W. A. P. Martin

William Alexander Parsons Martin (April 10, 1827 – December 18, 1916), also known as Dīng Wěiliáng (Chinese: 丁韙良), was an American Presbyterian missionary to China and translator, famous for having translated a number of important Western treatises into Chinese, such as Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law.

Biography

Martin was born in Livonia, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University in 1846 and then studied theology at the Presbyterian seminary, New Albany, Indiana. In 1850, Martin arrived in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, where he worked for the next ten years.

Martin served as interpreter for the United States minister William B. Reed, in negotiating the treaty of Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 with China, and in 1859 traveled with his successor, John Elliot Ward, to Beijing and to Edo, Japan.

From 1863 till 1868, he worked at Beijing, often as official interpreter for the American Minister to China, Anson Burlingame. He was reputed to be the first foreigner to make the journey from Beijing to Shanghai on the Grand Canal of China, and described the trip in the Journal of the Asiatic Society (1866). In 1869, Martin became president of the Tongwenguan in Beijing until 1895, and a professor of international law. He acted as an adviser of Chinese officials on questions of international law when disputes arose with European powers, notably during the conflict with France in 1884–1885. In the same year he was made a mandarin of the third class. On August 9, 1898, Martin was appointed by the Guangxu Emperor as the inaugural president of the Imperial University of Peking, the precursor of Peking University.