William Gifford Palgrave
William Gifford Palgrave (* 1826 in Westminster , London , England , † 1888 ) was a traveler to the Orient. He was the son of Sir Francis Palgrave (KH) and Elizabeth Turner.
He went to the Charterhouse School in Godalming , where, among other honors, he won the school gold medal for classical verse. He then attended Trinity College , Oxford, for which he had received a scholarship. He graduated there in 1846.
After college, Palgrave went straight to India and served in the British Army for a time. Shortly afterwards he converted to Catholicism , was ordained a priest and joined the Jesuit order . As a member of the order he served in India, Rome and Syria , where he acquired knowledge of the Arabic language .
Palgrave convinced his superiors to support a mission in interior Arabia, a country unknown to the rest of the world at the time . He also won the support of the French Emperor Napoleon III. and explained to him that a better knowledge of Arabia would serve French imperialism in Africa and the Middle East.
He then returned to Syria, where he assumed the identity of a traveling doctor. Accompanied by a servant, Palgrave packed his bags with medicine and travel goods and traveled to the Najd in the northern center of Arabia. He traveled disguised as a Muslim, otherwise it could have meant death in the hands of a tribesman. Every service he subsequently performed for the Society of Jesus and the French Empire was a spy, not a missionary. After traveling for a year from Syria through the Najd to Bahrain and Oman , he returned to Europe and wrote a short story of his travels. His story became a bestseller and was reprinted several times. He made no mention of the hidden motives for the trip.
After Palgrave had written this book, he changed pages again and in 1865 broke away from the Catholic Church. He entered the service of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was appointed consul in Sukhumi in 1866 , but moved to Trabzon in 1867 . In 1868 he married Katherine, the daughter of the Norwegian George Edward Simpson, with whom he had three sons. He was appointed consul on Saint Thomas and Saint Croix in 1873 , consul in Manila in 1876 and consul general in Bulgaria in 1878. In 1879 he was transferred to Bangkok . In 1884 he was Prime Minister and Consul General in Uruguay , where he served until his death in 1888.
In addition to his work on Central Arabia , Gifford Palgrave published Essays on Eastern Questions , a short story called Hermann Agha , a sketch of Dutch Guiana, and another volume of essays called Ulysses .
Works
- Observations in Central, Eastern, and Southern Arabia, during a Journey through that Country in 1862 and 1863 , London, 1864. ( online )
- Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-1863), vol. I. Macmillan & Co., London, 1865. ( online )
- Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-1863), vol. II. Macmillan & Co., London, 1866. ( online )
- Essays on Eastern Questions. London 1872. ( online )
- Hermann Agha: An Eastern Narrative. London 1872. (vol. I online + vol. II online )
- Dutch Guiana. London 1876. ( online )
- Ulysses or Scenes and Studies in Many Lands. London 1887. ( online )
literature
- Zahra Freeth , Harry Victor Frederick Winstone : Explorers of Arabia from the Renaissance to the End of the Victorian Era , Allen & Unwin, London, 1978
swell
- ^ Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63) . 1871. Retrieved September 24, 2013.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Palgrave, William Gifford |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British traveler to the Orient |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1826 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Westminster , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1888 |