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Satow, Sir Ernest (1843-1929) |
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Born of an English mother and a Swedish father, Satow was a British scholar-diplomat whose most significant postings were in the Far East. These culminated in China, to which he was posted as Envoy Extraordinary and High Commissioner shortly after the relief of the siege of the legation quarter in Peking in 1900. Satow received much of the credit for the agreement subsequently negotiated between China and the other powers, and remained in Peking until 1906. If students of the Far East now remember Satow for his profound scholarship on this region, by diplomats he is recalled chiefly for his authorship of what is now called Satow\'s Guide to Diplomatic Practice, which is in its fifth edition and is indisputably the English-language manual of the profession. It is a shame, however, that this still holds to the merely technical truth that Satow ‘never married’. In fact, he had a ‘common law’ Japanese wife called Kane who bore him two sons, one of whom worked subsequently as a botanist at Kew Gardens in London. It has been alleged - though this is disputed - that, although he was knighted and made a privy councillor, it is for this reason that the Foreign Office never promoted him to ambassador. In Japan Satow remains a celebrity to this day. |
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