Sidney David Gamble (July 12, 1890 – March 29, 1968) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to David Berry and Mary Huggins Gamble; grandson of James Gamble, who, with William Procter, founded

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/con ...

in 1837. in 1912 he graduated magna cum laude from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

with a Bachelor of Literature degree and was elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

. He visited China for four extended periods, 1908, 1917–1919, 1924–27, and 1931–1932, doing Christian social work for

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

and conducting social surveys. He is now best known for his remarkable and extensive photographs of

Peking Beijing, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city by urban area after Shanghai. It is l ...

and

North China North China () is a list of regions of China, geographical region of the People's Republic of China, consisting of five province-level divisions of China, provincial-level administrative divisions, namely the direct-administered municipalities ...

. He also took numerous photographs of

West China Western China ( zh, s=中国西部, l=, labels=no or zh, s=华西, l=, labels=no) is the west of China. It consists of Southwestern China and Northwestern China. In the definition of the Chinese government, Western China covers six provinces ...

(i.e.

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

). At his death he left his widow, the former Elizabeth Lowe, four children, Catherine, Louise, David, and Anne, and ten grandchildren. His daughter, Catherine G. Curran, in 1986 established the Sidney D. Gamble Foundation, and the Sidney D. Gamble Lectures are given annually in Pasadena, California.

Social survey and photography in China

Gamble first toured in 1908, accompanying his parents, then after graduating from Princeton in 1912, studied labor and industrial economics at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, spending six months on a fellowship working at a reform school for delinquent boys. At this time, he built the house which became known as the Sidney D. Gamble House. In 1917, he joined the work of Princeton-in-Peking and Peking

where his Princeton friend John Stewart Burgess invited him to do the surveys which resulted in ''Peking: A Social Survey'', which included more than fifty photographs. In 1919 Gamble was on hand to capture dramatic photographs of the May Fourth student demonstrations. The motto of the May Fourth Movement, "To save China through science and democracy," and the missionary ideal of "Saving China through Christianity" for a time seemed to be united. When he returned with his bride, Elizabeth Lowe, to China in 1924, he used his family resources to hire a team of Chinese researchers to survey 283 families. The book was published in 1933 as ''How Chinese Families Live in Peiping'' (as Peking was then called). In 1926, Gamble traveled for three weeks in the Soviet Union with Sherwood Eddy, a longtime mentor. As China became more and more inflamed by patriotic agitation and warlord fighting, he found hope in the Ting Hsien Experiment (Ding Xian Experiment) in Rural Reconstruction conducted by James Yen’s Mass Education Movement. In 1931-32 Gamble traveled to China for the fourth and final time to organize the surveys which he used for three more detailed volumes, ''Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community'' (1954) and ''North China Villages'' (1963). ''Chinese Village Plays'', published in 1970, after his death, give translations based on unique transcriptions of now lost village yang ko plays, which differ from the later dances.

Jonathan Spence Jonathan Dermot Spence (11 August 1936 – 25 December 2021) was a British-American historian, Sinology, sinologist, and author specialised in History of China, Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 199 ...

concludes of Gamble that his "findings were open-minded, clear headed, methodologically intelligent (though not always beyond criticism by scholars of different views), startlingly imaginative, and -- when presented in photographic form -- vigorous, ebullient, unsentimental, and starkly, yet never cruelly, illustrative of the deep and real suffering that lay at the heart of China's long revolution."

Later career

After his return to the United States, he was elected member of the National Council of YMCA, became Treasurer, Vice Chairman, Chairman, and President Emeritus of Church World Service; Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation; President and Honorary Chairman of Princeton-in-Asia.Chronology of Sidney D. Gamble (Duke University Library)

Notes

References and further reading

* * Jonathan Spence, "Sidney Gamble's China," in Spence, ''Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture'' (Norton, 1992 ): 51–67

* * *

Works

* Sidney D. Gamble, with the assistance of John Stewart Burgess
''Peking, a Social Survey'' ''Conducted under the Auspices of the Princeton University Center in China and the Peking Young Men's Christian Association''
(London: H. Milford, 1921). 538p. Foreword by G. Sherwood Eddy and Robert A. Woods. * Sidney D. Gamble, Ho-chên Wang, Jên-ho Liang, ''How Chinese Families Live in Peiping; a Study of the Income and Expenditure of 283 Chinese Families'' (New York, London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1933). 348 pp 33025920. Field work in charge of Wang Ho-ch*en and Liang Jen-ho. * S. D. Gamble, "The Disappearance of Foot-Binding in Tinghsien," ''The American Journal of Sociology ''49.2 (1943). * Sidney D. Gamble, Foreword by Y.C. James Yen. Field work directed by Franklin Ching-han Lee. ''Ting Hsien, a North China Rural Community'' (New York: International Secretariat Institute of Pacific Relations, 1954; rpr Stanford University Press, 1968). xxv, 472p. 54009009 * Sidney D. Gamble,''North China Villages; Social, Political, and Economic Activities before 1933 '' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). x, 352p. . * Sidney D. Gamble, ''Chinese Village Plays from the Ting Hsien Region (Yang Ke Hsüan); a Collection of Forty-Eight Chinese Rural Plays as Staged by Villagers from Ting Hsien in Northern China '' (Amsterdam,: APA-Philo Press, 1970). xxix, 762 p.p. ; . Translated from the Chinese by various scholars after the original recordings and edited with a critical introd. and explanatory notes by Sidney D. Gamble.

Later publications, exhibits

* ''China Between Revolutions: Photographs by Sidney D. Gamble, 1917-1927'' (Sidney D. Gamble Foundation )Introduction by Jonathan D Spence, May Wu, Editor. * ''Sidney D. Gamble's China, 1917-1932: Photographs of the Land and Its People'' (Washington, D.C.: Alvin Rosenbaum Projects, Inc., 1988). 191 pp. forewords by John Hersey and L. Carrington Goodrich; introduction by Jonathan D. Spence.

External links

* * —Gamble's 1920s film of pilgrimage to Miaofengshan, now housed at

Duke University Libraries Duke University Libraries is the library system of Duke University, serving the university's students and faculty. The Libraries collectively hold some 6 million volumes. The collection contains 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public docum ...

.
Sidney D. Gamble Photographs Collection
on Duke University Libraries: The site currently features photographs dated between 1908 and 1932. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gamble, Sidney D. 1890 births 1968 deaths American expatriates in China Photography in China Princeton University alumni History of Christianity in China University of California, Berkeley alumni YMCA leaders