Description

Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist, educated at Charterhouse. He modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system established by Thomas Wade earlier, resulting in the Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. He was a diplomat to China (1867 - 1892). He was British Vice Consul at Pagoda Island (1880-83) and Shanghai (1883-85) and Consul at Tamsui (1885-91) and at Ningpo (1891-93) who later became the second professor of Chinese at Cambridge, succeeding Wade, after living in Aberdeen, Scotland. Postal map spelling is also based on the Wade-Giles system described in his A Chinese-English Dictionary. Amongst his other works are Chinese Sketches (1882), China and the Chinese (1902), Religions of Ancient China (1905), The Civilization of China (1911) and China and the Manchus (1912).