Claude Maxwell MacDonald

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Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald KCB PC (1852 – 1915) was a British diplomat.

MacDonald was educated at Uppingham School and Sandhurst, and was a soldier-diplomat. He thought of himself as a 'soldier-outsider', as regards the Foreign Office. He presided over the Tokyo Legation in years of harmony between Britain and Japan (1900-12), swapping posts with Sir Ernest Satow who replaced him as Minister in Peking.

As a military man, MacDonald led the defence of the foreign legations in 1900 which were under siege during the Boxer Rebellion, and he worked well with the Anglophile Japanese Colonel Shiba Goro. On January 30, 1902, the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in London between the Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne and Hayashi Tadasu, the Japanese Minister. MacDonald was still in Tokyo when the alliance was renewed in 1905 and 1911. He also became Britain's first ambassador to Japan when the status of the legation was raised to an embassy in 1905, and was made a Privy Councillor in 1906.

[edit] See also

• Heads of the United Kingdom Mission in Japan
• List of Privy Counsellors (1901–1910)
• Anglo-Chinese relations
• Anglo-Japanese relations

[edit] References

• 'Sir Claude MacDonald: Minister and first Ambassador in Tokyo', by Ian Nish, Ch.9, British Envoys in Japan 1859-1972, ed. and compiled by Hugh Cortazzi (Global Oriental, 2004) ISBN 1-901903-51-6