[
    {
        "id": 204345,
        "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-1961",
        "page_number": 113,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n109\n\nbers, although poorer members may elect to pay $5 and well-to-do members may pay $40 or $100. The activities of the Association are in the hands of a Board of Directors of 35 members, of whom 15 are monks and nuns and 20 are laymen, the Chairman of the Board being the Abbot of the Po Lin Monastery, while the Vice Chairman is a prominent Buddhist layman. The directors hold office for two years and vacancies are filled through election at the annual General Meeting. The Association's office is at 15 Shan Kwong Road, Hong Kong, on the premises of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen MW (see above p. 44).\n\nTo disseminate the dharma, the Association has sponsored courses of nightly lectures on various sutras, delivered by an authority from the Sangha. These courses have been held three or four times a year, lasting two or three weeks each time, usually at the Tung Lin Kok Yuen. Attendance has run about 200 people.\n\nThe Association's welfare enterprises include four schools, a cemetery, and two clinics.\n\nThe Chinese Buddhist Free School, at 117 Wanchai Road, was established in October 1945. It is co-educational, and has an enrollment of 223. Though it is government-subsidized, pupils pay no tuition. Another school, also at the primary level, was opened during September, 1960 in the ground floor of a resettlement block at Wong Tai Sin (the use of such ground floor space for classrooms is encouraged by the Resettlement Department). Known as the Buddhist Boddhi Primary School, it accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, operates on a government subsidy, and charges the standard tuition fees.\n\nBy far the most impressive educational enterprises of the Buddhist Association, however, are the two schools on Eastern Hospital Road (near Causeway Bay). They began operation in September 1959 and comprise a primary school with 1,053 boys and girls (\"Buddhist Wong Cheuk Om Memorial School\") and a middle school with 321 boys and girls (\"Buddhist Wong Fung Ling College\" #+4) HK$350,000 of the construction cost was donated to the Association by two devout Buddhists, whose names the schools bear, while the other $650,000 was provided by the Hong Kong Government, $150,000 of this being in the form of a loan that the Association will eventually repay out of its portion of the school fees.\n\nThe Board of Directors of the Buddhist Association has full responsibility for and control over the operation of all these schools, although about 70 per cent of the operating costs, including teachers' salaries, are met by Government subsidy. The curriculum includes the study of Buddhism which, at the suggestion of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, was accepted by the Education Department in 1959 as one of the optional subjects thereafter to be included in the Hong Kong School-leaving Certificate examination.\n\nUp until now Buddhists, unlike Christians and Moslems, have had no separate cemetery facilities. The Buddhist Association's cemetery, which occupies seven acres of land recently allocated by the Government on Cape Collison, opened early in 1961.\n\nM\n\nHK$3 a month \"t'ong fei\" added to the standard fees for subsidized schools of $5 and $32 a month.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205714,
        "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": 20,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "14\n\nT. C. CHENG\n\nAnother advance was made in 1904 when several prominent Chinese, led by Dr. Ho Kai and Mr. Chau Siu-ki (the late father of Sir Tsun-nin Chau), collected the necessary funds, and, also with a land grant from the London Missionary Society, started the Alice Memorial Maternity Hospital, the first maternity hospital in Hong Kong.\n\nIn 1907 when the Chinese started another hospital, along the lines of the Tung Wah Hospital, in Kowloon the Kwong Wah Hospital Dr. Ho Kai was the motivating force and he became the Chairman of the first Board of Directors of the new hospital. In this important venture, he had the staunch support of the Honourable Wei Yuk, his Chinese colleague in the Legislative Council, and Lau Chu-pak, both of whom served as directors of the first Board.\n\nHaving received a western education himself, Dr. Ho Kai was very keen to spread such education among the Chinese youth. Apart from being an active member of the governing body of Queen's College, he and other Chinese leaders, including Tso Seen-wan, founded St. Stephen's Boys College in 1902. In 1901 a number of leading Chinese, including Dr. Ho Kai and Mr. Tso Seen-wan, had submitted a petition to the Governor setting forth their view that a need had arisen for a Chinese High School run on western lines. The fees were to be sufficient to keep the school without cost to the Colony. In such a school the sons of influential Chinese parents could be trained for public service and be instructed in all that was best in both British and Chinese cultures. The scheme was approved in principle and the Church Missionary Society stepped in to help and established St. Stephen's Boys College on Bonham Road. In 1928 it moved to its present site in Stanley with extensive playing fields. It has catered to Chinese children from wealthy homes and has tried to establish something of the tradition of the English public school. It has since occupied a unique and important place in Hong Kong as an exempted and independent school.\n\nIn addition, Dr. Ho Kai was a very far-sighted land developer. Just before he died, he and Au Tak,13 a prominent merchant who was a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1908, formed the Kai Tak Land Development Company to plan the development of the area in the neighbourhood of the present Kai Tak Airport,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206311,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 128,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "122\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nManagement and the Registrar General's Department, the more influence the former would have within the Chinese community. The Committee would be in a far stronger position to moderate government policies - or at least to influence the Registrar General by a flow of opinion and advice about the wishes of the Chinese than any committee which was remote from government. It seems likely that Wei Yuk, a shrewd man of affairs, understood that once the Registrar General brought the Committee within the colonial system of government, the latter would be forced not only to give the members of the Committee much 'face' but would have to engage in an intimate and prolonged dialogue with it: benefits would need to pass in both directions. Each, the Registrar General and the Committee would need to feel it gained from the special relationship25.\n\nBasically, the system created by Lockhart and Wei Yuk remained unchanged - there were a few slight modifications until 1941, the year of the Japanese occupation. The members of the Committee were nominated to their office by the Governor in Council, on the advice of the Registrar General (after 1913 renamed the Secretary for Chinese Affairs); and the Registrar General, before he put forward the name of a Chinese to the Governor, canvassed the opinions of prominent Chinese: nominees needed the support and approbation of both Chinese notables and the Registrar General.\n\nIn 1917 the Committee was enlarged from 12 to 14, exclusive of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the ex officio chairman, by the addition of two members selected from the retiring annual committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk but holding their appointments for the term of one year only. Usually these special nominees were the retiring chief directors of the two associations26. They were probationers in a sense. But usually such 'short-term' members of the District Watch Committee were made full members at a later date; or, in some cases, after their year of office was up. This special device allowed the Secretary for Chinese Affairs to include on the Committee any promising, emergent leader in these two lesser associations; at the same time, it helped inflate the status of the committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk by making possible a speedier transition for some to the key advisory board, the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206314,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 131,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n125\n\nChinese Affairs, spent most of its time in session discussing social and economic problems. In 1913, for example, among subjects discussed at its deliberations were the regulation of Chinese theatres, the prohibition of the circulation of foreign notes and silver, and means for the more effective regulation of Chinese householders; in 1914 the prohibition of all new Chinese restaurants in the Central District, the licensing of singing girls, and the classification of boarding houses (emigration houses and hotels); and in 1915 the restriction on the numbers of clubs and societies, the appointment of midwives, the question of payment of wine and spirit licenses, and the question of new legislation for money loan associations33. It is not surprising, then, that the Secretary for Chinese Affairs was pleased