CHINA AND JAPAN: a. Correspondence Relating to The Affairs ofChina 1862-4.

ALCOCK, Rutherford.

Beschreibung

[Edinburgh 1865, Edinburgh Review]. Extracted article,pp.175 202, new gray wrs., 14.5 x 21.5 cm. This work is a combination of two essays by the celebrated British Diplomat, covering his thoughts and opinions vis-a-vis China and Japan. . Alcock was the most respected and honored British diplomat of the 19th century, and an author of books on both countries. His opinions were heeded by the British government. * DIPLOMATIC SERVICE IN CHINA: 1844 In 1844, Alcock was appointed consul at Fuchow in China, where, after a short official stay at Amoy, he performed the functions, as he expressed it, "of everything from a lord chancellor to a sheriff's officer." Fuchow was one of the ports opened to trade by the Treaty of Nanking, and Alcock had to perform an entirely new role with regard to the Chinese authorities. In doing so, he earned a promotion to the consulate at Shanghai. He worked there until 1846 and made it a special part of his duties to superintend the established Chinese government and lay out the British settlement, which had developed into such an important feature of British commercial life in China. * DIPLOMATIC SERVICE IN JAPAN: 1858-64 Rutherford Alcock located the British legation in Tokyo from 1859 in Tozen-ji. . After the attack on the British legation in Tozen-ji on 5 July 1861. Attack of the British legation in Tozen-ji, Edo, in 1861.In 1858, he was appointed Consul-General in Japan. . Alcock opened the first British legation in Japan within the grounds of Tozen-ji in Takanawa, Edo [now Tokyo]. He saw "peace, plenty, apparent content, and a country more perfectly cultivated and kept, with more ornamental timber everywhere, than can be matched even in England", Sir Rutherford Alcock, 1860. . In those days, foreign residents in Japan faced some danger, with noticeable Japanese hostility to foreigners [Ronin shouting: "Sonno joi" -Restore the Emperor]. In 1860, Alcock's native interpreter was murdered at the gate of the legation, and in the following year the legation was stormed by a group of Ronin from the fiefdom of Mito Han, whose attack was repulsed by Alcock and his staff. . In 1860 he became the first non-Japanese to climb Mount Fuji. * SECOND DIPLOMATIC SERVICE IN CHINA: 1865-69 Shortly after these events he returned to England on leave on March 1862, and was replaced in Japan by Colonel Neale. Alcock had already been made a Commander of the Bath [CB] [1860]. In 1862 he was made a Knight of the same order [KCB], and in 1863 received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Oxford University. . In 1864, he returned to Japan, and after a year's further residence he was transferred to Peking, where he represented the British government until 1869, when he retired. *** REFERENES: Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 35005101

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Titel: CHINA AND JAPAN: a. Correspondence Relating ...