Sir Rutherford Alcock - First British Minister to Japan (1859-1865), Consul (1844-1859) and Minister (1865-1870) to China

Rutherford Alcock became a battlefield surgeon, working in Portugal and Spain during the civil wars in the 1830s. This book fills a major gap in the study of Japan''s opening to the West from a British perspective, as well as Britain''s relationship with East Asia as a whole, through the eyes of a brilliant, but complicated and contradictory figure.