[Lord] George Macartney

[Lord] George Macartney (1737-1806)

Life

[Lord Macartney; Baron Macartney, later Earl]; b. Lisanoure, Loughgiel, Co. Antrim, member of a branch of a successful Belfast merchant family which conformed to the established religion [Anglican]; ed. TCD (Dublin); appt. Ambassador to Russia, where he won the favour of Catherine the Great; appt. Chief Sec. for Ireland [representing the Townshend administration], 1769-72; created earl, 1792;

sent by Pitt with warships and Chinese translators to Peking on an embassy (or trade mission) for George III during 1793-94 - a record of which is given in his “Journal of the Embassy to China”, printed in John Barrow’s Memoir of Macartney (1807); ridiculed falsely in England for kow-towing to the Chinese Emperor, though actually exempted from the full form of obeisance; with Townshend, he was the butt of the satirical collection Baratariana (1771) [var. 1772], successive missions to China included those of Amherst, 1816-17, and Elgin, 1844-46; his portrait was painted by Lemuel Francis Abbott. RR ODNB PI DIW DUB

Lord George Macartney
by Lemuel Francis Abbott

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Works
Journal to the Embassy to China, incl. in Memoir by John Barrow (1807); An Account of an Embassy to Russia (1768); A Political Account of Ireland (1773), reprinted in Barrow; Macartney in Ireland 1768-72: Tom Bartlett, ed. and intro., A Calendar of the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (PRONI 1978). See also J. Redington, ed., Calendar of the Home Office Papers 1766-69 (1879) [contains some of his papers].

Tom Bartlett, ed. & intro., Macartney in Ireland 1768-72: A Calendar of the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (Belfast: PRONI [1978]), xlviii, 404, comprising the vast bulk of Macartney’s official papers relating to Ireland [and pertaining] to the period of his secretaryship, and shortly after; 17 vols. and some loose papers on deposit in Public Rec. Off., Northern Ireland [PRONI], arranged in haphazard fashion during his lifetime; supplemented by papers in other Northern Ireland, Indian, and American libraries. [See extract].

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Criticism

H. H. Robbins, Our First Ambassador in China, an account of the life of George Earl of Macartney (1908).
Peter Roebuck, Macartney of Lisanoure 1737-1806 (Belfast 1983).

See also

Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1996)
Henrietta Harrison, The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton, 2022), 341pp.[reviewed by Pamela Crossley in LRB (18 Aug. 2022) [see extract].

There is a short life in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.389-93 [see infra].

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Commentary
Tom Bartlett, ed. & intro., Macartney in Ireland 1768-72: A Calendar of the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (Belfast: PRONI [1978]), remarks: ‘Ireland like most of the colonies had been, by and large, going her own way with little regard to the dictates of Whitehall or the changes of government in Britain. [Ftn. quotes John Ponsonby, ‘What matter’s it to us who are minsters in England? Let us stick to our own circle and manage our own little game as well as we can’. Ponsonby to Foster, 15 Aug 1765 PRONI D562/1/757.] This attitude, the British ministers found increasingly irritating. The lord lieutenant, the knig’s representatvie in ireland, occupied a subordinate position in the Irish government and was forced to depend on the good offices of the undertakers to carry out the king’s business. Carious schemes were, at one time or another, bput forwards to re-establish the post and prestige of the lord lieutenant and to break the stranglehold of the undertakers on the Irish political life. Eventually the concensus of opinion was that the lord lieutenant should be constantly resident in Ireland. This would remove the need for lords justices and furthermore regain for the office some much needed status. ... Lord Townshend, elder brother of the more famous Charles Townshend, was appointed lord lieutenant after Bristol’s resignation. His main aim in coming to Ireland was to gain the Irish parliament’s approval for an augmentation to the number of troops on the Irish establishment. This was a matter dear to George III’s heart and it was probable that he drew up the plan which Townshend was to implement ... an attempt to standardise the size of regiments on both the Irish and the English establishments so as to facilitate their rotation on imperial service. (xvii-viii).

Note on Baratania: with Townshend, he was the butt of the satirical collection Baratariana (1771) [var. 1772], which bore a oval frontispiece port. of the former captioned, ‘And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes’, and the motto, ‘In Coelum jufferis ibit’, and with a string or halter passing between two hands marked North and Bute at left and right; a satirical engraving of Townshend’s cabinet from Baratariana, prominently including Macartney, appears on the jacket of Bartlett’s Calendar.

