George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney

George Macartney should not be confused with Sir George Macartney, a later British statesman.

The Earl Macartney
Portrait of Lord Macartney by Lemuel Francis Abbott.
Governor of Grenada
In office 1776-1779
Monarch	George III
Preceded by	William Young
Succeeded by	Jean-François, comte de Durat
Governor of Cape Colony
In office 1797-1798
Monarch	George III
Preceded by	Abraham Josias Sluysken
Succeeded by	Francis Dundas
Personal details
Born	(1737-05-14)14 May 1737 Lissanoure, Loughguile, Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, United Kingdom
Died	31 May 1806(1806-05-31) (aged 69) Chiswick, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Alma mater	Trinity College, Dublin

George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, KB (14 May 1737 – 31 May 1806) was an Irish-born British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat. He is often remembered for his observation following Britain's success in the Seven Years War and subsequent territorial expansion at the Treaty of Paris that Britain now controlled "a vast Empire, on which the sun never sets".

Biography

George Macartney was an Irishman descended from an old Scottish family, the Macartneys of Auchinleck, who had settled in 1649 at Lissanoure, in Loughguile, Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, where he was born. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1759, he became a student of the Temple, London. Through Stephen Fox, elder brother of Charles James Fox, he was taken up by Lord Holland.

Appointed envoy extraordinary to Russia in 1764, he succeeded in negotiating with Catherine II an alliance between England and that country. He was returned in 1768 to the Irish House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Armagh Borough, in order to discharge the duties of Chief Secretary for Ireland. On resigning this office he was knighted.

In 1775 he became governor of the British West Indies was created Baron Macartney in the Peerage of Ireland in 1776, and became governor of Madras (now known as Chennai) in 1780. He was elected to a seat in the British parliament (Bere Alston) from 1780 to 1781. He was then the Governor of Madras from 1781 to 1785, but declined the governor-generalship of India (then the British territories administered by the British East India Company) and returned to Great Britain in 1786.

Governor of Madras

During Macartney's tenure as governor, renovation and strengthening of the walls of Fort St.George was commenced after the siege of Lally and completed in 1783. It was also during this time that most of the buildings and barracks in the western portion of the Fort were erected. The Palace Street, the Arsenal, the Hanover square and the Western Barracks were constructed during this time. The streets in the eastern side of the Fort were also altered.

It was also during this time that idea of a police force for Madras was thought of. Popham, the brainchild of the steer which would bear his name (Popham's Broadway) submitted a plan for the establishment of a regular police force for Madras and for the building of direct and cross drains in every street. He also advocated measures for the naming and lighting of streets, for the regular registration of births and deaths and for the licensing of liquor, arrack and toddy shops. A Board of Police assisted by a Kotwal was subsequently formed. The Kotwal was to be the officer of the markets under the Superintendent of Police.

Embassy to China

Lord Marcartney saluting the Qianlong Emperor, 1793.

After being created Earl Macartney in the Irish peerage (1792), he was appointed the first envoy of Britain to China (his visit followed more than a hundred years after the first visit to England by a Chinese man, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung in 1685). He led the Macartney Embassy to Beijing in 1792 with a large British delegation on board a 64-gun man-of-war, HMS Lion. The embassy was ultimately not successful. This was not due to Macartney's refusal to kowtow in the presence of the Qianlong Emperor, as is commonly believed. It was also not a result of the Chinese reliance on tradition in dictating foreign policy but rather a result of competing world views which were uncomprehending and incompatible. After the conclusion of the embassy, Qianlong sent a letter to King George III, explaining in greater depth the reasons for his refusal to grant the requests of the embassy.[1]

The Macartney Embassy is historically significant because it marked a missed opportunity by the Chinese to move toward some kind of accommodation with the West. This failure would continue to plague the Qing Dynasty as it encountered increasing foreign pressures and internal unrest during the 19th century.

The policies of the Thirteen Factories remained. The embassy returned to Britain in 1794 without obtaining any concession from China. However, the mission could be construed as a success because it brought back detailed observations. Sir George Staunton was charged with producing the official account of the expedition after their return. This multi-volume work was taken chiefly from the papers of Lord Maccauley and from the papers of Sir Erasmus Gower, who was Commander of the expedition. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, was responsible for selecting and arranging engraving of the illustrations in this official record.

On his return from a confidential mission to Italy (1795) he was raised to the British peerage as Baron Macartney, and in the end of 1796 was appointed governor of the newly acquired territory of the Cape Colony, where he remained until ill health compelled him to resign in November 1798. He died at Chiswick, Middlesex, on May 31, 1806, the title becoming extinct, and his property, after the death of his widow (Lady Jane Stuart, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Bute; they were married in 1768), going to his niece, whose son took the name.

