British Consul Research Articles

The Cape Lopez Africans at Maranhão: Geo-political literacy, British consuls, and the demise of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil

ABSTRACT In early November 1845, sailors from H.M.S. Alert boarded an unnamed vessel off Cape Lopez, Gabon, Africa. Inside its hold they found fifty-eight shackled Africans. Placing a prize crew on the slaver, Commander Charles Bosanquet requested that Lieutenant Noel K. Wasey sail the captured ship to Freetown, Sierra Leone, for adjudication. Facing difficult winds and currents, Wasey shifted course, destination São Luis, Maranhão, Brazil. In January 1846, the captured schooner ran aground in the port of São Luis. Learning of its arrival, a gang of traffickers kidnapped the Africans and transported them to the interior of the province as slaves. Documents preserved in Brazil and England provide insights into the lives and escapes of four of the Africans. The events at Maranhão shed light on key variables that contributed to ending the slave traffic to Brazil in the early 1850s.

On the frontlines of slave trade abolition: British consuls combat state capture in Cuba and Mozambique

ABSTRACT This essay explores the careers of two British consuls on different sides of the globe, David Turnbull in Cuba and Lyons McLeod in Mozambique, both engaged in a long-running battle against the illegal slave trade. Consuls were often on the frontlines of efforts to police the trade, but they faced serious opposition from slave traders and government officials who often received bribes and kickbacks to turn a blind eye to the traffic. Far removed from their mother countries, these outposts of empire often operated in ways that contradicted imperial policies, practices that led to a level of corruption that amounted to state capture, a situation that helps explain why stopping the illegal slave trade was so problematic.

EARLY FOREIGN PENETRATION IN THE HOLY LAND DURING THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD: THE ROLE OF BRITAIN

Western foreign interest in controlling the Holy Land throughout history has been successful on several occasions, such as during the crusades and the British occupation in the twentieth century. However, modern interest in occupying this land began in earnest with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt and with his failed attempt to occupy the Holy Land during which he called for the ‘restoration’ of Jews to Palestine. His campaign had two long-term consequences: it instigated British interest, which in turn, mingled with the idea of “Jewish Restoration” to Palestine in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. Evangelical Christian groups were the first to promote the idea of an official political representation, which led to the opening of a British consulate in Jerusalem during the occupation of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Other Western powers followed suit, with the aim of consolidating their influence and penetrating the region. The British were able to consolidate their influence and penetration of the region through initially establishing a consulate in Jerusalem and this was followed by many steps until the occupation of the Holy Land in the fall of 1917 and the subsequent establishment of a Zionist client-state that would serve Western interests in the region.

The Security Implications of Brexit

On February 20th, 2020, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) Vancouver hosted its second roundtable in 2020 in partnership with the Vancouver Branch of the Canadian International Council (CIC), titled: The Security Implications of Brexit. This presentation featured British Consul General Nicole Davison as speaker, and a case study focusing on the potential implications of the “Wexit” separatist movement on the West Coast of Canada.

Jane Austen Goes to Drury Lane: Identifying Individuals in a Late Georgian Audience

This essay identifies the theatre box where the novelist, Jane Austen (1775–1817), sat in 1814 to watch Edmund Kean in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Drury Lane Box Book enables calendar analysis of box occupancy with names, titles and, occasionally, addresses. Critical practice has tended to treat audiences as undifferentiated groups. Assemblage theory makes it possible to conceptualise individuals in audiences as equivalent to audiences in their entirety. Sitting in the same box as Austen was Lady Cecil Copley (1770–1819), the divorced 1st Marchioness of Abercorn. Amongst the other boxes were parties formed by wives of army and naval personnel and a British consul to Brazil. A few boxes away sat Jane Akers, née Ramsay (1772–1842), the wife of a St Kitts slave owner. Akers later claimed compensation under the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. That weekend Austen had with her the manuscript of Mansfield Park (1814), a novel recognised as a critique of a fictional parkland estate sustained by slavery. Given the steep cultural differentials evident in this single box tier, it is argued theatrical performance, even in Kean’s re-evaluation of Shylock, may have been only tangential in altering the behaviour of that night’s audience.

