¹ Lensen, G. A. (ed.), Korea and Manchuria between Russia and Japan 1835–1904: the observations of Sir Ernest Satow (Tallahassee, Florida, 1966).Google Scholar Satow was awarded the KCMG in 1895, on the eve of his departure for Japan, and GCMG in 1902.

² Ibid. p. 17.

³ See Nish, I. H., The Anglo-Japanese alliance: the diplomacy of two island empires, 1894–1907 (London, 1966).Google Scholar Nish confined his researches in the Satow papers at the Public Record Office to the hMes of correspondence.

⁴ Satow himself might have rejected such a characterization. With regard to two of his oldest Japan resident and expert friends, he wrote: ‘[Times correspondent Captain Frank] Brinkley is far too pro-Japanese’, and comparing him with one of Japan's leaders of the time, that he was ‘Inouye Kaoru in an English dress, not Japan’, and ‘[Basil Hall] Chamberlain's hatred of everything European except Wagner's music is incomprehensible to me, as is his preference for Japan. He is fitted for something better.’ Satow to F. V. Dickins, 8 Mar. 1894, 20 Sept. 1889, 23 Feb. 1897, Public Record Office, PRO 30/33/11/5–6. Yet Chamberlain was later the author of a vociferous pamphlet about Mikado-worship, The invention ofa new religion (London, 1912),Google Scholar which he blamed mainly on Marquis Ito Hirobumi.

⁵ Vol. 2 of , Oliphant'sNarrative of the earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan 1857–59 (Edinburgh, 1859).Google Scholar Cf. Allen, B. M., The Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Satow GCMG: a memoir (London, 1933), p. 4, andGoogle ScholarSatow, Sir E., The family chronicle of the English Satows (Oxford, 1925), p. 18,Google Scholar where he indicates his debt to his elder brother Edward, who brought the Oliphant volume home, and preceded him to the Far East, dying in Shanghai in 1865 of cholera. On his p. 7, Allen, a Satow relative by marriage, talks of Japan as ‘the romantic land which he [Satow] had chosen to be the scene of his life-work’, on p. 131 recalls his own ‘thrill’ at news of the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian far eastern fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904, and on p. 36, from the perspective of 1933, celebrates the near 70 years in which, to that point, ‘the forces of England and Japan had never met in a conflict and that, when the great World Crisis [1914] called men to arms, the Japanese fought at Britain's side in grim reality’.

⁶ See Satow to Dickins, 17 May 1895, PRO 30/33/11/6, where he suggests that this affair was the consequence of careless behaviour by Richardson himself, in the presence of the regent of Satsuma, Shimazu Hisamitsu; and Satow to Dickins, 2 Nov. 1893, for his own 1860s experiences: ‘those years from ‘62 to ’69 were the most interesting portion of my life; then I lived. Now I seem to vegetate.’ But he adds: ‘What the Japanese, and I suppose the Turanian [Turcoman/ Tungusic?] race generally, fail in is-humour; that quality of mind in which the best of Englishmen are supreme, which saves them from the ridiculous belief that little Piddlington is the universe and its affairs of importance only limited by infinity.’ Largely on the basis of his retirement volume, A diplomat in Japan (London, 1921),Google Scholar itself mainly written up in the mid- 1880s in Bangkok, Satow is best known for his activities as a very young man in 1860s Japan, at the expense of his distinguished later career, especially what was to come after 1895.

⁷ Satow diary, 25 Mar. 1864, cited in , Lensen, Korta and Manchuria, pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid. p. 18. The famous Australian Times journalist G. E. Morrison, like Sansom a latter-day Satow acquaintance, in a characteristic display of spleen, apparently once referred to him as a ‘selfish old dryasdust who uses me and gives me nothing in return but frequent bad dinners’. Pearl, C., Morrison of Peking (Sydney, 1967), p. 140.Google Scholar

⁹ See ‘Harry Parkes's negotiations in Bangkok in 1856’ in Tarling, N., Imperial Britain m southeast Asia (Kuala Lumpur, 1975), pp. 202–32.Google Scholar In the 1870s Satow considered Parkes a bully who did much damage to Anglo-Japanese relations. See Jan, Cecilia Osteen, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service and observations of Sir Ernest Mason Satow’, unpublished Florida university Ph.D. dissertation 1976, pp. 53–3, 92Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Satow diaries, 25 Jan. 1868, PRO 30/33/15/2.

¹¹ See Allen, The Rt. Horn. Sir Errusi Satow, appendix, or for more accuracy, Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service,’ appendix.

¹² , Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service,’ pp. 5–7,Google Scholar, Lensen, Korea and Manchuria, pp. 19–21.Google Scholar Family tradition in Japan claims a daughter born in the early 1870s who died young. Nobutoshi, Hagihara, ‘Saigo Takamori and Ernest Satow: an episode in 19th century Anglo-Japanese relations’, unpublished paper, 1987.Google Scholar During 1872–5 (July), by which time he was back in England, Satow generally only entered details of journeys in his diary. Even here he was not to acknowledge his sons, born in 1880 and 1883, until his first visit back from Siam in 1884. What seems to be a contemporary family portrait is contained in PRO 30/33/15/10.

¹³ , Lensen, Korea and Manchuria, p. 19.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See obituary by his retirement friend Temperley, H. W. V. in Dictionary of national biography ‘1921–1930, orGoogle Scholar Allen, The Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Satow, this despite having both his sons to stay with him in England for varying periods from 1900.

¹⁵ Diary, 30 Oct. 1891, PRO 30/33/15/14, and Satow to Dickins, 29 Sept. 1896, 30/33/11/6. From the mid-1880s, Satow's often very explicit letters to Dickins, who had returned home to assume a legal career, or his wife, are the most valuable source on his personal views additional to his diaries. By the 1890s, Dickins was first registrar to the new University of London, and busy collaborating with S. Lane-Poole on the second volume of the standard biography of Sir Harry Parkes. In retirement he taught Japanese part-time at the University of Bristol.

¹⁶ Quite unreasonable rumours of a Satow ‘Japanese harem’ were a feature of his career. Similarly unfairly, he was also quite widely regarded as rich. Morrison, G. E. to V. Chirol, 7 July 1902, in The corrtspendtnee of G. E. Morrison (ed. Hui-min, Lo), I (Cambridge, 1976), 194Google Scholar.

