[
    {
        "id": 204971,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 79,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "70 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nmiddlemen in trade between the two countries. There was a flavour of irony in this, as the Portuguese were to prove as great pirates as the Japanese, Their most famous pirate was Mendes Pinto, who flourished in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and who seems to have been a combination of Sir Henry Morgan and Baron Munchausen. Pinto's exploits are characteristic of Portuguese history during those early centuries, displaying that amazing mixture of gallantry and greed, of religious zeal, bigotry, and cruelty. \n\nThe eastern seas had always been full of violence, and the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, and the Dutch a century later, increased that violence. The Dutch lacked the religious zeal of the Portuguese, but substituted an equally unattractive obsession with trade. Much of the European trade in the Far East at that time was based on piracy. The Dutch, for instance, were excluded from direct trade with China until 1729, and in their Japan trade in which Chinese silk was the most important commodity they obtained much of their silk by plundering Portuguese and Chinese ships. \n\n— \n\nThe persistence of piracy in Chinese waters for so long after regular trade had been established there by Europeans, was due to the peculiar conditions under which that trade developed. In India, and in the East Indies, European trade was succeeded by a steady increase in European power, although in both places there was a considerable time lag between establishing political power on land and the suppression of piracy at sea. \n\nBy the mid-nineteenth century, however, British and Dutch naval power had made Indian and East Indian waters comparatively safe for European commerce. The situation in China was very different, however, and piracy continued there for fully another century. Not until after the First China War of 1841-42 were there any centres of European power in China, and the few centres established then were separated from each other by hundreds of miles of Chinese territory. The situation was aggravated by the increasing anarchy and lawlessness which became endemic over much of coastal China from the early nineteenth century, as the authority and power of the Manchu Government declined. \n\nWhen the East India Company's monopoly of the China trade was abolished in 1833, and the trade thrown open to all comers,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206968,
        "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-1974",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n33\n\nLegion of Honour for Bravery. That same year he published Souvenirs de la Cochinchine,17 an account of his life and adventures in Indo-China in the years 1863-1868. It is extremely difficult to decide what is fact and fiction in this chronicle for Mayréna had already matured into a remarkable mythologiser and phantasist—a monumental liar.\n\nLittle is known about Mayréna's life for some years after 1871, except that he set himself up as a banker in Paris, dabbled in journalism and led the existence of a boulevardier, ogling the girls at Tortoni's and the Napolitain. Then in July 1883 he was accused of swindling, a warrant for his arrest issued, and he fled to Holland. From Holland he embarked for the Dutch East Indies and arrived there penniless in September 1883. In August 1884 he was repatriated to France at the expense of the Dutch colonial administration. But only a few weeks after his return to France he was again on his way back to the East, this time as leader of a scientific expedition of exploration to Java, financed by the Baron Roger Seillière.\n\nMayréna did not proceed to Java as planned but stayed on in Saigon. The 30,000 francs, handed to him by the Baron for equipping the expedition, he spent lavishly in the cafés of Saigon, relating wild Munchausen-like tales of his previous adventures in the East. The police soon compiled an extensive dossier on this troublesome fellow, who was suspected of gunrunning, swindling, and a variety of other offences. In August 1885, the Commissioner of Police wrote of Mayréna and his brother, who had accompanied him on this last trip, that they were 'faiseurs et monteurs de sociétés à exploiter les naifs'.18\n\nMayréna made several expeditions into the interior of Indo-China in the years 1885 to 1888, but it was his last journey which concerns us here. In March 1888 he landed on the coast at Quinhon at the head of a semi-official expedition of exploration into the independent region of the Moï country. The expedition had the blessing of the Secretary-General at Saigon. On 21 April 1888 the party left Quinhon. It included a seedy adventurer from Saigon, Mercurol; a trader, Paoli; two Annamite women; a few Chinese; and a contingent of local levies and porters. Mayréna was amazingly successful in a short space of time. He signed a treaty with an important Moï chief and soon succeeded in welding together a number of disparate Moï tribes into a confederation.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]