Who did kill British diplomat Augustus Raymond Margary on the remote China-Burma frontier in 1875?
It could have been agents of the Burmese king, eager to stop the British from undermining his own country’s trade with China; or local Chinese, scared that Margary was spearheading a British invasion from Burma. Some suspected a plot going right back to the xenophobic Chinese governor, Cen Yuying. Or perhaps Margary had simply run foul of bandits – and how was a tribute envoy of Burmese elephants involved?
Against a background of colonial arrogance and cultural incomprehension, A Murder in Yunnan unpicks the complex tangle of official reports, rumour, suspicions and unreliable newspaper rants clouding the facts behind Margary’s killing – an event which brought Britain and China to the brink of war.