to write in 1918 that 'the loyal advice and assistance of this important Committee (which deals with every kind of question affecting the Chinese community) continues to be of the greatest value to Government'. The stabilising role of the Committee is also made clear by its activity during periods of intense crisis in the Colony. Thus the Committee was extremely active during the period of ebullition following from the 1911 Revolution in China; it also helped to prevent violence during the short time when diplomatic relations between China and Japan were strained in 1915; it played a part in bringing to an end the bitter seamen's strike of 1922 and the strike and boycott of 1925-192634. It was a Committee, as Lockhart probably intuited it would become, that allowed the Chinese to 'regulate' themselves within the fairly broad limits set by government,\n\nThe committees of the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the District Watch Force, together with those of some other associations such as the Lok Sin Tong and the Chung Sing Benevolent Society35, formed a system. The system was, in terms, of prestige, influence and power, an hierarchical one. The Tung Wah Board of Directors was usually recruited from ex-committeemen of the Po Leung Kuk; and the District Watch Committee always contained a very large number of former members of the Po Leung Kuk and the Tung Wah Hospital. The District Watch Committee thus formed the apex of a pyramidal and hierarchical structure, at the base of which were local-based associations such as Kaifong, and also district and clansmen associations, and guilds of employers36. But the prestige",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207275,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 43,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n35\n\nbuildings and roads destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. Collaboration of this sort gave these merchant leaders a greater voice over taxation and other local public affairs.23 The same guild leaders joined charitable organisations because their larger numbers offered them a wider base of support.\n\nAs the merchants assumed a leadership role in providing social services and welfare, they gradually took over responsibilities and privileges which went along with their work. Because permanent charitable organisations could cut across guilds and sometimes Landsmannschaften, they claimed that their leadership was based on community-wide support. And since they were merchants, they should be identified as merchant leaders to whom matters affecting the merchants would be referred. Moreover, these merchants were elites in their own communities, and were regularly referred to as \"titled merchants” (shen-shang). Even as individuals, they had some political influence with the local officials. But unless they had begun as gentry or officials, such influence rested on no legitimate basis. When they organised themselves in institutions which had a communal purpose, they quickly used them to claim legitimate leadership.\n\nThis was what happened by the late nineteenth century. In Hong Kong, the board of directors of the Tung Wah Hospital quickly gained the right to present petitions to the Hong Kong government on all matters related to the Chinese community. Institutionally, the hospital was put under the jurisdiction of the Registrar General, after 1913 styled the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, who also served as its patron. By the early 1880's, the board opened up another channel when the Governor-general's Office in Canton began to correspond with it. There is some indication that the directors acted as a kind of information centre and advisory board for the Governor-general on matters involving the overseas Chinese.24 To this day, a seat on the board of directors of either the Tung Wah Hospital or the Po Leung Kuk still represents the government's recognition of each occupier's leadership status.\n\nIn Canton, charitable organisations, too, quickly became a regular channel of communication between the government and the merchants. In early 1886, when news of the San Francisco race riots against Chinese workers reached Canton and Hong Kong, the Chinese government wrote to the directors of the Ai-yü shan-t’ang",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207889,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 277,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nVISIT TO TUNG WAH GROUP OF HOSPITALS' MUSEUM,\n\n2ND OCTOBER, 1976\n\nThe Tung Wah Group of Hospitals is one of Hong Kong's leading Chinese voluntary bodies. The Hospital was established in 1870. Its services then comprised medical, social and educational work that has been continued and extended to the present day,\n\nThe Tung Wah Museum contains an excellent collection of materials and is well worth a visit. It is located in the Old Hall of the Kwong Wah Hospital, Kowloon, established between 1908-11, which itself is an interesting and historic building.\n\nThe visit to the Museum was made by courtesy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors 1976-77, to whom the Society is indebted. For Members' guidance, the exhibits in the Museum may be listed as: --\n\n(a) Presentation and Commemorative Boards (horizontal)\n(b) Presentation and Commemorative Boards (vertical)\n(c) Furniture\n\n(d) Books and Other Records pertaining to the Hospital\n(e) Photographs of past Tung Wah events\n\n(A) Other presentation items.\n\nItem (a), of which there are many examples, are all donated; some by previous directors or by senior officials and associations in China in appreciation of charitable work carried out by Tung Wah e.g. raising money for flood and famine relief.\n\nItem (b), also well-represented, usually includes presentations by directors or leading citizens of Hong Kong at the time of the establishment of, or major repairs to, the various Tung Wah buildings. They include presentations by other community organizations, like the Kaifongs of Hung Hom and Yaumati, also in Kowloon.\n\nItems (a) and (b) are always dated.\n\nItem (c) comprises furniture presented at times of building or major renovation, which again carry names and dates.\n\nItem (d) includes the early reports of the Hospital in English/Chinese over the past 100 years, and there are other valuable",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207890,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 278,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n263\n\nChinese reports on e.g. the work and accounts of the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road which has long been associated with the Tung Wah Group. Also Chinese medical works and journals. Item (c) comprises photographs of Tung Wah occasions over the past seventy years and more; but mostly modern.\n\nItem (f) includes presentation items from directors and others, including pieces of stoneware and porcelain.\n\nAll told, though still not, in my view, fully representative of all Tung Wah activities over the past hundred years, the Museum contains an impressive and interesting collection of exhibits and reflects great credit on the Hospital.\n\nCarl T. Smith's notes of the history and work of the Hospital follow this brief introduction to the Museum and its contents.\n\nHong Kong, 1976,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nNOTES ON TUNG WAH HOSPITAL, HONG KONG\n\nThese notes are not a comprehensive history of the Tung Wah Hospital group. For this the reader is referred to the following books issued by the Directors: Development of the Tung Wah Hospitals 1870-1960; One Hundred Years of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals 1870-1970 and The History of Education of Tung Wah (1963). Of particular interest is Henry James Lethbridge's article, \"A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: The Tung Wah\", Contributions to Asian Studies, 10, 1973, pp. 144-158. In it he views the Hospital as an important social organization of the Chinese community and draws attention to the efforts of Government to relate to that community through the Hospital Committee. The present notes underline the thesis developed by Mr. Lethbridge.\n\nEvery community has certain institutions of particular significance in such areas as education, religion, culture, business, politics and society. Seldom perhaps has one institution overlapped so many of these areas as Tung Wah Hospital. It has been some 107 years since the first Chinese Hospital Committee was formed—during these years the Hospital has played varying roles. This means that it can be looked at in different ways. A past, present or expectant member of the Board of Directors might give one story of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207893,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 281,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "266\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ncommunity. They resisted being sent to the temporary plague hospitals set up under the direction of European doctors. They feared that the bodies of dead relatives and friends would not be treated according to Chinese custom. The mood of the Chinese population became so hostile, almost breaking into open rebellion, that the Government finally permitted the Directors of Tung Wah Hospital to open a plague hospital in a recently built and as yet unoccupied pig and sheep depot in Kennedy Town. The attempt to force western medical treatment upon a Chinese population already aroused by the natural fear of the plague, further alienated the general population from any suggestion that western methods should be introduced into Tung Wah. The President of the Directors in that year was in the unenviable position of being also a member of the Sanitary Board whose duties it was to initiate and enforce measures to control the plague. His position with a foot in two camps provoked an attack upon his business premises while he was chairing a meeting at Tung Wah called to consider the protests of the Chinese community against the measures of the Government. Upon receiving the news of the attack, he hurriedly left the meeting, but his chair was no more outside the gates of the hospital than the hostile crowd which had gathered began stoning the chair bearers and rushed the chair turning it upside down with the unfortunate Chairman inside. He managed to crawl out and rush back within the safety of the Tung Wah gates. An Indian constable blew his whistle and a group of watchmen of the Hospital rushed out and the crowd dispersed. The incident reflects the strong feeling surging in the Chinese community against the measures taken by the Government in the plague crisis.