Occupation Soldier, Diplomat Name Claude MacDonald | Role Diplomat | |
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Books The Siege of the Peking Embassy, 1900: Sir Claude MacDonald's Report on the Boxer Rebellion Similar People Clemens von Ketteler, Zaiyi - Prince Duan, Ronglu, Ma Fuxiang, Alfred Gaselee | ||
Colonel Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald, (12 June 1852 – 10 September 1915) was a British soldier and diplomat, best known for his service in China and Japan.
Contents
- Early life
- Africa
- China and Korea
- The Macartney Macdonald Line
- Japan
- Ethel Lady MacDonald
- Selected works
- Honours
- References
Early life
MacDonald was born to a high-ranking officer in the British Army, and was educated at Uppingham School and Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the 74th Foot in 1872. He thought of himself as a 'soldier-outsider', as regards the Foreign Office.
Africa
MacDonald’s early career was in Africa. He served in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, and served as military attaché to Sir Evelyn Baring from 1884–85. From 1887–89 he was consul-general at Zanzibar, and then served some years as consul-general at Brass in the West African Oil Rivers Protectorate, where in 1895 he was an observer of the rebellion of King Koko of Nembe. He retired from the British Army in 1896.
China and Korea
In 1896, MacDonald was appointed British minister to Qing Dynasty Empire of China. He was simultaneously the British Minister to the Empire of Korea in 1896 through 1898.
In China, MacDonald obtained a lease at Weihaiwei, and obtained railway contracts for British syndicates. He was instrumental in securing the Second Peking Convention, by which China leased to Britain the New Territories of Hong Kong. MacDonald secured a 99-year lease only because he thought 'it was good as forever'. This and the contrasting lease-in-perpetuity of Kowloon created some problems in the negotiations for the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.
The Macartney-Macdonald Line
In 1899 MacDonald was the author of a Diplomatic Note which proposed a new demarcation of the border between China and British India in the Karakoram and Kashmir, now known as the Macartney-MacDonald Line, which still forms the basis of the border between China and Pakistan.
As a military man, MacDonald led the defence of the foreign legations in 1900 which were under siege during the Boxer Rebellion, and he worked well with the Anglophile Japanese Colonel Shiba Goro.
Japan
MacDonald was appointed Consul-General for the Empire of Japan in October 1900. He presided over the Tokyo Legation in years of harmony between Britain and Japan (1900 to 1912), swapping posts with Sir Ernest Satow who replaced him as Minister in Peking. On 30 January 1902, the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in London between the Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne and Hayashi Tadasu, the Japanese Minister.
MacDonald was still in Tokyo when the alliance was renewed in 1905 and 1911. He became Britain's first ambassador to Japan when the status of the legation was raised to an embassy in 1905. The first British Ambassador to Japan was appointed in 1905. Before 1905, the senior British diplomat had different titles: (a) Consul-General and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, which is a rank just below Ambassador. MacDonald was made a Privy Councillor in 1906. He died in London of heart failure in 1915. He is buried with his wife in Brookwood Cemetery.
Ethel, Lady MacDonald
In 1892, Claude Maxwell MacDonald wed Ethel (1857–1941), daughter of Major W. Cairns Armstrong; they remained married until his death in 1915. Named to the RRC and a Member of the Executive Committee of the Overseas Nursing Association, Lady MacDonald was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in her own right in 1935.
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about MacDonald, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 10+ works in 20+ publications in 2 languages and 300+ library holdings.