In late February 1793, the Hindostan, an East India Company ship, came to anchor off the coastal town of Anyer on the island of Java in cur...
In late February 1793, the Hindostan, an East India Company ship, came to anchor off the coastal town of Anyer on the island of Java in current-day Indonesia. Outside the Dutch fort at Anyer, there was a small plaque commemorating Charles Allan Cathcart, the former British ambassador to China. Cathcart had died five years earlier, just off the coast of Sumatra, and so his embassy never even reached its destination. The anchored Hindostan was waiting for the arrival of the current British ambassador to China, George Macartney.
Macartney was en route on the HMS Lion, a sixty-four-gun ship that had set off with the Hindostan from England in September 1792. Despite having the same appointment, Macartney was a very different man from Cathcart. He wasn’t born a noble, only gaining aristocratic titles later in life. When Cathcart got his appointment, he was only twenty-eight. Macartney had his first foreign posting at a similar age, representing Britain at the Russian court. But he was now fifty-five and a long and illustrious career trailed behind him.
