People · first British consul in Shanghai, army officer
Sir George Balfour
巴富尔Bāfù'ěr · 1809–1894
First British consul in Shanghai (1843): planned the British settlement, called the first residents' meeting and agreed the 1845 Land Regulations.
Sir George Balfour (巴富尔, Bāfù’ěr) was the first British consul in Shanghai and the officer who set the British settlement in motion.
An army captain on the staff of the Madras Artillery during the First Opium War, he reached Shanghai with plenipotentiary Henry Pottinger in October 1842. He returned on 8 November 1843 as consul with three staff, working at first from a rented Chinese house, Dunchun Hall (敦春堂), inside the county city. He then picked land beside the Huangpu outside the north gate for a British merchants’ settlement.
On 12 April 1844 he called the first public meeting of foreign residents. It decided on a cemetery, and ten and a half mu behind the Customs house was bought, later known as the old graveyard hill. In 1845 he agreed the first Land Regulations with daotai Gong Muju. He bought land at Lijiachang for a new consulate, a purchase that put him at odds with the Foreign Office, and resigned in October 1846. His successor was Rutherford Alcock.
Timeline
Connections
- Gong Muju宫慕久Agreed the first Land Regulations with daotai Gong Muju
Sir Rutherford Alcock阿礼国Succeeded as British consul by Alcock- Sir Walter Henry Medhurst麦华陀Interpreter to Consul George Balfour on arrival in Shanghai, 1843