Joseph Addison (diplomat)


Sir Joseph Addison KCMG was British ambassador to the Baltic States, and to Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazi Germany.

Career

Joseph Addison, son of John Edmund Wentworth Addison, was educated in France and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He entered the Foreign Office in 1903 and was assistant secretary at the Second Hague Conference in 1907 before being posted to Peking 1908–10. He was Private Secretary to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1911–13. He resigned from the FO in 1913 but rejoined and served in Paris 1916–20 before being appointed Counsellor at Berlin 1920–27, serving as chargé d'affaires at various times.
Addison was appointed Minister to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 1927 and transferred to be Minister to Czechoslovakia in 1930. The Times obituary said "For the next six years he held this important position and did much to foster good relations with the Czechoslovak government, especially after the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany in 1933." However, a historian of the period claims that Addison "made virtually no attempt to conceal his contempt for his hosts" and was "very much responsible for cultivating a negative view of the Czechs and their country in British official circles" and that he "disliked Edvard Beneš with considerable passion and took delight in embarrassing him in his reports from Prague."
In 1936 Addison was appointed Ambassador to Chile, but he did not proceed there and after a few months decided instead to retire.
Addison's obituary in The Times has been quoted above. A few days after its publication, The Times also published two tributes including one from Sir William Seeds who wrote:
Addison was appointed CMG in the New Year Honours of 1924 while he was serving in Berlin, and knighted KCMG in the King's Birthday Honours of 1933.