¹⁷ For the most detailed account of this episode see Minney, R. J., Fanny and the Regent of Siam (London, 1962),Google Scholar but also documents and Salisbury minutes in FO (Foreign Office archives) 69/70–72, especially 6 June 1879 in 69/70.

¹⁸ See Brailey, N., Two views of Siam on the eve of the Chokri reformation (Arran and Edinburgh, 1989), introduction.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Satow to Sir Philip Currie (private), 28 Apr. 1885, PRO 30/33/14/1.

²⁰ Diaries, 5, 11, 17 Dec. 1883, PRO 30/33/15/7. In the process, he was transferred from the consular to the diplomatic branch of the foreign service.

²¹ Diary, 26 Feb. 1884. PRO 30/33/15/7.

²² Ibid., 6 Nov. 1884, 31 July 1886, 30/33/15/8, 10, and Satow to Dickins, 29 July 1886, 30/33/11/5.

²³ Published as ‘Notes on the intercourse between Japan and Siam in the seventeenth century’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, XIII (1885), 139–210.Google Scholar See also his ‘Essay towards a bibliography of Siam’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, Straits Branch (1886), 1–85, 163–89Google Scholar.

²⁴ Diaries, 2, 18 Nov. 1884, PRO 30/33/15/7.

²⁵ As a footnote to some private comments by the Japanese politician Goto Shojiro about his own suitability, Satow adds ‘I really think they /the F.O.] could not do better than send me to Japan as [Sir F.R.] Plunkett's successor’. Diary 26 Aug. 1886, 30/33/15/10. All of ten years earlier, foreign office assistant under-secretary Currie had already been quizzing him about Japan policy ‘as if he were die Minister’.Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service’, pp. 52–3. Currie, who seems to have remained a good friend of Satow, had since become close to Lord Salisbury who promoted him foreign office permanent under-secretary in 1887.

²⁶ Satow to Dickins, 5 Nov. 1885, 4 Apr. 1886, PRO 30/33/11/5. ‘Klingi’, Kalingas, are Tamils, 10 the latter comment seems really to refer to Malaya, where many were settled, in the light of negotiations Satow was currently conducting with Singapore. But it follows directly after a tribute to the then chief commissioner for British Burma, Sir Charles Bernard, for his opposition to the outright annexation of Upper Burma.

²⁷ Satow to Dickins, 26 June 1885, PRO 30/33/11/5.

²⁸ The Times, 11 February and 20 July 1887, letters in 22 Nov. 1887 and 7 Aug. 1888. See also Pall Mall Gazette, various.

²⁹ For Gowan, see Wyatt, D. K., The politics of reform in Thailand: education in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (New Haven, 1969), p. 217.Google Scholar The replacement was William Willis. See Sir Cortazzi, H., Dr. Willis in Japan (London, 1985), pp. 236–7.Google Scholar He had already retired from his Japan practice.

³⁰ Diaries, 9, 20, 21 May and 13 June 1887, PRO 30/33/15/11. See also Satow to Sir P. Currie and W. G. Aston, 3, 16, 29 Jan. 1887, PRO 30/33/14/2, 11/3.

³¹ Diary, 1, 13, 21 July 1887, PRO 30/33/15/11. See also Chulasiriwongs, Chayachoke, ‘Thai-British relations concerning the northern Malay states, 1880–1899’, unpublished Ohio University Ph.D. dissertation, 1980, p. 250.Google Scholar That autumn, Thewawong also came under attack in the British press for cancelling an arrangement already made by the English secretary to the London legation, Frederick Verney, with Messrs Heaton of Birmingham, for the supply of a new bronze currency, and transferring it to a Hamburg company. The Times, 28 Oct. 2, 23, 29 Nov., I, 6 Dec. 1887.

³² At the beginning of the year he had written from Bangkok requesting a transfer for health reasons. Satow to Currie, 18 Jan. 1887, PRO 30/33/14/2. But at that point he had received no encouragement, and had thus reconciled himself to returning to Siam for a second term.

³³ Diaries, 21 July, 16 Sept., 9, 15, 16 Dec. 1887, 27 Jan., 1 May, 22 June 1888, PRO 30/33/15/11–12.

³⁴ Diaries, 30 Jan. 1889, 16 Dec. 1887, PRO 30/33/15/12, 11. Satow was also becoming a hard-liner at this time with regard to the negotiations with Japan. Satow to Dickins, 20 Sept. 1889. 30/33/11/5.

Consulted about Siam when passing through London en route to Morocco at the height of the Paknam crisis in July 1893, Satow advised the new permanent under-secretary-elect Sir Thomas Sanderson ‘the commerce of the Mekong valley was of no importance, the only thing of value being Siam proper, for rice and teak. Gave my opinion against buffer states; but the Indian Government say that if they have a frontier with France /in Indochina/, it will need to be garrisoned by three regiments, and construction of a railway, cost £200,000 a year.’ Diary, 25 July 1893. 30/33/15/15.

³⁵ See my ‘Robert Morant, R.S. 112 (1893–4) and Britain's Siam policy’ in Proceedings of the international conference on Thai studies (Bangkok, 1984), IIIGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ See Allen, Mea, Palgrave of Arabia (London, 1972),Google Scholar and Satow diary, 1 May 1889, PRO 30/33/15/12.

³⁷ Diary, 27 Oct. 1888, 30/33/15/12. But this may also be early evidence of his later pronounced anti-Russian feelings, in line with Japanese attitudes. See also his comment to Prince Phichit Prichakon in Bangkok, 21 Apr. 1886, 30/33/15/10, and even earlier fears of Russian expansionism in the Far East in his diary, 29 Oct. 1882, 30/33/15/7.

³⁸ Satow to Dickins, 30 July 1892, 30/33/11/6, quoted in Allen, The Rt. Horn. Sir Ernest Satow, p. 94. His negative views of South America are most evident in an earlier letter to Dickins, 29 Jan. 1891, 30/33/11/6.

³⁹ Here comparing them surprisingly with the Englishman who still ‘held his head high in China and Japan’. Satow to Dickins, 15 June 1899, 30/33/11/6.

⁴⁰ Diary, 11 Jan. 1892, PRO 30/33/15/14.

⁴¹ Boxer, C. R., The Christian century in Japan, 1540–1650 (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 475–6.Google Scholar Satow also had plans to anticipate this Boxer classic work, apparently frustrated by his professional duties in Japan as minister, 1895–1900. Satow to Dickins, 3 Jan., 9 Sept. 1896, PRO 30/33/11/6.

