Ralph Paget

Sir Ralph Spencer Paget

Early life and career

Ralph Spencer Paget was born on 26 November 1864 at the British Legation in Copenhagen, where his father

He was dispatched in 1891 to Zanzibar, recently exchanged with Heligoland, and worked with Gerald Portal (the colonial commissioner) to promote "the first beginnings of European civilisation in the East of Africa".^[3] In June, 1892 he was sent to the British mission in Washington, DC where he stayed for only a year. In June, 1893 he then joined the legation in Tokyo, where he served as chargé d'affaires, where he served for six years. In 1895 he was promoted to Second Secretary.^[5] He made such a good impression that upon his arrival the Japanese journal Nichi Nichi Shimbun wrote;

Mr. Paget has plenty of springs and autumns to come, the future of great promise [is] before him and [he] will certainly make himself a name as a diplomatist of mark.^[6]

At the beginning of his service in Tokyo the First Secretary was

In 1901 Paget was sent to the legation in

Upon taking charge in Bangkok he tried to have the Legation (built 1876) moved to land at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club due to its nearness to the river and generally unfavourable position. However the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Works refused to allocate funds and the project was eclipsed by first Paget's own work, and after his departure by the First World War.^[8]

During his tenure he had to deal with German economic encroachment in Siam and try and negotiate a new standard in Anglo-Siamese relations. The status of British nationals in Siam had to be addressed, along with a long-running dispute over the lengthy Siamese-Malay border and the construction of a Bangkok-Singapore railway. Paget was able to deal with all of these issues and brooked no opposition either from London or Bangkok. The Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 led to four tributary Siamese states coming under autonomous British control as the Unfederated Malay States, while Britain recognised Siamese control of four other states, officially demarcating a border which remains today between Thailand and Malaysia. Under the terms of the treaty, signed in March 1909, Britain undertook to build a railway between the two spheres of influence. ^{[citation needed]}

Return to Europe

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While laying the groundwork for this eventual success, in 1907 Paget married his third cousin once removed, Louise Margaret Leila Wemyss Paget (1881–1958), daughter of General Sir Arthur Henry Fitzroy Paget. Later that year he was made a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order.

In 1908 he was seriously considered for the position of

Paget arrived in Serbia on 21 September 1910 and presented his credentials to King Petar three days later.[7]^[16]

He was awarded Order of the White Eagle.^[17][7]

Return to England

In August 1913 Paget was called back to England and appointed an Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in succession to Sir Louis Mallet.^[18] He was placed in charge of the FO American Department, where he during the first two years of the Great War worked on establishing and improving the British economic blockade of the Central Powers. This work put him firmly on track for promotion to an ambassadorship when the British Government sought to improve its blockading efforts in the European neutrals in 1916.^[19]

Denmark

In 1916 Paget returned to his birthplace, when he replaced Sir Henry Lowther as the British Ambassador to Denmark. In 1916 and 17 he was deeply involved in trade negotiations with the Danish government, working closely with the wartime British Ministry of Blockade. Yet following US entry into the war the American embassy took up many of these duties and Paget became thoroughly bored with Copenhagen. He also disliked the Scandinavian winter climate intensely, and when an opportunity to take up the ambassadorship to Brazil presented itself in the summer of 1918 he eagerly took it.^[20]

Brazil

On 26 September 1918 it was announced that the Legation in

He spent only a year in Brazil though, despite being a success there, being awarded the honorary presidency of the British

After 1920 Sir Ralph Paget lived a further 20 years in the obscurity of private life. When in October 1934 the Yugoslav King Aleksandar I was assassinated, Lady Paget visited Belgrade and was present at his funeral. Sir Ralph died on 10 May 1940 while in Saint-Raphaël, France.^[3] His widow, Dame Louise Paget, continued her active interest in the Balkans. With the German invasion of Yugoslavia and the influx of Yugoslavian exiles into Britain, she did all she could to assist those in need, including selling her estate in Surrey. She died at Kingston upon Thames on 24 September 1958.

Citations

References

• Antić, Čedomir (2006). Ralph Paget: A Diplomat in Serbia. Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies SASA.
• Kaarsted, Tage (1979). Great Britain and Denmark 1914-1920. Odense: Odense University Press.
• Lambert, Nicholas (2012). Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Lee, Sir Sidney (1927). King Edward VII, Vol. II. London: Macmillan.
• Steiner, Zara S. (1977). Hinsley, F.H. (ed.). British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Steiner, Zara S. (1969). The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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