Asia (magazine)

Under their influence, the journal published many prominent Asian literary and political figures and American authorities.

An editorial in the Journal explained: "The ignorance of our people in regard to the countries of the Far East is unquestionably a serious obstacle to the legitimate extension of American influence.

"[1] In 1917 Willard Straight, who had been involved in promoting American trade and investment in Korea and China since the turn of the century, and his wife, Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight, bought the magazine and renamed it Asia and continued its publication as a popular journal of commerce and travel.

Writers included William Ernest Hocking, the Harvard liberal theologian; Hu Shih, leader of China's New Culture Movement; Owen Lattimore, the emerging authority on Central Asia; Lin Yutang; Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian independence leader; and reporters such as Nathaniel Peffer; Edgar Snow, Nym Wales, and Theodore H. White, who reported from the front line on China before World War II.

She continued her attacks on imperialism, particularly British, and offered strong support for colonial independence movements.

[5] With the end of the war in 1945, however, Americans lost interest in Asia and the magazine suffered a financial crisis.