Georges-Maxime Outrey

Georges-Maxime Outrey generally signed himself Max Outrey; the French diplomatic archives identify him as Maxime Ange Georges Outrey. Born in Baghdad in 1822, he came from a family of consuls and interpreters. He first worked for his father, accompanied the French mission to Persia in 1839, and served as an interpreter before studying law and entering the foreign ministry in 1844. ¹

Outrey’s career ranged across the Americas and the eastern Mediterranean. He served in New York, Quito, Alexandria, Jeddah, Damascus, and Beirut, and became France’s representative in Japan in 1868. After that posting ended in 1873, a special assignment took him back to Egypt in 1876. Washington was his final diplomatic post. ¹

In 1880 he helped implement the Franco-American claims convention. The two governments needed a third commissioner, and Outrey conveyed French agreement to a coordinated request that Brazil’s emperor select one. ²

He retired in February 1882 and died in Paris in 1898. His papers preserve dispatches from successive postings, including Washington. Their archival history also resolves an old identity confusion: collections once catalogued separately under Georges and Maxime Outrey were reunited in 2016 after the archives established that they belonged to the same diplomat. ¹