Sir
Donald Mackenzie Wallace (November 11, 1841 - January 10, 1919) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
editor and foreign correspondent of
The TimesThe Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register....
(London).
Donald Mackenzie Wallace was born to Robert Wallace of
BogheadBoghead is a small village in South Lanarkshire, west central Scotland. It is about southeast of Glasgow and sits nearby to the Avon Water. Boghead is a residential area, with working residents commuting to nearby villages and large towns of Lesmahagow, Strathaven and Lanark. It is composed of...
,
DunbartonshireDunbartonshire or the County of Dumbarton, is a lieutenancy area and a registration county of Scotland. Until 1975 it was a county...
, and Sarah Mackenzie. Both his parents died before Donald turned ten. By the age of fifteen, Wallace immersed himself in his studies. He spent all his time before the age of twenty-eight in continuous study at various universities such as
EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh founded in 1582, is an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. It is the sixth university to be established in the British Isles, making it one of the ancient universities of the United Kingdom.The university is amongst the...
and
GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities...
, focusing his study on metaphysics and ethics.
Sir
Donald Mackenzie Wallace (November 11, 1841 - January 10, 1919) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
editor and foreign correspondent of
The TimesThe Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register....
(London).
Early life
Donald Mackenzie Wallace was born to Robert Wallace of
BogheadBoghead is a small village in South Lanarkshire, west central Scotland. It is about southeast of Glasgow and sits nearby to the Avon Water. Boghead is a residential area, with working residents commuting to nearby villages and large towns of Lesmahagow, Strathaven and Lanark. It is composed of...
,
DunbartonshireDunbartonshire or the County of Dumbarton, is a lieutenancy area and a registration county of Scotland. Until 1975 it was a county...
, and Sarah Mackenzie. Both his parents died before Donald turned ten. By the age of fifteen, Wallace immersed himself in his studies. He spent all his time before the age of twenty-eight in continuous study at various universities such as
EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh founded in 1582, is an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. It is the sixth university to be established in the British Isles, making it one of the ancient universities of the United Kingdom.The university is amongst the...
and
GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities...
, focusing his study on metaphysics and ethics. He spent the remaining years at the
École de DroitThe Paris Law Faculty was one of the four faculties of the old University of Paris.After the creation of chairs in civil law in the 9th century, the Paris Law Faculty was called the Faculté de décret or Consultissima decretorum...
, Paris, and applied himself to Roman law at the universities of
BerlinThe Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
and Heidelberg, graduating with a doctorate in law from Heidelberg in 1867.
Travels to Russia
Wallace accepted a private invitation to visit
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, having a strong desire to study the Ossetes, a tribe of
IranianThe Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian...
descent in the
CaucasusThe Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region between at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain ....
. Living in Russia from early 1870 until late 1875, Wallace found the Russian civilization far more interesting than his original Ossetes. Wallace returned to England in 1876 and published two volumes in his work
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
by 1877, right before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. His book had great success, going through several editions and being translated into many languages.
Foreign correspondent
Due to the success of his work in
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Wallace was appointed as foreign correspondent of
The Times. His first post was St. Petersburg in 1877-78; he was then sent to the
Congress of BerlinThe Congress of Berlin was a meeting of the European Great Powers' and the Ottoman Empire's leading statesmen in Berlin in 1878. In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the meeting's aim was to reorganize the countries of the Balkans...
in June and July of 1878. There he assisted Henri de Blowitz, the famous Paris correspondent of
The Times, and carried the text of the treaty from Berlin to Brussels sewn into the lining of his greatcoat. From 1878-1884 he was in Constantinople; while there, he investigated the Balkan peoples and their problems and ended up going on a special mission to
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
. The outcome of Wallace's mission to Egypt became another successful book,
Egypt and the Egyptian Question (1883). After traveling through the Middle East, Wallace was selected as the political officer of Tsar Nicholas II in his Indian tour of 1890-91.
Later life
In his last years Wallace reverted to his youthful self and devoted himself to study again. He didn't publish anything after his last book,
The Web of Empire, in 1902. He contributed briefly to the editing of the 10th edition of the
Encyclopædia BritannicaThe Encyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a privately held company. The articles in the Britannica are aimed at educated adult readers, and written by a staff of about 100 full-time editors and more than...
, but in 1902 he was taken from his
Britannica duties by the
Prince of WalesPrince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the Heir Apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland...
,
George V of the United KingdomGeorge V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 1910 through World War I until his death in 1936...
, who commanded Wallace's attendance for a world tour. He never married and died at
LymingtonLymington on the west bank of the Lymington River is a port on the Solent, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. It is to the east of the South East Dorset conurbation, and faces Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight which is connected to it by a car ferry, operated by Wightlink. The town...
,
HampshireHampshire , sometimes historically Southamptonshire, Hamptonshire, , or the County of Southampton, is a county on the south coast of England. The county borders , Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Surrey and West Sussex...
, on January 10, 1919.
Sources
- G. E. Buckle, ‘Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie (1841–1919)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 28 Oct 2007