Auguste François
Item
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Title
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Auguste François
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nickname
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Fang Su Ya 方苏雅
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Date
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1857-1935
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birthPlace
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Lunéville
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deathPlace
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Belligné
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Description
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Little is known about Auguste François' childhood. Only child of a humble draper, the young François grew up in the city of Lunéville in the eastern French region of Lorraine. He became orphan at the age of sixteen when his grandparents and parents all passed away due to lethal diseases. Left alone, he completed his military service in 1877 at Commercy; then decided to study Law at Nancy. Between 1880 and 1885, he worked at the departmental administration in Arras, Nancy and eventually Paris. The year 1885 marked a watershed in his life: his application for a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allowed him to join the Mission to Tonkin led by the French physiologist and politician Paul Bert (1833-1886). He embarked upon a journey in 1886 that took him to the Far East. Henceforth, he kept on moving back and forth between France and the Middle Kingdom, while travelling to other countries like Paraguay where he worked in the mid-1890s. His duty as a Consul in China spanned the period from 1896 to 1904. First appointed in Guangxi, he spent most of his career in the southern Chinese city of Yunnanfu [present day Kunming].
His diplomatic occupation was hardly restful, especially from the turn of the twentieth century onwards as he had to endure the turmoil of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. This indigenous xenophobic resentment prompted violent attacks on foreign diplomats and missionaries; his consulate was then besieged and sacked. Around the same period, he became Delegate to the Yunnan railway Commission in charge of negotiating the construction of the Laokay-Yunnanfu railway with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Strategic position for French colonial expansion, this railway linked Southern China and North Indochina and was amongst the earliest to be negotiated with Qing authorities. Throughout his career, he strove for maintaining regional peace and stability and promoting French cultural and humanitarian actions, such as the launching of schools, hospitals, postal services, the preservation of monuments and artworks.
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image
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The Chinese general officer Su Yuanchun and on his left Auguste Francois, circa 1895 and 1899. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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commons.wikimedia.org
