Parkes, Harry, Sir, 1828-1885

British diplomat and minister to Japan, 1865-1883.

Epithet: KCB, diplomatist

Sir Harry Smith Parkes (1828-1885), British minister to Japan, 1865-1883, and subsequently to China and Korea, 1883-1885.

Parkes was born on 24 February 1828 at Bloxwich, near Walsall. He was the youngest of three children, and the only son, of an ironmaster and his wife. By the age of five he had been orphaned, and in 1841, after education at the King Edward the Sixth school in Birmingham, he proceeded, on account of a family connection, to China. After a short period studying Chinese, he joined the suite of Sir Henry Pottinger in the Yangtze campaign of 1842, which brought the First China War to a conclusion, and as a fourteen-year-old he witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. In September 1843 he commenced work for the British consular service in Canton, and in the next few years served as interpreter at posts in Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai and Canton. In 1854 he was appointed consul in Amoy, and the following year he travelled to Siam to assist Sir John Bowring in negotiations for a British treaty with that kingdom.

From 1856 to 1858 Parkes was acting consul at Canton. Shortly after taking up this post he assumed direct superintendence, under Bowring's guidance from Hong Kong, of the case of the lorcha Arrow. The boarding of this vessel by the Chinese, aggravating as it did British grievances arising from the flouting of treaty obligations by the authorities in Canton, led to the outbreak of the Second China War. Parkes' inflexible conduct, whilst approved by his superiors, became a source of abiding controversy. After the capture of Canton Parkes was appointed one of the three allied commissioners in the city. He was made a C.B. in 1859.

Allied forces returned to China in 1860 to assert the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin. At this time Parkes was instrumental in acquiring as British territory the Kowloon Peninsula in Hong Kong harbour, intended primarily as a depot for troops in transit. Parkes accompanied the expedition to the Peiho in the office of Joint Chinese Secretary of Lord Elgin's Special Embassy, and had leading roles in the reduction of the Taku forts and in negotiations with imperial commissioners at Tientsin and Tungchow. When fighting was renewed during the course of these negotiations, Parkes and his entourage were arrested and transported to Peking. Several of the party were killed by the rigours of captivity; Parkes himself narrowly escaped execution. After three weeks he was freed through the agency of Prince Kung. Parkes' steadfast behaviour throughout the ordeal met with general praise in Britain, and when he returned to England in 1862, after having established consulates on the Yangtze at Chinkiang, Kiukiang and Hankow, he was lionized in society and appointed a K.C.B. at the age of thirty-four.

Parkes returned to China in 1864 to take up the consulship at Shanghai, and in March 1865 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Japan. That country was in a state of political turmoil that culminated in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It was a strength of Parkes' diplomacy that he recognised early the importance of the emperor in Japanese affairs, and was accordingly in a position to assume pre-eminence amongst Western diplomats after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. In the course of eighteen years as minister in Japan, Parkes played an important part in the transition of the country from feudalism to industrial modernity; his influence was felt particularly in the spheres of currency, finance, and railway construction. In 1872 he accompanied the 'Iwakura Mission' on its visit to Great Britain; he also spent the period from November 1879 to January 1882 in England, and in 1881 was made a G.C.M.G. Further controversy dogged the later years of Parkes' career in Japan, largely on account of his attitude towards the question of treaty revision.

In July 1883 Parkes was appointed minister plenipotentiary to China. One of his first actions was to travel to Seoul to conclude a treaty with Korea; in March 1884 he was additionally made minister plenipotentiary to that country, and returned there to ratify the treaty. Parkes' tenure of the Peking legation coincided with the Franco-Chinese War, and the disruptions caused by this episode added to the burdens of his work. Sir Harry Parkes died in Peking after a brief illness on 22 March 1885.