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Sir Richard Wood GCMG CB (1806 – 31 July 1900) was a British dragoman and consul in Syria and Tunisia, at a time when the Ottoman Empire was in retreat and the British were gaining influence in the Middle East and North Africa.

Early life

Wood was born in Constantinople in 1806, the son of George Wood, a British dragoman, and his wife Lucia Privileggio. He grew up there and in Exeter, where he was educated at a boarding school, leaving in 1823. Fluent in Turkish, French, Greek, and Italian, and having a good understanding of the Ottoman Empire, he at first followed his father's career by becoming a dragoman.

Wood's mother died in 1821. His father, who had been born in England in 1780, died in Constantinople in 1834. He had a younger brother, Charles Wood, who became a doctor in Smyrna and spent his life there, and a younger sister, Mary Wood, who in 1827 in Constantinople married Niven Moore, a British Embassy cancellier, a clerk trusted with confidential documents.

Career

In 1831, Wood was posted to Ottoman Syria, to learn Arabic, but with the undercover task of finding ways to undermine the government of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. In 1832, during the Egyptian–Ottoman War, he went to observe the siege of Acre, where he saw Ibrahim himself in command, and reported that he had taken him at first sight for a cook.

In 1834, when Egypt gained formal authority in Syria, Wood returned to Constantinople, where he had talks with Lord Ponsonby, the British ambassador, about how Ibrahim might be brought down and the increasing Russian influence over the Ottomans undermined.

In August 1835, during the Syrian Peasant Revolt against Ibrahim, triggered by heavy conscription and taxation, Wood returned to Syria and tried unsuccessfully to persuade Bashir Shihab II, ruler of the Mount Lebanon Emirate, to support it. He then went to Kurdistan to observe a punitive campaign by the Ottomans against the Kurdish Mir Muhammad Bey, who was supported by Russia. Wood had a series of setbacks when he went down with small-pox in Aleppo and in Mosul caught typhoid. He was also wounded in the knee by a tribesman's lance and gained a head wound which permanently damaged his eyesight. In Kurdistan, he met Muhammad, who claimed that he had never heard of England, but agreed to go to Constantinople and negotiate with the Sultan Mahmud II.

In 1840 Wood returned to Syria, this time with both British and Ottoman instructions, in support of a revolt by the Druze and Maronites against Muhammad Ali of Egypt. A joint naval intervention by Austria, Great Britain, and the Ottomans in September 1840 led to the Ottomans regaining Syria in October, and Wood became a powerful man there. Thanks largely to him, the British had more influence in the region than any other power. In 1841, Wood was formally appointed as British consul in Damascus. He later played a significant part in the Maronite-Druze wars of 1842 and 1845.

In 1857 Wood left Syria take up the post of British consul to Tunis. He was Consul-General to Tunisia until 1879.

Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the prestige of France was badly damaged, and both Britain and the newly unified Kingdom of Italy wished to strengthen their influence in Tunisia. The Italians failed, but Wood was more successful. To limit the influence of the French, in 1871 he was able to secure the reinstatement of Tunisia as a province of the Ottoman Empire, with the autonomy of the Beys of Tunis guaranteed.

Honours

In 1879, Wood was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. He was a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

He was also a member of the Order of Glory of the Ottoman Empire.

Personal life

On 3 August 1850, in Milltown, County Kerry, Wood married Christina Godfrey, a daughter of Sir William Godfrey, 3rd Baronet. They had a daughter, Helen Isabella, a son, Cecil Godfrey Wood (1852–1906), and a daughter Mary Leontine Wood (1862–1917), born in Algeria. In 1883, she married the future Sir Edward Wheler, 12th Baronet.

After his retirement, Wood lived in Nice, a historically Italian city in the south of France, and at Leghorn, in Italy, but also spent summers with a daughter in La Goulette, Tunisia. He died in Bagni di Lucca, a small town in Tuscany, on 31 July 1900, aged 94. His widow died in Paris on 9 March 1902, aged 72.

Notes

1. ^ "Richard Wood Sir G.C.M.G, C.B. 1806–1900", ancestry.co.uk, accessed 31 December 2023
2. ^ Ozan Ozavci, "A Forgotten Hero? Sir Richard Wood’s Most Adventurous Decade in the Levant", University of Utrecht, 2023, accessed 31 December 2023
3. Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser (London), 28 Mar 1827; "MARRIED. Feb. 24, at Constantinople, Niven Moore, Esq. British Cancellier, to Miss Wood, daughter of George Wood, Esq. office of the principal interpreters to the British Embassy at Ottoman Court"
4. J. D. Fage, The Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1975, ISBN 9780521228039), p. 179
5. ^ Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, Volume 47 (Burke's Peerage, 1885), p. 1540
6. ^ Debrett's illustrated baronetage and knightage (and companionage) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Debrett's, 1880), p. 183

• 1806 births
• 1900 deaths
• British consuls
• Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George