Alexander Hosie

Sir Alexander Hosie at the Forbidden Palace in 1909, between Col. Michael Willoughby (extreme left) and Joseph Addison Sir Alexander Hosie (1853–1925) was a Scottish diplomat, traveller and botanical collector.

Early life He was born at Inverurie where his father was farming, the second child of Alexander Hosie (died 1869) and his wife Jean Anderson. He was brought up in Aberdeen, and was educated at Old Aberdeen Grammar School. He graduated from King's College, Aberdeen in 1872. He encountered William Mesny at Chengdu in 1883.

A series of further junior postings to Chinese cities, during which Hosie married, led up to a consular position in Wuzhou. In 1893 he wrote a commercial report on Formosa.

In 1900 Hosie took a boat journey from Khabarovsk to Blagoveshchensk, along the river boundary between the Chinese and Russian Empires. Appointed first consul-general at Chengdu in 1903, he journeyed to the eastern border of Tibet. At the stele in a mountain pass that by tradition marked the boundary of Sichuan and Kham, he met with a confrontation between Chinese and Khampa soldiers. In 1907 Hosie received a knighthood.

Collector Hosie was a prolific collector of botanical specimens, for Kew Gardens and other institutions. The plant genus Hosiea and tree Ormosia hosiei were named for Hosie by Kew. It deals with the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan. Manchuria: Its Peoples, Resources and Recent History (1901) Mr Hosie's Journey to Tibet, 1904: A Report by Mr A. Hosie, His Majesty's Consul at Chengtu, on a Journey from Chengtu to the Eastern Frontier of Tibet On the Trail of the Opium Poppy (2 vols., 1914) Szechwan, its products, industries and resources (1922)

Ethnography Three Years in Western China included a linguistic report on the Lolo people, and on the Phö indigenous language of Guizhou. Hosie took an interest in the Miao people and indigenous groups in China generally, and noted that their study had been neglected.

Family Hosie married firstly in 1887 Florence Lindsay (died 1905), daughter of John Lindsay of Aberdeen; they had one son, the cricketer Alec Hosie. He married secondly, in 1913, Dorothea Soothill (1885–1959), daughter of William Edward Soothill.