⁴² See his own accounts of his conversion to Mrs Dickins, 7 July, 8 Nov. 1889, PRO 30/33/11/5. His transfer to Uruguay had at least blocked his own half-baked private plans to promote the conversion of Buddhist Siam to Christianity! Satow to Dickins, 2 Oct. 1888, also in 30/33/11/5.

⁴³ Via his great friend W. G. Aston, they were eventually to find their way into the library of Cambridge university. See introduction to Nozomu, Hayashi and Kornicki, P. (eds.), Early Japanese books in Cambridge university library (Cambridge, 1991).Google Scholar For further testimony to this role of Satow see Brown, Vu-ying, A guide to Japanese books and manuscripts at the British Museum (1987Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Diaries, 30 Oct., 30 Dec. 1891, PRO 30/33/15/14. The transfer would not have been dissimilar to that he made from Tokyo to Peking in 1900.

⁴⁵ Diary, PRO 30/33/15/14. Salisbury's ignorance of geography seems later to have become quite notorious. Young, L. K., British policy in China 1895–1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 205Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Originally a Gladstonian Liberal contemptuous of Disraeli (to W. G. Aston, 3 Sept. 1876, PRO 30/33/11/3), Satow had welcomed Salisbury into power for his stronger foreign policy (to Dickins, 26 June 1885, 11/5), and was later (to Dickins, 8 Mar. 1894, 11/6) to regret the FO's loss of Rosebery to the premiership. The latter had served previously as foreign secretary and Satow's chief in the first half of 1886. See below, p. 126.

⁴⁷ Satow to F. Villiers (private), 30 Mar. 1893. PRO 30/33/14/3.

⁴⁸ Diary, 8 June 1893, PRO 30/33/15/15. For the full measure of his delight, see his letter to Dickins, 11 June 1893, 30/33/11/6, where he writes of ‘a very agreeable exchange, so good indeed that I tremble with apprehension lest it should not be realized’. And henceforth he seems to show a willingness to go anywhere he was sent, not least the mortifying swap with MacDonald in 1900 that took him to Peking. On 12 July 1893 he noted, writing to a junior colleague: ‘I recommended patience, that the F.O. disliked men who were always asking for something; tout vient à qui sait attendre, etc.’, 30/33/15/15.

⁴⁹ Cf. diary, 29 Sept. 1887, PRO 30/33/15/12: ‘Dined with Charles Aliens at Hampstead. From what he says about Morocco, the condition of things at Tangier must closely resemble that at Bangkok.’ Later, 9 Oct. 1895, to Dickins, 30/33/11/6: ‘Corea I anticipate will be another Morocco, a rotten fruit which no one may touch, and which will be carefully propped up lest it should fall into some one's hands of whom the others would be jealous to the point of fighting.’ And diary, 2 May 1900, 30/33/16/3; ‘Japan and Russia as to Corea like England and France as to Siam, a pretty woman with two suitors; no need however to come to blows.’ Cf. also diary, 17 Jan. 1896, 30/33/15/17.

⁵⁰ Satow to Rosebery (telegram), 29 Mar. 1886, and vice versa, FO 423/13. This was already in the era of rising German activity in the Far East. See Thompson, V., Thailand: the new Siam (New York, 1941), p. 197. or Joseph Conrad, The end of the tether (various eds.), based on Eastern experience purely of the 1880sGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ Diaries, 22, 24 Oct. 1893, PRO 30/33/15/15.

⁵² PRO 30/33/15/15. Tuat was a town in eastern Morocco near the border with Algeria, already long under firm French control.

⁵³ Pelcovits, N., Old China hands and the foreign office (New York, 1948), p. 173.Google Scholar No date for Satow's appointment is indicated in his diaries, but see his letter of thanks to Lord Kimberley, 5 May 1895, PRO 30/33/14/8.

⁵⁴ Grenville, J. A. S., Lord Salisbury and foreign policy: the close of the nineteenth century (London, 1964), p. 383Google Scholar. But Steiner, Z., The foreign office and foreign policy, 1898–1914 (Cambridge, 1969), p. 178,Google Scholar characterizes him as very much the diplomatic and social ‘outsider’. Cf. Satow diary, 28 May 1895, PRO 30/33/15/17, on his appointment, and for his views on the Rosebery government's foreign policy difficulties Satow to Dickins, 18 Apr. 1895, 30/33/11/6; also for the latter, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five years, 1892–1916 (London, 1925), I, 23.Google Scholar

J. H. Gubbins ultimately became Oxford University lecturer in Japanese, and Ralph Paget, a supposed Germanophile, minister in Siam, Munich and Serbia, transferring to the foreign office in 1913 as assistant under-secretary. Gerald Lowther, a future rather ineffective ambassador to the Ottoman empire, had succeeded in Tokyo to M. W. de Bunscn, chargé d'affaires 1892–4, mainly responsible for renegotiating the unequal Anglo-Japanese treaties at the behest of Rosebery and Kimberley. According to him, both le Poer Trench and N. O'Conor, British minister in Peking 1885–95, had been unsympathetic to the Rosebery/Kimberley policy. De Bunsen to the Hon. G. Curzon, 22 Feb. 1895. Curzon papers, India Office Library, Eur. F. 111/8Ia.

Satow's own reaction to this appointment was to write to Dickins, 30 May 1895, PRO 30/33/11/6, of ‘the awful responsibility before me’, and previously, 18 Apr., that in his view ‘The questions [then] in dispute with France sink into insignificance in comparison with what is going on in Eastern Asia.’

⁵⁵ Satow reported to Dickins, 21 Aug. 1895, 30/33/11/6, from Tokyo, that Salisbury had not thought that ‘any gain would result from my waiting until he had time to inform himself about Japanese affairs after the result of the elections was declared, and preferred that I should start at once’. And from amongst the senior F.O. staff, Salisbury recruited as his private secretary in this period, Eric Barrington, perhaps, along with the under-secretary, 1893–1906, Sir Thomas Sanderson, one of the two permanent officials most friendly to Satow.

⁵⁶ See n. 9 above.

⁵⁷ Diary, 30/33/15/17. Cf. 1 Aug. with Ito in Tokyo, referring to Kato discussion with Kimberley about an international guarantee of Korea, and 10 Feb. 1897, Satow's poor opinion of the local English-language press, 30/33/16/1. Also Satow to Dickins, 30 May 1895, 30/33/11/6: ‘The English [London] press has said some things that will do harm in Japan about the “Yellow Peril”.’

