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applied that system's principles to their native charges. By the 12th October the police had collected over five thousand weapons. Among the collection of swords, spears and assorted other traditional weapons there were quite a few firearms, including a case of Winchester carbines. It should be pointed out that the rioters of the 3rd had not used anything in the line of weapons beyond the usual sticks, stones, bricks and assorted other missiles. By the 12th the city was considered calm and safe enough for the troops to return to their barracks.
In spite of his all-too-evident prejudice against the Chinese, the editor of the Daily Press was having his doubts about the nature of the disturbances.20 He was not prepared to call them anti-foreign, but he was not sure exactly what they were. Nationalism as we think of it was still a new concept in 1884, and most Europeans had difficulty associating the concept with non-European peoples, especially the Chinese. For a century Europeans on the China Coast had referred to the Chinese resistance to foreign influences as xenophobia encouraged by the Confucian literati. When they realized that that concept would no longer adequately describe what they were seeing among the Chinese it is no wonder that they might have had difficulty in thinking of it in terms of nationalism. To them nationalism implied a degree of sophistication which did not square with their preferred view of China and the Chinese. We should, therefore, not be surprised that the editor did not recognize what might have been early signs of nationalism among the Chinese. It is notable that he was prepared to admit that the old definitions and explanations no longer applied to the situation as he saw it developing. Even the usual rumors of outside agitators no longer seemed to correspond to the facts and he was flexible enough to admit that.21
By October 21 the troubles were unquestionably over and the city was getting back to its business. Police guards were no longer needed for the boatmen. When Tam Yik Kiu, editor of the Wah Tse Yat Po, was tried for having published Chang's proclamation the case was thrown out of court on the 24th. The editor of the Daily Press hailed the failure of the action as a victory for freedom of the press.
22
Though the disturbances were over rather quickly one late incident could lead one to believe that perhaps nationalism was a