George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), known as Lord Curzon (), was a British statesman, Conservative politician, explorer and writer who served as Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 and Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924.
Curzon was born in Derbyshire into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, before entering Parliament in 1885. In the following years, he travelled extensively in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East, and published several books on the region in which he detailed his geopolitical outlook and underlined the perceived Russian threat to British control of India. In 1891, Curzon was named Under-Secretary of State for India, and in 1899 he was appointed Viceroy of India. During his tenure, he pursued a number of reforms of the British administration, attempted to address the British maltreatment of Indians, undertook the restoration of the Taj Mahal, and sent a British expedition to Tibet to counter Russian ambitions. In 1905, he presided over the partition of Bengal and came into conflict with Lord Kitchener over issues of military organisation. Unable to secure the backing of the government in London, he resigned later that year and returned to England.
In 1907, Curzon became Chancellor of Oxford University, and the following year he was elected to the House of Lords as an Irish representative peer. During the First World War, he served in H. H. Asquith's coalition cabinet as Lord Privy Seal, and from late 1916 he was Leader of the House of Lords and served in the war cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the War Policy Committee. He was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in October 1919 and lent his name to Britain's proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He also oversaw the division of the British Mandate of Palestine and the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan, and was the chief Allied negotiator of the 1922 Treaty of Lausanne which defined the borders of modern Turkey. In 1921, he was created a marquess. On Bonar Law's retirement as prime minister in 1923, Curzon was a contender for the office but was passed over in favour of Stanley Baldwin. He remained as foreign secretary until 1924 when the Baldwin government fell, and died a year later at the age of 66.
Early life Curzon was the eldest son and the second of the eleven children of Alfred Curzon, 4th Baron Scarsdale (1831–1916), who was the rector of Kedleston in Derbyshire. George's mother was Blanche (1837–1875), the daughter of Joseph Pocklington-Senhouse of Netherhall in Cumberland. He was born at Kedleston Hall, built on the site where his family, who were clergymen and priests, had lived since the 12th century. His mother, exhausted by childbirth, died when George was 16; her husband survived her by 41 years. Neither parent exerted a major influence on Curzon's life. Scarsdale was an austere and unindulgent father who believed that landowners should stay on their land and not indefinitely tour the world for pleasure. He disapproved of the journeys across Asia between 1887 and 1895 which made his son one of the most travelled men to be a member of any British cabinet. An influential presence in Curzon's childhood was that of his brutal, sadistic governess, Ellen Mary Paraman, whose tyranny in the nursery stimulated his combative qualities and encouraged the obsessional side of his nature. Paraman used to beat him and periodically forced him to parade through the village wearing a conical hat bearing the words liar, sneak, and coward. Curzon later noted, "No children well born and well-placed ever cried so much and so justly."
He was educated at Wixenford School,Philip Holden, Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-state (2008), p. 46. Eton College,Eton, the Raj and modern India; By Alastair Lawson; 9 March 2005; BBC News. and Balliol College, Oxford. His over-intimate relationship at Eton College with Oscar Browning led to the latter's dismissal."... Oscar Browning (1837–1923), who had been sacked from Eton in September 1875 under suspicion of pederasty, partly because of his involvement with young George Nathaniel Curzon" in Michael Kaylor, Secreted Desires (2006), p. 98. A spinal injury incurred while riding during his adolescence was a lifelong impediment to Curzon that required him to wear a metal corset for the remainder of his life.
Curzon was President of the Union and Secretary of the Oxford Canning Club (a Tory political club named after George Canning), but as a consequence of the extent of his time-expenditure on political and social societies, he failed to achieve a first class degree in Greats, although he subsequently won both the Lothian Prize Essay and the Arnold Prize, the latter for an essay on Sir Thomas More, about whom he knew little. In 1883, Curzon received the most prestigious fellowship at the university, a Prize Fellowship at All Souls College. While at Eton and at Oxford, Curzon was a contemporary and close friend of Cecil Spring Rice and Edward Grey. Spring Rice contributed, alongside John William Mackail, to the composition of a famous sardonic doggerel about Curzon that was published as part of The Balliol Masque, about which Curzon wrote in later life "never has more harm been done to one single individual than that accursed doggerel has done to me." It read:
When Spring Rice was assigned to the British Embassy to the United States in 1894–1895, he was suspected by Curzon of trying to prevent Curzon's engagement to the American Mary Leiter, whom Curzon nevertheless married. Spring Rice assumed for a certainty, like many of Curzon's other friends, that Curzon would inevitably become Foreign Secretary: he wrote to Curzon in 1891, 'When you are Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs I hope you will restore the vanished glory of England, lead the European concert, decide the fate of nations, and give me three months' leave instead of two'.
Old texts state that he spent few months in a cottage in Dehradun, India. Though exact records are not available there is a road named after him there (probably near his erstwhile cottage).