⁵⁸ See Satow to Peking chargé W. Hillier, 19 Dec. 1895, PRO 30/33/14/8, insisting ‘From home I have no indication of policy’. Cf. also diaries 16 May 1896, 17 Nov. 1898, 20 Apr. 1899, 30/33/16/1-–2, and Young, British policy in China, p. 21, who wrongly ascribes the advent of Francis Bertie to charge of a ‘China’ rather than ‘far eastern’ department of the F.O. in 1896, but admits (p. 24), even regarding Chinese affairs, ‘Lord Salisbury did not have any special interest’ prior to the Port Arthur crisis of 1901 (1898?), by which time he had ceded charge of the F.O. to Lord Lansdowne. Salisbury's neglect of Satow is reminiscent of his attitude to his ambassador in Paris, Edmund Monson. See , Grenville, Lord Salisbury and foreign policy, p. 14Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ , Pelcovits, Old China hands, p. 173,Google Scholar cites ‘The famous leader in the St James Gazette of March 18, 1895’, as widely representative of British unconcern at home.

⁶⁰ Salisbury to Satow, 3 Oct. 1895, PRO 30/33/5/2, quoted at greater length in Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance, p. 40. Cf. ibid. p. 79, on Satow's caution given Salisbury's known hostility to alliances, but also Barrington to Satow, 29 Sept. 1896, 30/33/5/2, excusing Salisbury's failure to reply to any of Satow's other letters as due to preoccupation with a matter ‘nearer home’, apparently the Ottoman empire. See Satow diaries, 7 Dec. 1898, 30/33/16/2. Of course, for a time in the late 1890s there was considerable support in Britain for instigating Russia to take compensation in the far east for her interests in the Levant and central Asia for the sake of the security of the Indian empire. Also in late 1895, Salisbury was involved in finding a solution to the dispute with France over Siam, provisionally resolved in the agreement of 15 Jan. 1896.

⁶¹ Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service,’ p. 21.

⁶² , Young, British polity in China, pp. 23, 229.Google Scholar By contrast, Lansdowne seems to have been in agreement with Satow and critical of both his foreign colleagues at the Peking conference, and the British cabinet (including, by implication, Salisbury himself as premier) for tolerating their weathercock behaviour. Nor does he seem to have been so dissatisfied with the brevity of Satow's telegram home which merely mirrored F.O. practice for which, if not Salisbury himself, then Bertie, his special far eastern adviser, was principally responsible.

⁶³ , Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance, p. 43.Google Scholar Cf. n. 69 below and also Satow to Salisbury, 1 Mar. 1897 FO 405/73, in , Lensen, Korea and Manchuria, pp. 1–3,Google Scholar on the depths of Japanese fortification at having to compromise at this stage with Russia in Korea.

⁶⁴ Satow diary, 7 Oct. 1897, PRO 30/33/16/1.

⁶⁵ Ibid. 18 June 1895, 13 Oct. 1897, 30/33/15/17, 16/1. For his knowledge and interest, see also , Curzon'sProblems of the far east (London, 1896 edn).Google Scholar But as a great Francophobe, he dismisses the Japanese, p. 47, as the ‘Frenchmen of the East’, and also refers, p. 391, to their ‘growing vanity’. Both remarks perhaps embody a response to the Cambridge-educated Inagaki Manjiro's unusual Japan and the Pacific and a Japanese view of the eastern question (London, 1890),Google Scholar a book highly ambitious for Japan, which Curzon read crossing the Pacific to Japan in 1892.

⁶⁶ Satow diary, 4 June 1897, 30/33/16/1. The consequences were evident in Satow's language to his confidant ‘Asaina’, 26 Nov. 1897, on his return to Tokyo. Though see also entry for 25 May 1898, on a Salisbury speech in England about Japan as ‘a country with which we have so many grounds of sympathy and co-operation’. (Ibid.)

The only early Salisbury minute on an official Satow dispatch is one prompted by a contemptuous Bertie inquiry of 28 Nov. 1895, on Satow's suggestions regarding Korean policy dated 1 Oct. 1895: ‘Do you wish any instructions to be sent to Sir E. Satow about Corea? He seems to consider that England as “mistress of the seas” is the neighbour of Corea.’ Salisbury replied, ‘I think he may be approved. He bluffs a little too much, but it is of no use at this distance attempting to send minute instructions as to the kind of language to be used.’ FO 46/453.

A forceful, anti-German character always apparently willing to do deals with Russia, Bertie seems to have had little respect for Satow, who was evidently glad to see him leave for Rome as ambassador in 1903. See Satow diaries 27 Jan. 1903, 7 June 1906, PRO 30/33/16/6 and 9. As late as March 1901 Bertie was still talking in terms of a Russo-Japanese accommodation over Korea and Manchuria as the greatest threat to British interests locally. , Young, British policy in China, pp. 297–8.Google Scholar, Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance, pp. 153–5,Google Scholar emphasizes Bertie's ignorance and lack of imagination and, at the time of his commitment to the idea of a Japanese alliance in July 1901, his patronizing view of Japan as ‘an oriental state [which] might act without caution if it found itself without funds or reliable friends’. Ibid. p. 154. For his career see , Steiner, The foreign office and foreign policy, pp. 37–41, 61–65,Google Scholar and al Chandran, J., ‘Lord Lansdowne and the “antiGerman clique” at the foreign office: their role in the making of the Anglo-Siamese agreement of 1902’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, IIII, 2 (1972), 229–46.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Satow diaries, 4 June 1897, 18 Feb., 27 July, 17 Nov. 1898, PRO 30/33/16/1–2. Cf. Okuma comments, 4 Oct. 1895, 14 Mar. 1896, 30/33/15/17.

⁶⁸ Lowther to Wyldc (private), 31 May, Satow to Salisbury 2 Aug. 1895, FO 46/453.

⁶⁹ Diaries, especially 13 Aug. and 4 Oct. 1895, 15 Feb. 1899, PRO 30/33/15/17, 16/2. Cf. also comments of Korean minister in Tokyo, 24 Jan. 1897, 30/33/16/1.