Malcolm Lowry no ocaso do Império

Este artigo propõe uma leitura de À sombra do Vulcão, de Malcolm Lowry, centrada na importância da história moderna e na presença do Império Britânico na narrativa do último dia de Geoffrey Firmin. Seguindo a noção de uma “leitura contrapontística” dos textos canônicos ingleses, formulada por Edward Said, discuto que, por ter nascido na Índia, o Cônsul (britânico) não consegue ter um sentido de pertencimento à Grã Bretanha, senão que se encontra em uma situação intersticial e liminar que antecipa a ruptura entre uma identidade imperial e uma identidade nacional, uma das maiores problemáticas abordadas nos estudos teóricos atuais sobre a identidade (especialmente nos estudos pós-coloniais). A partir desta perspectiva, a ênfase na situação imperial permite uma leitura que rompe com as interpretações do México como um “paraíso infernal” que perpetuou o estereótipo do nosso país mesmo em estudos críticos sobre o romancista.

The Deportation of Political Prisoners to Fernando Po and the Spanish State (1866–68)

The Deportation of Political Prisoners to Fernando Po and the Spanish State (1866–68) Dan Royle In the summer of 1866, nineteen radical leaders were sentenced to deportation to Fernando Po—now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea, then a Spanish imperial possession—for fomenting popular revolution. In February 1867, two of these men managed to escape but, by the time they returned to the Peninsula, a competing elite revolution had already been set in motion. Their deportation ensured that the nineteen played no part in organising the popular response to the initial coup d'état in September 1868, although some did participate in the extemporaneous barricade fighting that followed. The character of this popular response meant that the elites were able to impose a postrevolutionary settlement which excluded more radical elements. Those deported in the years before 1868—including the nineteen—came to have prominent roles in local and national government in the years that followed. Had they remained in Spain and continued to organise, the balance of power immediately after revolution might have been different. As it was, the nineteen men and their experience have largely been forgotten in favour of the military leaders of the coup d'état and the elite government that was installed thereafter. Deportation had long been a feature of the Spanish imperial experience, but relatively few political prisoners were ever sent from the metropolis: several thousand before 1868, primarily to North Africa and the Philippines. Only 1,600 political prisoners were sent to Fernando Po in the entire period between 1861 and 1895.1 The majority of Spanish deportations were between two colonies, often for non-political reasons.2 Nevertheless, it had formed an important part of the government's reaction to unsuccessful popular revolutionary attempts in both 1848 and 1861. And in the years before 1868, the tool was wielded with unprecedented reach and frequency in an attempt to remove the threat of popular revolution altogether. The deportation of the nineteen to Fernando Po in 1866 was a continuation of this tradition, but also a radical departure. Transporting deportees to an isolated, tropical island required a more sophisticated state apparatus than previous waves, a challenge that was not only practical but also conceptual. It demonstrated the aspirations of the state not just in terms of counter-revolutionary politics, but also its colonial project and its justice system. These aspirations proved largely irreconcilable. Deportation is an amorphous form of punishment, the reality of which depends on the individual experience of the deportee and the way his or her story is told.3 Yet it is inherently violent, dually so, both in process and result. In the Spanish case, it was also a reflection of the structural violence of the state in this period. Consistently powerless to broaden citizenship beyond a narrow elite, its only recourse was to violence. The deportation of the nineteen to Fernando Po was an example of its failure to convert victory over political opponents into hegemonic legitimacy.4 Weber's theory that the state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence has limits in the imperial context, but it remains true that state violence need not be callous and indiscriminate.5 Indeed it could even have been legitimated; the nineteen deportees, for example, were convicted as part of a constitutional judicial process and sentenced to a legal punishment by state functionaries. Nevertheless, this relied on a legitimacy which the Spanish state lacked; "only a legitimate entity can punish, all others abuse."6 A Precarious Colonisation Approached as the sun sets over the Bight of Biafra, Fernando Po could appear to be a tropical island paradise; the first European to visit called it Formosa Flora (beautiful flower). But such first impressions belie the difficulties the early colonists faced. Richard Burton, the British consul in the 1860s, recalled feeling "uncommonly suicidal" through his first night on the island.7 Around the same time, the captain of a US anti-slaving ship wrote that it possessed "as many of the requisites for forming an uncomfortable disagreeable place, as any other locality in the world."8 And yet, to many Spaniards, who increasingly mythologised the lost American colonies, Fernando Po represented something of...

