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Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (21 June 1826 – 12 February 1902) was a British public servant and prominent member of Victorian society.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= The Canadian Encyclopedia > Frederick Temple Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava )〕 In his youth he was a popular figure in the court of Queen Victoria, and became well known to the public after publishing a best-selling account of his travels in the North Atlantic. He is now best known as one of the most successful diplomats of his time. His long career in public service began as a commissioner to Syria in 1860, where his skilful diplomacy maintained British interests while preventing France from instituting a client state in Lebanon. After his success in Syria, Dufferin served in the Government of the United Kingdom as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Under-Secretary of State for War. In 1872 he became the third Governor General of Canada, bolstering imperial ties in the early years of the Dominion, and in 1884 he reached the pinnacle of his diplomatic career as eighth Viceroy of India. Following his retirement from the diplomatic service in 1896, his final years were marred by personal tragedy and a misguided attempt to secure his family's financial position. His eldest son was killed in the Second Boer War and another son badly wounded. He was chairman of a mining firm that went bankrupt after swindling people, although he was ignorant of the matter. His biographer Davenport-Hines says he was "imaginative, sympathetic, warm-hearted, and gloriously versatile."〔Davenport-Hines, 2004〕 He was an effective leader in Lebanon, Canada and India, averted war with Russia, and annexed Burma. He was careless of money but charming in high society in three continents. ==Early life== He was born into ''the Ascendancy'', Ireland's Anglo-Irish aristocracy. On his father's side, Dufferin was descended from Scottish settlers who had moved to County Down in the early 17th century. The Blackwood family became prominent landowners in Ulster over the following two hundred years, and were created baronets in 1763, entering the Peerage of Ireland in 1800 as Baron Dufferin. The family had influence in parliament because they controlled the return for the borough of Killyleagh. Marriages in the Blackwood family were often advantageous to their landowning and high-society ambitions, but Dufferin's father, Captain Lord Dufferin and Claneboye, R.N., did not marry into a landowning family. His wife, Helen Selina Sheridan, was the granddaughter of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and through her the family became connected to English literary and political circles. Dufferin was born Frederick Temple Blackwood in 1826 in Florence, then capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the Italian peninsula, with great advantages. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford Union Society for debate, although he left Oxford after only two years without obtaining a degree. While still an Oxford undergraduate, he visited Skibbereen in County Cork to see the impact of the Irish Famine first-hand. He was appalled by what he saw, prompting him to raise money on behalf of the starving poor.〔Christine Kinealy, ''Charity and the Great Hunger. The Kindness of Strangers'' (Bloomsbury, 2013)〕 In 1841, while still at school, he succeeded his father as Baron Dufferin and Claneboye in the Peerage of Ireland and in 1849 was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria. In 1850 he was additionally created Baron Claneboye, of Clandeboye in the County of Down, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.〔''Dufferin and Ava, Marquess of'', Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, 1911 (Marquess of Dufferin and Ava )〕 In 1856, Dufferin commissioned the schooner ''Foam'' and set off on a journey around the North Atlantic. He first made landfall on Iceland, where he visited the then very small Reykjavík, the plains of Þingvellir, and Geysir. Returning to Reykjavík, ''Foam'' was towed north by Prince Napoleon, who was on an expedition to the region in the steamer ''La Reine Hortense''. Dufferin sailed close to Jan Mayen Island, but was unable to land there due to heavy ice and caught only a very brief glimpse of the island through the fog. From Jan Mayen, ''Foam'' sailed on to northern Norway, stopping at Hammerfest before sailing for Spitzbergen. On his return, Dufferin published a book about his travels, ''Letters From High Latitudes''. With its irreverent style and lively pace, it was extremely successful and can be regarded as the prototype of the comic travelogue. It remained in print for many years and was translated into French and German. The letters were nominally written to his mother, with whom he had developed a very close relationship after the death of his father when he was 15. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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