Pamela Crossley, ‘“We possess all things”’ [review of Henrietta Harrison, The Perils of Interpreting [... &c.], in London Review of Books (18 Aug. 2022): ‘In 1793 George Macartney, the former governor of Madras, arrived in Beijing as the envoy of George III. Nobody in Beijing knew why he was there. He assumed that his commission from William Pitt made him an ambassador, and that his mission was to negotiate new trade relations between Britain and the Qing empire. Like many in Britain he believed that the “Canton System” was designed to restrict the scope of British trade at Guangzhou and thereby obstruct British access to the China market. Macartney hoped to persuade the Qing to reconstruct their trade practices entirely, as well as their ways of communicating with foreign states. He failed on both counts, and returned home with nothing more than a letter from the Qianlong emperor, translated to English, filled with grandiose stylings: “Our dynasty’s majestic virtue has penetrated unto every country under Heaven, and Kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and sea. As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”

Cont. ( Crossley, LRB, 18 Aug. 2022): ‘Today the fiasco of 1793 is the postulate for an elaborate paradigm that is supposed to explain China’s decline in power in the 19th century. In this paradigm, empires based in China had for millennia seen themselves as being at the centre of a “Chinese world order”. They adhered inflexibly to debasing rituals, such as prostration and beating the head on the ground, to assert their dominance over other societies, and refused or severely restricted trade. When the ballooning quantity of tea imported from China caused a trade imbalance for Britain in the later 18th century, the British turned to selling Indian opium to the Chinese. This led to the Opium War of 1839-42, which in turn produced a series of unequal treaties that inhibited Chinese development for almost a century. But the paradigm is problematic: it isn’t only ahistorical but, as Henrietta Harrison suggests in The Perils of Interpreting, it focuses on the wrong people. [...]’

Further (Crossley, LRB, 18 Aug. 2022): ‘At the suggestion of his home secretary – and president of the Board of Control – Henry Dundas, Pitt decided to send Macartney (who had some diplomatic distinction, apparently because Catherine the Great found him fetching) as an ‘ambassador extraordinary’ to China. Dundas wanted more direct access to the China market; some kind of territory for wintering, repairs and resupply; and that the Qianlong emperor accept him as a permanent ambassador.

‘Harrison narrates the ensuing comedy of errors by rotating between British and Chinese actors. Long before Macartney arrived in China, the East India Company had informed Qing officials that an envoy was coming to celebrate the Qianlong emperor’s 82nd birthday. On arrival, Macartney was alarmed when Qing officials attempted to educate him in guest ritual. Even before leaving England he had been mocked in the press as the kind of ingratiating milksop who would humiliate his country by grovelling before the emperor. Once prostration had been broached, Macartney seemed to fear that every encounter would entail a demand that he and his entourage fling themselves to the ground. The evidence strongly suggests, though without complete proof, that when the emperor realised Macartney had not arrived to offer ritual obsequies, but was a person of some standing (which Macartney attempted to manifest with his Order of the Bath cape), he modified the rules of etiquette to allow Macartney to bend a knee – or two. As he noted later in his letter to George III, ‘it has never been our dynasty’s wish to force people to do things unseemly and inconvenient.’ Nevertheless, Macartney’s obsession with prostration did not subside, and on his return to Britain the press went on a shaming spree, insinuating he had done the hated deed.’

‘[...] By diplomatic convention, Macartney wanted his own interpreter, not one provided by the Qing court, but he found nobody in Britain who knew any Chinese. His friend and secretary George Leonard Staunton had heard of four Chinese Jesuits in Naples who wanted a ride home, so he arranged for them to join the Macartney entourage. Harrison provides a biography of the most important of them, Li Zibiao, from his childhood in rugged north-western China to Naples and then Beijing. Li was most comfortable translating formal Chinese into Latin, but with Macartney he spoke Italian, the one vernacular the two men had in common.’