\n\nThe Governor was not only recipient of hostility from the Chinese community but was also strongly criticised in the English press for the slowness with which Government undertook plague measures and for making concessions to the feelings of the Chinese regarding the treatment and care of plague victims. He may have been stung by these criticisms, for after the passing of the plague he took a very strong stand in demands made on Tung Wah to change its former policy of exclusive employment of doctors trained in traditional Chinese medicine.\n\nIn 1895 a Commission was appointed to inquire into whether the Hospital should be closed, or, if continued, what changes should be made. There was no question in official minds that it could",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207902,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 290,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n275 \n\n(Lethbridge, 1971, p. 147). It was only when a \"respectable\" class of rich Chinese merchants and compradores emerged that a group existed which the colonial authorities could properly recognize as speaking for the Chinese community. The Chinese account states that the two patrons of the Temple \"judge the people (there) in public assembly\". In 1851 a proper Temple Committee was elected. It met at the Kung Soh (Public Meeting Hall), attached to the Temple, where all cases of public interest were decided. This judicial function by a self-organized Chinese institution is confirmed by the British Magistrates sending complainants to the Temple authorities for their arbitration of the disputes. For instance, in 1870 a case is mentioned in which the Kai-fong had imposed a fine upon a coolie for breaking a pane of glass.\n\nA year after the opening of Tung Wah Hospital the judicial proceedings formerly held at the Kung Soh of the Temple were moved to the Hall of the Hospital. This is reported in an editorial comment in the Daily Press (Jan. 2, 1873):\n\nThe old Joss House Court the Kung Soh in the Hollywood Road has, we hear, been given up in favour of another building not far off, and it seems that there a vast number of disputes are settled, and that it is an understood rule that matters should be brought to the cognizance of the proper authorities only if they cannot be arranged in this manner. We understand the committee of the Chinese Hospital is the same body of men who head the Kaifong, and that they discuss municipal and semi-political matters in the hall of the Hospital.\n\nInasmuch as the two committees apparently overlapped and as the Hall of the new Hospital was more spacious and imposing than the Kung Soh, the transfer in Chinese eyes would seem appropriate. On a visit of the Governor to the Hall he remarked that it was a much better meeting place than the Council Chambers of the Hong Kong Government. Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop) the famous Victorian lady traveller who visited Hong Kong in 1879, describes the building:\n\nThe hall where the directors meet (has) one side open to the garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle with a handsome chair for the chairman and six carved ebony chairs on each side -- a most stately \"board room\".*\n\n* Photocopy of original manuscript letter in possession of John Murray, publishers, London.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208787,
        "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-1979",
        "page_number": 244,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "4\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nWork of the Association in its early years\n\n217\n\nSoon after the port of Hong Kong was opened [again] in the last year of the reign of Hsien Feng in the Ch'ing dynasty (1860-61), there used to be a Nam Pak Hong Street (later renamed Bonham Strand West). At this favourable location our predecessors set up firms dealing in native products from south and north China. The following firms were among those then established one after another: the Kwong Mau Tai Hong and the Woo Kee Hong of Mr. Chiu Yue-tin, a celebrity of Kwangtung origin, the Hau Fung Hong of Mr. Lo Chor-san, the Hop Hing Hong of Mr. Lau Lo-tak, the Siu Fung Hong of Messrs. Fung Ping-shan and Kwong Tsz-ming, the Kwan Mau Hong (in Wing Lok Street West) of Mr. Li Sau-hin, the Wah On Hong of Mr. Chan Yue-fan, the Yue Wo Loong of Mr. Chan Sik-nin, the Yuen Fat Hong of Messrs. Ko Mun-wah and Chan Chun-chuen, celebrities of Chiu Chau origin, the Yuen Sing Fat Hong, the Kam Yue Fung Hong and the Kam Sing Lee Hong of Mr. Choi Si-kit, the Yue Tak Sing Hong and the Kwong Tak Fat Hong of Mr. Chan Tin-san, the Kin Tye Lung of Messrs. Chan Wun-wing and Chan Tsz-tan, the Ng Yuen Hing Hong of Mr. Ng Lei-hing, a celebrity of Fukien origin, the Chui Tak Loong Hong of Messrs. Wu Ting-sam and Wong Ting-ming, the Hau Tak Hong of Mr. Kwok Yim-sing and his brother(s), the Yi Tai Hong and the Lee Yuen Cheung Hong of a business group of Shantung origin. With the exception of Messrs. Chan Yue-fan, Chan Sik-nin and Kwok Yin-sing, all the aforesaid gentlemen have now deceased.\n\nIn 1868, with the concerted initiative and efforts of the said Messrs. Chiu Yue-tin, Chan Chun-chuen, Fung Ping-shan, Choi Kit-si, Chan Tin-sau and Wu Ting-sam, the Nam Pak Hong Association was founded in Bonham Strand West near its junctions with Wing Lok Street and Queen's Road. Then the objectives of the Association were to promote members' welfare and market prosperity, to assist the police in the maintenance of law and order in the neighbourhood and to formulate plans for the prevention of fires and alleviation of disasters. On the first floor of the Association building was the office, where regulations and business rules of the Association were decided, Directors and Managers of the Association mutually elected, and monthly meetings held. For the first term, the Chairman of the Board of Directors was Mr. Chiu Yue-tin and the Manager was Mr. Lau Lo-tak. The latter mana-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208874,
        "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": 36,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "KEITH G. STEVENS\n\nserve Buddhist devotees and which have Buddhist images on altars in their halls and offices. These include Buddhist schools, clinics, book-stores and libraries, homes for the aged and vegetarian food shops and restaurants.\n\nBuddhist temples and monasteries are not only more airy, lighter and cleaner than the Daoist folk temples, their images are larger, gold-lacquered and usually distinctive. However, there are the exceptions, few though they be, of small, dark and, because they are old, more drab Buddhist establishments. Some images too can be multi-coloured, though very few are of any material other than wood.\n\nExclusively Buddhist establishments are few and far between, the majority having an altar or two containing folk religion deities. Quite a number of the Buddhist temples were first instituted in Hong Kong by a single wealthy Chinese who recommended or selected the specific deity or deities to be placed on the altars. The donation of funds to help found a monastery is not only a move to obtain merit for the donor, or for perpetual prayers to be said by the monks in the Memorial Hall of the monastery for the donor himself or for his parents or wife, but is often a gesture to display the importance of the donor (it entitles his or her name to be engraved and displayed at the entrance). Once the monastery has been built the flow of funds from devotees enables it to flourish, but when devotees disappear the monastery too withers. Once the decision to found a Buddhist temple has been made, a board of directors is established and executive decisions are then made by them. (The same is true of Daoist and folk religion temples). In Buddhist and Daoist establishments a priest is invited to become the abbot, and nuns, monks and lay men and women are gradually enrolled. Abbots and hermits choose attractive and secluded spots on remote mountain sides to escape from the tumult of life and to devote themselves to quiet meditation. Founded by either fervent monks or wealthy benefactors, they were usually built on sites which were both aesthetic and practical because, in addition to being a place of meditation, in old China travellers in remoter areas found it necessary as well as agreeable to stay overnight in monasteries. (Plate 1)\n\nThree very distinctive areas in Hong Kong's New Territories were all sufficiently remote to satisfy the \"hermit\" in the monks.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208908,
