[ { "id": 204732, "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-1964", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "26\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nFriday 12th\n\n1* at\n\nAt nine this morning received a letter from Macao dated the 8th, in answer to mine of the 5th; all quiet there but everyone ready to be off the moment any trouble was at hand. Delano received, enclosed in mine, a chit from Russell Sturgis which contained much news. The Hercules and Austen left for the Bogue on Tuesday last to deliver their opium and were to be followed by the Jane and Aeriel. The Chinese would only let two vessels come up at a time. The Good Success left Macao on the 9th for Madras, with despatches to the British admiral on the India Station, and the Rob Roy was to leave today for Calcutta. The Exchange sailed for Manila on the 8th; the Nar† Naples, Roza and Benuo Successo and Poppy had also sailed for Manila but the letter does not say if they took opium or not.\n\nMr. Inness was on board the Hercules with Alex. Matthews and Chay. Beal36. The Hercules and Austen had in all over 5,000 chests.\n\nGave two bottles of beer to the Se-Ying37 or lieutenants on guard in the second line of boats in front of the Factories. Had a long chat with several of the officers belonging to Name Hoe's guard relative to matters in dispute. They appear exceedingly friendly but take no interest whatever in what is going on,\n\nSaturday, 13, 1839\n\nLast night at 12 o'clock Captain Elliot received a communication from the Commissioner, dated in the morning from the Bogue, in which he requests that the opium ships might be ordered to come up and anchor close to Chinn-up to deliver the opium, instead of Lankeel where there was much inconvenience owing to rough water. He also said that the compradores and cooks were ordered to return but they have not come yet. However it will take some time for the order to be generally promulgated.\n\nMidnight I have just returned from a chat of three hours duration held at the Hoppo House or \"Custom-House Station\" at the water's edge opposite our Factory between two officers, one equal to a captain and the other to a lieutenant, the Custom-House Officer and myself. The Captain, who wore a crystal button, was\n\n*Two words illegible.\n\n† Part of ship's name illegible.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211622, "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-1989", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "12\n\nHong Kong had been named for the first time as a potential British acquisition only on 11 January 1841.33 Lord Palmerston wrote a letter to the minister of the Emperor of China on 20 February 1840 instructing him that 'the British Government demands that one or more sufficiently large properly situated Islands on the Coast of China, to be fixed upon by the British plenipotentiaries [Admiral G. Elliot and Captain C. Elliot], shall be permanently given up to the British Government'.34 The two Elliots were left to choose the island or islands, and when the Rear-Admiral returned home, the choice was left entirely to Charles Elliot. However the British Government had been expecting the acquisition of the island of Chusan off the northern coast of China. As neither Chusan nor Shachiao were acceptable to the Chinese, Hong Kong was suggested as an alternative. Ch'i-shan wrote to Charles Elliot on 15 January offering him either Hong Kong or Kowloon but not both, and Elliot replied accepting Hong Kong on 16 January 1841. On 15 January James Matheson wrote to his partner that Elliot had arrived in Macao the night before: 'I learn from him very confidentially that Ki Shen has agreed to the British having a possession of their own outside, but objects to ceding Chuenpee; in lieu of which Captain Elliot has proposed Hong Kong'. Consequently there had not been much time for reconnoitre between the suggestion of Hong Kong and the reality of its possession, either on the part of the expeditionary forces or on the part of those members of the merchant community of the Pearl Delta who were conversant with the diplomatic negotiations. James Matheson's curiosity about the island, as evinced by his circumnavigation of it, which was surely not done for show, was matched by that of the Protestant missionaries, eight of whom chartered a lorcha in Macao on 8 February and went to Hong Kong on an exploratory outing.\" Their verdict that 'Hong Kong will, if retained by the British, rise in importance and influence until it becomes the first insular emporium in these Eastern waters'38 could provide a key to later references to the flag-hoisting\n\n36\n\nceremony,\n\nFor although twentieth-century and contemporary historians of Hong Kong have continued in the tradition of downplaying or ignoring the event, there was a period between the late 1870s and the early 1890s when at least two people contended for the honour of having been the person who hoisted the flag on 26 January 1841. That such claims were being made is indicative of the fact that Hong Kong had become a more stable community with a developing sense of identity. The differences between the contenders illustrate the wide-ranging appeal of this honour.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212178, "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-1990", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "97\n\nmade a very good shewing, which drew the admiration of all neutral observers. The Japanese soon brought reinforcements and extended their front down towards the Yangtze in an attempt to dislodge the Chinese from their grip on the suburb of Chapei; but despite the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese equipment, especially in the air, the Chinese stuck to their ground all through August and September, until well into October, when they began to crack, and were finally dislodged by a successful landing on the flank in Hangchow Bay,\n\nThese operations at first led to a complete breakdown in communications between Nanking and Shanghai. Towards the end of August, however, it was found that cars could cover the 200 miles to Shanghai by turning off the main road at Soochow, and passing through Kashing to the Hangchow road, which entered Shanghai from the south. As I was badly in need of instructions I decided to motor down. On arrival in Shanghai I was astonished at the state in which I found popular foreign opinion. There appeared to be no adequate appreciation of the meaning of these new Japanese encroachments in China, or of the Japanese threat to the \"open door\" system of trading the Far East, the traditional British policy expressed in Lord Palmerston's instructions to Admiral Elliot in 1840, when he said \"You will bear in mind that Her Majesty's Government do not desire to obtain for British subjects any exclusive privileges of trade which should not be equally extended to the subjects of every other power\".