Byron Brenan

Byron Brenan CMG, (7 December 1847 – 28 February 1927), was a British diplomat who served in China from 1866. His last position before retirement was as British Consul General in Shanghai from 1899 to 1901.

Brenan had English and Irish ancestry. His second brother worked for Chinese Maritime Customs Service. One of his nephews John Fitzgerald Brenan was also a diplomat who also served as same British Consul General in Shanghai from 1930 to 1937.

Brenan joined UK Foreign Office in 1866 and served initially in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhu and Tianjin. He served as consul in Chefoo (now Yantai) from 1883 to 1885, and then served as British consul in Beijing and Tianjin from 1885 to 1893. In June 1886 he went to Hong Kong to represent the British Government, on a joint committee on opium and facilitated the signing of regulations on the management of western medicine in Hong Kong.

From 1893 to 1898 while serving as the British Consul General in Guangzhou, Brenan had to deal with response to rumours concerning the bubonic plague in Hong Kong and Sun Yat-sen's anti-Qing revolutionary movement. Later in 1897, Brenan negotiated with the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, Tan Zhonglin about the expansion of Hong Kong, which led to the signing of Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory in 1898. In addition, in 1895, he was appointed by the British Government as a special commissioner to examine the trade situation of the UK in Far East and published in 1897 a "Report on the State of Trade at the Treaty Ports of China".

Brenan was appointed as British Consul-General in Shanghai in 1898 and took office in the following year. During his tenure, he assisted in the rescue of Kang Youwei during the 1898 Jiangsu coup. In 1899, he successfully negotiated with the Qing court to expand the total area of Shanghai International Settlement by more than three times its size to 33,503 acres. In order to honor his performance in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Council on his retirement in July 1901, named a new road in the concession Brenan Road (now Changning Road). He continued to pay attention to Chinese affairs after he retired to the UK. He founded the China Society in 1889 and served as honorary secretary. He died in London in 1927, at the age of 79.