Harry Parkes (diplomat)
Sir Harry Parkes | |
---|---|
Sir John Walsham | |
Personal details | |
Born | Harry Smith Parkes 24 February 1828 Birchill Hall, Bloxwich, Staffordshire, England |
Died | 22 March 1885 Beijing, China | (aged 57)
Sir Harry Smith Parkes
Early life
Parkes was born in Birchill Hall in the parish of Bloxwich in Staffordshire, England. His father, Harry Parkes, was the founder of Parkes, Otway & Co., ironmasters. His mother died when he was four, while his father was killed in a carriage accident in the following year. He lived with his uncle, a retired naval officer, in Birmingham[1] and was educated at a boarding school in Balsall Heath[2] before entering King Edward's School, Birmingham in May 1838.
Career in China (1841–64)
First Opium War
In June 1841, Parkes sailed to China to live with his cousin, Mary Wanstall, who was also the wife of the German missionary Karl Gützlaff.[2] Upon arriving in Macau in October 1841, he prepared for employment in the office of John Robert Morrison, a translator of Sir Henry Pottinger, who was then the British envoy and plenipotentiary and superintendent of British trade in China. Around this time, the First Opium War (1839–42) was being fought between the British and the Qing Empire of China.
Parkes learnt the basics of the
As a translator and then a consul
Between September 1842 and August 1843, Parkes served as a clerk under Karl Gützlaff, who was appointed as a civil magistrate in Zhoushan after the British occupied the island. In August 1843, he passed the consular examination in Chinese in Hong Kong and was appointed as a translator in Fuzhou in the following month. However, as there was a delay in the opening of Fuzhou port, he was instead reassigned to serve at the consulate in Canton and as an assistant to the Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong.[2]
In June 1844, Parkes was appointed as a translator in Amoy. In March 1845, he and Rutherford Alcock (the British consul in Amoy) were transferred to Fuzhou, where they were attacked on 4 October by Chinese soldiers, who threw stones at them. In June 1846, he assisted Alcock in securing $46,163 from the Chinese authorities in Fujian as compensation for British property looted and destroyed during a riot.[2]
In August 1846, Parkes and Alcock were transferred to
Parkes was appointed as the British consul in Amoy in 1854. In 1855, he accompanied Bowring to
Second Opium War
Outbreak of war
Parkes's position as the acting British Consul in Canton brought him into renewed contact with Ye Mingchen, the Qing-appointed Imperial Commissioner and Viceroy of Liangguang. Conflict between them eventually led to the outbreak of the Second Opium War (1856–60).
On 8 October 1856, the Chinese-owned
Subsequent scholarship has established discrepancies in Parkes's account of the alleged insult to the British flag. First, the ship's papers were still in his possession at the time of the incident, meaning that it would have been illegal for the Arrow to leave port. British captains were obliged to give their papers to the consul when they arrived and were not permitted to leave until they had retrieved them, with the proper stamps. If the Arrow had not been about to leave port, there would have been no reason for her colours, under ordinary circumstances, to be up. Parkes alleged that the incident took place at 8:30 am, at which time the British consulate at Canton would not have been scheduled to open for another hour and a half. Further, Captain Kennedy admitted in his deposition to Parkes of 9th October 1856 that he had been breakfasting in another vessel called the Dart at the time of the incident, an account that his fellow diners, John Leach and Charles Earl, corroborated. Unmooring the boat while Kennedy was not on board would have meant leaving without him. According to a local newspaper, the master and crew of a nearby Portuguese lorcha corroborated Chinese officers' account that no flags had been flying on the Arrow when it was boarded by the marine police.[5]
Parkes demanded that Ye release the detained sailors immediately and apologise for the alleged insult to the British flag.[6] Although the British right to enter Canton had been established under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, it had previously been denied. Bowring saw the Arrow incident as an opportunity to enforce this right. The deliberate escalation of the incident into a war had the object of forcing the removal of Britain's obstacles to trade and diplomacy in Canton.
