[ { "id": 204719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n13\n\nOn the evening of the 19th affairs looked so squally that Mr. Hunter who had returned to Canton a day or two before ordered all the books and papers packed up and started with them at 2 A.M. the next morning for Macao. At 7 Mr. King started Mr. Spooner and myself off in Mr. Hunter's sail boat with a load of baggage, and books that Mr. H. could not take. We were towed down by Captain Endicott's boat and arrived safer after a passage of 6 hours on board the Naraganset. On our arrival we received a chit from Mr. Hunter stating that a number of transports and men of war were on the way up and advising us to get out of Canton as soon as possible. This I forwarded to Mr. King, but he did not get it as he had already left with the remainder of R and Co's Establishment.3\n\nExplanatory terms\n\nIn China the factory was a multi-purpose building. The lower floor usually was used for office space, storage, and the like, the second floor for dining and lounging, and the third for sleeping. Broad verandahs around the building gave it a spacious and airy quality. In Canton the factories of the various nationalities, American, Danish, French, Dutch, and Swedish faced the river. The British factory was truly magnificent for it contained a huge and lavishly furnished dining hall with terrace, library, chapel and numerous private rooms.\n\nHong was sometimes used interchangeably with factory but specifically it referred to all the buildings of a commercial establishment, i.e., the factory and subsidiary buildings such as living quarters for servants and workers and large storage areas for cargos of ships.\n\nHong merchants had formed an association in the early eighteenth century; in 1839 the Chinese merchants numbered thirteen and they had a monopoly of trade with foreigners. The most powerful and wealthy Hong merchant was Howqua, spelt by Hunter Houqua.\n\nConsoo House was the property of the Hong merchants, and in actuality was a series of buildings in the Chinese style. The main building contained lavish reception rooms and a series of courtyards.\n\n3 James Duncan Phillips, editor, \"The Canton Letters 1839-1841 of William Henry Low,\" The Essex Institute Historical Collections LXXXIV, 1948.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204720, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "14\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nLinguists were licensed Chinese interpreters. (See note 39). Compradore was a Chinese national in charge of workers in a factory.\n\nColoured buttons attached to caps determined the rank of Chinese officials.\n\nThe term Hoppo was coined by Westerners to designate the official appointed by the Emperor to look after trade at Canton and to remit the resulting revenue to the Board of Revenue (the hu-pu) at Peking. His full title was Yüeh Hai-kuan-pu which means \"Superintendent of Customs for the province of Canton”.\n\nChop was an official pronouncement by Chinese authorities.\n\nChop boats carried cargo from Whampoa to Canton; in design they resembled a melon with circular decks and sides and could provide for 500 chests of opium.\n\nJOURNAL OF OCCURRENCES AT CANTON 1839\n\nMarch 24, Sunday\n\nThe Chinese are building bridges across the street in the rear, to the roofs of our Hongs in order the better to keep a lookout.\n\nOur servants, coolies, cooks, and compradore as well as those from all other Factories, quit the Hongs this evening. It looked as if they were running from a plague, each person carried off his bed, trunk, or box, and for a short time the Square was all in confusion. The linguists permitted ours to remain till the last moment, and from the time the order for them to quit was received, which was about 8 p.m., till after 8 when not a Chinese was left in any Hong, the coolies made out to secure for us outside and bring in about 60 fowls, 15 tubs of water, a tub of sugar, some oil, a bag of biscuits, and a few other things.\n\nThe Square now is one blaze of light, innumerable lanterns from the different Hongs are disposed all over it, and the noise of some three or four hundred coolies stationed to guard any foreigner from leaving Canton makes it resemble a large wild encampment.\n\nCaptain Elliot landed at the Factory steps about 5 p.m., hoisted the British colors and called a meeting of all the foreigners in Canton. He then went to Mr. Dent's Factory and took him to the hall. Thousands of Chinese in the Square greatly excited", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204825, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\nSecondly that the great extent of our commercial concerns in China requires a place of security as a depot for such of our goods as cannot be sold off or shipped during the short season that is allowed for our shipping to arrive and depart; and that for this purpose we wish to obtain a grant of a small tract of ground or detached Island, but in a more convenient situation than Canton, where our present Warehouses are at a great distance from our ships, and where we are not able to restrain the irregularities which are occasionally committed by the Seamen of the Company's ships, and those of private traders4.\n\n107\n\nIn fact in his Journal under an entry dated 2-7 January, 1794, after discussing the possibility of obtaining Macao, he went on to mention the possibility of a settlement on an island.