George Macartney (British consul)

Sir George Macartney should not be confused with his kinsman George Macartney, an earlier British statesman.

Sir George Macartney & Chinese Officials, Kashgar, 1915

Sir George Macartney KCIE^[1] (Chinese: 馬繼業) (19 January 1867 –19 May 1945) was the British consul-general in Kashgar at the end of the 19th century. He was succeeded by . Macartney arrived in Xinjiang in 1890 as interpreter for the Younghusband expedition. He remained there until 1918. Macartney first proposed the Macartney-MacDonald Line as the boundary between China and India in Aksai Chin.

Macartney was born at Nanjing and was half-Chinese while his godfather was Chinese politician Li Hongzhang.^[2] His father, Halliday Macartney, was a member of the same family as George Macartney, the 18th century British ambassador to China, and his mother was a near relative of , one of the leaders of the Taiping rebellion.^[3]

Macartney married Catherine Borland in 1898.^[4] In Kashgar his wife, Catherine, Lady Macartney, assisted the archaeologists who found the library at Dunhuang.^[5] The Macartneys had three children.^[6]

The Macartneys retired to Jersey in the Channel Islands, where they were trapped by the German occupation during World War II. Macartney died on Jersey, just a few days after the German surrender.

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Skrine, Clarmont Percival; Nightingale, Pamela (1973). Macartney at Kashgar: New Light on British, Chinese and Russian Activities in Sinkiang, 1890–1918. London, England: Methuen. ISBN 978-0415361712.
• Lady Macartney, An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan. London: Ernest Benn, 1931.