Amédée Baillot de Guerville, or A.B. de Guerville (May 3, 1869 - May 21, 1913), was a free-lance war correspondent, editor, and commercial agent, most frequently cited for his travel writing. He was best known in his day for his staunch defense of Japan in the aftermath of the alleged Port Arthur Massacre

Port Arthur massacre (1894)

The Port Arthur massacre occurred during the First Sino-Japanese War from 21 November 1894 for two or three days, when advanced elements of the First Division of the Japanese Second Army under command of the one-eyed General Yamaji Motoharu killed somewhere between 1,000 to 20,000 Chinese...

 of November 1894.

Born to Paul-Louis-Amédée Baillot, clerk, commercial agent, and teacher of the French language, and his third wife, Antoinette Luce, Baillot followed what was apparently a family tradition of borrowing a portion of the Huet de Guerville family name, begun in England by his father in 1850 when he immigrated to the United States from his native France in 1887.

De Guerville began teaching French at Milwaukee Women's College in 1889. In 1890 he established the Le Courrier Francais newspaper for the Milwaukee and Chicago francophone community. Baillot began his career as commercial agent in 1891, with a stereopticon presentation of the 1889 Exposition Universelle de Paris (Paris World's Fair) to an audience in St. Paul, Minnesota. Around this time the American Tariff League accused de Guerville of having accepted money from French merchants and the Democratic Party to influence the Wisconsin elections of 1892. That same year de Guerville traveled to Japan, Korea, China, Ceylon, and Europe as a Special Commissioner for the World Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World's Fair) of 1893, where he promoted the event to kings, emperors, and heads of state.

In 1894 he returned to Asia, banking on contacts he made during the brief time he spent there in 1892 to secure an assignment as special correspondent covering the Sino-Japanese War

First Sino-Japanese War

The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea...

, then known simply as the China-Japan War, for the New York Herald

New York Herald

The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6, 1835, and 1924.-History:The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the UnitedStates...

 under the direction of James Gordon Bennett, Jr.

James Gordon Bennett, Jr.

James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was publisher of the New York Herald, founded by his father, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., who emigrated from Scotland. He was generally known as Gordon Bennett to distinguish him from his father....

. His primary competition was James Creelman

James Creelman

James Creelman , was a reporter during the height of yellow journalism. He was born in Montreal, Province of Canada, the son of a boiler inspector, Matthew Creelman, and homemaker, Martha Dunwoodie....

, writing for The New York World

New York World

The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...

. Creelman and Baillot came to journalistic blows regarding the massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops at the Chinese city of Port Arthur

Lüshunkou

Lüshunkou is a district in the municipality of Dalian, Liaoning province, China. Also called Lüshun City or Lüshun Port, it was formerly known as both Port Arthur and Ryojun....

 on November 20–21, 1894. While Creelman, and other correspondents present, described a widescale and cold-blooded massacre, de Guerville alleged in the pages of the New York Herald that no such massacre had occurred.

Baillot married Laura Belle Spraker on December 23, 1896, in New York City. In 1900 Mrs. A.B. de Guerville filed for bankruptcy and divorce, but no divorce was ever granted. In 1898, a fire was reported at the offices of The Illustrated American, where de Guerville had taken over has part-owner and managing editor the previous year. Following the fire, but not necessarily as a result of it, de Guerville left the United States for good. In his version of events, the onset of a heretofore latent tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 was the cause of his departure for his native France. By his own account, de Guerville experienced a near miraculous recovery from his tuberculosis while a patient at the pioneering Nordach Clinic

Nordach Clinic

The Nordach Clinic, or Nordach Sanatorium, was a clinic for the treatment of advanced tuberculosis. It was established in the late 19th century by Dr. Otto Walther in Nordach in the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany. Some of Dr...

 for consumptives in Germany's Black Forest

Black Forest

The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....

 region. Thereafter he continued to travel and write for a short while, producing his memoirs of his experiences in the Far East entitled Au Japon (1904), in which he admitted that the massacre had occurred while insisting it was Japanese coolies who had done the butchering. He also wrote a well-received travelogue of British Egypt entitled New Egypt (1906). While in Egypt in 1906, A.B. de Guerville claimed to be the first man to race up the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...

 in his motor-boat. In the last years of his life de Guerville was reported to have lived in Lausanne

Lausanne

Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

, Switzerland. During these latter years he also purchased land from in Valecluse in the south of France, where he is credited with developiing the land and expanding their golf course. He died in 1913, likely of the tuberculosis from which he claimed to have been cured. He is buried in the Alphonse Karr Cemetery in Saint-Raphaël, France.

Sources

• Guerville, A.B. de. The Crusade Against Phthisis." London: Hugh Rees, 1904.

• Guerville, A.B. de. Au Japon: The Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent in Japan, Korea, and China, 1892-1894. Edited and with an Introduction by Daniel C. Kane. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2009.

• Kane, Daniel C. "Each of Us in His Own Way: Factors Behind Conflicting Accounts of the Massacre at Port Arthur." Journalism History 31.1 (Spring 2005):23-33.