[
    {
        "id": 211808,
        "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": 223,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "198\n\nT: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs\n\nF: Music\n\nTh: D\n\nR: This was the last theatrical entertainment organised by Horatio BUSKIN and he could look back on a successful \"career\" as manager. Only the music had flagged of late (tonight \"a buzz in a box near the proscenium represented the music — we were ten feet away from it and it was therefore lost upon us\" the days of \"Sir George Smart and Messrs Thalberg\" and \"Koenig\" were over).\n\n—\n\nTo make up for these shortcomings \"Mr. CLAY as Honeybun (in the Infanticidal Farce) was, as he always is, first rate\". In Slasher and Crasher the public witnessed the debut of \"Miss Polly DEXTER as Rosa, affording hope of a new evening star of the first magnitude\" (NCH 23.2.1856).\n\n14.8.1856 (Thur)\n\nN.N.: The Nigger Doctor and his Patient Patient or the First Lesson in Surgery\n\nT: Negro farce\n\nC: Travelling American Company (Messrs Baker, Woodward and Montgomery) Th: Old Theatre (C)\n\nN: The whole evening was announced as a \"Grand Ethiopian Musical Soirée\"\n\nR: An advertisement only was published in the NCH of August 9. In it the above mentioned gentlemen (formerly of the New York Serenaders) praised their performances as having been \"the theme of universal admiration during the past four years throughout the East Indies as well as the Australian Colonies\". In addition to the farce, the programme consisted of \"Negro songs, interspersed with willy saying and doings peculiar to the African race in America\".\n\n19.9.1856 (Fri)\n\nConcert by Ali Ben Sou Alle and some local amateurs.\n\nInstruments: Turkophone, \"Turkophonini\", clarinet, piano.\n\nProgramme:\n\nG. ROSSINI: Two overtures. V. BELLINI: Selections from \"La Sonnambula\". F. MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY: \"The Fairest Flower\" (song). Some German songs, The \"Shanghai Redowa Walse\", Medley of English, Scottish and Irish airs. Th: N.N. (C)\n\nR: Tonight was the occasion of the first real concert in the Settlement's history. It was given by Mr. ALI BEN SOU ALLE, a Turk who, after a study at the Conservatoire de Paris, had been appointed Directeur de Musique de Marine in Senegal (which had been French since 1871) in 1844. In 1847 he returned to Paris to enter the orchestra of the Opéra Comique, but the following year he went to London where he found employment in the orchestra of Her Majesty's Theatre at the Haymarket. He learned to play some instruments that had been invented by Adolphe Sax, the Belgian musician (1814-1894) and thereafter he made an extensive tour to Australia, Java, Singapore, Manila and China (CM 16, 10, 1856). In Hong Kong and even Canton he had appeared in August and October 1856 (CM 7.8. 14.8. 21.8. 16.10.1856). In between he gave two recitals in the Yangtze port. In the Survey it has already been stated that the soloist entertained the public with performances on several instruments that had been rechristened Turkophone and Turkophonini: in reality they were the Saxophone and (probably) the soprano saxophone. Well may we ask how these instruments, which were only of recent origin (1840s), were received by an audience completely unused to their sound. The artist interpreted a selection from Bellini's \"La Sonnambula\" on the \"Turkophone\" and the critic wrote that \"the compass of the instrument is very great but we confess to some disappointment as regards its quality of tone, and correctness of tone also, in some few notes, and altogether we think it an imperfect instrument",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215286,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 63,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "II\n\nasked that Britain should approach Australia to secure for Hong Kong the same tariff preference as Britain enjoyed, in accordance with article 15 of the Ottawa agreement. He pointed out that Hong Kong had granted Australian brandy a preference in the excise duty of three dollars a gallon and had received nothing in return. Cunliffe-Lister refused to take any action minuting that he was not prepared to press for equal treatment in the dominions for British and colonial industries like shipbuilding in which owing to different standards of living the levels of cost were necessarily different. This attitude shocked the civil servants in the Colonial Office. One senior official minuted, 'I have always assumed that the Secretary of State would be the advocate of colonial interests.' The matter was not allowed to rest there in spite of the views expressed by Cunliffe-Lister. Officials consulted the Board of Trade and when that department raised no objection a letter was sent to the Australian High Commission asking for the grant of preference. The Australian government was most unwilling to extend preference to a territory with oriental wages even though it was part of the empire, but eventually granted all the colonies preference at the same rate as Britain in respect of vessels over 500 tons only.\n\nIn 1933 Hong Kong manufacturers followed the lead of the Singapore factory in vigorously expanding their exports. Sales to Britain grew from HK$16,190 in 1930 to HK$454,252 in 1933 and to HK$1,823,874 in 1934. British manufacturers protested to the Board of Trade about this competition in their home market and the Board of Trade passed on their complaints to the Colonial Office. Cunliffe-Lister suggested that Britain should confine its preference to primary products and that entry free of duty should be refused to colonial manufactured goods which could compete with an efficient British industry. This proposal did not find favour with the civil service. Instead officials proposed that an interdepartmental committee should be set up to consider the whole question of the industrial development of the colonial empire. The committee was composed of officials from the Board of Trade, the Department of Overseas Trade, the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office. The first meeting was held in January 1934. R.V. Vernon of the Colonial Office was the chairman and was said to have been largely instrumental in drafting the committee's report.\n\nThe committee concluded that industrial development in the colonial empire was an inevitable contingency which could not be prohibited or indefinitely retarded; but the committee saw no reason why a conscious policy of the artificial encouragement of industry should be undertaken by the institution of a tariff high enough to protect the products of local industry from imports from Britain or elsewhere. The interests of British manufacturers and of colonial consumers who would have to pay a higher price for products previously imported should also be considered. So the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]