The 1852 Centaur Shipwreck: Law, politics and society in the Persian Gulf

The 1852 Centaur Shipwreck:Law, politics and society in the Persian Gulf Seema Alavi The Incident In 1852 Centaur—a 550-ton British merchant ship under the command of Captain William Taylor Salmon—set sail from Calcutta on a voyage to Bushire and Basrah in the Persian Gulf. Its owner was Haji Baba Tazim—a British Indian subject. She had an insured cargo of rice, sugar and 1,645 chests of indigo valued at about 12 lakh Indian rupees. She wrecked in dense fog 25 miles south of Rāʾs al-Ḥadd, located at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman where it enters the Persian Gulf above and meets the Indian Ocean below.1 The site of the wreck was 120 miles from Muscat and well within the territorial jurisdiction of its Sultan Sayyed Sa'id.2 Arabs mainly from the Banī Bū ʿAlī tribe looted her cargo. A passing sheikh of the Jeneba tribe, that was also involved in the plunder, offered his boat to carry the crew for 100 Maria Theresa dollars (hereafter, $MT) to the safety of Muscat.3 The Muscat sultan on the advice of A. Hamerton, the British consul, initiated an investigation to get to the bottom of the shipwreck.4 But his team was unable to reach the site because of bad weather and returned to Muscat. The damaged and plundered Centaur was set on fire by the tribes, making investigation impossible. The Context Observers noted that the looted Bengal indigo comprised the entire annual stock that was consumed in the Persian Gulf. This may well have been the case as Indigo—the vivid blue pigment produced from plants belonging to the genus Indigofera—, indigenous to many tropical and subtropical parts of the world including India, was of high value in the region. In the Persian Gulf societies it was used to dye cloth, and also as a pigment for body paint by tribes of the Arabian Peninsula at weddings and festivities. It also had medicinal value. Temporally and spatially the Centaur shipwreck can be located in a specific moment in Omani history when its political sovereignty was contested by Britain, which was determined to control the Western Indian Ocean. By the mid-nineteenth century Oman's economy was booming. The reduction in the European slave trade due to the anti-slavery campaign of Britain diverted slave labor and capital to the hands of Arabs, who invested it in Omani clove and date plantations.5 This increased Britain's resolve to interfere and have an upper hand in the ocean. The internal tensions within the Sultanate offered the perfect canvas for British intervention and competition: royal family feuds, ambitions of Omani political and religious leaders, the Arab tribes and the Wahabi incursions. The Argument It is in the backdrop of these imperial rivalries that the claims for the recovery and reparation of indigo assumes special significance. Historians have written the history of commodities, like indigo, that moved across the Indian Ocean as integral to the story of colonialism and capitalism.6 Recent histories offer a more textured view of imperialism by putting the spotlight on the Indian Ocean as a transregional space of exchange where itinerant communities created legal regimes that sustained their commercial and social exchanges with political implications.7 Other works explain the working of different forms of "customary law" at sea to explain incidents of piracy, and the role of the loot and plunder that followed shipwrecks in building the political economy of tribes.8 This essay enriches these legal histories of the ocean by detailing the microhistory of law as reflected in the unfolding of the Centaur story. The many different experiences of individuals impacted by the same mishap but located in different geographical, social and political contexts offers a thick connectedness of things on scales both small and large.9 The movement of the looted indigo and the fight for its recovery and reparation made the Persian Gulf the main site of social interaction for three sets of people: the merchants, ship-owners and underwriters; the sultans, the Arab sheikhs and the tribes; and the British political agents and legal experts. It became a critical social space of...