\n\nShanghai had for some years been the object of much factious interference and petty vexation on the part of Chinese officials in their campaign to recover their \"lost privileges\". The municipal council of the International Settlement found itself continuously involved in arguments, mostly sterile, over all sorts of questions of local interest, such as roads, police, taxes, jurisdiction, and so on, providing occasions where the Chinese aptitude for obstruction had full play. The consequence was to alienate the sympathies of many of the leading foreigners in the main stronghold of foreign interests in China. (According to Professor Remer, an American economist who made a study of foreign investments in China in 1931, British business investments were distributed as follows:\n\nIn Shanghai £130,000,000\n\nIn Hongkong £36,000,000\n\nIn the rest of China £30,000,000\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214844, "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-1999", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "226\n\nconcerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress.” Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from “An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842”, Blackwood's, 1964, p. 80.\n\n\"The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981), p. 117.\n\n12\n\nAs, e.g. in Bingham, op.cit., Vol.I, p. 187: \"Captain Elliot assured the Chinese, by proclamations in their language, that no harm was intended to the peaceable inhabitants by the present expedition; that it was caused by Lin's bad treatment of the English; and that the force would only act against the mandarins, officers, and soldiers of the government.\"\n\n13 Bingham, Vol.II, p.171, and Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975), p.129.\n\n14 Beeching, p.149. They had done the same in Lower Burma in 1824-26 (George Bruce, The Burma Wars 1824-1886 (London, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973) pp.33-35.\n\n15 See Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Sheridan (Eds), The Laws of War, Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 6, \"The Age of Napoleon”, in which Gunther Rothenberg wrote (p.97) that \"Professional soldiers were well aware of the laws and customs of war between civilized states, and by and large observed them,” and that despite atrocities and violations, their \"basic existence and validity” were never challenged.\n\n16 The most notable example being the firing of a salute of minute guns by the flagship, HMS Blenheim, when Admiral Kuan's body was recovered by his family after the battle of the Bogue in January 1841: see Bingham, Vol.II, p. 151, and Beeching, p. 128.\n\n18\n\nBeeching, pp. 147, 151. Wyndham Baker in Blackwood's p.79. By way of comment he added, “The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214961, "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-2000", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "12\n\nالرقاب\n\nwe wanted might have been got, if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliot - not Admiral Elliot, for he was obliged to come away from ill-health who completely disobeyed his instructions and tried to get the lowest terms he could......Albert is so much amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong...' (author's italics).\n\nWaley compares Lin and Elliot, the opponents in the opium dispute, and finds similarities; for instance, both were civil servants carrying out tasks imposed on them from above, both being cashiered for failing to fulfil these tasks. Strangely, Waley does not mention what is perhaps the most significant similarity: they both detested the opium trade. Elliot saw it as a disgrace and a sin and the blackest stain on the British character. It has even been suggested that Elliot, under instructions to protect the opium traders - a task he resented - deliberately disobeyed his orders and demanded less from the Chinese than the Government at home had ordered him to do.\n\n21\n\nLin was dismissed in late 1840. He left Guangzhou in May 1841, exiled to Xinjiang (Turkestan). He failed through no fault of his own; he was sent on a “mission impossible.\" Booth sums it up by saying that Lin had powerful forces massed against him - the military power of the British, the corruption of the Chinese government, and the devious immorality of the opium dealers.'22 The Opium War settled nothing. The long line of an unprotected Chinese coast threw the opium trade, in Elliot's words, 'into desperate hands.' Opium smuggling became totally out of control, and relations between Britain and China remained unstable and hostile. The measures Emperor Daoguang took to stop the opium traffic may have led to war, but it would be inaccurate to say that they caused it. It has been strongly argued that they merely gave an excuse for the war, which certain groups in Britain had been long demanding. It would be wrong, however, to assume that British public opinion was solidly behind the government and its war with China. Elsewhere in the Symposium it will be pointed out that a strong anti-opium sentiment existed in Britain, which in the end could not be silenced and led eventually to the end of the infamous trade. Two examples will suffice here: The Times, upon receiving the news of the Treaty of Nanjing wrote that the moment had come for Britain to extricate herself from her involvement with opium. Some moral compensation was owed to China 'for pillaging her towns and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]