[ { "id": 213874, "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-1996", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "200\n\nThe influence of these western-educated Cantonese extended northward in the 1860s when western firms such as Jardine and Swire established their branch offices in the newly opened Treaty ports — Shanghai in 1850, Fuzhou in 1854 and Hankou in 1861. It was in these new Treaty ports that the Cantonese recognized that a new job market in politics was open to them. A \"Western Affairs Movement” was initiated by several powerful provincial officials in China by the 1870s. Under the patronage of these officials, economic and legal reforms were introduced into China in the name of westernization. These officials who rose to power after suppressing the Taiping Rebellion without Beijing's support, developed huge business enterprises in the name of the \"official supervision — merchant management” or “western-affairs movement\". The Hong Kong compradores were mainly responsible for the collection of capital. Their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, with or without the legal backing of a company law, but from their own reputation as well as the political patronage behind them.\n\nAmidst the rhetoric of these western affairs movements, “reform-minded\" officials recruited their own advisors and set up their own personal governments, known as Mufu, literally, tent government, or what we now call think-tanks. Many Cantonese, with or without imperial degrees, were sought to fill these posts. The strength of this “Cantonese party” rested on their early access to things western — the \"Cantonese faction established predominance in China's internal affairs and foreign relations... [their strength] lies in the monopoly in the matter of emigration overseas ... Before 1840, Canton was the only port open to foreign traders”. On how these think-tank members were appointed, westerners observed that:\n\nin the exercise of patronage... the principle is that which animated Washington in the selection of his first cabinet. Latterly the Canton party, ultra-progressive, has come to the front.\n\nIn the 1870s amidst this rhetoric of westernization, and with the assistance of western-educated Cantonese, the \"reform-minded\" officials managed to bargain with Beijing and develop huge business enterprises under their patronage. In an environment where company law and stock markets were absent, these reform-minded officials started these modern enterprises under an arrangement known as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213884, "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-1996", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "210\n\nKong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.”\n\nThe Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan:\n\n[The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years.\n\nTo help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was \"to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly\". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan.\n\nThe worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that:\n\nThey really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation...\n\nHe explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed:\n\nWhen the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215643, "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": 420, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "372\n\nand pavilions at every turn. Now the summer residence of the Emperor consists of a series of grey-roofed and grey-walled pavilions connected by roofed corridors reaching down to the same willow-fringed lake seen by Macartney. In one of its chambers, on a brass plaque, is the following admonitory message for visitors: NOT FORGETTING THE NATIONAL HUMILIATION THE EMPEROR SIGNED THE BEIJING TREATY HERE ON OCTOBER 18 1860 (15th September by the Lunar Calendar). It was in the West Warm Chamber that the Emperor was forced to sign the Beijing Treaty with Britain, France and Russia which\n\nceded Kowloon to Britain.\n\nAt various places in his journal Macartney refers to differences arising between Manchu and Chinese officials and predicts the eventual demise of a regime which was observing the status quo and terrified of the change which foreigners would bring. The attitude to his Embassy by various officials and, indeed, the Emperor is therefore a mixture of showing the Embassy every courtesy commensurate with not letting good manners develop in friendly and warm relations. Not to let the British presume too much.\n\nREFERENCE\n\nCranmer-Byng, J.L. (Ed.). An Embassy to China: Lord Macartney's Journal 1793-1794, London: Longmans.\n\nNOTES\n\n[Ed. - See Solomon Bard's Tea and Opium, Vol. 40, JHKBRAS, pp. 1-201\n\nPage 420\n\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215974, "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-2002", "page_number": 273, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "207\n\nCh'ea was also in the \"habit of going about with a board on his back,\" announcing by this means certain \"striking sentences of the New Testament\" written in large Chinese characters. One can imagine that if these \"striking sentences\" were considered offensive by neighbours and acquaintances, a complaint would also travel back quickly to the civil leadership.