[Harrison also treats of George Thomas Staunton who travelled with his father on the expedition, aged 11, and learnt enough Chinese on board (presum. from Li Zibiao and three other Chinese translators whom Macartney had found in Italy) to receive a purse from the person of the Emperor himself. concerns the truth or falsehood of accepted theories about the novelty of world trade for the Chinese, pointing out that ‘here was no negotiating the fact that China was the world’s greatest manufacturer and exporter, and no country could sell to China more than it bought.’ [London Review of Books, 18 Aug. 2022 - available online; accessed 19.08.2022).

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References

Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.389-93

GEORGE, EARL OF MACARTNEY. The son of George Macartney, Esq. of Anchinleck, in Scotland, was bom in Ireland in 1797, and was educated [390] as a fellow-commoner in Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degrees in 1759. Shortly after this; he travelled with the sons of the late Lord Holland. This, perhaps, was his introduction at court. His edocation had been liberal, and he had improved the advantages which he possessed from a fortunate train of circumstances. He had an aspiring mind, and excellent talents, and war ambitious of some public employment. His own wishes were seconded by the seal of his friends, and he was, in 1764, appointed envoy extraordinary to the empress of Russia. The occasion of this mission, and of the appointment of this young man, was the great importance of the commercial and political relations between Great Britain and the empire of Russia; and it was necessary, at that period, to counteract the influence of France at the Russian court. The character and policy of that court required to be particularly studied: and hence the embassy from this country included an office that required much penetration, vigilance, and discretion, as well as [insinuating] manners, and an agreeable address. These qualifications were thought by the most discerning judges, to be united in Mr. Macartney.

[Mission to Russia:] The principal business of his mission was to negociate a commercial treaty, for the benefit of the merchants trading to Russia. Of the interests of the Russian trade he was well informed. His address surmounted every difficulty of access to the empress and her ministers; he knew how to seize the proper moment for negociation, and he had coolness and patience to conquer every obstacle which, might be opposed to the views by the artifices of others. He is a short time procured the Russian court to agree to a treaty satisfactory to the wishes of the British merchants at [St.] Petersburgh, and suitable to the instructions, which he had received at home. An address from the merchants of the British factory at St. Petersburgh, the honour of the knighthood of the Polish order of the White Eagle, conferred by a monarch who was himself at once a man of fashion, tact, and pleasure, and a man of political talents; and his elevation [391] to ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary from the British court, in which he finally concluded the treaty of commerce, were among the testimonies of approbation and respect which Sir George Macartany obtained by his conduct in this diplomatic mission to the North.

Thus successful and distinguished, he returned to the British Court about the close of the year 1767. Early in the following year, be married Lady Jane Stuart, second daughter of the Earl of Bute. By this marriage he had contracted a relationship to Sir James Lowther afterwards Earl of Lonsdale; and by that gentleman’s interest with, or influence over, the electors, he was returned, in the same year, one of the representatives of the borough of Cockermouth; after which we find him chosen a representative in the Irish parliament for the borough of Armagh. In 1769, Sir George was nominated principal secretary to the late Marquis Townsend, in the high offioe which be then filled of lord-lieutenant of Ireland. In 1779, be was nominated by his sovereign, knight of the Bath and in 1775, went out as governor of Grenada and Tobago. He continued there till 1779, when, on the capture of those islands by the French, he was taken prisoner, and sent to France. In 1776 he had been made an Irish peer by the title of Lord Macartney, Baron Lissanoure, in the county of Antrim. As the loss of Grenada had not [stemmed] from any misconduct in him, while his defence of it had indeed been signalised by the most illustrious display of all his great qualities, he met with a very gracious reception from his sovereign on his return.

In 1780, he was chosen to represent Beeralstone in the British parliament; and, [at] the following winter, he was appointed governor and resident of Fort St. George, at Madras, in the East Indies: and he went without delay to discharge the functions of his appointment, where his conduct obtained such universal approbation, that, in 1785, he was appointed to the high office of governor-general of Bengal, which, however, after due consideration, be chose to decline, and returned to England. In 1780, he received a flattering testimony [392] of respect from the court of directors of the East India Company, who granted him an annuity for his life, of £1500 per annum, which was bestowed as a reward for the important services which this illustrious nobleman had rendered to the Company. The same year he fought a duel with General Stuart, whom he had superseded in India. In 1788, he took his seat for the first time in the Irish House of Peers; and about the same time, was appointed one of the trustees of the linen manufacture of the province of Ulster, and also custos rotulorum for the county of Antrim. He was likewise promoted to the command of a regiment of dragoons in the Irish militia.