Extracts from Journal of Embassy to China

Lord Macartney

For it would now seem that the policy and vanity of the Court equally concurred in endeavouring to keep out of sight whatever can manifest our pre-eminence, which they undoubtedly feel, but have not yet learned to make the proper use of. It is, however, in vain to attempt arresting the progress of human knowledge. I am, indeed, very much mistaken if all the authority and address of the Tartar Government will be able much longer to stifle the energies of their Chinese subjects. Scarcely a year now passes without an insurrection in some of their provinces. It is true they are soon suppressed, but their frequency is a strong symptom of the fever within. The paroxysm is repelled, but the disease is not cured.

The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom. The breaking-up of the power of China (no very improbable event) would occasion a complete subversion of the commerce, not only of Asia, but a very sensible change in the other quarters of the world. The industry and the ingenuity of the Chinese would be checked and enfeebled, but they would not be annihilated. Her ports would no longer be barricaded; they would be attempted by all the adventures of all trading nations, who would search every channel, creek, and cranny of China for a market, and for some time be the cause of much rivalry and disorder. Nevertheless, as Great Britain, from the weight of her riches and the genius and spirits of her people, is become the first political, marine, and commercial Power on the globe, it is reasonable to think that she would prove the greatest gainer by such a revolution as I have alluded to, and rise superior over every competitor.

It should be never absent from our recollection that there are now two distinct nations in China--the Chinese and the Tartars--whose characters essentially differ, notwithstanding their external appearance be nearly the same. They are both subject to the most absolute authority that can be vested in a Prince(Qianlong), but with this distinction--that to the Chinese it is a foreign tyranny, to the Tartar a domestic despotism. The latter consider themselves as in some degree partakers of their Sovereign's dominions over the former, and that imagination may, perhaps, somewhat console them under the pressure of his power upon themselves--like the house servants and house negroes belonging to a great landlord in Livonia or planter in Jamaica, who, though serfs themselves, look down upon the peasantry and field negroes as much their inferiors.

ON MARCO POLO

If opinions were solely to be formed of China and its inhabitants from the accounts of the first travellers and even of the later missionaries, they would often be inadequate or unjust. For those writers, although they probably did not mean to deal in fiction, yet, when they do tell the truth, they do not always tell the truth, which is a mode of narration that leads to error almost as much as falsehood itself.

When Marco Polo, the Venetian, visited China in the thirteenth century, it was about the time of the conquest of China by the Mongol Tartars, with Kublai khan at their head. A little before that period the Chinese had reached their pitch of civilization; but not having improved, or having rather gone back, at least, for these hundred and fifty years past, whilst we have been rising in arts and sciences, they are actually becoming a semibarbarous people in comparison with the present nations of Europe.

The Government, as it stands, is properly the tyranny of a handful of Tatars over more than three hundred millions of Chinese.

yet it cannot be concealed that the nation in general is far from being contented. The frequent insurrections in the distant provinces are ambiguous oracles of the real sentiments of the people. The predominance of the Tartars and the Emperors's partiality for them are the common subjects of conversation among the Chinese whenever they meet together in private. There are certain mysterious societies in every province, who, though narrowly watched by the Government, find means to elude its vigilance, and often hold secret assemblies, where they revive the memory of ancient independence, brood over recent injuries, and meditate revenge.

See also

• William Pitt Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst
• Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest

References

• Barrow, John. (1807). Some Account of the Public Life, and a Selection from the Unpublished Writings, of the Earl of Macartney, 2 vols. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies.
• Cranmer-Byng, J. L. "Lord Macartney’s Embassy to Peking in 1793." Journal of Oriental Studies. Vol. 4, Nos. 1,2 (1957-58): 117-187.
• Esherick, Joseph W. "Cherishing Sources from Afar." Modern China Vol. 24, No. 2 (1998): 135-61.
• Hevia, James Louis. (1995). Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793. Durham: Duke University Press. 10-ISBN 0-822-31637-4; 13-ISBN 978-0-822-31637-4
• Peyrefitte, Alain. (1992). The Immobile Empire (Jon Rotschild, translator). New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Random House. 10-ISBN 0-394-58654-9; 13-ISBN 978-0-394-58654-0
  • Peyrefitte, Allain. (1990). Images de l'Empire immobile ou le choc des mondes. Récit historique. Paris: Fayard. 10-ISBN 0-221-302383-2; 13-ISBN 978-221-302383-0 (paper)
• Robbins, Helen Henrietta Macartney (1908). Our First Ambassador to China: An Account of the Life of George, Earl of Macartney with Extracts from His Letters, and the Narrative of His Experiences in China, as Told by Himself, 1737-1806, from Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence and Documents. London : John Murray. [digitized by University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives, "China Through Western Eyes." ]
• Rockhill, William Woodville. "Diplomatic Missions to the Court of China: The Kotow Question I," The American Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Apr., 1897), pp. 427-442.
• Rockhill, William Woodville. "Diplomatic Missions to the Court of China: The Kotow Question II," The American Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1897), pp. 627-643.
• Staunton, George Leonard. (1797). An Authentic Account of and Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 3 vols. London: G. Nichol.

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)