\n\nOr with as little trouble and with more advantage we might make a settlement in Lantao or Cow-hee, and then Macao would of itself crumble to nothing in a short time. The forts of the Bocca Tigris might be demolished by half a dozen broadsides, the river would be impassable without our permission, and the whole trade of Canton and its correspondencies annihilated in a season. The millions of people who subsist by it would be almost instantly reduced to hunger and insurrection.\n\nTherefore it was natural that Macartney should send Lieutenant Parish to survey the coast of Lantao and the neighbouring islands in search of a harbour and a possible place for a settlement. In his report Parish refers to \"a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade\". It was unfortunate that the bad weather during the short time available for the survey prevented Parish from obtaining a more detailed description of the area. However, he did manage to land on an island which he calls Cowhee and his report to Macartney contains information of interest which, together with his sketch map, is worth reproducing3. It reads as follows:\n\nMacao 28th February, 1794.\n\nPursuant to your Excellency's orders, Mr. Alexander and myself embarked on board the Jackall in the Typas, at seven", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205216, "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-1966", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ncase at Compensation Board hearings, following upon such resumptions.\n\nRods, acres and chains are unknown measurements in Hong Kong insofar as the Chinese farmer is concerned. He uses such measurements as mau (mou), tau chung (tou chung) and tam shui (tan shui) which besides being different words are also very different in area. A mau = 4.8 of an acre. This measurement is still used in mainland China but has been out of general use in the Colony of Hong Kong since at least the early 1900's. Here in Hong Kong the tau chung and the tam shui are the local measures.1\n\nEach Chinese village in Hong Kong has its own tau. Usually it is a wooden tub or boat-shaped container which holds approximately ten catties of rice seed. A catty is a Chinese weight of 1¼ pounds. The tau is therefore about 13.333 lbs., but could be more or less as there is no standard tau in use among the villages. Turning from the tau to the tau chung, the latter measure is the area of land required to grow one tau of rice seed.\n\nAgricultural land in Hong Kong is rated as first class, second class or third class, dependent on its water supply. First class land is well-watered land that will grow two crops of rice and a catch-crop in the off season, generally sweet potato. Second class land relies generally on rainfall for its water supply and is rated as medium grade land. Third class land is generally located on hillsides, is usually dry, and is used as orchard land or for growing ground nuts, millet and upland rice.2\n\nJust prior to the rice growing season which coincides with the southeast monsoon, padi nurseries are prepared here and there in the fields and the seed is scattered in a small nursery plot which grows very green and very thick. At the same time, the farmer gets out his buffalo and ploughs the padi fields in preparation for the planting. Each padi field is constructed so that it is at a slightly higher level than the one below it, which accounts for the terracing effect one associates with padi fields. The size and location of a padi field is governed by its ability to receive a gravity feed of water from its source. Each padi is surrounded by an earth bund in which outlets are made so that water flowing in from the top level feeds directly to the lowest level. With sufficient water in the lowest field the farmer plugs the bund outlet and allows the next level to fill until all the padis have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205415, "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-1967", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "170\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n16 This bell is dated in the autumn of Chien Lung year (1773).\n\n17 Summary of Report of the Squatters Commission, p. 115. The same man said (p. 122) that Ap Lei Chau 'was built about 1850'.\n\n18 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 28 March 1857 p. 4, Table No. 3.\n\n19 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 1867 p. 92, Table No. 7.\n\n20 Mayers, Dennys and King. The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (London, Trubner and Co., 1867) p. 49.\n\n21 Hong Kong Sessional Papers, i.e. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, for 1897 and 1911, pp. 484 and 103(23) respectively.\n\n22 Mayers, Dennys and King, p. 49 mention 'boat-building and general trade'. See also information given in the printed proceedings of a court case over ownership of land on Ap Lei Chau given in Sessional Papers August 1886 - September 1887 (Appendix to Report from the Land Court of 1886-87), pp. 33-35.\n\n23 For another example see my article on Cheung Chau (an island near Hong Kong that together with the rest of the New Territories was leased to Great Britain by the Convention of Peking, 1898) in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 3 (1963), especially pp. 95-98.\n\n24 Sessional Papers 1911 and 1897 at the pp. quoted at note 21 above.\n\n25 See also the article referred to at note 23 above.\n\n26 This and the previous paragraph are based on the oral statements of three Ap Lei Chau elders born 1887, 1891 and 1897 who had belonged to the three Fongs. Their evidence helps to interpret and confirm the evidence given before the Squatter Board during a hearing to determine ownership of the Hung Shing temple in 1893. See Summary of Report of the Squatters Commission, pp. 120-141.