Margary Affair

The Margary Affair (Chinese: 马嘉理事件; pinyin: Mǎjiālǐ Shìjiàn or 滇案; Diān àn) was a crisis in Sino-British relations, which followed the murder of British official Augustus Raymond Margary in 1875.

As part of efforts to explore overland trade routes between British India and China's provinces, junior British diplomat Augustus Raymond Margary was sent from Shanghai through southwest China to Bhamo in Upper Burma, where he was supposed to meet Colonel Horace Browne. It took Margary six months to make the 1,800-mile (2,900 km) journey through the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan and he met Brown in Bhamo in late 1874. On the journey back to Shanghai, Margary heard rumors that the return route was not safe and changed the route to Tengyue. However, he did not notify local officials of their arrivals and confronted native people. In a following conflict on 21 February 1875, he and his four Chinese personal staff were killed.

The incident created a diplomatic crisis and gave British authorities an excuse to put pressure on the Qing government. The crisis was only resolved in 1876 when Thomas Wade and Li Hongzhang signed the Chefoo Convention, which covered a number of items unrelated to the incident.

"The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society" said [Bead, February 14th, 1876.] [The Government of India having signified a desire to send a small Mission into Yun-Nan, a passport was obtained in the summer of 1874 by the British Legation from the Chinese Government, to enable four officers and gentlemen, with their followers, to cross the frontier from the Burmese side. Mr. Margary, a young member of the China Consular Service, of great promise, was sent with a separate passport from China to meet the above Mission, which had been placed under the leadership of Colonel Horace Browne. Having joined Colonel Browne at Bhamo, the Mission had entered China, and was but a short distance from Manwyne, when Mr. Margary pushed on to that town. He had passed a week in it on his journey southward. At Manwyne he was murdered on the 21st of February. An attack was made on the following morning on Colonel Browne's party, which, however, after a sharp struggle, was enabled to draw off without serious loss. Mr. Margary, in compliance with his instructions, kept a journal; but the following portion of it, recording his experiences as far as Ta-li Fu, is all that was saved. There are various gaps in it, to be explained probably by the fact that he suffered from time to time seriously in health. The remainder was probably with him when he was murdered.]

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