Only an academic field that evolved as fast as China changed could comprehend this vast, complex, and dynamic civilization. For within that field, no single human being would ever again have to clean the Aegean Stables, as Williams had attempted to do. Instead, the study of China, like that of Europe or the Middle East, would be divided into ever smaller units, dispersed across time, and distributed among many minds engaged separately in studies of China’s literature, philology, language, government. Of course, within these divisions, sub-divisions would appear that would break down topics further. In this intellectual setting, a single summative work on China, were someone to attempt it, would appear an anachronism.  
 

In 1955, Kenneth Scott Latourette, an expert on Chinese diplomacy, reflected on his graduate education at Yale in the early twentieth century. He referred to Samuel Wells Williams as the first Sinologist and fondly recalled reading The Middle Kingdom in a seminar. Who assigned this text and served as Latourette’s mentor? The answer is Frederick Williams, Samuel’s son, who occupied a China Chair at Yale. Though Williams’s great text was revered, at no point in his education was Latourettte instructed to write something like The Middle Kingdom himself. Rather, Frederick Williams and the other professors helped him find his individual niche. The days of the generalist, such as a scientific missionary, were over.