\n\nFootnote:\n\nIt is clear from re-reading Sayer, pp. 22-23, that the Hung Shing temple was originally on a small island that was later, and before Sayer wrote in 1937, joined by reclamation to its larger neighbour Ap Lei Chau.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205511, "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-1968", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "48\n\nT. J. LINDSAY\n\nOne point that shows up in the accounts is the speed of coaling at Singapore. In 1880 Glencoe loaded 1,130 tons in 103 hours, in 1882 Sterling Castle 1,600 tons in 10 hours, in 1884 Glenogle 1,500 tons in 62 hours. Moyune 700 tons in 5 hours in 1887 as against Glenogle 1,200 tons in 5 hours in the same year. The “Glen\" figures of 220 tons an hour in 1884 and 240 tons in 1887 are remarkable.\n\nWhat of the conditions in these ships racing home? The stoke-hold must have been almost unbearable, so it is no wonder that difficulties with the stokers were reported. In 1882 there was trouble culminating in Singapore when a stoker of Glenogle struck the Chief Engineer. When a European shore policeman came on board the 31 stokers threatened but the policeman \"took his stand in the most daring manner and fairly cowed the men by his determined demeanour\". At Hankow, too, there was trouble in 1883 when some of Glenogle's crew were reported to have mutinied and the Navy had to be called in to deal with the situation.\n\nPassengers, too, had something to complain of. On one occasion in Singapore when two or three passengers had been granted conditional passages they found the saloon and every state-cabin crammed with tea.\n\nConditions in the China tea trade were about to change. In 1881 the North China Daily News wrote:\n\n“It is not so many years since China was the only tea producing country. It was sufficient then for the buyer to watch the deliveries at home and the export from China, to be guided, with little chance of error, in his operations. But the fatal energy of our race has reared up in British India a frightful rival to the Flowery Land, and India not only demoralises China by sending opium here, but demoralises our tea markets by sending tea in increasingly enormous quantities to London. There are no squeezing Mandarins in India, there is European supervision in packing and the firing of the leaf, and the plantations are connected with civilization by the railway and the telegraph. Everything is done to give India an unfair advantage over China. Java is competing too, and Ceylon is threatening. As yet Indian tea is hardly taken on the continent of Europe at all, but here too it will penetrate sooner or later, as it is doing into America and Australia, and then there will be no corner of the earth where the sway of China tea will be undisputed.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205541, "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-1968", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "78\n\nGORAN AIJMER\n\non Dabu Jiuxu (Tai Po Old Market), dominated by a single mighty Cantonese lineage, who tried their best to harass market visitors.\n\nThis rather tedious exercise provides us with evidence enough to justify an assumption that the people of Plum Grove Village were better off than their neighbours of Big Stream Village.10\n\nA key factor for the understanding of social change in this area is the rapid urbanization on the Kowloon Peninsula after 1875. For the villages in question this process implied a set of new choices, e.g. the use of a new, comparatively lucrative market developing at Youmadi (Yau Ma Tei). Here they came to sell firewood, and once in town they encountered new possibilities. The demand from overseas for Chinese labour had led to the establishment of labour-recruiting bureaux and agencies. The expanding shipping trade in the Hong Kong harbour offered opportunities for jobs on board transoceanic steamers. At the same time the appearance of new industrial products on the market drastically reduced traditionally complementary incomes from home industries.\n\nThe men of Big Stream Village soon jumped at the new opportunities that were displayed in Kowloon. Many of them ended up in the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. Through their remittances the home community now had access to an inflow of external incomes. As time passed considerable accumulation of capital brought about changes in the economic status of the village. Before the Pacific War several large and spacious houses were constructed by a handful of very successful emigrés. Conditions had improved, although economic differentiation within the community now was more marked than in the traditional situation. The general location of the village will also have become more favourable as the Kowloon-Canton Railway and a modern road were constructed on the other side of Tide Cove in the opening years of the 20th century.\n\nThe possibilities displayed in Kowloon did not have the same attraction for the people in Plum Grove Village. Land was still sufficient, the yield in normal years will have been reckoned as satisfying, and the firewood cutting, charcoal burning, and other home industries could for a long time bridge the slowly emerging gap between increasing population and static means of production. Part of the land that in 1906 belonged to outsiders seems to have been bought back by local people, but such expansion of produc-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205785, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n85\n\nCrawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: \"A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below...