Charles W. Le Gendre: A Treaty-Port Career in China, Japan, and Korea
This essay offers a sketch of the personal life and his public career of Charles Le Gendre, a French-born American who served as an officer in the Civil War and then as an American diplomat in Asia. Le Gendre’s involvement with the infamous Rover shipwreck on the southern coast of Taiwan (1867) and as advisor to the Japanese government (1872-1875) have received a fair amount of research attention, in the form of major scholarly articles and dissertations, over the years. Such critical attention serves here to further expand his biography to other periods of his career and to events in his personal life not adequately addressed in prior scholarship, as well as to one or two facts pertaining to the years 1867-1875 which have not been brought to light previously.