| Summary: | George Leonard Staunton, who wrote the authoritative account of the first British embassy to China in 1793, and his son George Thomas Staunton, who translated the Chinese legal code into English and in so doing influenced much later understanding of Chinese law, are well-known figures in the history of China. This paper argues that their British identity was constructed by George Thomas to conceal the family’s Irish Catholic background, but that in fact George Leonard used that background for the benefit of an imperial career that propelled him from Galway to the West Indies, India, and finally China. It enabled him to win the support of the Papacy for the British embassy to China, and his son to learn Chinese and make a career as a merchant and translator. Their story shows some of the mechanisms that connected the nineteenth-century British empire in Asia to the Catholic church which had been the great global institution of the early modern age. Moreover, a distinctively Irish concern with property law can be seen to have influenced George Thomas’ great work on Chinese law. The paper ends by examining the Stauntons’ finances and the impact of their imperial wealth in Ireland.
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