[Mission to China:] In 1792, he was selected as the fittest person for ambassador from the king of Great Britain to the emperor of China. He was on the same day nominated a privy-counsellor; and in a few weeks he was raised to the rank of an Irish viscount, under the title of Viscount Derrock, in the county of Antrim. He now proceeded, without delay, on his embassy, attended by Sir George Staunton as his secretary, and a great train of followers and servants. A ship of war, under the command of Sir Erasmus Gower, was, with smaller vessels, assigned for his voyage. Many rich presents were sent from the British to the Chinese sovereign. He arrived in safety in the Indian seas; and when his approach was announced at the Chinese court, the emperor and his minister agreed, though not without some hesitation, to receive the ambassador and presents. In his approach to Pekin, the northern capital of the empire, his lordship was obliged to direct his voyage round the south sea coast of China, by a track hitherto almost unknown to European navigators. The opportunity of exploring that tract, was regarded as almost sufficient to compensate for all the difficulties and expense of the embassy.

As soon as he landed, mandarins of the highest rank were appointed to conduct him to the imperial court. His presents were accepted, and he, with all the train, were treated in a hospitable and even sumptuous manner; but the main object of the mission was completely [393] frustrated, viz., to obtain permission for the permanent residence of a British ambassador at the court of China. This was absolutely refused, and Lord Macartney and his train returned overland. His lordship entered Canton in December 1705. From thence he proceeded to Maçao; and, in March 1794, be sailed from that port to Europe. He arrived in England in the following September, after an absence of almost two years. On his return he was created an Irish earl, and in 1796, he was farther advanced to the dignity of a British peer, by the title of Baron Macartney, of Parkhurst, in Sussex. After this, he was called to the administration. In this high, station, as in the other offices which he filled, Lord Macartney displayed qualities which are honourable to his talents as a statesman, and his feelings as a man. His lordship died on the 91st of March, 1806. [End.]

Pagination as per top of page; paragraph breaks added here.

See full-text copy of Biog. Hib. in RICORSO > Library > History [...] via index or as attached.

Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast) holds Baratariana, A Select Collection of Fugitive Political Pieces (Dublin 1777)

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Notes
George McCartney [sic] reported from Belfast in 1707, ‘.. thank God we are not under any great fears here, for ... we have not among us above seven papists.’ See Loreto Todd, The Language of Irish Literature (1989).

John Ponsonby: Macartney regarded with animosity by the chief undertaker, John Ponsonby, who wrote, in correspondence, of his ‘categorical style’. It was chiefly Ponsonby’s control of Ireland through the Revenue Commission and the House of Commons, of which he was Speaker, that the viceroy Townshend was trying to undermine. (See Bartlett, 1978, op. cit. infra, p.xxiii.) Macartney was under attack in the press, notably the Freeman’s Journal, which called him ‘an officious scribe ... of ministerial principles and by family connexion linked to the BUTEAN interest who will not hestitate at the next session to propose any motion, the junto can contrive for their purpose or he devise for their favour’ (FJ, 15 Aug. 1769; quoted Bartlett, xxiv). Hnnry Grattan wrote;’Macartney, if possible, is more disliked than Lord Townshend. An eternal sneer, a nauseating affection and a listless energy make him (they say) disgusting in general and give him the name of the Macaroni prime minister (in H Grattan, Memoirs of Henry Grattan, Dublin 1839, I, p.162; cited Bartlett, xxxii, ftn.)

Bardic bagatelle: Macartney paid but five guineas to one Gorman, a scribe, who presented to him his ‘poetical bagatelle’, as reported with happy surprise in a letter of Charles O’Conor to Archb. Carpenter of Dublin ([10 Jan. 1772; O’Connor, ed. Ward and Ward, Letters, pp.265-66].

Macartney letterbooks: The Macartney [family] letterbooks for eleven years in the period 1696-1706 are employed as a documentary basis for much of the analysis in Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1996).

Portrait: An oil port. of Lord [Geo.] Macartney by Gustav Lundberg was acquired by the Ulster Museum through the Macartney sale, Belfast 1947 (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition Catalogue], Belfast: Ulster Museum 1965).

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