[6] He went to Yale University on a Clare-Mellon Fellowship to study the history and culture of China, receiving an MA and then a PhD in 1965, when he won the John Addison Porter Prize.
As part of his graduate training, he spent a year in Australia to study under Fang Chao-ying and Tu Lien-che, scholars of the Qing dynasty.
Some of his books during this period included The Search for Modern China (1990), which was published on the back of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (1996).
[7] While his primary focus was on Qing dynasty China, he also wrote a biography of Mao Zedong[9] and The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a study of twentieth-century intellectuals and their relation to revolution.
[16][17] In 2010, Spence was appointed to deliver the annual Jefferson Lecture at the Library of Congress, the US federal government's highest honour for achievement in the humanities.
[18] Spence's name in Chinese, 史景遷 (pinyin: Shǐ Jǐngqiān), was given to him by Fang Chao-ying to reflect his love of history and admiration for the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian.
[12][23] He had two sons from a previous marriage (1962–1993) to Helen Alexander, Colin and Ian Spence, two stepchildren, Yar Woo and Mei Chin, a grandchild as well as two step-grandchildren.