# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Currie, Philip Henry Wodehouse

​CURRIE, PHILIP HENRY WODEHOUSE, first Baron Currie of Hawley (1834–1906), diplomatist, born in London on 13 Oct. 1834, was fourth son of Raikes Currie (1805-1881) of Bush Hill, Middlesex, and Minley Manor, Hampshire, M.P. for Northampton 1837-57, by his wife Laura Sophia (d. 1869), eldest daughter of John, second Baron Wodehouse. After education at Eton, he entered the foreign office at the age of twenty, and served in that department for forty years, passing through the various grades of the political staff until his selection to be assistant under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1882 and permanent under-secretary of state in 1889. He was precis writer to the earl of Clarendon during his tenure of office as foreign secretary in 1857-8, and was temporarily attached to the British legation at St. Petersburg in 1856 and 1857 during Lord Wodehouse's special mission to that capital on the conclusion of the Crimean war. He assisted Julian Fane [q. v.] in his duties as protocolist to the conferences on the affairs of Luxemburg in May 1867. When Lord Salisbury was sent to Constantinople in 1876 to act as British plenipotentiary in the conferences held there on the Eastern question, Currie was appointed secretary to the special mission, and Lord Salisbury formed on that occasion a high estimate of his ability. On Lord Salisbury's accession to the office of foreign secretary in April 1878 he appointed Currie to be his private secretary, and when Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as the British plenipotentiaries to the congress of Berlin in June following, Currie and Montagu Corry (afterwards Lord Rowton) accompanied them as joint-secretaries to the special mission. He received the C.B. in recognition of his services at the close of the congress, and on his return to England in addition to his work as private secretary was entrusted by Lord Salisbury with the correspondence respecting Cyprus, which had been leased from the sultan under the convention of 4 June 1878.
On Lord Salisbury's resignation in 1880 Currie resumed his work as a senior clerk in charge of the Eastern department. He was attached as secretary to the marquis of Northampton's special mission to invest King Alfonso XII of Spain with the garter in 1881, and in October 1882 was appointed assistant under-secretary of state by earl Granville, who succeeded Lord Salisbury as foreign secretary. In June to August 1884 Currie acted as joint protocolist to the conferences held in London on the finances of Egypt. In 1885 he received the K.C.B., and in December 1888 he was promoted permanent under-secretary of state in succession to Lord Pauncefote, who had become British envoy at Washington.
After five years' service as permanent under-secretary, during which he was made G.C.B. in 1892, he was appointed by Lord Rosebery in December 1893 British ambassador at Constantinople, being sworn as usual a privy councillor. This post he held for four and a half years. ​ The period of his service was one of exceptional difficulty. The continued misrule and oppression of the Christian subjects of the Porte in Asia Minor drove the Armenians into an active and widespread conspiracy of revolt, which was repressed by the authorities and the Mussulman population with savage severity. In May 1895 the representatives of the great European powers made a collective demand for reforms in the administration. This was met by the Porte with the usual dilatory pleas, and by the eventual announcement of inadequate concessions in September and October following. Riots broke out in the latter month at Constantinople, in which a considerable number of Armenians lost their lives, and terrible massacres shortly afterwards took place at Trebizond and in other places in Asia Minor. Collective demands were again made by the representatives of the great powers in November for investigation of the circumstances and punishment of those responsible, but were again met by evasive answers ; there was, however, some amendment of the situation, and a formidable rising in the district of Zeitoun north of Aleppo was pacified by the mediation of the powers in 1896. But on 1 August of that year a sanguinary massacre of Armenians was perpetrated in Constantinople itself by a Mahomedan mob which had received arms from the Turkish authorities. Fresh remonstrances were made by the embassies and met by fresh excuses on the part of the Turkish government. More effective precautions were however taken against further outbreaks, and the troubles gradually subsided.
Throughout this period the British ambassador, under the instructions first of Lord Kimberley and later of Lord Salisbury, who became foreign secretary in 1895, was taking a leading part in the efforts of the European representatives to secure protection and redress for the sufferers. British policy was greatly hampered by a frank declaration from the Russian government that the tsar had an invincible repugnance to the employment of coercive measures against the sultan, but there was a moment after the massacres at Constantinople, when it seemed possible that the British government might decide on intervention even at the risk of ulterior complications. The objections to this course were considered to be too serious to permit of its adoption, and subsequently a sporadic recrudescence of disorders made it clear that the sultan's authority and goodwill were in fact the only means, however imperfect and untrustworthy, of keeping Mahomedan fanaticism in check. The relations of the British ambassador with the Turkish sovereign could hardly in such circumstances be altogether cordial, and a certain impulsiveness of energy and directness of speech which were among Currie's characteristics were not qualities likely to win favour with an Oriental autocrat. It was no secret that the sultan would have been glad that be should be replaced, and that Lord Salisbury turned a deaf ear to intimations to that effect. A personal episode of a somewhat unusual character, which occurred in the autumn of 1895, added to the difficulties of the ambassador's position. Said Pasha, a former grand vizier, having refused the request of the sultan to resume that office, was imprisoned in the grounds of Yildiz Kiosk, but succeeded in making his escape, and took refuge late at night in the British embassy, which he positively declined to leave, until after five days of negotiation the sultan had given full assurances to the ambassador that the recalcitrant ex-minister should not be molested in any way. In 1897 the troubles in Asia Minor were succeeded by the revolt of Crete, the despatch to the island of a Greek force, the consequent outbreak of war between Turkey and Greece, resulting in the disastrous defeat of the Greek army, the intervention of the powers to secure favourable terms of peace for the Hellenic kingdom, and the autonomy of Crete under Turkish suzerainty. In all these matters the British embassy necessarily took an active part, and Currie who, though physically strong, was not possessed of a very robust constitution, found his health giving way under the strain, and was glad to succeed Sir Clare Ford at the embassy at Rome in July 1898.
His period of service in Italy was marked by the assassination of King Humbert and the accession of King Victor Emmanuel III on 30 July 1900. No very critical diplomatic work devolved on him, the principal questions for discussion between the two countries being connected with Italian claims and interests in Africa, which were not unsympathetically regarded by Great Britain. He was one of the British delegates at the international conference held at Rome in the winter of 1898 to consider the means of dealing with anarchism, a matter in which this country was unable entirely to associate itself with the methods agreed upon by other powers. In January 1899 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Currie of Hawley, and retired on pension on 17 Jan. 1903. He passed the rest of his ​life in England until his death at his country place, Hawley, on 12 May 1906.
Currie was an admirable official, rapid in his work, clear in judgment, and wanting in neither courage nor decision. As a diplomatist he was somewhat lacking in power to appreciate and make allowance for the susceptibilities of those with whom he had to deal. In social life he was a warm friend, kindly, hospitable, and good-naturedly sarcastic, not universally popular but greatly liked by the majority of those with whom he was closely associated.
He married on 24 Jan. 1894 [see Currie, Mary Montgomerie, Suppl. II], but had no children.
[The Times, 14 May 1906; Foreign Office List 1907, p. 397; correspondence laid before Parliament.]
S.