[ { "id": 205428, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n183\n\nagain draw back the curtain and look at what lay concealed behind it\" (p.11). “At this point we must take another look behind the scenes\" (p.29). On Anson's seizure of the Spanish galleon bringing treasure from Acapulco to Manila he writes that \"to the weird, unreal mandarinate of China it appeared horrific\". \"Weird' and 'unreal' to whom? To the English at that time, or to the Chinese people, or to the author alone? There is no evidence on which to base these epithets. They have meaning only in the author's own mind. On the same page he writes of the \"dastardly\" opinion which the Chinese were forming of Anson, But dastardly from whose point of view? Who is justified in calling it dastardly? Next an example of the author's jocular style: \"The failure of the Amherst embassy and we enter the final straight\". Finally an example of the author's oracular style: “A sense that there was no turning back seeped into the till then strangely changeless atmosphere, and in the extraordinary way in which one thing led to another, both in England and China, soon practically nothing was the same.”\n\nIt would be tedious to challenge the author on the many dubious statements and judgments which mar this book - it would also require a very long review. But any reader with an enquiring mind and a regard for historical accuracy will constantly find himself irritated into asking \"Where is the evidence for this statement?\" In some places the author is simply inaccurate. Thus, in one of his rare footnotes, he states: \"Governors usually, but not always, ruled two provinces, in this case Kwangtung and Kwangsi, the Eastern and Western Kwangs; thus the Governor of the Two Kwangs\". In fact there was a Governor-General (tsung-tu) for the two Kwangs and a Governor (hsün-fu) for each province. This is an elementary mistake which a knowledge of the Chinese sources would have corrected. Similarly, a greater familiarity with the Chinese scene would have saved him from writing \"the Summer Palace in the Western Hills near Peking\", when in fact it lies in the plain between Peking and the Western Hills. Also in the brief chapter on Lord Macartney's embassy to China he mentions that Macartney \"presented to the Grand Secretary a short memorandum of the points he was authorized to raise. But which Grand Secretary? There were six members of the Grand Secretariat when Macartney was in Peking in 1793. Clearly he means Ho-shen, the favourite minister of the Emperor Ch'ien-\n\n++", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205829, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "NOTES ON ETHNO-BOTANY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n129\n\nGlochidion eriocarpum (tsat tai koo ✯✯★★) is a hillside plant. The leaves are first boiled and then applied to sores to relieve irritation.\n\nHydrocotyle asiatica (pang tai woon). A tonic drink is made from this plant as a yuet hei reliever. It is considered especially good for nursing mothers. The leaves and stalks may be eaten as a vegetable with rice, and an excellent soup can be made from it.\n\nHedyotis uncinella (po chau tsai). The plants are dried in the sun and used in making a tonic drink to relieve yuet hei and to offset general debility.\n\nThese are only ten of many economic simples with reputed curative or medicinal qualities. As already suggested, some of them may have been emergency famine food at one time or another, particularly those that also serve as vegetables or as soup stock.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 In 1962-63, most of the nets in small sampans appeared to have been made from commercial natural fibres (abaca, ramie or coconut coir fibers). However, Agave fiber was still used for making twine. Fishermen then were readily accepting synthetic nets. Some fishermen I talked to believed that synthetic nets were too expensive for small craft as snagged nets meant costly losses because it is harder to salvage nets of synthetic fiber than those of natural fiber, so I was told.\n\n2 I haven't seen cochineal insects used for dye myself and the information given me was essentially \"before the use of chemical dyes, in olden days, this kind of cactus (Opuntia) harboured yin chi insects that were used for a red dye.\" Whether the cochineal insect was used or not in the lifetime of the older villagers I talked with, I do not know. Personally I suspect it was used extensively in the past and the dyeing technique diffused through the Philippines to the China coast from Acapulco, Mexico in the days of the Manila Galleon (i.e., Acapulco to Manila to Macau and thence along the South Chinese coast).\n\n3 Kong Nim and Pei Kwan Kong terms for Rhodomyrtus tomentosa berry, are used interchangeably at Fan Lau. Fan Lau as well as most of the other Lantau villages were, I suspect, pirate hideouts and it may well be that Pei Kwan Kong may have been a term derived from the time of the Great Evacuation, 1662-1669. For details of the latter see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its Communications before 1842. (Hong Kong 1963, Chinese version 1960) chapter VI,\n\n4 Tuk yuc tung (\"fish poison vine\"). Many cultivators buy an insecticide powder called tuk yue fun (fish poison powder). This powder is usually first mixed with sawdust before application. It is the same powder used by gardeners to rid the lawn of white grubs! This powder too is dusted on the heads of children suspected of having lice in their hair.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208943, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE\n\n73\n\nPhilippines was a colony within a colony, being financed and administered not from Madrid but by the government of Nueva España in Mexico. The islands produced little except small quantities of wax, ginger, cinnamon and gold, and the entire Spanish military and administrative establishment had therefore to be subsidised from Mexico. Apart from the missionaries, who were scattered fairly widely over the archipelago and later became the principal landowners in the Philippines, there were no Spanish settlements of any consequence outside Manila and the colony's sole economic—as opposed to spiritual—justification was the existence of Manila, which therefore grew rapidly and soon became the metropolis of the whole archipelago. Its excellent harbour facilities and its proximity to the rich rice-producing hinterland of central Luzon had made it a natural centre for government and commerce in the first place. By 1650 the population of the Spanish walled city of Intramuros and the suburbs where the Chinese and Filipinos lived was about 42,000.