        "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": 70,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "38\n\nJIANN HSIEH\n\nbecause of high heterogeneity and rapid local social mobility, kinship networks are difficult to perpetuate. For this reason, it seems impossible to organize traditional clan associations based on genealogical ties, even though the Hakka are much concerned about maintaining their culture, especially their kinship system. However, instead of clan associations, the Waichow Hakka have organized six surname associations based on fictive kinship. For instance, Tz'eng-tzu (曾子), as a cultural hero of ancient China, was assigned the rank of common ancestor in one surname association in order to consolidate all the Ts'engs from Waichow. In other words, kinship as a fictive concept rather than as traced in a concrete genealogy is still an important principle manipulated by the Waichow Hakka in organizing voluntary associations in urban situations.\n\nThe very mixed origins of residents, the complex differentiation of occupations, and the rapid social mobility in Hong Kong have also rendered the maintenance of traditional guilds and associations, based on occupation and often combined with locality and/or kinship principles difficult (Ho, 1966: 101; Gamble, 1929:168). Taking the Waichow Hakka as an example, although they established the Waiyang (Hweiyang) Trade Union after the Second World War, its nature today is more that of a locality association than that of an occupational association. In addition, the Waichow Hakka from Tsu-chin District established the 紫金縣同鄉會 (Tse Kam District Countrymen's Association); nineteen of the forty-one members of its executive committee or board of directors are concerned with construction work and the association has been very active in recruiting its members as employees for that business. But still it cannot be called a guild because of the nature of its regulations.\n\nI wish to stress that dialect as an organizing principle of voluntary associations is not necessarily identical with locality. As mentioned before, Waichow, as a prefecture in the Ch'ing Dynasty, included ten districts inhabited by two dialect groups: the Hakka, who stem mostly from the districts of Hwei-yang (惠陽), Po-lo (博羅), Hsin-feng (新豐), Ho-yuan (河源), Lung-chuan (龍川), Tzu-chin (紫金), Lien-ping (連平), and Ho-ping (和平), and the Hoklos, who came mostly from the districts of Haifeng (海豐) and Lu-feng (陸豐) (Lo, 1933:102). Because Hakka constitute the absolute majority of the Waichow population, most members of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209270,
        "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-1981",
        "page_number": 173,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "28.48\n\nJUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826\n\n159\n\nThe Topaze crisis, lasting from late 1821 into 1822, was the most serious confrontation between the Chinese and the British to that day, especially since the controversy involving all the significant issues of the day, including naval presence, jurisdiction over foreigners, and opium smuggling, came so close on the heels of the Terranova crisis. British trade at Canton was stopped for several months. The British factory, fearful that they would be held responsible for the misdeeds of sailors from the frigate Topaze, fled to their ships at Chuenpi on 11 February 1822. At the end of the crisis Juan Yüan made a compromise by not insisting on the surrender of the already departed criminals, but the British capitulated by abandoning the policy of using \"threat of force as a means of protecting or forwarding British interests in China\" at least for the time being. The Court of Directors of the East India Company \"advised the First Lord of the Admiralty to stop all peace-time visits of His Majesty's ships to the China coast unless assistance was urgently requested by the Governor-General of India\". An Order in Council was subsequently issued to this effect in 1823,\n\n1\n\n$\n\nIn December 1821, rancour from the Terranova case had hardly died down. Foreign traders realized that they could not escape completely the newly reinstituted stringent anti-opium laws even by sacrificing Terranova. The Emily, Terranova's ship, as well as three British ships, all with opium on board, were sent away from their Whampoa anchorage to Lintin, where they remained for three years without discharging or taking on cargo. During this period, two British warships, HMS Curlew and HMS Topaze, had sailed into the Pearl Estuary to \"protect\" these commercial vessels. Sailors had gone ashore \"to fetch fresh water\" from time to time. On 14 December 1821, a group of sailors from frigate Topaze came ashore. Only this time they brought along their pet goat. Unfortunately, the goat dug up potatoes, eating a number of them, and damaging the potato patch. A Chinese peasant, Huang I-ming, owner of the patch, then called upon his wife, brothers and neighbours to trample upon the sailors with sticks and stones, and in the fracas two urns of wine on the side of the hut were broken. When the sailors were driven aboard their ship, they discharged the cannon to disperse the pursuing and cursing villagers. During the skirmish among the potatoes a number of British sailors were injured, but none died. The next morning, the sailors, reinforced, went ashore again to revenge their mates. They chopped down the door of the hut of Huang I-ming, and fired a musket, killing him instantly. His son-in-law, also injured by the fusillade, died a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209271,
        "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-1981",
        "page_number": 174,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "160\n\nWEI PER-TI\n\nfew days later from his wounds. Upon being told of the news, Juan Yuan \"suspended the Company's trade and required the surrender of the man whom he termed the 'Foreign Murderers'\"*\n\n+\n\n63\n\nTo Juan Yuan, the Select Committee's reaction to his demand was in contravention to Chinese regulations. He was told by the Committee to communicate directly with Captain Richardson of the Topaze instead of going through the hong merchants and the Select Committee. Had Juan Yuan done as he was asked, he would have implicitly consented to change the Canton system. This he refused to do. He continued to hold to the principle that the supercargo of the British factory be responsible for the conduct of all British nationals in China. While the hong merchants, British traders at Canton, and Captain Richardson debated various possible courses to take, Juan Yuan suspended all British trade and held steadfast to his principles. On February 3, 1822, a Chinese official was permitted to board the Topaze and was understood to have said that he would make a report to the Governor-General. On 8 February, using as the excuse that as he had not heard from Chinese officials everything must be satisfactory, Captain Richardson took the Topaze to sea.\n\nIt was at this point the crisis really became serious. The British factory left Canton within three days. The language used by both sides in their communications was inflexible and threatening. The Committee insisted upon disclaiming responsibilities for the British navy. Another two weeks passed without any sign of solution. The Committee then explained to Juan that Captain Richardson had returned to Britain to \"report to his sovereign\" and that \"copies of all the papers would be sent to the Court of Directors [of the Company]\". Juan Yuan, noting that since the Topaze had already left Chinese waters, so that it was impossible for the supercargo to surrender the criminals even if he had been willing, and as the entire account was being sent back to both the sovereign and the Company, permitted the resumption of British trade at Canton. This compromise in order to resolve a difficult case reflected Juan Yuan's willingness to make the best of a bad situation.\n\nJuan Yuan did not negotiate with the British except through the intermediary of the hong merchants, and, it was the Company that was to be held responsible for finding the criminals to be remitted to Chinese justice, although no such promise had actually been made.55 And, most important of all, the British navy was removed from the China seas. On the surface at least, the principles of the Canton system were preserved.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209582,
        "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-1982",