James German: One of Melville's South Sea Crewmates

James German:One of Melville's South Sea Crewmates Mark Howard Click for larger view View full resolution "Captain German," 1870s. Photograph of James German conveying his force of character. Freeman Studio negative, call number ONCY 2:614. Digital image of photocopy of original photograph that has since been lost. Image courtesy of State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Herman Melville served on three whaling ships in the Pacific during the 1840s, one of which was an Australian vessel, the Lucy Ann of Sydney. He joined the ship at Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, on 9 August 1842, and soon after coming aboard he met the forceful chief officer (first mate), James German (c1797–1879). German made a strong impression on Melville who later included a pen portrait of him in Omoo (1847), the first half of which is based on his time on the Lucy Ann. Melville changed the name of the vessel and the crewmen in the book: the Lucy Ann became the Julia and James German was renamed with the homophonous "John Jermin." Melville writes: [End Page 131] So far as courage, seamanship, and natural aptitude for keeping riotous spirits in subjection were concerned, no man was better qualified for his vocation than John Jermin. He was the very beau-ideal of the efficient race of short, thick-set men. His hair curled in little rings of iron gray all over his round, bullet head. As for his countenance, it was strongly marked, deeply pitted with the small-pox. For the rest, there was a fierce little squint out of one eye; the nose had a rakish twist to one side; while his large mouth, and great white teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. … Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock's; that you saw at a glance. … but he had one failing: he … cleaved manfully to strong drink. At all times he was more or less under the influence of it. … sometimes he drank too much, and a more obstreperous fellow than Jermin in his cups, you seldom came across. He was always for having a fight; but the very men he flogged loved him like a brother, for he had such an irresistibly good-natured way of knocking them down, that no one could find it in his heart to bear malice against him. … Not a few of … [the] crew were … riotous at times [and] the bluff, drunken energies of Jermin were just the thing to hold them in some sort of noisy subjection. Upon an emergency, he flew in among them, showering his kicks and cuffs right and left, and "creating a sensation" in every direction. … they bore this knock-down authority with great good humour (Omoo 11, 14–15). John Jermin's origins in the historical James German is supported by German's presence aboard the Lucy Ann, which is amply recorded in documents generated by an 1842 inquiry into a mutiny on the vessel by the Acting British Consul at Tahiti (Mutiny Documents). These documents, and the event they describe, have in turn been discussed by a number of scholars in the years that followed (Leeson 370–79; Hayford, Mutiny Documents 309–39; Heflin 162–68; Howard 3–17). German continued to serve on Sydney whaling vessels for another two decades after he met Melville on the Lucy Ann in 1842. As he grew older and his strength diminished, he had to take on less demanding roles. He was navigator on the Australian (1855–56) and ship-keeper on the Post Boy (1857), Kate (1858), Governor (1859), and Amherst (1864–65) (Mariners and Ships). He retired from the sea in 1865 and died 14 years later in his room at a Sydney hotel (German death certificate). He had no wife or children and there is no record of a will (Index to wills). He probably had nothing to leave in any case as no intestate file or probate papers were generated in his name by the legal authorities in New South Wales (Index to intestate files). All of this raises a question: how could a man with no money or family...

Lyman Bartlett’ın Kayseri İstasyonu Raporu, 1877-1878

The aim of this study is to evaluate the essential topics that came to fore in the 1877-1878 Kayseri Annual Report, which was written by one of the prominent missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), Lyman Bartlett. Apart from those subjects which other missionary reports had usually dwelled on (such as detailed and quantitative information about the missionary schools, the pupils who were attending these schools, education, missionaries’ native laborers both in Kayseri and its out-stations), subjects such as the architectural design of their recently built worship place, the extraordinary developments that took place in the Protestant church of Yozgat, and the country’s deteriorated economic situation caused by the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878 were also pointed out. In addition to these, the formation of the Protestant congregation in Ankara (which would become modern Turkey’s capital city), and the British Consulate’s support came to the fore among the important topics mentioned. Evaluation also demonstrates that some events which were touched upon in Bartlett’s report were reflected in a different way in other missionary sources of the period.

