John Mansfield Addis

Sir John Mansfield Addis KCMG ( June 4, 1914 - July 31, 1983 ) was a British diplomat , art collector and art historian. He was British Ambassador to Laos, the Philippines and the People's Republic of China in the 1960s and 1970s.

Life

John Mansfield Addis was the twelfth child and fifth son of Sir Charles and Lady Addis. He attended rugby school from 1928 to 1932 and then studied at Christ Church College, Oxford .

He entered the foreign service in 1938, where he was initially subordinate to the State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, Alexander Cadogan , as Assistant Private Secretary . During the Second World War he served from 1942 to 1944 as a civil liaison officer at the Allied Forces Headquarters , which migrated from London via Algiers to Caserta , and after the liberation of France in 1944 as second-class embassy secretary in Paris . From 1945 to 1947 he served as the private secretary to Prime Minister Clement Attlee .

In 1947 Addis was transferred to China - which was in the middle of a civil war - and headed the office of the embassy in Nanjing as first class secretary and from 1950 (when Great Britain recognized the People's Republic of China ) in Beijing . From 1951 to 1954 he was employed in the China and Korea Department of the Foreign Office in London and took part in the Indochina Conference in Geneva from May to July 1954 . From 1954 to 1957 he was stationed again in the People's Republic of China, this time as Counselor and Consul General in Beijing. After returning to the headquarters of the Foreign Office, he headed the South Department there until 1959.

From 1960 to 1962 Addis was the British ambassador to Laos . He then taught for a year as a fellow at the Institute for International Affairs at Harvard University in the US state of Massachusetts . From 1963 to 1969 he was ambassador to the Philippines . From 1970 he taught for a year at the Royal College of Defense Studies . His last stationing as a diplomat took him again to the People's Republic of China : After the British embassy had only been run by temporary businessmen since 1949 , Addis became the first full-fledged ambassador (Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary) with the upgrading of diplomatic relations with the communist-ruled state in 1972 ) in Beijing. He held this post until his retirement in 1974. In early 1973 he was made Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George .

In 1975 he became a senior research fellow of Contemporary China Studies at Wolfson College of the University of Oxford appointed and retained this position during his retirement. Addis was also a member of the Advisory Board of the Victoria and Albert Museum , a trustee of the British Museum , a member of the board of directors of HSBC , advisor to the Barclays and the Great Britain-China Center.

Individual evidence

1. ^ JE Hoare: Embassies in the East. The Story of the British and Their Embassies in China, Japan and Korea from 1859 to the Present. Curzon Press, Richmond (Surrey) 1999, pp. 87, 213.
2. ^ School of Oriental and African Studies , [1]

predecessor	Office	successor
John Pilcher	British Ambassador to the Philippines 1963–1969	John Curle
John Denson	British Ambassador to China 1972–1974	Edward Youde