ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG
Foreign Adventurers
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The word 'adventurer' derives etymologically from the French aventurier, a term applied in the fifteenth century to a gamester. Over time the word has evolved to encompass a number of social types such as the soldier of fortune, the speculator, the impostor, and a person who lives by his wits. The Grand Larousse encyclopédique states magistrally that the aventurier is a 'personne qui vit d'intrigues, et n'est pas très scrupuleuse sur les moyens de se procurer de l'argent, le pouvoir, etc.' The concept includes two important elements—the idea that an adventurer is one who freely chooses to take risks and is involved, if only faute de mieux, in some kind of imposture or degree of deceit. This latter quality is particularly attached to the role of the adventuress, for she is perceived as someone who will stick at nothing to gain her ends, including the prostitution of her body; but it must be granted that the terms ‘adventurer' and ‘adventuress' are not simply the male and female equivalents of the same thing, they are linked to social roles, each of which, the male and female, has a different content. An adventurer may be an extremely moral person, like the Marquis de Morès, but an adventuress can hardly be that.
Psychologically, adventurers may be positioned on various points of a continuum, ranging from the atavistic adventurer (the adventurer per se or sui generis) at the one end, to the run-of-the-mill soldier of fortune,54 hardly distinguishable from any other professional, at the other. Mayréna exemplifies the first species; a poseur, liar, gambler, swindler, and crook; his morals were those of the barnyard, though he was often extremely brave. The aristocratic and patriotic Morès, devoted husband and father, a devout Catholic of impeccable private morality, was more a soldier of fortune, as were many of his Spanish forefathers in Sardinia; he was a gentleman who simply enjoyed danger, challenge, movement; he was exhilarated by life in exotic climes. Thus Mayréna and Morès represent two extremes of a class of adventurers, a social category equivalent to that of bandits, feminists, sportsmen, terrorists.55
The golden age of the European adventurer spanned the hundred years from Waterloo to the First World War. It is true that adventurers of all types flourished before that period—condottierri, landsknechten, conquistidores, filibusters, freebooters, buccaneers, explorers, imposters, swindlers and tricksters—but the hundred years of