Because Ye refused to capitulate despite minor reprisals, the
Battle of Canton
British reinforcements assembled in Hong Kong in November 1857 in preparation for war against the Qing Empire under the direction of Lord Elgin, who had been appointed as the British High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary to China. The British acted in coordination with the French, who were also drawn into the Second Opium War over the death of Auguste Chapdelaine, a French missionary in China. Parkes, who was attached to Admiral Seymour's staff, was part of the group of Anglo-French representatives who delivered an ultimatum to the Qing officials on 12 December. When the ultimatum expired, the British and French bombarded Canton on 28 December and conquered the city by late December. Parkes hunted Ye Mingchen through the streets of Canton; George Wingrove Cooke reported that Parkes took special pleasure in humiliating Ye. "Ye was my game," said Parkes, and finally found what a report called "a very fat man contemplating the achievement of getting over the wall at the extreme rear" of the administrative office.[8]
On 9 January 1858,
Beijing campaign
On 25 June 1859, with the British attack on the Taku Forts by the Hai River in Tianjin hostilities between the Anglo-French and Qing sides resumed. On 6 July, Parkes was requested to join Lord Elgin in the Bohai Sea. He sailed on 21 July and was appointed as Lord Elgin's Chinese secretary alongside Thomas Francis Wade.
On 1 August 1860, as an attaché to General
as "Peking" at the time).Parkes and a delegation – whose members included Henry Loch (Lord Elgin's private secretary) and Thomas William Bowlby (a journalist for The Times) – travelled ahead of the Anglo-French army to negotiate with the Qing officials in Tungchow on 14 and 17 September. After some negotiations, they managed to secure an agreement that the Anglo-French army should move to a position about 5 mi (8.0 km) away from Tungchow. On 18 September, he left Tungchow to mark out the site of the proposed British encampment, but returned to remonstrate with the Qing officials when he saw a Qing military force assembling at the site. After receiving a hostile response, he and the delegation attempted to head back to the British headquarters, but were arrested by Qing soldiers under the command of the general Sengge Rinchen. Following his capture, Parkes was escorted to Beijing along with Loch, Nal Singh (a Sikh sowar), and two French soldiers. In Beijing, he and Loch were taken to the Ministry of Justice (or Board of Punishments), where they were incarcerated and tortured.
On 29 September, as ordered by Prince Gong (the Xianfeng Emperor's brother), Parkes and Loch were transferred out of the prison to more comfortable living quarters in a temple, where they were pressured to intervene in the negotiations between the Anglo-French and Qing sides. Parkes refused to make any pledges or address any representations to Lord Elgin. On 8 October, Parkes, Loch and six other members of the delegation were released from captivity – just shortly before the Qing government received an order from the Xianfeng Emperor, who was taking shelter in the Chengde Mountain Resort, for their executions. On 18 October, in retaliation for the torture and deaths of the other members of the delegation, Lord Elgin ordered the British and French troops to burn down the Qing Empire's Old Summer Palace in the northwest of Beijing.
Post-Second Opium War events
Following the signing of the
Parkes returned to Beijing in April 1861 but left for Nanjing again in June for further meetings with the Taiping rebel leaders. On 21 October, the British and French returned the control of Canton to the Qing government, thereby ending Parkes's duties as the British commissioner in Canton. Parkes travelled to Shanghai in November and met up with the Taiping rebels again in
Career in Japan (1865–83)
In May 1865, during a trip to the
During this turbulent
Throughout his 18 years in office, Parkes was instrumental in bringing a large number of British foreign advisors to train the Imperial Japanese Navy and to build modern infrastructure, such as lighthouses, a telegraph system and a railway between Tokyo and Yokohama.[11]
He ran the British mission in a way that encouraged the junior members to research on, and study, Japan in greater depth.
While in Japan, Parkes's wife became known, in 1867, as the first non-Japanese woman to ascend
Japanese paper report and collection
In 1869, Prime Minister William Gladstone requested a report on washi (Japanese paper) and papermaking from the British embassy in Japan. Parkes and his team of consular staff conducted a thorough investigation in different towns, and then published a government report, Reports on the manufacture of paper in Japan, and produced a collection of over 400 sheets of handmade paper. The main parts of this collection are housed in the Paper Conservation Laboratory of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Economic Botany Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.[14]In 1879, Kew sent duplicate samples to Glasgow, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, but these have been lost. The Parkes paper collection is important because the origin, price, manufacturing method and function of each paper was precisely documented.
