Person
George Thomas Staunton
- Slug
- george-thomas-staunton-400
- Alternative names
- Sir, Baronet
- Gender
- Assigned male at birth
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Ethnicity
- White
- Languages
- English
- Occupations
- Politician, Scholar
Born near Salisbury in 1781, George Thomas Staunton travelled to China at the age of 12 to accompany his father, Sir George Leonard Staunton, who was the secretary to Lord Macartney’s mission to China. Having started to learn Chinese before the trip, Staunton was appointed Lord Macartney’s Page, and he made a good personal impression on the Qianlong Emperor.
He studied at Cambridge for two terms, before being first a writer and then chief in the East India Company’s Guangzhou factory. After some translation work between English and Chinese, Staunton joined an ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Beijing. Returning to the UK, Staunton became MP for several English constituencies as a liberal Tory. He was a member of the East India Committee, and in 1823, in conjunction with Henry Thomas Colebrooke founded the Royal Asiatic Society.