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Concept
Thomas Blake Glover
Summary
Thomas Blake Glover (6 June 1838 – 16 December 1911) was a Scottish merchant in the Bakumatsu and Meiji period in Japan.
Thomas Blake Glover was born at 15 Commerce Street, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland on 6 June 1838, the fifth of eight children, to Thomas Berry Glover (1806-1878), a coastguard officer from Vauxhall, London and Mary Findlay (1807-1887) from the parish of Fordyce, Banffshire. Thomas Blake Glover spent the first six years of his life in Fraserburgh, which was fast expanding as a fishing and trading port.
In 1844, the family moved first to coastguard stations at Grimsby, then Collieston in Aberdeenshire, then finally to the Bridge of Don, by Aberdeen, Thomas senior having by this time been promoted to Chief Coastguard Officer. Young Thomas was educated first at the recently opened parish school in Fraserburgh, then in primary schools in Grimsby, Collieston, and finally at the Chanonry School in Old Aberdeen. Upon leaving school, Glover took a job as a shipping clerk with the trading company Jardine Matheson and in 1857 he moved to Shanghai.
In 1859, aged 21, Glover crossed from Shanghai to Nagasaki and worked initially buying Japanese green tea. Two years later, he founded his own firm, Glover and Co. (Guraba-Shokai).
His business was based in Nagasaki. It was here that he had his home constructed; the building remains today as the oldest Western-style building in Japan.
Anti-western sentiment was rife in Japan in the Bakumatsu period due to the unbalanced treaty agreements imposed upon the Tokugawa shogunate by the United States and other western powers, which included extraterritorial rights. Nationalistic militants in Satsuma and Chōshū spearheaded anti-government efforts aimed at toppling the Shogunate and restoring the Emperor as sovereign. It was these factions, later to become leaders in the Meiji Restoration government, that Glover supplied with arms and warships.
Some of the arms sales to rebellious factions in the Western regions of Japan (i.e.
Official source
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