        "page_number": 239,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "CARL T. SMITH\n\nTHE HONG KONG AMATEUR DRAMATIC CLUB AND ITS PREDECESSORS\n\nTHE PROLOGUE\n\nTo set the mood for an article on Amateur Dramatics in Hong Kong, I quote a prologue to the performance of \"the screaming farce\", 'I've Written to Brown' presented on 21 April 1871 by the Hong Kong Amateurs.\n\nLadies and Gentlemen, the pleasing task\n\nIs mine tonight your kindly smiles to ask,\n\nFor those who now behind the curtain wait,\n\nWith biding, anxious hearts to learn their fate.\n\nSo let your verdict generous be, the while\n\nWe strive a pleasant hour to beguile.\n\nBut who can now a pleasant hour boast,\n\nWith thirteen steamers daily up the coast\n\nSharebrokers pressing one to sell or buy\n\nWith telegrams cach minute from Shanghai\n\nWith stern Welsh witnesses, who'd rather brook\n\nA Judge's ire than kiss a dirty book,\n\nAnd, by their word prepared to stand or fall\n\nSay they'll be if they will swear at all!\n\nWith piece goods market all to pieces gone,\n\nThrough sales of damaged shirtings ex the Don,\n\nAnd, piling agony, beyond endurance\n\nWith Oily Phantom's new Chinese Insurance;†\n\nWhere, of our interests most august protectors,\n\nThey've such a crushing army of Directors!\n\nSince last we met, though some enlivening rays\n\nOf social light have cheered our nights and days,\n\nA quiet Picnic to Victoria Peak\n\nPhotos in High Life, taken once a week\n\n†The American firm of Olyphant and Company organized in 1871 at Hong Kong the Chinese Insurance Company. It was the first insurance company on the China coast to cater especially to Chinese shippers and merchants. Its Board was composed of both Chinese and foreigners.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209916,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 175,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "153\n\n'When the entire company is made up of yes men, it will decline. It is not desirable to have complete tranquility.'\n\nA non-proprietary director, B24, emphasized that it was an executive's duty to speak his mind:\n\n'If the managing director said we shall go south and I thought north is the right direction, then I would explain my reasons for my belief. If ultimately he said let us go east, I should follow him eastward. The most important thing is not to be a yes man. Do not support going south just because he says so.'\n\nThe fact that the ‘yes man' was singled out for criticism seems to indicate that compliance among subordinates constituted a problem in their companies.\n\nDifferences in opinion, according to the spinners, must be contained and resolved before they deteriorate into actual conflict. They followed several rules to prevent dissent getting out of hand. Steps were taken to ensure that the interests of the key decision-makers were homogeneous. As A22 told me, 'All of our executive directors are Chinese, friends. We can argue things out'. Besides ethnic and friendship ties, kinship bonds were also used to guard against irreconcilable conflicts.\n\nIn Mill 17, a young director said that differences in opinion were settled by those at the top who would take the ultimate responsibility:\n\n'I follow the advice of my uncle and my father. My uncle has a son on the Board [of Directors]. So the four of us are of the same family. Only two other board members are outsiders.'\n\nWithin this framework, the weight of an individual's opinion was graded according to his hierarchical standing. A24 put this best:\n\n'If they are under me, I make the final decision. If they are senior to me, I explain my views to them. If they do not accept, I shall do it their way.'\n\nBut among peers of similar status and power, resolution of differences could not be so straightforward. Under these circumstances, most spinners did not favour settlement by majority vote. A27 gave the following explanation:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210094,
        "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-1984",
        "page_number": 65,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "44\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\n6. Hou-wang ling-ch'ien 14, published by Tsui-ching tang f**, Canton, n.d. (block print edition; 64 oracles).\n\n7. Pei-ti ling-chien w, published by Wu-kui t'ang in Canton, n.d. (block print; 50 oracles, identical with above Shang-ti ling-ch'ien).\n\n(iv) Oracles reproduced in the Tao-tsang\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\n5.\n\n6.\n\n✯ (−TT), 1977 Taipei reprint. Szu-sheng chen-chin ling-ch'ien 145, vol. 54, pp. 44056-44080, TT. 1298 (1 scroll; 49 oracles).\n\nHsian-chen ling-ying pao-ch'ien KERAK, vol. 54, pp. 44081-44137, TT. 1299 (3 scrolls; 365 oracles, divided over 12 daily hours each of which has 30 slips, i.e. 360 plus one slip for each of the five agents).\n\nTa-tz'u hao sheng chiu-t'ien wei-fang Sheng-mu yilan-chun ling-ying pao-ch'ien KkP;AMP@!#MEW, vol. 54, pp. 44138-44150, TT. 1300 (1 scroll; 99 oracles).\n\nHung-en ling-chi chen-chân ling chien light hi. Vol. 54, pp. 44150-44154, TT. 1301 (1 scroll; 53 oracles).\n\nLing-chi chen-chün chu-sheng ling ch’ien OBZIRAR, vol. 54, pp. 44155-44159, TT. 1302 (1 scroll; 64 oracles).\n\nFu-t'ien kuang-sheng ru-i ling-ch'ien KQE✯, vol. 54, pp. 44160-44190, TT. 1303 (1 scroll; 120 oracles).\n\n7. B-2 Hu-kuo chia-chi chiang-tung-wang ling-ch'ien ARMORIA, vol. 54, pp. 44193-44213, TT. 1305 (1 scroll; 100 oracles).\n\n8. Hsuan-t'ien Shang-ti kan-ying ling-ch'ien K, vol. 60, pp. 48479-48506 (49 oracles).\n\n(v) 1. Sham Francis, Trans., Kwun Yum Fortune Slip Predictions. Hong Kong: Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Board of Directors, 1983. (This set corresponds with the Kuan Yin set found in Lukang; B-11 and -12).\n\n2. Sham Francis, Trans., Predictions of Wong Tai Sin. Hong Kong: Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Board of Directors, 1984. Chai, Tung-yeh # !f, \"Ling-chien malo-chii” NUE.\n\n3. Heaven-Earth-man Journal Ke (published in Taichung, Taiwan), no. 1 (1968), 117-147.\n\nB. Studies\n\n1. BAUER, Wolfgang, China and the Search for Happiness. Recurring Themes in Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural History. (Translated from the German by Michael Shaw.) New York: The Seabury Press, 1976 (German Ed.: 1971)\n\n2. EBERHARD, Wolfram, \"Oracle and Theater in China\", pp. 191-199, Studies in Chinese Folklore and Related Essays, The Hague: Mouton, 1970.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210683,
        "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-1986",
        "page_number": 34,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "17\n\nJOHN JOSEPH FRANCIS, CITIZEN OF HONG KONG, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nV.H.G. Jarret writing about Francis in the South China Morning Post in the 1930s commented \"It seems strange that so well known a man should not be commemorated in any way”. When one considers the number of streets and roads in Hong Kong named after less prominent Government officials and businessmen the force of that comment will, it is hoped, be appreciated by the end of this essay.\n\nFrancis was born in Dublin in 1839, the eldest son of William Francis Aylward, an Inspector of Irish National Schools, and\n\nMr. Walter Greenwood J.P., M.A. (Cantab.), Barrister of Gray's Inn and the North Eastern Circuit, a Permanent Magistrate in Hong Kong\n\nAUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:\n\nThis essay was hurriedly researched and written in snatched hours and does not claim to be comprehensive, much less to do justice to Francis. I hope it may lead to interest in his life and career and I should be grateful if anyone who finds new information about him would send it to me at 26, Great Bounds Drive, Southborough, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN4OTR. It is based mainly on skimming through newspapers and dipping into the standard histories of Hong Kong. I have also received generous help from many quarters. First I should like to acknowledge my gratitude to the staff of the Hong Kong Public Records Office for their ever friendly and willing help; my thanks go also to the staff of the Supreme Court Registry and University Library, the Secretaries of the Bar Association, the Law Society, the Jockey Club and the Volunteers, Mrs. Lisa Chee, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Po Leung Kuk, Fathers Naylor, Pagani and Pittavino (for searching church records), Mr. Michael Clancy (for information about “Stonyhurst”), Mr. Carl Smith (for information about Francis' marriages) and Mr. Colin West (for arranging the cleaning of Francis' tombstone) in Hong Kong; the Parish Priest of All Saints Church, Borella, Colombo; Father Turner of Stonyhurst College; the staff of the Public Records Office, Genealogical Office and Public Registry in Dublin; Mr. Julian Walton of Dublin and Waterford (for supplying me with material about the Aylward family which he also presented to Dr. Ken Smith of South Africa for use in his biography of Alfred Aylward); the Editor of the Irish Ancestor, the staff of the Public Record Office, Royal Artillery Institution, University and Crown Agents in London; Mrs. Theresa Thom, Librarian of Gray's Inn; Mr. Leo D'Almada Q.C. in Portugal; Dr. Walter Mautsch in Germany; Mr. Nigel Osner in London; Pamela and Eric Russ in Bournemouth; my wife (for her patience whilst I practised my drafts on her); and Mrs. Mary Whitticase for her great kindness in typing my manuscript.\n\nCopyright Walter Greenwood 1986.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211157,
        "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-1987",
