22 July 1891 Greenfields, Pennsylvania - d. Chicago, 22 June 1947) was a scholar and academic specialist in the modern international relations of East Asia.
[4] He and his mother moved their household goods to Chicago, but MacNair was not at first inclined to accept the offer of an ongoing position there.
[1] Perhaps the most important factor in overcoming his reluctance to leave St. John's for Chicago was the urging of Florence Wheelock Ayscough (1878-1942), a writer and a translator of Chinese poetry.
[6] Modern Chinese History: Selected Readings, a two-volume compilation of some 400 excerpts of documents and writings chosen to be assigned along with H.B.
A reviewer at the time quoted MacNair that the approach was "expository and not critical", and noted that he "adds his plea to those of American statesmen from the time of President Cleveland for the passage of legislation conferring on the federal executive and judicial agencies power to protect aliens against the violation of their treaty rights".
The reviewer added that "the author has not, apparently, allowed his Chinese environment to destroy reasonable objectivity in his use of materials.
The review praised MacNair's additions to Morse, such as the description of the events of 1925–1927, which led to suppression of the Shanghai printing of the volume.
[12] In the 1930s, especially after his marriage to Florence Ayscough, his interests turned away from international relations and political conditions, and from professional scholarship.
During World War II, however, he was a staff member of the University of Chicago Civil Affairs Training School, where the views he presented were sometimes in conflict with American government policies.