19 - Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927) and Japan

Summary

INTRODUCTION

LORD LANSDOWNE OCCUPIES a special place in the history of Anglo-Japanese relations as the Foreign Secretary on whose watch the alliance between the two countries was concluded and then reaffirmed. Even so, as a historical figure he has been curiously neglected. This applies more especially to his five years at the Foreign Office, which tend to be seen as something of an interlude, an epilogue to Lord Salisbury or a prologue to Sir Edward Grey, overshadowed also by his later role during the constitutional crisis of 1909–11 and his advocacy of a compromise peace in 1917.

Already in 1900, Lansdowne's appointment to the Foreign Office was ridiculed in some sections of the press as a ‘first-rate joke’. ‘Saki’ lampooned him in his ‘Westminster Alice’ satire as the White Knight who fell from off one horse, the War Office, on to another, Foreign Office: ‘A knowledge of French and an amiable disposition will see one out of most things.’

CAREER

There was more to Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845–1927), than a genial personality and fluent French. A scion of the Whig cousinhood, he parted company with his ancestral party over Irish land legislation in 1880, and gradually moved across the party divide, without, however, ever becoming a Conservative. His landed wealth and social position gave him a standing in late Victorian politics. More than that, he was considered ‘a very “safe” man’. Having been apprenticed in politics as Undersecretary at the War Office in the early 1870s, he held a succession of pro-consular posts between 1883 and 1894, first as Governor-General of Canada and then Viceroy of India.

Without doubt, he was more knowledgeable about Asia and also more sympathetic to the East than many amongst the contemporary political class. Lansdowne's imperial career also sharpened his appreciation of the vast future potential of the United States and of the more immediate Russian threat in Central Asia, while his superintendence of the unreformed War Office between 1895 and 1900 heightened his sense of the constraints on British power. Lansdowne’s American and Indian experiences provided the vital backdrop to his dealings with Japan. Equally important was his ‘ultra-cautious’, diffident style, which made him appear ‘undecided in character’.