\n\nLegge himself recorded numbers of comments about Ch'ëa's evangelistic zeal and preaching as they travelled together in the Poklo district in May, 1861. Since several weeks were spent together on boats travelling up and down the East River, there was much time to reflect on their shared missionary project, pray over problems, and work together during various periods of literature distribution and preaching. Overall, Legge was impressed with Ch'ea's consistency in character and genuine interest in others. In addition, Ch'ëa acted as their interpreter before the Poklo magistrate, Wang Shouren, causing \"astonishment and exaltation among the people,\" because the \"gauntlet of scorn\" he had often passed through in other settings was now surprisingly forgotten, even to the point that he was given a position of relative honour.67\n\n66\n\nOften Ch'ea and Leung Man-shing (Liáng Wenchéng), one of the Chinese colporteur-evangelists, went into a new town first to present the cards and map-sized travel documents of the foreign missionaries to the local mandarin, facing any threats that might come their way for associating with British citizens. This was a very sensitive problem because, although new treaty provisions promised free and safe travel for all foreigners entering China, there were still at this time British and French troops bivouacked in the city of Canton. In fact, they had remained in Canton for more than three years, maintaining their military posts since taking the city after a major offensive move in 1857. In addition, the British attack on the emperor's Summer Palace in Beijing during the summer of 1860 only heightened fears and resentment, even though it squashed Qing opposition and brought about their compliance at the treaty table. Undoubtedly all of this was common knowledge among the Cantonese citizens, a warrant for making any attacks on foreigners or their associates in spite of the treaty conditions.68 Besides, these signs of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216035, "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-2002", "page_number": 334, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "268\n\nbannermen stationed there.\n\nThe great Qing emperor Qian Long, travelled far and wide throughout his empire on Inspection Tours and visited Zhenjiang. He had a particular love for the monastery at Jin Shan. Lord Macartney was yet another visitor who, in 1792, passed through Zhenjiang on his way up to Beijing, during his unsuccessful attempt to achieve British diplomatic representation there. He was much impressed by the crossing of the Yangzi from the southern arm of the Grand Canal to the start of the northern arm, and by the pagoda-crowned islands he observed on the Yangzi. These would be Jin Shan and the Ganlu Si. Some twenty-five years later Lord Amherst's Mission to Beijing also visited Zhenjiang. His visit was also unsuccessful and, moreover, he was treated with gross discourtesy in the Capital.\n\nThe storming and capture of Zhenjiang by the British force under Sir Hugh Gough on the 21st July 1842 during the First Anglo-Chinese War\n\nThis episode in Zhenjiang's history is described in Part II by Phillip Bruce.\n\nThe problems facing the Qing emperors and their survival from both within and without China during the seventy or so years after 1840 heightened political consciousness and the increasing weakening of control due to unrest and an increase in brigandage. During the latter years of the Qing forced confrontation with Western culture in treaty ports led to the spread of popular unrest and Zhenjiang was no exception.\n\nThe Taiping era\n\nThe Taiping Rebellion was an armed rebellion against the Manchu Emperor. It grew out of worsening social and economic conditions, with a number of secret societies and clan groups offering an existence economy and protection. The foreign dynasty of the Manchus had lost its drive and with opium addiction widespread, the scene was set and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216067, "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-2002", "page_number": 366, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "300\n\nSilver Island forts. I did not answer his letter, but noted the date thereon and the date on which I received it. I was requested to send an answer to someone in Zhenjiang. I gave the letter to Consul Mowat.35\n\nAs I did not answer Mason's letter he called early one morning and I asked who he was and what he wanted. He replied that he was the United States consular marshal at Hankou and had come down to see the machine gun I had offered to sell to the Municipal Council at Hankou and wished to know if my machine was a single action or double action gun. I showed him the gun and how to work it, and he decided to buy it. He then wished me to send it somewhere on the Yangzi, I said I could not let it go out of my house until it was paid for, and would not deliver anywhere outside the limits of a treaty port unless provided with a special passport or huzhao. Mason then said that he was going to Ningbo and would call for the gun on his return. He did not do so. He went to Hongkong engaged a lot of foreigners, instructed them to come and report themselves to me for duty, etc., etc.\n\nOn Mason's return to Shanghai he brought a lot of firearms he had bought in Hongkong. They were seized, and the men he had engaged were looked after. He himself was introduced by Mr R.E. Bredon, Shanghai Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, to the Daotai of Shanghai who invited him to dinner and to witness a theatrical performance as if he, Mason, had been a popular hero.\n\nHe lived in the Central Hotel and was a frequent visitor at the Shanghai Club where he had been introduced by Mr Bredon.\n\nMeanwhile all sorts of tricks were being practised to inveigle me into a trap. Conch shells were blown at all hours of the night about my house under the direction of Mason. A host of extra police officers and detectives were placed on special duty on my property, at the switch-back railway. I suddenly remembered the letter that had been sent me. I thereupon called on Mr acting-consul Mowat and insisted on his reporting the matter to H.M.'s Minister at Beijing. Mowat pooh-poohed the whole thing as a farce and so it proved in reality though very costly and dangerous to me.\n\nInstructions were soon received from H.M.'s Minister at Beijing and Mason was removed from the Central Hotel on the Bund to H.M.'s", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]