Wellington Koo

"a wealth of much needed detail"
-- Literary Review

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This book is part of Makers of the Modern World, Haus Publishing's ambitious series of biographies of all the major delegates at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Wellington Koo (1888-1985) was born and raised in Shanghai's International Settlement, a foreign enclave in which the Chinese themselves were regarded as second-class citizens. He experienced first-hand the injustices of China's "unequal treaties" with foreign powers, and was one of the handful of young scholars in whom late imperial China invested all its progressive hopes.

By the time Koo was recalled to his homeland, in 1912, after his studies in America, a newly acquired doctorate of law in hand, the imperial system had been swept away and replaced with a chaotic, corrupt series of bickering republicans, grasping warlords and embittered restorationists. Koo was sent abroad again as China's minister to Washington, where he fostered a respectful relationship with the American president, Woodrow Wilson. At the close of the First World War, he was one of the bright intellectuals sent to plead China's case before the Paris Peace Conference. While most countries had sent their elder statesmen and great diplomats, many of the Chinese delegation were a full generation younger than those from the Great Powers. Moreover, they were a squabbling cabal that reflected the lack of unified government back home. Thrust into the limelight by his personal connections with Wilson and by internal disputes among the Chinese, Koo became his country's most outspoken and eloquent champion at the Paris Peace Conference.

While Paris was a swansong for many careers, Koo's was only just beginning. It also saw his attempt to rebuild a shattered personal life. Newly widowed by the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, Koo's sojourn in Paris saw his whistle-stop pursuit of and betrothal to the woman who would become his third wife, the sugar cane heiress Oei Hui-Lan. The 32-year-old diplomat made his maiden speech at the Conference, initiating three further decades in politics that would see him briefly appointed president of China, before serving further diplomatic posts in Britain, France, Mexico and the United States.