⁷⁰ For example, see Satow to Lord Salisbury, 21 April 1896 (FO 405/71) printed in , Lensen, Korea and Manckuria, pp. 67–9,Google Scholar on Kato't unhappiness with the latter's attitude over Korea and China. Cf. also Satow diary, 4 May 1896, the suggestion by Belgian minister Baron d'Anethan (5 May) that the Japanese were reverting to their former - Lowther's time - reticence, due presumably to the unfriendliness of Salisbury, and 16 May, Ito's apparent mystification at his Policies, and Vice-Admiral Buller's agreement with Satow that the premier's sudden proposal for the ‘neutralization’ of Korea had probably been just a temporary stratagem. See n. 62 above.

⁷¹ Diary, 3 May 1897, PRO 30/33/16/1. Sa-ko means ‘closed port,’ jo-1 ‘expel the foreigner’. Cf. diary 4 June 1896, for Satow talk with the ‘dwarf Shintoist’ Viscount Fukuha, and 17 Feb. 1898, though also Satow to Dickins, 15 June 1899, 30/33/11/6, following some dismissive comments about Japanese literature. ‘Still I have greater hopes of the permeation of Japan by European ideas than one would have entertained in respect of the vast mass of the Russian Empire. American and English thought readily finds response in the minds of the rising Japanese youth. It will be “Japan for the Japanese” of course, but where is it [such sentiment] not so? ‘On the possibility of a new European combination against Japan, see diaries, 13 Dec. 1897, 6, 14 Jan. 1898, 30/33/16/1, or Satow to Dickins, 18 Apr. 1895, 26 Apr. 1896, 30/33/11/6.

⁷² Diary, 20 Sept. 1895, 19 Nov. 1896, 30/33/15/17, 16/1. Cf. also 2 Oct. 1896 for Okuma views, and 19 Feb. 1896 on Japanese fighting spirit; also Curzon, Problems of the far east, for similar comparisons.

⁷³ 18 Apr. 1895, PRO 30/33/11/6, a feeling he reiterated in his farewell speech, 29 May 1906, published in the Japan Weekly Mail, 2 June 1906. Yet right up to the early months of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, even in his private correspondence, he was expressing considerable uncertainty about the reality of Meiji Japan's self-strengthening.

⁷⁴ Diaries, 4 Oct. 1895 and 4 June 1896, 30/33/15/17, 16/1. Satow had had personal contacts With émigré radical Koreans since the early 1880s, including the tragic Kim Ok-kiun, and had begun learning the Korean language at that time. Cf. also 18 March 1897, and for Inouye's role, Conroy, H., The Japanese seizure of Korea, 1873–1910 (Philadelphia, 1960), chap. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁵ Diary, 14 Jan. 1898, 30/33/16/1. Ito's policy was merely a continuation of that of the previous Matsukata government.

⁷⁶ Cited in , Lensen, Korea and Manchuria, pp. 29, 119.Google Scholar It appears complete in Gooch, G. P. and Temperley, H. V. (eds.), British documents on the origins of the war, 1898–1914, vol. 1: The end of isolation (London, 1927), 25–7.Google Scholar Cf. Yoshitake, Oka, ‘The first Anglo-Japanese alliance in Japanese public opinion’, in Henny, S. and Lehmann, J. P. (eds.), Themes and theories in modern Japanese history (London, 1988), pp. 185–93.Google Scholar for an eminent Japanese historian's assessment of his country's 1895–1909 predicament.

⁷⁷ This ‘might is right’ lesson was one contemporaneously being learned by other independent Asian states, e.g. Siam. See Battye, N. A., ‘The military, government and society in Siam, 1868–1910’, unpublished Cornell University Ph.D. dissertation (1974)Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Diaries, 6 July, 2, 15 Oct. 1896, PRO 30/33/16/1. There were subsequent mere echoes in 1899, I, 8 June, 24 July, 30/33/16/2, by which time the main issue was the question of permitting Chinese immigration into Japan.

⁷⁹ Stephan, J.J., Hawaii under the rising sun (Honolulu, 1984), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar, Conroy, The Japanese seizure of Korea, p. 499 n,Google Scholar credits Ito with blocking the Okuma protest. Gf. also Satow diary, 15 Apr. 1897, 30/33/16/1: ‘He spoke rather more mildly. Germany it seems has said she is indifferent.’

⁸⁰ Diaries, 19 June, 25 Nov. 1897, 25 Mar., 21 June 1898, 30/33/16/1. Iriye, Akira, Pacific estrangment: Japanese and American expansion, 1897–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), especially pp. 48–54,Google Scholar draws some unlikely parallels between Japanese and American attitudes to Hawaii and the Philippines in this period.

⁸¹ For the background see Saniel, J. M., Japan and the Philippines, 1868–1898 (Quezon City, 1969; New York, 1973), andGoogle Scholar Iriye, Pacific estrangement. The Hawaiian compensation was mainly for Japanese immigrants turned away in 1897, and ultimately totalled only $75,000.

⁸² Satow diary, 12 Aug. 1895, PRO 30/33/15/17. The first sentence is a striking indication of the attitude of many Westerners to Japan at the time. The American interviewer was apparently a Mr Cockerill of the New York Herald.

⁸³ Diaries, 7, 16, ai Oct., 26 Nov., 3, 9 Dec. 1896, 30/33/16/1. For the Russian policy of pushing Japan south, see also 2 July, 7 Dec. 1898, 30/33/16/2. Satow also refers to the Japanese-Filipino links of this time in a later letter to Lord Lansdowne, 21 Sept. 1905, 30/33/14/16.

⁸⁴ Diaries, 4 Oct. 1897, 19 Nov. 1896, 18 Mar. 1897, a July 1898, PRO 30/33/16/1–2. Japan had experienced considerable trouble in asserting her authority in Formosa.

⁸⁵ Diaries, 23 June, 17 Aug. 1898, 30/33/16/2.

⁸⁶ Diary, 21 Mar. 1900, 30/33/16/3. Cf. also Hobson, J. A., Imperialism: a critical study (London, 1902 edn), pp. 23, 74, 78–85,Google Scholar on the emergence of the United States as an imperialist power. However, in the second, 1905 edition, Japan was substituted for the United States in the second reference, and a substantial section on Japan's role in the far east added to part II, chapter v.

