Thomas Francis Wade
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Sir Thomas Francis Wade (25 August, 1818 - 31 July, 1895) was a London-born British diplomat and Sinologist linguist who invented what was to become the Wade-Giles Romanization for Mandarin Chinese. His Chinese name was Wei Tuoma (威妥瑪).
Like his father, Wade began working in the army. As a soldier, later an official interpreter, Wade went to the Qing Dynasty-ruled China in 1842. He became a diplomat in 1845 and served in Nanking (Nanjing), Peking (Beijing), Hong Kong, and other posts.
Biography
Born in London, the son of Major Wade of the Black Watch, by his wife Anne Smythe (daughter of William Smythe) of Barbavilla, County Westmeath, Ireland. In 1838, his father purchased for him a commission in the 81st Regiment. Exchanging (1839) into the 42nd Highlanders, he served with his regiment in the Ionian Islands, devoting his leisure to the congenial study of Italian and modern Greek.On receiving his commission as lieutenant in 1841 be exchanged into the g&ih Regiment, then under orders for Qing China, and landed in Hong Kong in June 1842. The scene of the First Opium War had at that time been transferred to the Yangtze River, and thither Wade was ordered with his regiment. There he took part in the attack on Zhenjiang and in the advance on Nanking.
In 1845, he was appointed interpreter in Cantonese to the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, and in 1846 assistant Chinese secretary to the superintendent of trade, Sir John Francis Davis. In 1852 he was appointed vice-consul at Shanghai. The Taiping Rebellion had so disorganized the administration in the neighborhood of Shanghai that it was considered advisable to put the collection of the foreign customs duties into commission, a committee of three, of whom Wade was the chief, being entrusted with the administration of the customs. This formed the beginning of the imperial maritime customs service.
In 1855, Wade was appointed Chinese secretary to Sir John Bowring, who had succeeded Sir J. Davis at Hong Kong. On the declaration of the Second Opium War in 1857, he was attached to Lord Elgin's staff as Chinese secretary, and with the assistance of H. N. Ley he conducted the negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Tientsin (1858). In the following year he accompanied Sir Frederick Bruce in his attempt to exchange the ratification of the treaty, and was present at Taku when the force attending the mission was attacked and driven back from the Pei Ho (Hai River).
On Lord Elgin's return to China in 1860, he resumed his former post of Chinese secretary, and was mainly instrumental in arranging for the advance of the special envoys and the British and French forces to Tientsin (Tianjin), and subsequently towards Peking. For the purpose of arranging for a camping ground in the neighborhood of Tongzhou he accompanied Mr (afterwards Sir) Harry Parkes on his first visit to that city.
As early as 1866, Wade urged Chinese officials to discontinue their method of execution known as "slicing", which was made notorious via tales (perhaps exaggerated or inaccurate) of the death by a thousand cuts.
Thomas Francis Wade was knighted in 1875, and participated in the Chefoo Convention (1876).
After retiring from working over forty years in the British embassies in China, he returned to England in 1883, and donated 4,304 volumes of Chinese literature to the Cambridge University Library's Oriental Collection three years later. He was then elected to be the first professor the Chinese language in Cambridge University in 1888. He had the position as a professor until his death in Cambridge at 77.
Works
In addition to diplomatic duties, Wade published books teaching or advancing non-Chinese's knowledge in the language:- The Records to Find the Seaport(?) (尋津錄 Xun Jin Lu, 1859)
- Teach Yourself Chinese (語言自邇集 Yuyan Zier Ji, 1867)
- Peking Syllabary (1895)
See also
External link
References
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