John Curtis Perry also known as John Perry (born 18 July 1930) is an East Asian and Oceanic studies professor and historian. He is the Henry Willard Denison Professor Emeritus of History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was also the director of that school's Maritime Studies program and founding president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, until his retirement in 2014.
Perry has written several history books and articles on topics including Pacific Asia-US relations, the American occupation of Japan, American expansionism toward the Pacific Ocean, and Singapore's history. His writing style has been characterized for artfully conveying history to the general reader with pith, wit, and clarity. The Japanese government awarded him the Imperial decoration of the Order of the Sacred Treasure for his contributions to US-Japan relations.
Education
Perry attended Friends schools in Washington, DC and New York City, subsequently going to Yale College for his bachelor's degree in Chinese Studies, graduating in 1952. At Yale he also pursued a master of arts in Foreign Area Studies.
Later, he attended Harvard University for his PhD in history, concluding in 1962 with his thesis Great Britain and the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1858-1905. His doctoral advisors were Edwin O. Reischauer, a japanologist, and Robert G. Albion, a maritime historian; both the leading scholars in their fields at the time.
Career
From 1962 until 1966, Perry was Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College, and from 1966 to 1980, he was Assistant Professor, Professor of History, and Director of the East Asian Studies Program at Carleton College. In 1980, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, becoming the Henry Willard Denison Chair of History in 1981.
Perry was a visiting research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies from 1976 to 1979, and at the Japan Institute (later renamed Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies) from 1979 to 1980.
In his early career, his teaching and research focus was American-East Asian relations, especially with Japan. In the early 2000s, he shifted his focus to maritime studies in order to explore the history of human interactions via the sea. From 1985 to 1997, he was the director of the North Pacific Program, and then director of the Maritime Studies program. He taught courses including Maritime History and Globalization and The International Relations of the China Seas.
Notable students of his include Alan M. Wachman, a scholar of cross-strait relations and Sino-U.S. relations, and Sung-Yoon Lee a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies, and specialist on North Korea. Perry became Lee's doctoral advisor, and developed a life-long mentor-mentee relationship.
In 1995 Perry also took an interest in the Russian Tsar's family dynamics, partnering with in researching the Romanovs' family history from the youth of Alexander III in the 1860s to the death in 1960 of his last surviving daughter. Their research, was published in a book The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga (1999), the first book to provide a biography of the family as a whole. Perry and Pleshakov, at the invitation of the Russian government, attended in 1998 the burial of the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
Perry is the founding president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, a non-profit research organization. He served as IGMS' president from 2007 to 2014, continuing to be the Chair of the Board afterwards. He has been a consultant to several organizations, including the Policy Planning Branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, the Japan Export Trade Promotion Organization (currently the Japan External Trade Organization, JETRO), and Rhumb Line LLC. He also served as a director of the Japan America Society of New Hampshire, and is a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 1990. He is a senior advisor and director of the Japan Society of Boston.
In 2015 Perry retired from active teaching, while continuing to pursue other academic activities. That same year it was announced that he was finishing a book about the implausibility of Singapore's success. That book, titled Singapore: Unlikely Power was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
Family
In 1957, Perry married Sarah Hollis French, of Farmington, Connecticut. They have five children and ten grandchildren.
Honors
In 1991, the Japanese Government awarded Perry the imperial decoration of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon), for his contributions to American-Japanese relations.