⁸⁷ Diary, 30/33/16/1. If not already at this stage, Indian students were present in Japan soon after-19 May 1899, 30/33/16/2 -denying any political interests. See also Shigenobu, Count Okuma, Fifty years of new Japan (London, 1909), II, 574–5,Google Scholar for his pan-Asianism; Lebra, J., Okuma Shigenobu, statesman of Meiji Japan (Canberra, 1973),Google Scholar for his links with the Toho Kiokai; also Saniel, Japan and the Philippines (appendix), for a list of the society's leading members.

⁸⁸ The above reference to Indian studentsn. 87, is an exception, but the coincidence of this with the inception of the Yamagata-Aoki government is striking; see below p. 142. For Japanese freelance efforts to bolster Siam against French takeover or Anglo-French partition see also Rood, E. T., ‘The shishi interlude in old Siam’, in Wurfel, D. (ed.), Meiji Japan's centennial (Wichita, 1971) andGoogle ScholarToten, Miyazaki, My thirty-three years’ dream, trans, and introd. Shinkichi, Eto and Jansen, M. B. (Princeton, 1982),CrossRefGoogle Scholar who testifies to the isolation of Japan's pan-Asianists even at home for some time after 1898. Inagaki, who had studied at Cambridge university with Profesor Seeley, published in 1890 with T. Fisher Unwin his Japan and the Pacific, and a Japanese view of the eastern question. Back in Japan thereafter, he had written a number of other books, and apparently first made Satow's acquaintance through the Eastern Association (diary, 12 Apr. 1896). The last diary reference to him, 2 Dec. 1898, is also in connexion with Toho Kiokai business, namely its attempts to arrange a talk in Tokyo by Sir Charles Beresford, subsequent to the admiral's China visit to discuss British military support for the Chinese army. However, not till a year later did Inagaki return to Bangkok for a further 3½year tour of duty, now as minister plenipotentiary. Satow met him again much later in a Tientsin-Peking train, Satow to Lansdowne, 24 Sept. 1903, PRO 30/33/14/13, and he served a final term in Bangkok (Nov. 1903 to Feb. 1905), before transferring to Madrid, where he shordy died. Cf. also Satow to Lord Lansdowne, 24 Sept. 1903, 30/33/14/13, for the eventual signing of a Japanese-Persian treaty at The Hague (!); also Yoneo, Ishii and Toshiharu, Yoshikawa, 600years of Thai-Japanese relations (Bangkok, 1987 Thai edn), pp. 85–9 on InagakiGoogle Scholar; Oblas, P. B., ‘Nascent pan-Asianism in Thai-Japanese relations: the Kawakami mission and the treaty of 1898’, in Khamchoo, Chaiwat and Reynolds, E. Bruce (eds.), Thai-Japanese relations in historical perspective (Bangkok, 1988), pp. 45–58, and especiallyGoogle ScholarJunzo, Iida Japan's relations with independent Siam up to 1933: prelude to pan-Asian solidarity’, university of Bristol Ph.D. dissertation (1991).Google Scholar

The total number of references to Siam in the Satow diaries in this period is distinctly larger than for any Oriental country other than Korea and China. For Kawakami's dismissive views on Siam see Satow to Salisbury, 24 Mar. 1897, FO 422/47. Both British ministers in Bangkok 1901–9, Reginald Tower and Ralph Paget, were former Satow subordinates in China and Japan, and doubdess owed their preferment in part to his support.

⁸⁹ Chira, prince of Nakhon Chaisi and future Siamese army chief and war minister, was a son of King Chulalongkorn by a minor wife. Back in 1884–7, Satow would have known Princes Chaturonratsami and Phanurangsi, full brothers of the king, as chaofa, ‘celestial’ princes.

Satow's view of the legs of Siamese women appears to have been a popular idea at the time amongst Westerners. See also Conrad's, JosephLord Jim and ‘Falk’ of 1900–1901.Google Scholar Cochin China was a foreign name for the Mekong delta area of Vietnam. And Chulalongkorn has also been described elsewhere as ‘talking in a very loud voice’ on this, the first of his two visits to Europe. Satow had been attempting to meet him in London shordy before this, but the arrangemenu fell through. Arisugawa, the Japanese prince apparently signified here and a cousin of the Meiji ten-no, attended the 1897 jubilee and was well known to Satow.

⁹⁰ Various diary references and Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service,’ pp. 5–7. In the early stages, Hisayoshi was often referred to by his father as ‘Chachan’, and thereafter for a time as Hisakichi. Takeda was their mother's family name. I am indebted to Messrs Hagihara and Nagaoka for many of the personal details.

⁹¹ By this time, after study at Sapporo Agricultural College in Hokkaido, Hisayoshi was already launched on his career as an eminent Japanese botanist. He married, had two daughters, And prior to his death in 1972 at the age of eighty-nine published in Japanese some reminiscences of his father, and also a volume entitled Mountaineering and vegetables (1969), indicating how much they had in common. Eitaro had died in the United States in 1926, and their mother only slightly outlived Sir Ernest himself.

⁹² Diaries, 2 July 1886, 28 Dec. 1899, PRO 30/33/15/10, 16/3. Conroy, The Japanese seizure of Korea, describes Ito as continuing ‘to be the most powerful single personality in die government to his death in 1909’ (p. 79), and as ‘the Japanese epitome of realistic leadership’ (p. 268). See also pp. 339–40 for a more profound assessment. For a view of Okuma at the time of his original ousting from the Japanese leadership see Satow to Aston, 23 Oct. 1881, PRO 30/33/11/3.

⁹³ Diary, 16 May 1896, 30/33/16/1. Cf. 2 Oct. 1896 for Okuma's stance.

⁹⁴ Diary, 15 Feb. 1899, 30/33/16/2. Cf. also 2 July 1898, ibid., for Okuma's view of the need to maintain China's territorial integrity.

⁹⁵ , Pelcovits, Old China hands, pp. 243–4, 253–5.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ , Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance, pp. 82–3, 86–7.Google Scholar In his ‘Japan's policies toward Britain’ in Morley, J. W. (ed.), Japan's foreign policy 1868–1945: a research guide (Columbia, NY, 1974),Google Scholar he identifies the joint effort in suppressing the Boxen as the real starting-point of an Anglo-Japanese ‘special relationship’.

⁹⁷ Diary, 23 Jan. 1900, PRO 30/33/16/3. Apparently, Satow also expressed his feelings on the matter shortly after, doubtless in more circumspect language, in a dispatch to Lord Salisbury, which is missing from the foreign office files at the Public Record Office. For the lather of the 1919 Versailles delegate and 1930s warmongering Japanese premier, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, see Jansen, M. B., ‘Konoe Atsumaro’, in Iriye, Akira (ed.), The Chinese and the Japanese (Princeton, NJ, 1980), pp. 107–23.Google Scholar Soejima Taneomi had been Japanese foreign minister in the 1870s.

