Margary Affair

Margary Affair (Chinese: 马嘉理事件 or 滇案) is the name of a crisis in Sino-British relations, which followed the murder of British official Augustus Raymond Margary in 1875.

As part of efforts to explore overland trade routes between British India and China province, junior British diplomat Augustus Raymond Margary was sent from Shanghai through southwest China to Bhamo in Upper Burma, where he was supposed to met Colonel Horace Browne. It took Margary six months to make the 1800 miles long journey through the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan and he met Brown in Bhamo in late 1874. On the journey back to Shanghai, Margary heard rumors that the return route was not safe and changed the route to Tengyue, where he and his personal staff were murdered on February 21, 1875.

The incident created a diplomatic crisis and gave British authorities an excuse to put pressure on the Qing government. The crisis was only resolved in 1876 when Thomas Wade and Li Hongzhang signed the Chefoo Convention, which covered a number of items unrelated to the incident.

References

• Margary, Augustus Raymond, and Rutherford Alcock. The Journey of Augustus Raymond Margary, from Shanghae to Bhamo, and Back to Manwyne: From His Journals and Letters, with a Brief Biographical Preface. London: Macmillan and co., 1876.
• Wang, Shên-tsu. The Margary Affair and the Chefoo Agreement. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1940.