(Excerpt from Geography of Asia
6. Asia is remarkable for...)
Excerpt from Geography of Asia
6. Asia is remarkable for the large number of peninsulas and islands along its coast. The principal peninsulas are Kamchatka (kg g Corea (e Q), that formed by Siam and indo-china.
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Charles Daniel Tenney was an American educator and diplomat to China.
Background
harles Tenney was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 29, 1857 to Rev. Daniel Tenney and Mary Adams Parker. His father was a descendant of Thomas Tenney who emigrated from Yorkshire, England, to Salem, Massachussets, in 1638, and settled at Rowley, Massachussets, the following year; his mother, Mary Adams (Parker), claimed descent from Gov. Thomas Dudley. Reared in a Congregationalist family, Tenney reached young manhood during a period of foreign missionary fervor in New England.
Education
He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1878, (taught for a year in an academy at Atkinson, N. H. , and completed the divinity course at Oberlin Theological Seminary in 1882.
Career
In 1882 he proceeded to his first missionary post, in the province of Shansi, China, under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Retiring from the mission field, Tenney moved in 1886 to the "treaty port" of Tientsin, then seat of the Viceroy Li Hung-chang. Here he at once established intimate relations with the great Chinese statesman by becoming tutor to his sons, and the same year was instrumental in establishing the Anglo-Chinese School, an institution for Chinese students, of which he remained the principal from 1886 to 1895. Concurrently with his other activities, he was vice-consul and interpreter to the American consulate at Tientsin from March 6, 1894 to June 30, 1896. In 1895 he was selected by the Chinese government as the first president of the newly organized Imperial Chinese University at Tientsin (after 1900 designated Peiyang University). He served in this capacity until 1906. The Boxer outbreak of 1900 interrupted his educational work. During the siege of Tientsin, Tenney and Herbert C. Hoover, then in charge of the reorganization of the Kaiping coal mines, devoted themselves to the relief of numerous Chinese and their families who had thrown in their lot with the beleaguered whites. Among these was a young American-trained Chinese, T'ang Shao-yi, who was to become one of China's eminent statesmen. Following the relief of Tientsin by an international column, Tenney served as Chinese secretary of the Tientsin provisional government from 1900 to 1902, earning the gratitude of the local Chinese populace for his determined stand against unnecessary harshness of treatment at a moment when the many outrages of the Boxers were still fresh in the minds of the armies of occupation. The University was occupied by German troops during the Boxer troubles, and in 1902, on his own responsibility as its administrative head, Tenney made a special journey to Germany to obtain an indemnity for the seizure of the plant. He was successful in his mission, and the institution was rebuilt on a new site.
From 1902 to 1906 he was also superintendent of high and middle schools in Chihli, making inspection tours throughout the metropolitan province. His labors in this connection resulted in a development of the school system which placed Chihli in an advanced position in that respect among the "eighteen provinces. " When he retired as president of Peiyang University in 1906, he was appointed director of Chinese government students in America, which position he held until 1908, making his headquarters at Cambridge, Massachussets, and establishing in various American universities successive groups of Chinese students. In 1907-08 he was lecturer on Chinese history at Harvard. Following his retirement in 1908 from his lengthy service to China, Tenney accepted the appointment of Chinese secretary to the American Legation at Peking. In 1909 he was designated one of the three American delegates to the joint International Opium Commission convened at Shanghai. In 1912, when Nanking assumed importance as the capital of the revolutionary government, he was assigned by the American government to that post with title of consul; but owing to the illness of his wife, he resigned in 1913 and returned to the United States. The following year (May 1, 1914) he was reappointed Chinese secretary of the American Legation at Peking. In 1919 he was advanced to secretary of legation, class I, and counselor of legation, serving as chargé d'affaires ad interim at Peking from September 1919 to July 1920. He returned to the United States on leave in October of the latter year and retired from the diplomatic service, March 1, 1921, to make his home at Palo Alto, Cal.
In 1923 he revisited China, and while at Peking in 1924 suffered a severe illness from which he never recovered, remaining an invalid until his death, six years later, at Palo Alto.