Colonel Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald GCMG GCVO KCB PC (1852 – 1915) was a British diplomat, best known for his service in China and Japan.[1]
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MacDonald was educated at Uppingham School and Sandhurst, and was a soldier-diplomat, commissioned into the 74th Foot in 1872. He thought of himself as a 'soldier-outsider', as regards the Foreign Office.
His early career was in Africa. He served in the Egyptian campaign of 1882, from 1887 to 1889 was consul-general at Zanzibar, and then served in west Africa.[2]
In 1896, MacDonald was appointed British minister to China. He was also the British Minister to Korea in 1896 through 1898.[3]
In China, MacDonald obtained a lease at Weihaiwei, and obtained railway contracts for British syndicates. He was instrumental in securing the Second Peking Convention, by which China leased to Britain the New Territories of Hong Kong.[2]
In 1899 he was the author of a Note which proposed a new demarcation of the border between China and British India in the Karakoram and Kashmir, now known as the Macartney-Macdonald Line, which still forms the basis of the border between China and Pakistan and the line of control between China and India.[4]
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.
MacDonald 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. 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.[5]
MacDonald was made a Privy Councillor in 1906.
The fictitious character Sir Arthur Robinson in the film 55 Days at Peking (played by David Niven) is somewhat based on Claude Maxwell MacDonald.
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Claude MacDonald, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 10+ works in 20+ publications in 2 languages and 300+ library holdings.[6]