George Carter Stent (1833–1884) was an English soldier in India and China, an agent of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, and a translator of Chinese texts into English.
George Carter Stent was born into a family of modest means in Canterbury in 1833.
[2] Shortly after his twentieth birthday he joined the British Army as a soldier of the 14th (King's Light) Dragoons and proceeded with the regiment to India, where in the 1850s he witnessed and later wrote about the Great Mutiny.
[3] By the mid-1860s, he was in China, serving in the guard of the British legation at Peking.
[3] He displayed an affinity for Chinese literature, and with the help of Thomas Francis Wade was recruited into the Maritime Customs Service.