⁹⁸ Diary, 17 Nov. 1898, PRO 30/33/16/2.

⁹⁹ Grenville, pp. 390–1. , Nish, Anglo-Japanese alliance. 167,Google Scholar notes the misrepresentation of Ito and Inouye by Yamagata protégé General Kauura, premier at the time of the signing of the treaty. Ito had previously served a final rather unsuccessful spell as premier with Kato TakaaJu at his foreign minister in 1900–1. For one influential journalist's support for Britain's use ofJapan as a catspaw against Russia see G. E. Morrison's Correspondence, vol. 1, especially the introduction by C. P. Fitzgerald.

¹⁰⁰ Satow's diaries (1899–1900), record a whole series of Japanese expressions of support for Britain in South Africa, by General Kawakami, now minister of war, ex-premier Matsukata, Satow's confidant Asaina, Yamagata, and even Ito, the Meiji ten-no, and his brother Prince Komatsu, 27 Nov., 6, 26, 29 Dec. 1899, 7 Mar., 2 May 1900, 30/33/16/3.

¹⁰¹ See Stony, R., Japan and the decline of the ivest in Asia, 1894–1943 (London, 1979), pp. 79–80,Google Scholar on die limitations of Japan's 1904–5 success against Russia, and , Young, British polity in China p.39,Google Scholar or , Grenville, Lord Salisbury and foreign policy, pp. 291–2,Google Scholar on previous Russian power; also , Hobson, Imperialism p. 139,Google Scholar for his 1902 belief in strength in numbers, and , Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance p. 228,Google Scholar on Lord Cranborne's patronizing presentation of the alliance to the house of commons. Evidently it would have demeaned Britain to represent Japan as anything but the supplicant, though Sanderson, Bertie and others in the foreign office seem in part to have viewed the alliance as a way of restraining Japan from risking a war with Russia they considered her bound to lose. Satow to Dickins, 27 Jan. 1905, 30/33/11/6, presents his view of the war's significance.

¹⁰² Though cf. arguments of Wilson, K. M., The policy of the entente (London, 1985), pp. 74–84, and ‘Sir Edward Grey’ inCrossRefGoogle ScholarWilson, K. M. (ed.), British foreign secretaries and foreign policy: The Crimean war to the first world war (London, 1987), pp. 177–80,Google Scholar about Grey's efforts to conciliate Russia, the real significance of which lay in their comparatively easy success. Before 1904, by contrast, there had been litde sign of Russian willingness to meet a whole series of British feelers half-way.

¹⁰³ Satow diary, 7 Dec. 1898, PRO 30/33/16/2. The following year, Aoki had already been pressing for the upgrading of Anglo-Japanese relations to ambassadorial level, diaries, 27 Feb., 6 Dec. 1899, 30/33/16/2–3. See Sanderson to Satow, 9 May 1902, 30/33/7/1, for the former's subsequent rather shamefaced apology for keeping Satow ignorant of the alliance negotiations. Satow's deputy at the Peking legation, Walter Townley, commented to the Australian journalist Morrison, ‘What an astonishing thing that the Anglo-Japanese treaty should have been concluded without consulting Satow or informing him!’ Pearl, C., Morrison of Peking (Sydney, 1967), p. 143Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Quoted in , Lensen, Korea and Manchuna p. 242.Google Scholar Cf. ibid. pp. 29–30 on Satow's 1899 and 1903 suspicions of Russia: the ‘absorbing power’ which ‘aimed at universal domination, being the youngest [?] of the nations, full of sap; Eastern Europe and the whole of Asia was what she aimed at’, and the need to fight her in Manchuria ‘tooth and nail’. Also Satow to Lansdowne, 29 Dec. 1903 30/33/14/3, on Russia as a ‘barbarous nation’. Apparently General Yamane was getting similar answers to the same question elsewhere. See Morrison, G. E., Correspondence, I, 236Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Satow to Lansdowne, 18 July, 3 Nov. 1904, 1 June 1905, PRO 30/33/14/14–15. And cf. n- 56 above.

¹⁰⁶ Diary, 35 Sept. 1900, 30/33/16/3. The editor was presumably Young, R., previously responsible for an unusually thoughtful article, ‘The case of the foreign residents in Japan’ in The nineteenth century, XLII (08 1897), 305–16,Google Scholar but described a decade later by Beatrice Webb, visiting Japan with her husband, as ‘A bitter secularist of the extreme individualist type… We parted in a state of veiled hostility between him and us. My only consolation was that he looked quite unhappy in his chronic depreciation of the people among whom he lives, and in whose country he has made his livelihood - an unhappiness which satisfied one's sense of fitness.’ MS diaries, 16 Oct. 1911. Cf. also , Lensen, Korea and Manchuria, pp. 37–8:Google Scholar ‘Satow had a remarkable grasp of Attitudes and events… He appreciated the potential resurgence of China and realized that the days of the white man's undisputed domination of the world were past.’ And contrast , Nish, The Anglo-Japanese alliance p. 154,Google Scholar on Francis Bertie, the F.O. official he generally reported to: ‘His knowledge of the far east was second-hand and was based on his assessment [only] of the standing of the powers there rather than the rights and expectations ofJapan or China. His judgments were not, therefore, particularly forward-looking.’

¹⁰⁷ Until Tokyo was raised in 1905 to the status of an embassy, its minister only earned £4,000 Per annum as opposed to his Peking counterpart's £5,000. Byron Brenan, consul-general in Shanghai, was reported to be already rushing home to secure the succession in 1899 (Satow diaries 25 July, PRO 30/33/16/9), but MacDonald was still allowed to return to his post from leave in early 1900.

¹⁰⁸ For the necessarily usual separateness of the two services, see especially comments by Satow cited in Barr, Pat, The Deerbry Pavilion: a story of Westerners in Japan i868–1905 (London, 1968), pp. 244, 247.Google Scholar In the late nineteenth century, the appointment of consuls-general in Seoul, Korea, was a particular bone of contention.

