George Macartney, earl, a British diplomatist, born at Lissanoure, near Belfast, May 14, 1737, died in Chiswick, England, March 31, 1806. He graduated at Trinity college, Dublin, studied law in London, and in 1765 was sent as envoy extraordinary to the court of Russia, with which country he succeeded in concluding a commercial treaty. In 1769 he was made chief secretary for Ireland, and distinguished himself in the Irish parliament, to which he had been returned, by his contests with the former lords justices, who for selfish purposes had joined the patriot party. He was governor of the island of Grenada from 1775 to 1779, when, being compelled to surrender that possession to the French, he was sent prisoner to France. He was allowed by Louis XVI. to return to England, and was soon after exchanged. He was appointed governoc of Madras in 1780; but ill health constrained him to resign this office in 1786, and to decline that of governor general of India to which he had been nominated before his arrival in London. In 1792 he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the court of Peking, being the first English envoy ever sent to China. He was next made first British governor of the Cape of Good Hope, but declining health soon obliged him to return to England. In 1776 he was created baron, in 1792 viscount, and in 1794 Earl Macartney in the Irish peerage; and in 1796 he received a British barony.

An account of his Chinese embassy by Sir George Staunton, who accompanied him as secretary, appeared in London in 1797 (2 vols. 4to). His life, with selections from his writings by Sir John Barrow, was published in London in 1807 (2 vols. 4to).