        "page_number": 218,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "193\n\nThe new hall was a more impressive and comfortable meeting place for community leaders than the old Kung Soh which was not only rather small but was also beginning to show the marks of age.\n\nA famous Victorian lady traveller, Isabella Bird, has left an account of the Tung Wah hall which she visited in 1879;\n\n\"The building where the directors meet... (has) one side open to the garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle with a handsome chair for the chairman and six carved ebony chairs on each side—a most stately 'board room'.”\n\nThe furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon. They had encountered financial difficulties and the Chinese Government had seized their property for debt and sold it at a public auction. In this manner it found its way to Hongkong.\n\nThe activities of the hospital committee in affairs affecting the Chinese community were viewed with suspicion by Europeans in Hongkong.\n\nEven before the hospital was opened, the committee came under attack for interfering in a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States.\n\nThe Daily Advertiser said that members of the board of the hospital \"appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the Colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some time in the future.” As indeed there was.\n\nThe committee which oversaw the affairs of Tung Wah Hospital was elected annually from the most prominent members of the community.\n\nOstensibly their duties were to manage the hospital. Its members, however, also served as temple and kaifong directors. The jurisdiction of these bodies was not sharply defined.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211161,
        "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-1987",
        "page_number": 222,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "197\n\nand in his public utterances, and during the course of his much lauded conciliatory and considerate policy towards the Chinese, the Governor has unduly accentuated the political power assumed by this eleemosynary institution.”\n\nThe paper had time and again drawn the attention of the public to the dangers the activities of Tung Wah posed to the legitimate authority of the Government.\n\nOnce again it warned of the \"dangerous mischief calculated to result from the action of a native corporation possessing no guide or check” and urged the “necessity for either prohibiting the directors from acting as extra judges or jurymen, or for recognising certain powers in them limited by clearly defined rules.”\n\nTheir acting as \"a sort of Small Cause Court, Chamber of Commerce, Tribunal of Arbitration, (and) Hongkong Association\" was the natural result of the composition of the directorship of the hospital,\n\nIt was made up of elected representatives from the major commercial guilds. There was usually a member from the pawnbrokers, the compradores, the rice merchants, the nam-pak hongs (trading firms dealing in goods between the northern ports of China and Southeast Asia), the California-Australia importers and exporters, the piece-goods merchants, the cotton yarn merchants and the opium dealers.\n\nThe directors were quite aware of the tenuous position they were in, due to their being charged with the management of a hospital and at the same time undertaking to act as a board of arbitration over disputes that could not be settled within a guild.\n\nThey also could not escape the fact that the Chinese in Hong Kong looked to them as their natural leaders and entrusted them with the general overseeing of the welfare of the community.\n\nAs long as the hospital was used for the management of general community affairs, the directors realised they would be criticised. For this reason they requested a grant of land from the Govern-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212319,
        "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": 261,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "238\n\nCompany joined Dairy Farm and became known as the Dairy Farm, Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited, following the merging of the food sections of Lane Crawford and Dairy Farm.\n\nBecause records were lost little is known of the company's history between 1920 and 1942. The directors who were not killed fighting the Japanese in 1941, however, did manage to hold a minuted board meeting, on June 1st, 1942, in Stanley prison camp. They later held a joint meeting with the directors of Lane Crawford's when it was suggested the two firms should co-operate after hostilities ceased.\n\nThis idea materialised in 1960 with limited success. In 1972, Hong Kong Land acquired Dairy Farm in the first contested takeover bid in Hong Kong. The old building on Lower Albert Road, used by the Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited until 1978, now houses the Foreign Correspondents' Club and the Fringe Club. In the late 20th century milk is tankered into Hong Kong mainly from China.\n\nWatson's\n\nAnother of the few firms that is as old as Hong Kong itself is A.S. Watson's. It is connected with the Canton Dispensary which operated from 1828 to 1858. The Hong Kong Dispensary was opened in a matshed at Possession Point by Doctors (Peter) F.H. Young, a naval surgeon, and Alexander Anderson. The latter became the first Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong. Doctor John Morrison, son of Doctor Robert Morrison who founded the Canton Dispensary with Doctor Livingstone, was also involved. In July 1841, a bad typhoon destroyed the Dispensary's matshed at Possession Point as well as other structures in Hong Kong.\n\nThe main purpose of Di Yeuk Fong (†) (big medicine shop as it was then called) was as a dispensary for soldiers and sailors. On 1st January 1843 it moved to Captain Morgan's Bazaar, and the same year a Doctor Samuel Marjoribanks, a surgeon, joined as a partner. In 1845 the dispensary moved to permanent premises, in Queen's Road, and Doctor James Hume Young (a relative of F.H. Young) became manager.\n\nThe first member of the Watson family to go East was Thomas",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212325,
        "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": 267,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "244\n\nParsees. At one time, with a German Chairman and an American Deputy Chairman, the Board had no British members. The financial failure of Dent, in 1867, had the effect of freeing the Bank from dependence on any one enterprise and brought about more independent management control. Within months of setting up its headquarters in Hong Kong a branch was opened in London, and further branches were established in San Francisco (1875), New York (1880), Lyons (1881) and Hamburg (1889). By the 1880s The Hong Kong Bank had become banker to the Hong Kong Government, and to this day it is, in effect, the Central Bank of the Territory.\n\nWorld War I proved a difficult period, and its German directors resigned shortly after hostilities commenced. The Bank resumed its leading position in China and the Far East in the 1920s and 30s. Like the Chartered Bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank's branch in Shanghai operated without interruption all through the Cultural Revolution.\n\nToday 'Wardley' is the name of an investment company associated with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In 1864, Wardley House (demolished in 1882 when its new bank building was completed) was the first premises of the Bank. William Henry Wardley was a staff member of Gibb Livingston. He started his own firm about 1850. Although the company was taken over by F.B. Johnson and James Bowman the name was retained. It stopped trading about 1861, before the Bank was established. But the name, Wardley, has been perpetuated.\n\nThe Mercantile Bank\n\nThe old Mercantile Bank can be traced back to October 1853, with the founding of the Mercantile Bank of Bombay. Within two months it had become the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, a co-partnership of four Indian proprietors and four British. An office was opened in London almost immediately, and other offices, in 1854, in Madras, Colombo and Kandy. In 1855 branches started at Calcutta, Singapore, Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Comparing these dates with the Chartered Bank, Mercantile got off to a quicker start, although both banks were established in the same year. Mercantile had a branch in Hong Kong, for example, four years before Chartered.\n\nSkipping a century, in 1958 the name was shortened to ‘Mercantile",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212329,