John Garstang and Sakçagözü Excavations (1908-1911)

Sakçagözü, located in the Nurdağı district of Gaziantep province, was excavated by John Garstang between 1908 and 1911 during two excavation seasons. Of the 11 identified layers, IX. and X. contain the Neo-Hittite palace enclosure, which was surrounded by walls and had a ‘bit hilani’ structure decorated with reliefs. The excavation records, photographs and materials held at the University of Liverpool’s Garstang Museum of Archaeology, as well as materials held at the Archaeological Museum of İstanbul were utilised for this study. Garstang’s relations with the director of the Imperial Museum Osman Hamdi Bey, and Sir Edwin Pears from the British Consulate in İstanbul at the time, will also be considered. I will also consider how Garstang obtained the excavation permit for the Sakçagözü and his subsequent interest in the Neo-Hittite reliefs found here.

BRITISH CONSULATES IN PORT CITIES OF THE NORTHERN BLACK SEA AND AZOV REGION OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Summary. The purpose of the research is to study the history of British consular offices in port cities of the Southern Ukraine at the times of the Russian Empire. The research methodology is based on search and comprehensive study of representative complexes of primarily sources on the history of the British consulates in the region, in particular, the annual consular reports to London. The scientific novelty: changes in the network of consulates of the British Empire and in the configuration of British consular districts in the region have been tracked; lists of consular representatives in each consular office have been composed; the specifics of the consuls’ status, functions and working conditions have been researched. Сonclusions. The development of the network of British consular offices in port cities of the Northern Black Sea and Azov region, which took place after the end of the Crimean War, unambiguously demonstrated the understanding by official London prospects of the deployment of economic ties with the region. During the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries the consular district of Odessa turned into the largest British consular district on the territory of the Russian Empire in number of consular offices. Forming the consular staff, the British Empire for a long time preferred appointing «non-trading» consuls, or «consul de carriere», which required considerably more money, but allowed consuls to focus on their professional duties, while the majority of consular representatives of other countries in the region were engaged in business. On the other hand, approaches of official London to the formation of the consular staff, financing consuls and the regulation of their activities had a number of disadvantages, which ultimately led to a revision of these approaches. However, the dynamics of development of economic relations between ports of the Northern Black Sea and Azov region and the British Empire was affected by a wide range of factors, and, despite the efforts of the British consuls, this dynamics was not always positive. So, the consuls only had to report about such a state of affairs, recalling with nostalgia «better times» of British trade in the region.

Legal Mediators: British consuls in Tengyue (western Yunnan) and the Burma-China frontier region, 1899–1931

AbstractBritish consuls were key agents for the British imperial presence in China from 1842 to 1943. Their role, which was to perform administrative duties that protected the rights of British subjects, is most prominently remembered in connection with the east coast. Here larger foreign communities and international maritime trade necessitated their presence. However, British consuls were also posted to the far southwest province of Yunnan and the Burma-China frontier region. This article sheds light on the role of consuls working in the little-known British consular station of Tengyue, situated close to the Burma-China frontier. Using the reports of locally stationed consuls and Burmese frontier officials, it argues that consuls were important mediators of legal power operating at the fringes of empire for British imperial and colonial interests in this region. They represented British and European subjects, and were mediators in legal disputes between British Burma and China, helping to smooth over Sino-British relations and promoting British Burmese sovereign interests. The article serves to shift our attention from the British presence in China on the east coast to the southwestern frontier, demonstrate the importance of consular legal duties, and emphasize the trans-imperial nature of British legal roles across this region.

