The young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York (April 1893), and later in Boston (December 1893). He was French consul in China (1895–1909), including consul in Shanghai (June 1895), and vice-consul in Fuzhou (October 1900), consul in Tianjin ("Tientsin") (1906–1909), in Prague (December 1909), Frankfurt am Main (October 1911), Hamburg (October 1913), Rome (1915–1916), "ministre plénipotentiaire" in Rio de Janeiro (1917–1918), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1921-1927), Washington, D.C. (1928–1933, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in 1933) and Brussels (1933–1936). While he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. (His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, later world-famous as a composer, who wrote incidental music to a number of Claudel's plays.)