        "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": 271,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "248\n\nwere still in darkness. Kowloon had to wait another 28 years before gas lights were turned on. The inhabitants there continued to depend upon candles and oil lamps.\n\nThe board of directors set up their office in London, and from there they engaged staff and ran the company. The first manager in Hong Kong was R.C. Whitty. It was he who erected the plant, which came from Britain, on the waterfront at West Point (near Whitty Street). It was the first gas utility in the Far East. Jardine's office, the Hong Kong Dispensary (A.S. Watson and Company), and the Hong Kong Hotel were the first buildings to be lighted by gas. Gas cookers and water heaters were still unheard of.\n\nThe first plant could manufacture 120,000 cubic feet of gas a day, and for 80 years coal was used as fuel. The Ma Tau Kok gasworks used to ring a brass bell at hourly intervals, like ships of old using the marine system of two, four, six, and eight bells over a four-hour period, for timing the charging and discharging of furnaces. This bell was a familiar sound to Ma Tau Kok residents.\n\nFor 90 years the company was managed directly from Britain. Then, in 1954, majority control was purchased by George Marden of Wheelock Marden. In 1982, the transfer of the company's corporate registration from England to Hong Kong made it a local firm. These moves brought about more effective management control.\n\nFor 100 years there were gas lights in Hong Kong. Today only four remain. These are situated at the head and foot of the broad granite steps, built between 1875 and 1889, which lead from Ice House Street into Duddell Street in Central. The lamps were installed at the turn of the century when they were lit manually. These steps and the four street lights have been gazetted as historical monuments. Once there were over 2,000 street gas lamps. But in spite of the loss of business, the Gas Company learned to adapt and emerged stronger than ever. In the late 1980s, it had over half a million consumers. After 1981, Towngas has been produced entirely from eight naphtha plants.\n\nHong Kong Electric\n\nThe first power station in Hong Kong was in Star Street, Wanchai,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213038,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 106,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "86\n\nwas to promote the responsibility of District Committees, by requiring their 'joint charge and control over the whole range of the labours carried on by their individual members.' The medical mission work in China was already distinguished by local financial support and greater reliance was being placed on the local committee for hospital management and administration. Given these factors, the reply of the LMS Board of Directors is understandable.\n\nThe Chinese subscribers, 21 of the richest men in Hong Kong, therefore guaranteed a sum of $2,000 per annum for the lady doctor's salary, but added a condition: that she be available to treat the women of the subscribers' families in their own homes. As well, she would be required to spend her first year learning Cantonese in Hong Kong (rather than in Canton, where LMS language training was established), so that she could mix socially with the Chinese ladies and introduce to them Western hygiene and health care. Negotiations took several months, agreement reached in February, 1903, the delays attributed by the LMS Hong Kong Secretary, Mr. Pearce, to the inability of Dr. Ho to arrange a meeting of the subscribers. More likely, since the subscribers' money was essential, the delay was tactical, Dr. Ho certainly having been able to arrange their support very quickly initially.\n\nFor Dr. Gibson, pursuit of the project was important, because he feared that the Tung Wah Hospital, having introduced some Western medicine and by now handling obstetric cases, would threaten the viability of the Alice Hospital and thereby, the mission enterprise in Hong Kong, saying:\n\n·\n\n+\n\nI feel confident that the Directors of the LMS do not wish that our Missionary Institution should be behind a purely heathen Institution in making provision for the relief of suffering.\n\n18\n\nHis vision was at all times expansionary, having set up a clinic in Kowloon in 1901, in order to bring Western medicine to a wider public. In the event, he was obliged to accept a lady doctor on terms other than he would have wished. The repercussions of this were to affect the development of the service offered by the new AMMH and lead to the resignation of the lady doctor in 1909. From that point, supervision was fragmented until 1925, when Dr. Annie Sydenham took over the maternity hospital.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213093,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 161,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "142\n\nimportance of an unexampled calamity. However in spite of difficulties in balancing the budget, many public works projects were completed during his term. He governed with a liberal-mind for he increased the number of unofficial seats in both the Legislative and the Executive Councils in response to a demand for reforming the government. He also agreed to have an unofficial majority on the Sanitary Board. Generally regarded as an able administrator he stayed for fully six years as Governor, the longest tenure held by any governor thus far. In the history of modern China, he would be remembered as the Governor of Hong Kong who imposed a five-year ban on Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who then went to London and was kidnapped but rescued by Sir James Cantlie but that is another story.\n\nSir James Stewart Lockhart, the main target of Lowson's attack, was Registrar General and acting Colonial Secretary in 1894. There is a biography of him written by Shiona Airlie entitled 'The Thistle and the Bamboo.' He emerged from it as a capable but ambitious man who was eager to seek promotion ahead of his time, and in spite of what Lowson said of him, he got on well with the Chinese. The function of a Registrar General in the early years was to deal with Chinese affairs, not legal matters as at present, in fact, the initial title was Protector of the Chinese. In this office, Lockhart maintained good relations with the directors of Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk and the District Watch Committee, the three main representative bodies of the Chinese community. As to his character, he was said to possess 'humoured geniality which endeared him to his contemporaries' but 'occasionally his patience snapped and from a man considered in the main to be warm-hearted and genial, he became angry and stubborn.' He made at least one important contribution in connection with the Epidemic. After the Resumption of Tai Ping Shan Ordinance was passed, action had to be taken to demolish the old houses. Both landlords and tenants put up a spirited resistance as they both had to suffer financial loss, no rent to be collected by the landlords for sometime and no cheap lodgings for the tenants who were mostly coolies. The coolies threatened to go on strike which would paralyse the city in already very difficult circumstances. Lockhart, who was fluent in Chinese, having been a cadet in the Hong Kong Civil Service, was instrumental in solving the dispute which ended amicably. In 1895, at the age of thirty seven, he became Colonial Secretary when his acting appointment was substantiated. In addition, he was appointed as Special Commissioner for the New Territories in 1897 after the lease was settled. In 1902, he went to Weihaiwei as its first Civil Commissioner. On his departure the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213201,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 23,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "2\n\nThe name apparently derives from a city in Germany, but records indicated they had for a time lived in Egypt or Turkey before arriving at the China coast.\n\nThis study is one-dimensional. I do not have sufficient knowledge nor have I undertaken the necessary research to put the story of the Germans in Hong Kong in a proper international setting or to relate it to the complexities of the internal and external developments of the German states and, subsequently, the German nation. This study is based on Hong Kong sources and hence is seen only from the Hong Kong view. The story could be greatly enlarged and enriched by a scholar with broader knowledge than the present author.\n\nSources for the study\n\nDocumentation of sources is usually of little interest to the average reader but they are important to the scholar who might want to check the facts or further develop aspects of the subject. I am not aware that there has yet been published so detailed a history of the German-speaking community in Hong Kong as the present study. Even so, I have not dealt with the subject in a thoroughly exhaustive way. I have confined myself to data found in Hong Kong and I have not included every detail or fact I have in my files.\n\nReaders who check the notes will find that most of my information is from a limited number of sources: Hong Kong newspapers; the Hong Kong section of directors for China and the Far East; the Hong Kong Government Gazette contains jury lists, annual probate calendars, the medical register, notices of changes in the partnership of firms and authorisation to sign; reports of the Spirit Licensing Board; the China Repository lists of residents on the China coast 1833-1851; Colonial Office records, especially for the World War I period; selected Series in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, especially those from wills, rates and valuations, and surrendered deeds; and the memorials in the Land Office. With so many references, there may have been some mistakes in transcribing dates and names. I hope these errors are at a minimum.\n\nI should like to express my appreciation to the staff of the Public Records Office, the Secretariat Library, the Special Collections Room at Hong Kong University Library, and to the Registrar General for permission",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213251,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 73,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "52\n\nestablish a branch there of the new Deutsch Bank. Mr. Mammelsdorf to take charge in Yokohama. A special branch will be opened in Hong Kong. Both of these gentlemen were formerly in the Comptoir as was also Mr. Wallach who will take charge at Berlin. Mr. Probst, formerly of Pustau and Co. takes the branch at Hamburg. At Bremen will be Mr. Van der Heyde, formerly of Behre, Meyer and Co Singapore.