A foreign office inspection report at british consulate in Cernauti in 1940

In April 1940 a British inspector arrive in Cernauti to inspect the activity of the British consulate in this city. During the inspection activity he checked the stage of the building and equipment, the security of the consulate, accounts, Consulate’s correspondence, the passports and visas issued by the consulate, the situation of British community in Cernauti, the activity of the British Council in Cernauti. The aim of this article is to present how control took place and what were the conclusions of this inspection

Mapping Reality and Virtuality: Paintings, Maps and Hydrographical Surveying about British and American Settlements of the Shanghai Bund, 1845–1860

Abstract. On 8th November, 1843, Captain George Balfour (1809–1894) arrived in Shanghai to take up his position of the first British Consul in Shanghai. After he paid a visit to the Taotai 道台 of Shanghai Gong Wujiu 宮慕久 and had a discussion with the latter, both sides agreed and announced that Shanghai would be open to foreign trade since 17th November, 1843. The boundary of the British Settlement was mentioned in Land Regulations of Shanghai, the promulgated agreement between Gong and Balfour in November 1845; the southern end of the British Settlement was Yang-Kin-Pan Creek (Yang King Pang or Yangjingbin 洋涇濱 Creek; now Yan’an Road East) and the northern end Lijia chang 李家廠 (now Beijing Road East) [Figure 1]. The eastern end was not mentioned in the Land Regulations and understood as Huangpu River 黃浦江. The western end was unsettled but in the following year, it was agreed that it would be Barrier Road (Jielu Road 界路, now Henan Road Central). A survey of the British Settlement at that time gave the area of 830 acres and land deeds were issued. In 1848, the American Settlement was established. Consul of the US and Britain as well as the authorities of the two settlements both hired professionals to map the two settlements or invited the surveyors of the two navies to draw navigational or channel survey maps from Huangpu River to Yangtze River. This paper will use paintings, maps and sources on hydrographical measurement to give a succinct account of the development of cartography and surveying of the British and the American Settlements between 1845 and 1860.

THE ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF ESTABLISHING A “ZIONIST CLIENT-STATE” IN ISLAMICJERUSALEM

The idea of bringing the Jews to the region of Islamicjerusalem (the Holy Land) and establishing an entity for them preceded the creation of Zionism. The idea stemmed officially during the failed attempt of Napoleon to occupy the Holy Land. His campaign instigated British interest mingled with the idea of the “Restoration†of Jews to Palestine as a prelude to the Second Coming of the Messiah. With the establishment of a British consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, Britain consolidated its influence and penetration of the region. The paper illustrates how the British were successful in fostering their colonial interest in the region through establishing a buffer state in Palestine against rival influences and later a Zionist Client-State that would continue to serve western interest in the region.

From Karm al-Khalil to Kerem Avraham: A British Settler-Colonial Outpost Near Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century

Kerem Avraham was a farm for Jewish labourers established by Christian Zionist James Finn, the influential British consul in Jerusalem, and his wife Elizabeth, in 1854. Ostensibly intended to provide relief for the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem during a famine, the farm was in fact a deeply ideological project which foreshadowed the Zionist agricultural settlements in Palestine in the later nineteenth century. This paper chronicles the farm's development, and later influence on settler-colonial theory and practice.

A BRITISH MERCHANT IN TURKEY: FREEMAN OF THE LEVANT COMPANY AND CONSUL, DONALD SANDISON AT BURSA, 1795–1868

<div><!--block-->Donald Sandison was a British merchant who was based in Istanbul, from where he ran his business beginning with the second decade of the nineteenth century. He established business partnerships and became a member of the British Levant Company as well as a consul. He was the first British consul to Bursa, between 1838 and 1868. This bibliographic study focuses on Sandison, an overseas British citizen in Istanbul, as both a merchant and a consul. The study includes a wealth of information from national archives in Great Britain and Turkey, genealogical search, and nineteenth-century British newspapers.</div>

