ling, and Soong Mei-ling, three Shanghainese (of Hakka descent) Christian Chinese women who were, along with their husbands, amongst China's most significant political figures of the early 20 ...

, and

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

's second-in-command

Zhou En-lai Zhou Enlai (; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Ma ...

. During the Second World War he worked for American intelligence alongside

Owen Lattimore Owen Lattimore (July 29, 1900 – May 31, 1989) was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of ''Pacif ...

, co-ordinating US policies to support China against Japan. He was very anti-Japanese, and fearing retribution he left Shanghai for good in 1937, just days after the Japanese attacked as part of the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

Battle of Shanghai The Battle of Shanghai () was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan The also ...

. He returned to Chongqing in 1939, entering China via the Burma Road from Rangoon to Kunming. He wrote a diary of this time which has been edited by Shanghai-based English writer Paul French, and published as ''Carl Crow: The Long Road Back to China''. He died in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in 1945.

Works and impact

With A.R. Burt and J.B. Powell, Crow published the bilingual ''Biographies of Prominent Chinese'' (c. 1925). In the 1930s and 1940s, Crow wrote 13 books. ''Master Kung: The Story of Confucius'' (1937), ''Time'' magazine wrote that to "orthodox Confucians Author Crow's Confucius may sometimes seem confusing. But they will have to admit that he succeeds in peeling off a lot of the 24-century coating of official lacquer. In fact, as Author Crow portrays him, the huge, ugly wise man emerges with a look as human as Benjamin Franklin's." This was followed by the anecdotal ''The Chinese are Like That'' (1938), titled ''My Friends the Chinese'' in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Crow's most popular book, ''400 Million Customers'' (1937), won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1937, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association."Books and Authors", ''The New York Times'', 1936-04-12, page BR12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007)."Booksellers Give Prize to 'Citadel': Cronin's Work About Doctors Their Favorite--'Mme. Curie' Gets Non-Fiction Award Two Others Win Honors Fadiman Is 'Not Interested' in What Pulitzer Committee Thinks of Selections Other High Favorites Paperweights As Prizes", ''The New York Times'' 1938-03-02, page 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers ''The New York Times'' (1851-2007). The book argued that foreign businessmen had to listen to their Chinese customers to meet their surprising but ultimately comprehensible requests. Chinese were customers, not bosses. The book has been reprinted at least twice in the new millennium. The historian Jerry Israel, however, wrote that Crows China had no misery, wretchedness, poverty or . . . revolution. He looked for Four Hundred Million Customers, but perhaps found Four Hundred Million Number One Boys. Jerry Israel, "Carl Crow, Edgar Snow, and Shifting American Journalistic Perceptions of China," in Jonathan Goldstein, Jerry Israel, and Hilary Conroy, eds., ''America Views China: American Images of China Then and Now'' (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1990), p. 153.

Important works

*1913 – ''The Travelers Handbook for China'', Hwa-Mei Book Concern, Shanghai, (1913) *1914 – ''America and the Philippines'', Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, NY, (1914) *1916 – ''Japan and America: A Contrast'', Robert M McBride & Company, New York, (1916) * - ''Biographies of Prominent Chinese'', Biographical Publishing Company Inc., Shanghai, (c. 1925) *1933 – ''Handbook for China.'' (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore: Kelly & Walsh, 5th, 1933). Reprinted: with an Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge (Hong Kong, Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1986). *1937 – ''I Speak for the Chinese'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1937) *1937 – ''Four Hundred Million Customers'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1937). Various reprints, including with an Introduction by

Ezra Vogel Ezra Feivel Vogel (; July 11, 1930 — December 20, 2020 ) was an American sociologist who wrote prolifically on modern Japan, China, and Korea, and worked both in academia and the public sphere. He was Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Scie ...

(White Plains, NY: EastBridge Books, 2003 ISBN 9781891936074); with a
Introduction by Paul French
(Earnshaw, 2003; ISBN 1-891936-07-7); Kegan Paul (2006) ISBN 0-7103-1212-1}. *1938 – ''Master Kung: The Story of Confucius'', Harper & Brothers, New York and London, (1938) *1938 – ''The Chinese Are Like That'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1938) (Also published as ''My Friends the Chinese'', Hamish Hamilton, London (1938)) *1939 – ''He Opened the Door of Japan: Townsend Harris and the Story of His Amazing Adventures in Establishing American Relations with the Far East.'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1939). Sometimes known by the alternative title ''Harris of Japan'' *1940 – ''Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1940). *1940 – ''Meet the South Americans'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1940) *1942 – ''Japan's Dream of World Empire: The Tanaka Memorial'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1942) *1943 – ''The Great American Customer'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1943) *1944 – ''China Takes Her Place'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1944) *1945 – ''The City of Flint Grows Up'', Harper & Brothers, New York, (1945) *2009 – ''The Long Road Back to China: The Burma Road Wartime Diaries'' (written 1939, pub. 2009)

References and further reading

* . * French, Paul. ''Through the Looking Glass: Foreign Journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao''. Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
Elizabeth Ingleson, "Four Hundred Million Customers: Carl Crow and the Legacy of 1930s Sino-American Trade", ''Australasian Journal of American Studies'' Vol. 35, No. 1

Notes

External links

Carl Crow's 1935 map of Shanghai
*
NPR on Carl Crow

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crow, Carl 1884 births 1945 deaths 20th-century American biographers American male biographers American business writers American travel writers American expatriates in China National Book Award winners