George Macartney

Who was George Macartney?

Sir George Macartney, KCIE, was the British consul-general in Kashgar at the end of the 19th century. He was succeeded by Sir Clarmont Skrine. 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; 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 Lar Wang, one of the leaders of the Taiping rebellion.

Macartney married Catherine Borland in 1898. In Kashgar his wife, Catherine, Lady Macartney, assisted the archaeologists who found the library at Dunhuang. The Macartneys had a son called Eric.

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.