Our Man in Fez: James Maciver MacLeod

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 44, 3, 2019 © The Maghreb Review 2019 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources OUR MAN IN FEZ: JAMES MACIVER MACLEOD JOHN FISHER* After some years of relative neglect, the role and functions of British consuls are again coming under scrutiny.1 This development is well deserved given their vital role as the eyes and ears of central government in Whitehall, in countries outside the settled empire. Their work reflected many aspects of British power projection overseas, some of which have yet to be fully investigated. Extant literature, notably Desmond Platt’s work, might suggest that, during the nineteenth century in particular, they were, often with good reason, rather troublesome and often disgruntled, frequently succumbing to what one of their number described as ‘consulitis’: that is a permanent sense of inferiority towards and jealousy of their more elevated cousins in the Diplomatic Service.2 An uncomplaining British consul who, through prolonged residence especially at a difficult post, acquired formidable expertise in that country’s affairs, was relatively rare, and typically earned the respect of British diplomats and Foreign Office officials. James MacIver MacLeod (1866–1944), who spent much of his professional life in successive consular appointments at Fez, fell into that category; a faithful and diligent servant of successive British ministers in Tangier, his characteristics were noted by Edward Gleichen, soldier, intelligence-gatherer and military attaché, when attached to an official mission to Fez, in 1909: Consul J. McLeod [sic] is a very hard-working, conscientious little man, who enters so much into details that he occasionally runs the risk of overdoing it. He is a hard-headed intelligent Scotsman, who knows the people, the language, and the country well, and has excellent judgement. He is very self-reliant, and has a taste for maps and procuring information of all sorts, both military and otherwise. A most useful man in every way.3 MacLeod is interesting for several reasons. First, there was his background. * University of the West of England. Faculty funding from University of the West of England, Bristol, facilitated research for this article and is gratefully acknowledged. 1 See, for example, G. R. Berridge, ‘A Political Consul in Nineteenth-Century Armenia’, in Berridge, The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy and other essays (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 50–70; and, while it ranges more widely than the Consular Service, G. Hamm, ‘British Intelligence in the Middle East, 1898–1906’, Intelligence & National Security, 29/6 (2014), pp. 880–900; R. Dunley, ‘“Not Intended to Act as Spies”: The Consular Intelligence Service in Denmark and Germany 1906–14’, International History Review, 37/3 (2015), pp. 481–502. 2 D. C. M. Platt, ‘The Role and Function of the British Consular Service in Overseas Trade 1825–1914’, Economic History Review, 15/3 (1963), 494–512 and idem, The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1971); L. Grafftey-Smith, Bright Levant (London: John Murray, 1970), p. 13. 3 ‘Report by the Military Attaché with the British Mission from Tangier to Fez and back, April– June 1909’, Inclosure 1 in War Office to Foreign Office, 23 July 1909, F[oreign] O[ffice] 371/696/3974/27920, T[he] N[ational] A[rchives], Kew. Gleichen’s description of the ‘selfstyled physician in chief to the Sultan’, ‘Dr’ Lancelot Wilkinson, as ‘a lunatic, a dipsomaniac, and a megalomaniac’ was no less accurate. Wilkinson had just been sacked and had a deep grudge against MacLeod, who appears to have sought redress through the Lord Chief Justice. 292 JOHN FISHER After local schooling in Glasgow, South Lanarkshire and Argyllshire, and on account of his father’s death and his mother’s delicate health, he attended Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, as a boarder.4 There, he enjoyed various sports, endured frequent beatings, and did reasonably well in several subjects, notably history and poetry. However, he left the academy in 1880 and began an apprenticeship, nominally with his uncles’ firm in Manchester, which shipped cotton to West Africa. In practice, he spent time with a succession of other textile firms in Manchester. There, and for a time in Glasgow, he also served in the army reserves, and actively...

A Report on the Conservation Project of Former British Consulate in Nagasaki, an Important Cultural Property

A Report on the Conservation Project of Former British Consulate in Nagasaki, an Important Cultural Property