\"\n\nAt the same time as the Deutsch Bank was in the process of opening offices in China, the Deutsche National Bank of Bremen was organised and appointed Melchers and Co. their agent in Hong Kong and Siemssen and Co. their agent in Shanghai (DP 29 June 1872).\n\nThe Deutsch-Asiatische Bank was registered at the Imperial German Consulate in Shanghai on 15 May 1889. In 1905, M. Hemann, the manager of the Hong Kong branch of the Bank was succeeded by Hugo Suter (DP 17 July 1905). The Bank redeveloped in 1913 the property on Queen's Road which it had occupied since 1901. The building, of modern renaissance style \"on chaste and simple lines\", was occupied for only a few months before it had to shut its doors with the outbreak of hostilities between England and Germany (SCMP 14 Aug. 1913, HKT 6 Jan. 1914). The building was purchased from the liquidators in 1917 by Sir Paul Chater for $355,000 (SCMP 14 Aug. 1917).\n\nFrom the time of the organization of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1864 to 1914 there were Germans on the Board of the Bank. Woldemar Nissen of Siemssen and Co. was on the Provisional Committee. Another member of the Provisional Committee was Waldemar Schmidt, whose name sounds German, a partner in the English firm of Fletcher and Co. In May 1868 Julius Menke of William Pustau and Co. joined the Board. With the failure of William Pustau and Co. in 1877 the firm was no longer represented. But in the meantime Hermann Melchers of Melchers and Co. was elected to a seat on the Board in 1872. The bank was watchful that the British interests should not be swamped by German and American, Arnhold, Karbegg and Co. had a representative on the board from 1888 and Carlowitz and Co. from 1875. In 1914 all the firms mentioned, but William Pustau and Co., had a partner on the Bank (Dr. King's detailed history of the bank has lists of the directors for each year).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214667,
        "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": 82,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "46\n\ntrust in his father's name (the Chan Hok Yin Tso) which owned 2.7 acres (Chan Tak-hing and his brother Chan Tsan-hing,\n\n(\n\n, were the only beneficiaries - it is likely that much of the property of this trust was amassed by Chan Tak-hing). His son, Chan Kwok-yan, 1872-1937) succeeded him on the Lok Sin Tong Board, the Kowloon City Kaifong, and as trustee for the Chan Hok Yin Tso, but he took to smoking opium, and the family business was closed down in 1930, when the family shop in Kowloon City was cleared for re-development.\n\nAs for the Lis, Li Ping-ngam, an \"honest farmer, who, on coming back from a meeting in Kowloon City, would take off his shoes and go back to work in the fields\", and resident in Sha Po, was an early Director as well312. He was probably dead by 1902. Li Ping-shang, who does appear in the 1902 Block Crown Lease, may have been his brother; if so, the lady Li Ip Shi mentioned above was very possibly Li Ping-ngam's widow, since Li Ping-shang owned a small piece of land jointly with the widow Ip. It is entirely likely that Li Ping-ngam was not quite the simple farmer he was remembered as. He may have been the dominant leader of the Li clan before Li Lai-ting (who could also have been called \"an honest farmer\").\n\nNg Shue-fan was also one of the Directors of the Lung Chun School within the Walled City () at the end of the nineteenth century33. This had been founded in the 1840s when the Sub-Magistracy was moved to Kowloon City, as a mark of the importance the Ch'ing Government placed on education and scholarship. Five trustees, who probably represented the local groups who had paid for the erection of the school in the 1840s, managed it: it is likely, therefore, that Nga Tsin Wai had been significantly involved in the foundation. By the end of the nineteenth century this school was being used as a Meeting Hall when meetings of the district elders and gentry were called. That Nga Tsin Wai provided one of the trustees is eloquent evidence of its local prestige and importance.\n\nNg Shue-tong was similarly important in local charitable affairs outside the Lok Sin Tong. Thus, when the Hau Wong temple was restored in 1879, he was the Chief Manager for the project (at least seven other Nga Tsin Wai villagers can be identified from the Donation Tablet)34. When the Hau Wong Temple had been restored in 1822,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215392,
        "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": 169,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "It's no doubt advisable to have every plague patient properly isolated but I fail to see how this can be done in practice as the Chinese do not like to part with our sick until there is no hope of saving them, and it is only in extreme cases, especially in the case of husband and wife and mother and child that they should do so. It has been amply known from experience that the Chinese rather conceal their sick until the last moment and dump their dead in cases where their fellow lodgers would be involved in trouble in order to avoid detection than to submit to forcible removal. Would it not therefore be better to give them the option of treating their sick in their own houses or in some places where the relatives can tend their sick or soothe the mind of the sick by being present oftener, thus ensuring the disinfection of every infected building and placing every plague patient under proper surveillance. The bye-law as to isolation has proved to be a failure; it is time that some new scheme should be tried.\n\nIn an early step towards resolving the problem, it was decreed that infant corpses could be brought to dispensaries, no questions asked, and a $1 reward given. Street Committees were appointed and coordination and funding entrusted to the Directors of the Tung Wah Hospital.\n\nPage 118\n\n[Some text appears to be missing or out of order in the original OCR output, but based on the provided rules, the above response focuses on correcting the text that is reasonably coherent and follows the instructions given.]\n\nFounder and Chief President in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 1913. Official Member of the Legislative Council (18) and Director of the Po Leung Kuk.\n\nAn indication of what the Chinese community wanted is provided by the report of letters from Mr. Lau Chu Pak (a member of the deputation at Government House) read at a meeting of the Sanitary Board on Tuesday, 24 December 1907.\n\nThe dumping of dead bodies in the streets or the harbour had been a life-threatening issue and all efforts to put a stop to it had been ineffective. Suspicions that the practice was the result of infanticide were disproved and the main reason it continued was fear of disinfection of households by the foreign authorities.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215774,
        "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": 73,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "their petition. Even before 1826, the Spanish silver dollar and local copper cent had been used widely by the Straits merchants in their trade and commerce, (even though in theory, in 1835, the rupee was the currency of account for official purposes until 1867).\n\nThe directors of the EIC, considering only the Indian Empire's interests,29 established a uniform rupee currency throughout its territories, which of course included the Straits Settlements. In 1854, a bill was introduced to the Indian legislative council 'to improve the law relating to the copper currency in the Straits,' which provided for a copper currency based on fractions of the rupee.30 According to the Currency Act, the Indian pice was to be made legal tender instead of the copper cent and the rupee was to be enforced as legal tender.31\n\nThis Act was fiercely objected to by the Straits merchants, and in response to the opposition, the directors ordered the act to be repealed in 1857. Mr Ballie (Secretary of the Board of Control of the EIC) argues that 'it was very natural that the governor-general should desire to establish a uniform currency throughout the whole of the territories subject to his authority'32 and that after the complaints made at Singapore, this grievance was redressed, and that therefore the petitioners did not have a right to complain.**\n\nPage 36\n\n33\n\n35\n\nThe 1867 Act legalised a currency which was already assured,” and by the time the transfer to the Colonial Office took place, the currency issue was virtually resolved. However, as it was a problem that could have been prevented instead of cured, I would accord little credit to the Indian government's role in this issue.\n\nPiracy and western laws\n\nThis was another arguable \"problem\" that was cited in the petition, and used as an example of the Indian government's inefficiency. Piracy was widespread in the Straits until the mid-19th century, and was a threat to the property and commerce of the merchants. The pirates that predominated in the 1830s and 1840s were pirates of the Sulu archipelago, Illanun pirates from Mindanao and Dyaks from North Borneo. Complaints were that 'no systematic measures of protection have ever been adopted or carried out by the EIC, who have been content to leave the service to be performed by the Royal Navy.”37",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]