Abstract
Whatever diplomatic skills the British were later to deploy in Japan were not, however, available to James, the 8th Earl of Elgin (1811–63),1,2 the first British plenipotentiary to treat with the Japanese. Having forced the Treaty of Tientsin on the Chinese (26 June 1858) he was authorised to make a quick dash to Japan, to make contact and, if possible, sign a trade treaty there. Elgin’s action was perhaps indicative of his confidence in his own skills as a negotiator, for, despite his expostulation, ‘How to make a treaty without time, interpreter or credentials!’,3 he believed he had a fair chance of success. Partly because of favourable outside circumstances and partly due to Japanese complaisance, he did succeed in bringing his negotiations to a speedy and successful conclusion. He arrived in Japan on 3 August 1858 and signed the Treaty of Edo on 26 August.4,5
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Notes and References
Rutherford Alcock, 1809–97, army surgeon, Marine Brigade, Portugal, 1832–6; consul at Foochow, China, 1844; Shanghai, 1846; first consul-general Japan, 1859–65; Minister Plenipotentiary, Peking 1865–71. For his response to Japan see Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon, reprinted Greenwood, 1969.
The Far East Consular service (China, later Japan, Siam and Korea) developed into a ‘close service specially recruited with its own system of promotion and payment and its own code of instructions’, see D. C. M. Platt, ‘The Role of the British Consular Services in Overseas Trade’, EcHR, no. 3 (1963) pp. 494–512.
The Consul’s function was to ‘protect and promote trade, administer shipping laws, act as head of the resident community and generally represent his government’. See P. Byrd, ‘Regional and Functional Specialization in the British Consular Service’, JCH, vol. 7, 1–2, 1972, pp. 127–45. Gibbon wrote of the ‘humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land’. See R. A. Jones, The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office and The British Diplomatic Service.
See B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, pp. 360–2, F. V. Dickens, The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, vol. II, 1894;
G. Daniels, ‘Sir Harry Parkes, British Representative in Japan, 1865–1882’, thesis, 1967, and H. Cortazzi, ‘The Pestilently Active Minister’, pp. 147–61.
See Parkes Papers, ULC, Correspondence Hammond to Parkes, 15 March 1868. By June 1868 Hammond was writing about affairs in Japan, ‘I am glad to find you take so sanguine a view of the general prospect before us’ (Parkes Papers, ULC Correspondence Hammond to Parkes, 17 June 1868). See Mitford (Lord Redesdale) Memories, vol. I, p. 109. See also M. A. Anderson, ‘Edmund Hammond, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1854–1873’, thesis, 1955.
For Thomas Blake Glover (1848–1911) see Mitford, Memories, vol. I, p. 377. See O. Checkland, ‘Scotland and Japan, 1860–1914’ and S. Sugiyama, ‘Glover & Co: a British merchant in Nagasaki, 1861–1870’ in I Nish (ed.) Bakumatsu and Meiji: Studies in Japan’s Economic and Social History, International Studies, 1981/2, LSE, and
S. Sugiyama, ‘Thomas B. Glover: a British Merchant in Japan, 1861–70’, BH, vol. XXVI, no. 2 (July 1984) pp. 115–38.
Laurence Oliphant had been in Japan in 1853, as private secretary to Lord Elgin, and in 1861 as Secretary of the Legation. See A. Taylor, Laurence Oliphant, 1829–1888, 1982. A contemporary summed him up as ‘a mystic in lavender kid gloves, full of spiritualism, strange creeds, and skits upon society’, Mitford, Memories, p. 125; see also
I. P. Hall, Mori Arinori, 1973, pp. 73–4;
P. Harrison, Oliphant, 1956; and Chapter 8 of this volume.
For Parkes policy during the final years of the Shogunate see G. Daniels, ‘The British Role in the Meiji Restoration: A Re-interpretive note’, MAS, II, vol. 4, 1968, pp. 291–313.
J. H. Longford, ‘England’s record in Japan’, JSL, vol. VII, 1904–7, p. 104.
After the attack the British moved back to Yokohama for a time. See H. Cortazzi, ‘The Pestilently Active Minister’, MN, Summer 1984, vol. XXXIX, no. 4, p. 152.
B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 1905, p. 392.
Sir Hugh Fraser had Far Eastern experience having served in Peking for several years between 1867 and 1879. See M. C. Fraser, A Diplomat’s Wife in Japan, edited by H. Cortazzi, 1982.
G. A. Lensen Korea and Manchuria … The Observations of Sir Ernest Satow, Introduction, p. 9. Note also Sir George Sansom’s comment: Satow was perhaps a rather dry scholar, but he was a prodigious worker. Besides being a most valuable member of the British legation in Japan at a crucial period, he added to his understanding of Japanese politics a remarkable command of the Japanese language and a scholar’s interest in Japanese history and literature. Much of his work is still not superseded. He is one of the founding fathers of modern Japanology’; see Sir G. Sansom, reprinted JAS, vol. XXIV, no. 4, August 1965, p. 566.
For the text of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Great Britain and Japan, 16 July 1894, see Meiji Japan through Contemporary Sources, Tokyo, 1972, vol. 3, pp. 187–200. The Japanese Minister in London at the time was Shuzo Aoki. See also I. H. Nish, ‘Japan reverses the Unequal Treaties, the Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1894’, Papers of Hong Kong International Conference on Asian History, no. 20, 1964.
I. H. Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1966, p. 10.
E. Grey (Viscount Grey of Falloden), Twenty-five Years, 1892–1916, 1925, vol. 1, p. 71.
This section owes much to I. H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907, 1966.
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© 1989 Olive Checkland
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Checkland, O. (1989). Diplomats and Consuls. In: Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10609-7_1
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