Career in Korea (1883–84)
Having represented the British in the negotiations leading to
Death
Parkes died of malarial fever on 21 March 1885 in Beijing. On 8 April 1890, the Duke of Connaught unveiled a statue of Parkes at the Bund in Shanghai, where it stood until it was removed during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War. There is a memorial to him in St Paul's Cathedral.[16]
Family
While in England, Parkes met Fanny Plumer, the granddaughter of Sir Thomas Plumer, the first Vice Chancellor of England, at the home of a mutual friend. "She was a beautiful girl," wrote a friend about her, "tall, well-proportioned, and graceful, her colouring rich and soft, her features expressing sensitiveness and the power of warm emotion; her dark brown eyes full of intelligence and speaking earnestness of purpose. She possessed in a large degree the power of fascination in which all her family were remarkable." After a six-week courtship, Parkes and Plumer were married on New Year's Day, 1856, in St Lawrence's Church, Whitchurch. The couple left England on 9 January.[17]
Lady Fanny Parkes is noted for being the first non-Japanese woman, possibly the first woman, ever to scale Mount Fuji on 7 and 8 October 1867.[18] She died of illness in October 1879.[19]
Parkes's elder daughter, Marion Parkes, married James Johnstone Keswick from the Keswick family, the controllers of Jardine Matheson Holdings. His second daughter, Mabel Desborough Parkes, married Captain Egerton Levett, a Flag Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. She died after falling from her horse in 1890.
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Parkes, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 20 works in more than 30 publications in four languages and over 400 library holdings.[20]
- Observations on Mr. P.P. Thoms' rendering of the Chinese word ... Man. (1852)
- File concerning Harry Parkes' mission to Bangkok in 1856 from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, London by Harry Parkes (1856)
- Papers, 1853–1872
See also
- Thomas Blake Glover
- Anglo-Chinese relations
- Anglo-Japanese relations
- British Japan Consular Service
- List of Ambassadors from the United Kingdom to Japan
- List of Ambassadors from the United Kingdom to Korea
- List of Ambassadors from the United Kingdom to China
References
- ^ Douglas 1911.
- ^ a b c d e Oxford DNB (2004)
- ^ Lane-Poole, Stanley. (1901). Sir Harry Parkes in China, p. 138.
- ISBN 0-8047-0602-6.
- ^ Wong, J.Y. (1998). Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the 'Arrow War' (1856-1860) in China. Cambridge University Press. p. 55.
- ^ Wong, pp. 43–66
- ^ Hansard. 144 (3): 1350, col. 2. 1857.
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(help) - ^ Lovell (2011), p. 258.
- ^ Smith, Carl. Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. p. xxvii.
- ^ 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.
- ^ ISBN 406205938X.
- ISBN 0-415-05966-6.
- ^ Lane-Poole, p. 318.
- ^ "Search results for Parkes". ecbot.science.kew.org. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
- ^ JE Hoare, "The Centenary of Korean-British Diplomatic Relations: Aspects of British Interest and Involvement in Korea 1600-1983," Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch (58) (1983), p. 1. Korean Mission to the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington, D.C., 1921–1922. (1922). Korea's Appeal, p. 32., p. 32, at Google Books. JE Hoare, Embassies in the East: The Story of the British and Their Embassies in China (2013) p. 172.
- Sinclair, W.p. 462: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
- ^ Lane-Poole, pp. 131–133.
- ^ "Lilian Hope Parkes". The Cobbold Family History Trust. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
- ^ Lane-Poole, vol. 2, p. 289
- ^ WorldCat Identities: Parkes, Harry Sir 1828–1885
- Daniels, Gordon. (1996). Sir Harry Parkes: British representative in Japan 1865–83. Folkestone: Japan Library. ISBN 1-873410-36-0
- Frederick Victor Dickins. (1894). Life of Sir Harry Parkes. (Vol. I, China; Vol. II, Japan) London: [digitised by University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives, "China Through Western Eyes." ] extract, volume 1, chapters XV-XVII
- Lovell, Julia (2011). Opium War. London: Picador. ISBN 9780330537858.
- ISBN 9781901903515; OCLC 249167170
- Parkes, Harry. (1871)."Reports on the manufacture of paper in Japan," Japan, No. 4.
- Wells, John (2004). "Parkes, Sir Harry Smith (1828–1885)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21353. Retrieved 4 November 2008. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- Wong, J.Y.; Patrick Hannan; Denis Twitchett (2003). Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China. Cambridge University Press. pp. 43–66. ISBN 0-521-52619-1.
- This article incorporates text from OpenHistory.
- public domain: Douglas, Robert Kennaway (1911). "Parkes, Sir Harry Smith". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 830–831. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- UK in Japan, Chronology of Heads of Mission Archived 13 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- Kew Gardens, Economic Botany Collection, includes Parkes papers