John Hay Drummond Hay

The Right Honourable
Sir John Hay Drummond Hay
GCMG KCB
Envoy Extraordinary to Morocco
In office
1845–1886
Succeeded by Sir William Kirby Green
Personal details
Born John Hay Drummond Hay
(1816-06-01)1 June 1816
Valenciennes, France
Died 27 November 1893(1893-11-27) (aged 77)
Wedderburn Castle, Scotland

Sir John Hay Drummond Hay GCMG KCB PC (1 June 1816 – 27 November 1893) was the United Kingdom's Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Morocco in the 19th century.[1][2]

John Drummond Hay was born in 1816 in Valenciennes, France,[1] where his father Captain Edward Drummond Hay, a nephew of the ninth Earl of Kinnoul, was serving in the British army of occupation.[3]

He was educated at Charterhouse School alongside his older brother, Edward Hay Drummond Hay.[1][2]

At the age of 24, he was appointed a paid attaché to the Embassy of Constantinople, where he remained for four years, and was then sent to Morocco to assist the Agent and Consul-General in his communications with the Court of Morocco during the difficulties with the French Government. In this mission he displayed so much ability that a few months afterwards, though still having merely the rank of a paid attaché, he succeeded his temporary chief as Agent and Consul-General.

Thus began diplomatic activity, involving considerable personal initiative and freedom of action, which lasted without interruption for more than 40 years. During this long period his intelligence, energy, and thorough knowledge of the Oriental character enabled him to exercise an amount of influence, both with the Government and with the native of all classes with whom he came in contact, such as had never been enjoyed by any of his predecessors, and such as none of his successors is ever likely to obtain. He belonged, in fact, to a category of diplomatists who are very useful in semi-civilized countries, but who are no longer to be found so near to Europe, and who are not well adapted to the present methods of bureaucratic and Parliamentary control.

In 1845, he acted as a mediator in the difficulties which Morocco had with Denmark, Sweden and Spain, and signed in that capacity the convention which the Sultan concluded with the Court of Madrid. In 1856 he negotiated and signed a general treaty and a commercial convention with the Moroccan Government, and was raised five years afterwards to the rank of Minister Resident.

In 1861 he was appointed by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Rose.[4] His further promotion to the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary took place in 1872, and to that of Envoy Extraordinary in 1880.

In July, 1886, he retired on a pension, and was sworn a Privy Councillor, but he continued to reside privately a great part of the year in the country where he had served his country, so long and so successfully. He died at Wedderburn Castle, near Duns, in Scotland.[2]

References

Wikisource has original works written by or about:
John Hay Drummond Hay
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Our Mission to the Court of Marocco in 1880, under Sir J. D. Hay (1881) by TROTTER.
  1. 1 2 3 Parish, William Douglas (1879). List of Carthusians, 1800–1879. Lewes: Farncombe and Co. p. 114. OCLC 37118353. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 "Obituary: Sir John Drummond Hay". The Times of London. London. Nov 29, 1893. p. 7. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  3. Khalid Ben-Srhir (2004). Britain and Morocco During the Embassy of John Drummond Hay. Routledge. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  4. The foreign officer list and diplomatic and consular hand book January 1877, pg 114. Available at Google Books

Further reading

Diplomatic posts
New title Envoy Extraordinary to Morocco
1845–1886
Succeeded by
Sir William Kirby Green
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/6/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.