James Alfred Davidson - Government Service

Government Service

In 1951 he was posted as naval liaison officer to the Chinese Nationalist Government. The post was a sensitive one, with the Korean War in progress and the Communist Chinese threatening the offshore islands. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek lived close by and Davidson was invited to the family home to play mah-jong. On his return to England, Davidson was promoted and became commanding officer of the minesweeper HMS Welfare, on minesweeping and fishery protection duties. But he found the peacetime Navy less attractive than wartime service and decided to seek an alternative career.

He married his wife Daphne While in 1955.

After being called to the Bar, he joined the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1960. His first assignment was as first secretary in the newly independent Trinidad. In 1969, though, he was posted to Phnom Penh, where he formed a good relationship with the head of state, Prince Sihanouk.

In 1970 Sihanouk was deposed in a military coup. The British and American embassies were the only ones to keep families on in Cambodia, and the Davidsons were kept awake at night by the mortar fire of the Khmer Rouge closing in on the city. All those who worked for them later fell victim to the horrors of "Year Zero". Davidson was an acknowledged authority on the region and his book, Indo-China: Signposts in the Storm (1979) was well received.