Sir Edmund Backhouse, 2nd Baronet

Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, 2nd Baronet was a British oriental scholar, Sinologist, and linguist whose books exerted a powerful influence on the Western view of the last decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). Since his death, however, it has been established that the major source of his China Under the Empress Dowager is a forgery, most likely by Backhouse himself. His biographer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, unmasked Backhouse as "a confidence man with few equals," who had also duped the British government, Oxford University, the American Bank Note Company and John Brown & Company. Derek Sandhaus, the editor of Backhouse's memoirs Décadence Mandchoue, argues that they are also an undoubted confabulation but contain plausible recollections of scenes and details.