Early political career In his youth, Curzon regularly attended debates at the House of Commons. Curzon became Assistant Private Secretary to the Marquess of Salisbury in 1885, and in 1886 entered Parliament as Member for Southport in south-west Lancashire. The press reaction to his maiden speech, was mainly favourable. The Times called it 'brilliant' while other newspapers described it as 'capital' and a 'decided success', and the St James' Gazette deemed it 'very successful' though 'unnecessarily flippant in tone'. Subsequent performances in the Commons, often dealing with Ireland or reform of the House of Lords (which he supported), received similar verdicts. He was Under-Secretary of State for India in 1891–1892 and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1895–1898.
Asian travels and writings In the meantime Curzon had travelled around the world: Russia and Central Asia (1888–1889); Persia (September 1889 – January 1890); Siam, French Indochina, China, Korea and Japan (1892); and a daring foray into Afghanistan and the Pamirs (1894–1895). He published several books describing central and eastern Asia and related foreign policy issues. A bold and compulsive traveller, driven by orientalism, he was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his exploration of the source of the Amu Darya (Oxus). His journeys allowed him to study the problems of Asia and their implications for British India, while reinforcing his pride in his nation and her imperial mission.
Curzon believed Russia to be the most likely threat to British India, Britain's most valuable possession, from the 19th century through the early 20th century.Curzon, Russia in Central Asia (1967), p. 314. In 1879 Russia had begun construction of the Transcaspian Railway along the Silk Road, officially solely to enforce local control. The line starts from the city of Kyzyl-Su, formerly Krasnovodsk (nowadays Turkmenbashi) (on the Caspian Sea), travels southeast along the Karakum Desert, through Ashgabat, continues along the Kopet Dagh Mountains until it reaches Tejen. Curzon dedicated an entire chapter in his book Russia in Central Asia to discussing the perceived threat to British control of India.Curzon, Russia in Central Asia (1967), p. 272. This railway connected Russia with the most wealthy and influential cities in Central Asia at the time, including the Persian Khorasan Province,Denis Wright, "Curzon and Persia", The Geographical Journal 153#3 (November 1987): 343. and would allow the rapid deployment of Russian supplies and troops into the area. Curzon also believed that the resulting greater economic interdependence between Russia and Central Asia would be damaging to British interests.Curzon, Russia in Central Asia p. 277.
Persia and the Persian Question, written in 1892, has been considered Curzon's magnum opus and can be seen as a sequel to Russia in Central Asia.Denis Wright, "Curzon and Persia", The Geographical Journal 153#3 (November 1987): 346. Curzon was commissioned by The Times to write several articles on the Persian political environment, but while there he decided to write a book on the country as whole. This two-volume work covers Persia's history and governmental structure, as well as graphics, maps and pictures (some taken by Curzon himself). Curzon was aided by General Albert Houtum-Schindler and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), both of which helped him gain access to material to which as a foreigner he would not have been entitled to have access. General Schindler provided Curzon with information regarding Persia's geography and resources, as well as serving as an unofficial editor.Wright, "Curzon and Persia", pp. 346–347.
Curzon was appalled by his government's apathy towards Persia as a valuable defensive buffer to India from Russian encroachment. Years later Curzon would lament that "Persia has alternatively advanced and receded in the estimation of British statesmen, occupying now a position of extravagant prominence, anon one of unmerited obscurity."George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (Volume 1). New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966, p. 605.
First marriage (1895–1906)
On 22 April 1895, Curzon married Mary Victoria Leiter, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Levi Leiter, an American millionaire of Jewish descent, who co-founded the Chicago department store Field & Leiter (later Marshall Field). Mary had a long and nearly fatal illness near the end of summer 1904, from which she never really recovered. Falling ill again in July 1906, she died on the 18th of that month in her husband's arms, at the age of 36.Maximilian Genealogy Master Database, Mary Victoria LEITER, 2000 It was the greatest personal loss of his life.
She was buried in the church at Kedleston, where Curzon designed his memorial for her, a Gothic chapel added to the north side of the nave. Although he was neither a devout nor a conventional churchman, Curzon retained a simple religious faith; in later years he sometimes said that he was not afraid of death because it would enable him to join Mary in heaven.
They had three daughters during a firm and happy marriage: Mary Irene (known as Irene), who inherited her father's Barony of Ravensdale and was created a life peer in her own right; Cynthia Blanche, who became the first wife of the fascist politician Sir Oswald Mosley; and Alexandra Naldera ("Baba"), Curzon's youngest daughter; she married Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe, the best friend, best man and equerry of Edward VIII. Mosley exercised a strange fascination for the Curzon women: Irene had a brief romance with him before either were married; Baba became his mistress; and Curzon's second wife, Grace, had a long affair with him.
Viceroy of India (1899–1905)