PARKES. piirks, Sir SMITH (1828 85). A British diplomatist, born in the Parish of Bloxwich, near Walsall, in Staffordshire. Eng land. Left an orphan in tender years. he was educated at Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham. In 1841 he went to Macao. China. By his enerpy and diligence he rose to he British Consul at Canton. On October S. 1856. the Chinese seized the British ship Arrow, taking therefrom twelve Chinese sailors. Parkes's vig ()roils protest and :Mandarin Yeh's defiant refusal to make amends led. in December, 1s57, to the bombardment and occupation of moon by the British forces, who were aided IT French. In July, 1560, Parkes joined Lord Elgin in the Anglo French punitive exiuNlition to North China. After the capture of Tien-tsin, August Parkes, with twenty-five men, prwee•dimg to T'ung-t how mid( r a flag of truce. \ as ea ,t ire,' and imprisoned. Though suffering toile f• sent word to his chief to n ake elehV e r eompromise. and to take no aecount of hi•n.
The Allies arrived in Peking t t, toter rth, at 1 half of t to prisoners—those not already i mr dered or starved—were .b livered up(ii tolu r Ilth; but, in punishment of the government's treach ery, the Emperor's summer palace was pillared and destroyed. Parkes was knighted in 15t.,',
became Consul at Shanghai, and in 1565 appointed British to 'Japan. Fr r eigh teen years in this' office, lie enjoyed extraordinary popularity with his countrymen, and was al ways a stalwart upholder of British inter ests. He was a powerful elen ent in the modern history of Japan, fearless, trutl fut.
and a despiser of the shams at d which marked the old school of Japanese states manship. In 1882 he was ma le It. t . It, Ile was appointed Minister to china in to succeed Sir Thomas F. Wade. and in the follow ing year he also became Minister to Korea. Ile visited Seoul and negotiated a treaty there: but after the Tongking question and diplomacy. in which "he tired out the Tsung-li (q.v. i. lie died of overwork, 22. 185. Ile was buried at Whitechurch in England. A mar ble bust of Parkes was umciled in 1.487 IT *sir Rutherford Aleock in Saint Paul's Cathedral in T.ondon, and in April. 1890, his was the first pub lic statue unveiled in Shanghai. See his by Stanley Lane-Poole (London. 1890, and the Dictionary of Vational Biography.