John McNeill (diplomat)
Sir John McNeill GCB , PC , FRSE , FRAS (born August 12, 1795 in Colonsay , † May 17, 1883 in Poralto, Cannes , France) was a Scottish, British diplomat and surgeon .
Life
McNeill was the third of the six sons of Hester McNeill († 1843) and John McNeill (* 1767; † 1846), landlord of Colonsay and Oronsay , and the younger brother of Duncan McNeill, 1st Baron Colonsay and Oronsay.
John McNeill studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh , where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1814 .
On September 6, 1816, he was the assistant doctor of the British East India Company in Bombay with Colonel William East († August 20, 1817 in Bombay) in Kachchh (State) and Okamundel.
1822 accompanied McNeill Willock the charge d'affaires from London to Tehran. McNeill's first wife had died in 1816, in 1823 he traveled to Tabriz with his second wife , one of their five children surviving childhood.
McNeill was instrumental in the Treaty of Turkmanchai , with which a withdrawal of Russian troops from Azerbaijan (Iran) was agreed. In December 1831 he was appointed to a post in Bushire , after arriving there with his pregnant wife, the appeal was revoked and he returned to Tabriz.
Persia
From May 1, 1824 to June 4, 1836 he worked as a surgeon.
From 1824 to 1835 he was employed by the British East India Company's embassy in Tehran; first as a doctor and later as political advisor to the envoy John Macdonald Kinneir .
On June 30, 1835, he became embassy secretary in Tehran under Henry Ellis and congratulated Mohammed Shah on his accession to the throne, who decorated him with the order of the sun and lions .
In the spring of 1836 John McNeill traveled to London and anonymously published Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East , in which he made the Russian threat to British India for public relations work for the dogma of The Great Game . The East India Company saw Mohammed Shah from Nicholas I affected.
In 1838, Mohammed Shah and Russian military advisers besieged Herat . From the perspective of British India , the city on the Silk Road occupied a key strategic position, which the Governor of British India George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland saw best secured by the installation of an independent regent under British protection, from which the first Anglo-Afghan war developed.
John McNeill was recalled to London and the rest of the British mission with Thomson moved to the Ottoman city of Erzurum . In 1840 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .
John McNeill returned to Persia in 1841 .
From 1845 to 1868, John McNeill was chairman of the committee for the Scottish Poor Law Act, a social legislation in Scotland that taxed economic poverty on the occasion of the fungal attack on potato plants .
Crimean War
In 1854 at the beginning of the Crimean War , McNeill had revised and supplemented his work Progres et position actuelle de la Russie en Orient and now also warned in French of the Russian danger to Great Britain, Christianity and the autonomy of the Ottoman and Persian empires. In early 1855 he was sent to Balaklava with Alexander Tulloch to report on the logistical causes of the British failure in this dispute. Your investigation report became the basis for a reorganization of British procurement in October 1858. The House of Commons was enthusiastic about this information and asked for an award for McNeill, whereupon he was accepted into the Privy Council .
family
McNeill married Innes Robinson von Clermiston, Midlothian († 1816) in 1814 , Eliza Wilson († 1868) in 1823, and Lady Emma Augusta Campbell in 1871. In his second marriage McNeill was brother-in-law John Wilson (Scottish writer), in his third marriage McNeill was brother-in-law of George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll .
Individual evidence
- ^ Sir John McNeill, Progress and present position of Russia in the East
- ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 19, 2020 .
- ↑ Denis Wright, The English amongst the Persians: imperial lives in nineteenth-century Iran, p. 21
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| James Justinian Morier |
British ambassador to Persia 1826–1830 |
James Justinian Morier |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McNeill, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | McNeill, Sir John (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British ambassador |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 12, 1795 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Colonsay |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 17, 1883 |
| Place of death | Poralto, Cannes , France |