Yenching University was formed through the merger of four Christian schools over the course of five years, from 1915 to 1920: • The school of theology was itself a union of the theological seminary of North China Education Union and two Methodist theological schools in Beijing.
John Leighton Stuart was appointed as the principal of the university in January 1919, prior to which he had been teaching
Greek at the Jinling Theological Seminary (金陵神學院) in
Nanjing. As the university was initially short on funds, he turned to fundraising worldwide and received support from the estate of
Charles Martin Hall, an American executive of
Alcoa Aluminum. The university bought the royal gardens of a
Qing Dynasty prince to build a scenic campus and employed gardeners from the Imperial gardens. In 1926 the campus was completed. Theology, Law, and Medical were the main schools of the university, together with Arts and Science studies. Stuart determined to create a university that served the Chinese nation. He attracted major Chinese and Western scholars to teach. Religion was not a qualification, although Stuart gave major support to the School of Theology. Among the first was
William Hung, who became Chairman of the History Department and Dean. In 1928, the
Harvard-Yenching Institute was jointly founded by Yenching University and
Harvard University for the teaching of the humanities and social sciences in
East Asia. Under Hung, the university's reputation for Chinese studies rose steadily, especially with the publication of the
Harvard-Yenching Sinological Index Series. By 1930, the school was among the top universities in China, its teaching distinguished itself by a considerable academic freedom. During the
Second Sino-Japanese War, the area was occupied by Japan. Japanese military police (
Kempeitai) sealed off the campus and also arrested its foreign faculty. The university was moved to
Chengdu,
Sichuan. After the
People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Yenching University remained open. In 1950, the School of Religion of Yanching University became independent as the Yanjing (
Modern Pinyin spelling of Yanching) School of Religion, which was later renamed
Yanjing Theological Seminary. In response to the PRC's entry into the
Korean War, the US froze all Chinese assets in America. The United States also prohibited transfers funds from the United States to recipients within the PRC, which cut off funding for American-influenced institutions in the PRC. The PRC began efforts to remove American cultural influence from China, including by nationalizing cultural institutions affiliated with the United States. In early 1951, Yenching University was nationalized and became administered by the
Ministry of Education. In 1952,
Mao Zedong's government re-grouped the country's higher education institutions with individual institutions tending to specialize in a certain field of study after the Soviet model. As a result, Yenching University was closed up, and its arts and science faculties were merged into
Peking University and other state-operated institutions, its politics and law faculties were merged into
China University of Political Science and Law, its economics faculties were merged into
Central University of Finance and Economics, its sociology faculties were merged into
Minzu University of China, and other faculties merged into other institutions. At the same time, its
engineering section was merged with
Tsinghua University, and Peking University moved from central downtown Beijing to take over the former Yenching University campus in the city's
Haidian District. ==Scholars==