William Woodville Rockhill (April 1, 1854 – December 8, 1914) was a United States diplomat, best known as the author of the U.S.'s Open Door Policy for China, the first American to learn to speak Tibetan, and one of the West's leading experts on the modern political history of China. Life and career Rockhill was born in Philadelphia, the son of Thomas Cadwalader Rockhill and Dorothea Anne Woodville (1823–1913). His father died when he was 13 years old and his mother relocated the family to France to escape the Civil War. While in his teens, Rockhill read Abbé Huc's account of his 1844-46 voyage to Lhasa, which sparked young Rockhill's interest in Tibet. Rockhill sought out the celebrated Orientalist Léon Feer of the Bibliothèque Nationale, who guided Rockhill's learning about the Far East. Rockhill attended the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, where he studied Tibetan. After graduation, Rockhill joined the French Foreign Legion, serving as an officer in Algiers. In 1876, Rockhill returned to the United States, and on December 14, 1876, he married his childhood sweetheart, Caroline Tyson, daughter of J. Washington Tyson and Marie Louise (Hewling) Tyson of Philadelphia. The couple purchased a cattle ranch in New Mexico, but Rockhill concluded that ranching was not to his liking. By 1880, he had completed a French language translation of the Tibetan version of the Udanavarga, which was published in 1881. The Rockhills sold the ranch in 1881 and moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where William's mother lived. He spent the next three years in Europe studying Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese. During this period, he co-authored a biography of the Buddha with Nanjo Bunyu and Ernst Leumann, and completed a French language translation of the Prātimokṣa sūtra, published in 1884 under the title Prâtimoksha sutra; ou, Le traité d'émancipation selon la version tibétaine: avec notes et extraits du Dulva (Vinaya). In 1883, Rockhill's wife came into a $70,000 inheritance on the death of a cousin, allowing Rockhill to take an unpaid position with the American Legation in Peking. After perfecting his language skills, he was upgraded to a paid position. In the 1880s, he made two extended expeditions into western China, Mongolia and Tibet. He sent an account of his travels to the Smithsonian Institution for publication (as The Land of the Lamas (1891)), and in 1893, he was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Artifacts from Rockhill's