¹⁰⁹ , Young, British policy in China, pp. 117, 151–2;Google Scholar, Allen, The Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Satow, pp. 120–1,Google Scholar Satow to W. G. Aston 16 Aug. 1900, 30/33/11/3; and Satow diary, 12 June: ‘Then I saw Ld. S. He looks as if he suffered from eczema. Boxers. He thinks the business will not come to much.’ But thereafter, despite repeated consultations with the F.O. staff, parliamentary under-secretary Brodrick, and Lords Lansdowne, Goschen and G. Hamilton, who formed a triumvirate in July supervising F.O. affairs, Satow only saw the premier once more, at a levee on 6 July. Cf. also diary entry, 7 June 1906, for Satow-MacDonald retrospective discussion, 30/33/16/9. The plan to withdraw MacDonald may have been only Sanderson's.

¹¹⁰ Satow diaries, 17 Oct. 1903, quoted in , Lensen, Korea and Manchuria p. 226 (wrongly dated 15 Oct.). And already by this time, the admiral was declaring ‘that our people at home have not played the game as regards the Japanese alliance, and ought to have done much more’. For Satow's standing in China seeGoogle Scholar, Pelcovits, Old China hands, pp. 371, 273–4, andGoogle Scholar, Young, British polity in China p 223Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ For the extent of this deterioration by 1911, see Lowe, P., Great Britain and Japan, 1911–15 (London, 1969), especially pp. 23–4. See alsoGoogle Scholar Morrison, Correspondence, vol. I, for his part in it, following the Russo-Japanese war.

¹¹² Contrast Satow to Dickins, 9 Oct. 1895, 3 Jan. 1896, 30/33/11/6, with diaries, 20 Aug. 1900, 11 Mar. 1901, 30/33/16/3–4.

¹¹³ , Young, British polity in China p.223.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Satow to Admiral Noel, 21 Dec. 1904, PRO 30/33/14/15. Cf. also Saniel, Japan and the Philippines, appendix, for discussion of the terms soshi and shishi.

¹¹⁵ Satow to Lansdowne, 26 Feb. 1904, 30 Nov. 1905, 30/33/14/14–15, and diary, 23 Nov. 1905 cited in Jan, ‘The east Asian diplomatic service’, pp. 315–16.

¹¹⁶ Apparently the basis for his 1917 classic study, A guide to diplomatic practice, heavily Eurocentric despite his own entirely non-European diplomatic experience. Diary, 28 Aug. 1886, 30/33/15/10. Satow to Dickins, 23 Feb. 1897, 15 June 1899, 24 June 1904, 30/33/11/6, and , Allen, The Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Satow p. 142Google Scholar.

¹¹⁷ All this followed, and was evidently a consequence of, the Russo-Japanese war; as late as 18 Nov. 1903 (Satow to Davidson, 30/33/14/13), he had been describing China as ‘this Far Eastern Poland’, and ‘in a bad way’, but to Lansdowne, 10 Aug. 1905, he began to talk, like various contemporaries, of ‘the birth of a consciousness of united nationality amongst the Chinese people with which we shall have to count in the future’. Cf. Satow to Lansdowne, 2 Nov. 1905, and to Sir Edward Grey, 14 Dec. 1905, 21 Mar. 1906, 30/33/14/16. For his views on the course of Anglo-Chinese relations see Satow to Dickins, 17 July 1905, 30/33/11/6, and to Campbell of the F.O., (?) Sept. 1906, enclosed in diary, 30/33/16/9. For his criticisms of current American immigration policy towards Chinese and other Asians see Satow to Campbell, 8 Mar., and to Grey, 21 Mar. 1906, 30/33/14/16.

¹¹⁸ Diaries various, especially 26, 28 May 1906, 30/33/16/9, and for Lindley in the 1930s see my ‘Southeast Asia and Japan's road to war’, Historical Journal, XXX, 4 (1987), 995–1011.Google Scholar As ambassador, following MacDonald's 1905 promotion, Lindley of course outranked his early 1930s contemporary, Sir Miles Lampson, still only minister in China.

¹¹⁹ Tell Sir Ernest Satow that China is very grateful to Great Britain for the attitude that she has adopted since the troubles of 1900, for to that alone, I believe, is due the fact that China remains intact today.’ Nanking viceroy Liu K'un-i in Satow to Lansdowne, 22 May 1902, quoted in , Jan, ‘The East Asian diplomatic service’, p. 256.Google Scholar In London, Bertie had vacillated hugely about China.

¹²⁰ The Japanese anyhow refused, in 1902, London's demand that they support the British imperial position in southern Asia. , Nish, Anglo-Japents alliamtt p. 211Google Scholar.

¹²¹ , Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance, pp. 359–64. Cf.Google Scholar, Lowe, Great Britain and Japan, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

¹²² Although Satow's letters to Lansdowne of 19 Nov., 29 Dec. 1903, 21 Apr., 5 May 1904, 23 Mar, 3 July 1905, show how, in the context of the Russo-Japanese war, the entente served to bring him and Dubail, his French colleague at Peking, closer together, he continued to snipe at it to Lansdowne, 10 Mar., 2 June 1904, to Campbell, 11 Dec. 1905, PRO 30/33/14/14–16.

¹²³ He did serve for some years as one of Britain's delegates to the international peace conference at The Hague.

¹²⁴ Uchida, Japanese foreign minister 1911–13, 1918–23, 1932–3. as a young man had been Satow's closest colleague in Peking where, he succeeded Komura in 1901.

¹²⁵ For the standard study of the 1922 cancellation of the alliance see Nish, I. H., Alliance in decline: a study in Anglo-Japanese relations, 1908–23 (London, 1972).Google Scholar Cf. also , Storry, Japan and the decline of the west in Asia p. 125,Google Scholar quoting Corelli Barnett: ‘All in all, it is hard to disagree with the view that ”the right course for England was to cleave to the Japanese alliance”.’ But the renewed unimportance to the foreign office of relations with Japan would appear already to have been signalled with the appointment to replace Sir C. MacDonald as ambassador in Tokyo in 1912, by Sir Conyngham Greene, a diplomat devoid of Asian experience, who had evaded posting to Bangkok in 1901 in favour of Switzerland. , Nish, Alliance in decline p. 294,Google Scholar also mentions the frustration of plans to return Satow's protégé, Sir Ralph Paget, to succeed Greene in 1919, in the context of the intention to terminate the alliance. But not until the return of Lindley, almost on the eve of the Manchurian Mukden incident in 1931, was Britain represented in Japan by another diplomat with real experience of the country.