General William Mesny (1842 – 11 December 1919) was an adventurer and writer born on the island ofJersey but spent most of his childhood inAlderney, the family home of the Mesnys. He was the eldest of three children of William Mesny and Mary Rachel Nicolle.
Mesny left home at the age of twelve to sail the oceans until finally, after visiting India and Australia, he settled in a turbulentChina in 1860. He served with two of the provincial armies of theQing dynasty imperial military as amercenary or, in modern parlance, a foreign adviser.
He spent 59 years in China. He became a Major-General in the Imperial army in 1873 when he was only 30, suggesting that his services were greatly valued by the Chinese. He was also made a "Knight Ying of the Order of thePa-tu-lu", the Chinese equivalent of the FrenchLegion d'honneur. In 1890 he was awarded the decoration of the Pao Hsing (the Star of China).
He always retained British citizenship and was a Fellow of theRoyal Geographical Society, theRoyal Horticultural Society, and of theImperial Institute.[1] At one time he was the senior adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese armed forces and was given the title of Brevet Lieutenant-General, Chinese Army.[2]
He visited almost every part of China, includingSinkiang. He also visited Tonking (now northernVietnam) and accompanied CaptainWilliam Gill on his expedition in 1877 fromChengdu toBurma viaLitang,Batang,Dali, along the Tibetan borderlands toBhamo. He was a plant collector and sent specimens back to the British Consul in Canton, Dr.Henry Fletcher Hance, a famous botanist. One species,Jasminum mesnyi, was named after him.
He wrote an informative history of "Tungking" – now northern Vietnam, which also includes details of theBlack Flag Army, a pro-Chinese militia then fighting the French occupation.
In his later life he periodically produced a sort of weekly newspaper or journal in Shanghai calledMesny's Chinese Miscellany. Publication ofMesny's Chinese Miscellany began in September 1895, and continued through 1896, was revived briefly in 1899 and again in 1905. It was composed of his reminiscences of his life and adventures, snippets of recent news, and thousands of brief articles and notes on a very wide variety of topics relating to China. Mesny also strongly promoted railways and other methods of "modernizing" China.
A set of six stamps was issued in Jersey in 1992, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, showing Mesny in various roles in China. They comprise two stamps of 16p denomination: one showing him in 'Shanghai 1860', and the other 'Running theTaiping blockade 1862'; two stamps of 22p: as 'General Mesny, River Gate 1874', and 'Mesny accompaniesWilliam Gill to Burma in 1877'; and two of 32p: 'Mesny advises Governor Chang 1882', and 'Mesny, Mandarin First Class 1886'.
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