\n\nFor about 200 years the Manila galleon sailing between Manila and Acapulco in Mexico was the economic mainstay of the Spanish colony in the Philippines. The galleon trade was based on the exchange of Chinese silks, for which there was an almost limitless demand in Mexico, and Mexican silver, for which, as we have seen, there was an equally insatiable demand in China.\n\nTo the galleon trade the substantial Chinese immigration into the Philippines, which has significantly altered the ethnic composition of the Filipinos, must also be attributed. Already by the 1580s the Sangleys, as the Chinese settlers were called, had been assigned a separate quarter of the city—the Parian or market place—which soon became the commercial centre of Manila. The Chinese rapidly gained a virtual monopoly of retail business in the city and dominated the craft trades. The galleons also brought to the Philippines the clergy needed for the propagation of Christianity in the islands and many new crops and animals from the New World, including maize, cattle, goats and horses.18\n\nThe voyage across the Pacific was made almost annually from the foundation of Manila and in 1593 was regulated at two ships a year from Acapulco to Manila. This pattern was maintained more or less continuously right up till the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. Very large ships were used for the voyage; vessels of up to 1000 tons are recorded from 1614,19\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208944, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "74\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\nOriginally the Spanish had hoped to gain a share of the Moluccan spice trade from Manila, but the Portuguese and later the Dutch were too strongly entrenched and the trade with China soon became virtually the Philippines' only economic resource. Silk and other Chinese goods were brought to Manila at first by Chinese junks and after about 1604 also by Portuguese ships from Macau. In the 1630s the annual value of imports from Macau to Manila averaged about 1.5 million silver pesos. At the end of the 16th century between 40 and 50 large seagoing junks were still coming yearly to Manila from Fukien bringing Chinese goods, which they sold for Mexican and Peruvian silver pesos and rials-of-eight.20 In 1573, for example, the two galleons bound for Acapulco carried 712 bolts of Chinese silk and 22,300 pieces of fine china gilt and other porcelain wares.21\n\nAlthough the Manila merchants gained enormous profits from this trade, the government of the colony had an annual deficit of between 85 to 350 thousand pesos. The Mexico treasury made up this deficit with silver bullion, much of which found its way into the coffers of the Chinese merchants. This tremendous drain on Spanish resources led to various proposals being put forward to abandon the Philippines altogether. The merchants of Seville, who enjoyed a monopoly of the trans-Atlantic carrying trade with Nueva España, and the Andalusian textile manufacturers, who feared that Mexico and Peru would be flooded with cheap Chinese silks, were especially hostile to the Philippine colony. In the end, they succeeded only in having the trade restricted to the Manila-Acapulco route, the trade between Mexico and Peru abolished, and the value of the goods to be shipped annually from Manila to Acapulco restricted to 250,000 pesos, which was deemed a large enough quota to maintain the Philippine colony and small enough to be easily absorbed in Mexico. In practice, however, the value of the goods shipped from Manila was closer to 2 million pesos a year, the quantity of merchandise loaded being determined not by royal decree but by the amount of cargo space available on the galleons. The Chinese packers were extremely skilled at cramming goods into the galleons, with resulting overlading, which caused many shipwrecks. Individual seamen were also each allowed to carry one chest, which, as one contemporary wryly observed, had a most expansive capacity.22 Space on the galleons was bought by a few wealthy entrepreneurs and by groups such as the cathedral chapter and charitable foundations such as orphanages and hospitals, which often amassed enough", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208945, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE\n\n75\n\nwealth thereby to act as bankers to the shippers. Profits were seldom less than 100 and often as much as 300 per cent. In return the galleons from Acapulco brought about 2 million silver pesos to the Philippines in an averagely good year.23\n\nIn 1580, with the death of the Cardinal King Henry of Portugal, the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united in the person of Philip II. In the Indies as well as in Europe, the Cortes of Tomar of 1581 guaranteed completely separate Portuguese and Spanish administrations and made direct trade between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions overseas illegal. Both in Manila and Mexico there were many who wished to engage in direct trade with China, but the Portuguese argued that this would ruin their commerce in the Far East and that Spain would also suffer, as all the silver from Nueva España would go to China and not to Spain or the Philippines.24 They also claimed it would mean the ruin of the Portuguese Jesuit missions in Japan, since, as a bishop in the Philippines remarked, \"all these affairs are moved by but one wheel, namely Macau.\"25\n\nDirect voyages were even made occasionally from Macau to Acapulco, though these caused great scandal in official circles. In 1589, D. João da Gama made the first crossing of the Pacific from Macau but on arrival in Acapulco was imprisoned and his goods impounded.\n\nRequests made by the leading citizens of Manila to make voyages to \"Japan, Macau and all other kingdoms and posts, whether Portuguese or pagan\" were not granted.26 The government in Madrid accepted that Japan lay within the Portuguese sphere of influence and that Macau had a monopoly of the Japan trade, while at the same time the Macaonese consistently thwarted all Manila's attempts to gain a trading base on the China coast which would have competed with theirs. The Cantonese officials did finally allow the Spanish to settle at a place they called El Pinal on the coast between Canton and Macau; its exact whereabouts are unknown. The Portuguese informed the Chinese that the Spaniards were \"robbers and insurrectionaries who raise revolts in the kingdoms they enter\" and then attempted to drive them out of El Pinal. Though this attack was staved off, El Pinal was nevertheless abandoned shortly afterwards.27\n\nBy about 1610 some direct, though intermittent, trade had developed between Nagasaki and Manila. Most of it was conducted in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 } ]