Robert Swinhoe

"Swinhoe" redirects here. For Robert's brother, also a naturalist, who lived 1838 to 1923, see Charles Swinhoe.

Robert Swinhoe FRS (1 September 1836 – 28 October 1877) was an English diplomat and naturalist who served as a consul in Qing-era Taiwan (then known to Westerners as Formosa). He catalogued many East Asian birds, and several, such as Swinhoe's pheasant, are named after him.

Biography

Swinhoe was born in colonial-era Kolkata (then known as Calcutta), where his father, who came from a Northumberland family, was a lawyer.[1] The date of his arrival in England is not clearly recorded, but it is known he attended the University of London, and in 1854 joined the China consular corps.

He was stationed at the remote port of Amoy, approximately 300 miles northeast of Hong Kong, in 1855. While there, he mastered the Chinese language (both official Mandarin and the local Amoy dialect) and developed a detailed and authoritative understanding of the ornithology of eastern China. In March 1856, Swinhoe made an "adventurous" visit to the camphor districts of northwestern Taiwan on board a lorcha, a hybrid vessel utilizing a European hull and Chinese rigging. Whether this visit was official or personal is unknown, but he referred to it on several occasions in his later publications. While at Amoy he courted and married Christina Stronach (née Lockie), the daughter of a Scottish missionary, in 1857.

In June and July 1858, Swinhoe participated in the circumnavigation of Taiwan on board HMS Inflexible in search of British and American castaways. He also served as translator in two subsequent British actions against China in 1858 and 1860, the latter resulting in his book The North China Campaign of 1860 (London, 1861), his personal account of the Second Opium War.

In 1860, Swinhoe was appointed the first European consular representative to Taiwan, although delays prevented him from taking up the post until 1861. On 2 July of that year, Swinhoe and his assistant, George C. P. Braune (1838–1864), arrived at the prefectural capital, the southern city of Taiwan-fu (now Tainan). Shoaling of the harbour prompted him to re-establish the British consulate at the northern port of Tamsui, where most foreign trade occurred. He published several accounts of his early experiences in Taiwan, as well as numerous works on the island's wildlife.

In August 1864, Swinhoe was ordered to return to Takow (present-day Kaohsiung) to establish the British Consulate for South Formosa. On 4 February 1865, he was officially appointed British Consul to Taiwan. He often operated from temporary premises such as ships (including HMS Ternate) or rented houses near the lagoon from 1865 to 1866. He never lived in the consulate building that stands today (the Former British Consulate at Takao), which was completed in 1879 after his death.

In early 1866, he left Takow for Amoy (Xiamen). He later served as consul at Amoy, Ningbo, and Yantai. At various times during his career, he also served as a "roving consul" for the British plenipotentiary in China, Rutherford Alcock. His duties included expeditions to Hainan and a journey up the Yangtze River to Chongqing in Sichuan Province to assess steamship navigation. Throughout his postings, he continued to hold the Taiwanese consulship until his retirement in 1873.

During his time in China, Swinhoe collected numerous natural history specimens. As the region had only recently opened to Westerners, many of these were new to science. Although primarily an ornithologist, he also collected fish, mammals and insects. He returned to England in 1862 with his collection. Many of the birds were first described in John Gould's Birds of Asia (1863).[2]

Death

Robert Swinhoe died on 28 October 1877 in London at the age of 41, possibly of syphilis.[3]

Descendant

In 2019, a fifth-generation collateral descendant of Robert Swinhoe, Christopher Swinhoe-Standen, visited the British Consulate at Takow in Kaohsiung to learn more about his ancestor. He toured the former consulate building, now a museum, accompanied by officials from the Kaohsiung Bureau of Tourism.[4]

Natural history

At a young age, he developed an interest in birds and assembled a small collection of British birds, nests and eggs. He corresponded with Henry Stevenson, and one of his first publications appeared in 1858, the same year in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their papers on natural selection. Swinhoe accepted Darwin's ideas, and in 1872 named a species (now a subspecies) after him (Pucrasia macrolopha darwini).[2] He was a regular contributor to The Ibis after 1860 and later to the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London.

During his travels, he studied birds and mammals as well as local cultures. He collected both live animals and specimens and regularly sent them to the London Zoo. The first Pere David's deer in Europe came from him.[2]

His primary interest, however, was birds, and he corresponded extensively with Edward Blyth. Around 1871, he began to suffer from partial paralysis and moved to Yantai, which he called the "Scarborough of China". His health forced him to leave China in October 1875. From his home in Chelsea, he continued publishing, and his final paper in The Ibis described the new genus and species Liocichla steerii.[2] He died at the age of 41, presumably of syphilis.[5]

P. L. Sclater described him as "one of the most industrious and successful exploring naturalists that have ever lived", and after his death, A. R. Wallace wrote that "due to Mr. Swinhoe's own exertions...there is probably no part of the world (if we except Europe, North America, and British India) of whose warm-blooded vertebrates we possess fuller or more accurate knowledge than we do of the coast districts of China and its islands."[2]

His collection of 3,700 specimens was purchased by Henry Seebohm and later bequeathed to the Liverpool Museum.

Four species of mammals and 15 species of birds were named after Swinhoe,[6] including Swinhoe's storm-petrel, which he first described in 1867. Four species of reptiles are also named in his honour: Gekko swinhonis, Diploderma swinhonis, Rhabdophis swinhonis, and the Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei).[6]

One of his brothers, Colonel Charles Swinhoe, was a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society and an expert on Lepidoptera.[1]

Published works

  • Swinhoe, R. (1863). Notes on the Island of Formosa. London: F. Bell. OCLC 31834495.
  • Swinhoe, R. (1864). "Notes on the Island of Formosa". Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. 34: 6–18. doi:10.2307/1798463. JSTOR 1798463.
  • Swinhoe, R. (1865). "Additional Notes on Formosa". Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London. 10 (3): 122–128. doi:10.2307/1799660. JSTOR 1799660.
  • Swinhoe, R. (1871). A revised catalogue of the birds of China and its islands. London. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.17734.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

References

  1. ^ a b Fisher, Clemency Thorne (2004). "Swinhoe, Robert (1836–1877)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38460. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c d e Hall, Philip B. (1987) Robert Swinhoe (1836–1877): A Victorian Naturalist in Treatyport China. The Geographical Journal 153:37–47
  3. ^ Coates, P. D, The China consuls: British consular officers, 1843–1943 (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 498, 500.
  4. ^ "Descendant of Britain's first consul visits Taiwan". Taipei Times. 20 January 2019.
  5. ^ Coates, P. D, The China consuls: British consular officers, 1843–1943 (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 498, 500.
  6. ^ a b Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 258–259.

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