John Van Antwerp MacMurray (October 6, 1881 – September 25, 1960) was an American attorney, author and diplomat best known as one of the leading China experts in the U.S. government. He served as Assistant Secretary of State from November 1924 to May 1925, and was subsequently appointed Minister to China in 1925. Although MacMurray had coveted the China post, he soon fell into disagreement with the State Department over U.S. policy towards the ruling Kuomintang government. He resigned the position in 1929 and briefly left the foreign service. Following several years in academia, MacMurray returned to the State Department to become Minister to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1933 to 1936. He later served as ambassador to Turkey from 1936 to 1941, and then was made a special assistant to the Secretary of State until his retirement in 1944.
In 1935, MacMurray was commissioned to write a memorandum on the conflict between China and Japan. In it, he suggested that the United States, China, and Great Britain were partly to blame for Japan's aggression, and anticipated that unless the United States recognized Japan's grievances, a war between the two powers was likely. His warnings proved prescient, and the Pacific war broke out when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
MacMurray was born in Schenectady, New York to Junius Wilson MacMurray and Henrietta MacMurray (née Van Antwerp). His father was a career soldier, serving as a captain in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and later joining the regular army. MacMurray's father also taught military tactics at the University of Missouri and Cornell University, and was the author of several books. His mother, Henrietta Wiswall Van Antwerp, was the daughter of a bank president.
In 1892, at the age of eleven, MacMurray attended Captain Wilson’s boarding school near Princeton, New Jersey. Later, while he was attending the nearby Lawrenceville School, his father's death dealt a “deep emotional blow”, according to historian Arthur Waldron. After graduating in 1898, MacMurray enrolled at Princeton University. The school’s president, Woodrow Wilson, encouraged him to pursue a career in academia, noting his aptitude for language and literature. MacMurray was also said to display an independent nature, declining to participate in eating clubs or attend chapel.