\" An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: \"In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful\". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of \"ordinary glass lamps\" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else!\n\nFortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: \"If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary\".\n\nFour years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205786, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205950, "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-1970", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "LORD ELGIN AND THE TAIPINGS\n\n25\n\nhimself, use this opportunity to reach some kind of understanding with the Taipings? Did he use the opportunity to at least gain a greater understanding of them, as a possible prelude to a later accommodation? Let us look at the record.\n\nThe occasion was Lord Elgin's trip up the Yangtze River following the yet-to-be-aborted Treaty of Tientsin of 1858. The treaty had provided for the opening of the Yangtze River to Western trade. The official purpose of the mission was to investigate suitable trading ports and trading conditions along the river in anticipation of the day when this concession could be fulfilled. Elgin departed Shanghai aboard H.M.S. Furious on November 8, 1858 and arrived in Hankow on December 6. He left Hankow on December 12, returning to Shanghai on January 1, 1859.\n\nFar from getting off to a diplomatic start as far as any approach to the Taipings was concerned the trip was conducted in the grand gunboat style. Elgin declared:\n\nI, of course, resolved that no human power, and no physical obstacle which could be surmounted should arrest my progress. It was obviously essential to the prestige of England, that a measure of this description, if undertaken at all, should be carried out; I could not therefore recognize in the rebels a right to stop me, nor could I take any step which they might construe into such an admission. Subject to this limitation, I was ready to give them every assurance that our movement was of a peaceful character, and that we did not intend to take part, one way or another, in the civil war to which they were parties.3\n\nNo effort was made to notify the Taipings of the coming of this special mission. As a result an almost predictable misunderstanding occurred when Elgin's mission reached Nanking. Unfortunately we only have the English version of the incident, but this is sufficient to raise some interesting questions. Upon reaching Nanking, Elgin dispatched a smaller vessel to communicate, if possible, with the Taiping authorities. As the vessel approached the Nanking batteries, it was not unnaturally fired upon. The vessel, however, was under orders not to return fire immediately, but to hoist a white flag first. It did so. The Taiping batteries, however, fired seven additional shots within three minutes time.5\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205976, "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-1970", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\nNOTES\n\n51\n\n1 Since the end of war with Japan in 1945 both Hong Kong and its Government Service have experienced major changes of circumstance and outlook. Whilst the cadet or administrative grade continues in being there are now (April 1970) administrative officers in a total permanent Civil Service establishment of there are Chinese officers, the first of whom was appointed in 1948.\n\n2 The title was later changed to \"Cadet on Probation\". In 1862 cadets received a salary of £200 per annum on arrival in the Colony and at the end of two years' study or as soon afterwards as they were declared qualified by a Board of Examiners £400 per annum. In 1924 the salary was still only £350 on arrival and £400 after passing the final examination; in 1936 the amounts were £450 and £525 respectively. Information on the Cadet Service is to be found in the various General Orders of the Hong Kong Government.\n\n3 The following books have information on the origin of the scheme: E. J. Eitel Europe in China, Hong Kong, 1895, p. 365; G. B. Sayer Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, 1937, p. 194; J. W. Norton-Kyshe The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1898, vol. 2, pp. 8-11; and Sir Charles Collins Public Administration in Hong Kong, London, 1952, pp. 126-127.\n\n4 Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, London, 1962, p. 164. Major Sir Ralph Furse was Director of Recruitment, Colonial Service, 1931-48; and Adviser to the Secretary of State for Colonies on Training Courses for the Colonial Service, 1948-50.\n\n5 For a sketch of Caldwell's career see G. B. Endacott A Biographical Sketch-book of Early Hong Kong, Singapore, 1962, pp. 95-99. Daniel Richard Caldwell was of mixed blood, born at Singapore, and married to a Chinese. He was a brilliant linguist and occupied, at one time or another, various senior posts in the Hong Kong Government. His proved association with Ma Chow Wong, a frequenter of pirates, ruined Caldwell's career. Caldwell was found unfit by a Commission of Inquiry to continue in the public service. He died in 1875.\n\n6 E. J. Eitel \"Chinese Studies and Official Interpretation in the Colony of Hong Kong”, China Review, vol. 16, 1877-8, p. 5.\n\n7 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit., vol. I, p. 579.\n\n8 January 28, 1867,\n\n9 See note 6.\n\n10 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 8-9.\n\n11 Ibid., p. 10. The revised regulations for Hong Kong Cadetships, published in the Government Gazette, 7 September 1872, gives the heads of examination as follows: \"(A) Obligatory — 1st. Exercises designed to test Handwriting and Orthography; 2nd. Arithmetic, including Vulgar and Decimal Fractions; 3rd. Latin, and one of the following languages: Greek, French, German, Italian; 4th. English Composition, including Précis writing; (B) Optional 5th. Pure and Mixed Mathematics; 6th. Ancient and Modern History, and Geography; 7th. Elements of Constitutional and International Law, and Political Economy; 8th. Geology, Civil Engineering and Surveying\". Every candidate was expected to show a competent knowledge of the first four subjects, but could select any two of the optional subjects.\n\n7", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206007, "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-1970", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nmarine surveyor was appointed to enforce the provisions of this Act. This resulted in many of the emigrant ships leaving Hong Kong harbour with the prescribed number of passengers on board, and then picking up many more outside Green Island, on its western limits. Even the very modest space of 12 square feet (6 feet by 2 feet) was only provided in the few good ships, and in some sailing ships each coolie had only 8 square feet. Another step to remedy abuse was taken in 1869, when emigration of Chinese to places outside the British Empire was prohibited. A more important step outside China was the appointment of British officials as Protectors of Chinese in Singapore and Penang in 1877 and 1880 respectively, followed in 1901 by the appointment of similar Dutch officials in Indonesia. (It should be remembered in any comparison between British and Dutch colonial administrations, that slavery was not abolished in the Dutch East Indies until 1860). Perhaps the last major improvement was taken in 1914, when Britain abolished indentured labour throughout the British Empire, an act of altruism which destroyed the Penang sugar industry.\n\nBesides emigration to the Nanyang and to South America, the discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1849 and 1851 respectively, started Chinese emigration to both places; and the first official returns of emigrants from Hong Kong in 1854 showed 10,491 emigrants leaving for California and 4,341 for Australia. The Chinese called California ‘Kam Shan', Golden Mountains; and Australia San Kam Shan, 'New Golden Mountains', a name this country still retains among many Chinese to this day.\n\nMost of the emigration to California and Australia was voluntary, and as stated above, the greatest abuses in the emigrant trade involved South America and the West Indies, and in particular the Peruvian guano islands and Cuba. In 1856, for instance, the master of a British ship which had left Hong Kong with 332 emigrants for Cuba, reported losing 128 from suicide and disease during the voyage. The first suicide took place on the first day out, and there was an average of three per day until the ship passed through the Sunda Straits. The captain had received $70 in passage money for each man who boarded the ship in Hong Kong, and collected a further $400 for every one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206010, "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-1970", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 85\n\nat the French settlement on New Caledonia, after which the French authorities sent a ship to rescue the survivors on Rossel Island. Only one small Chinese boy was found, whose story was that the rest of the passengers and crew had been eaten by the natives. This was accepted as gospel by the press in Sydney where the boy was taken, although there were some glaring inconsistencies in his story, and it was repeated in the British Admiralty Sailing Directions. Not until thirty years later was it seriously questioned, when its most important critic was Sir William MacGregor, the first Australian administrator of New Guinea. It is now generally believed that, rather than wait to be taken on to Australia and a life-time of labour to repay the inflated cost of their passages, the Chinese had preferred to take a chance in New Guinea. Food, including the highly prized luxury bêche-de-mer, was comparatively plentiful, and life in New Guinea with freedom must have appeared infinitely preferable to life in the Australian goldfields saddled with a heavy personal debt. When the first official census was taken in New Guinea, many Chinese were recorded, of whose origins there was no satisfactory explanation.\n\nAnother notable incident in the history of Chinese emigration, and which had a happy conclusion, concerned the Peruvian ship Maria Luz in 1872. The Maria Luz had left Macao with over 300 indentured labourers for the Peruvian guano islands, and was forced into Yokohama harbour in distress. One coolie jumped overboard and swam to H.M.S. Iron Duke, where he reported that the passengers on the Maria Luz had either been kidnapped or decoyed on board under false pretences. As a result of the publicity and outcry which this caused, all the passengers were sent back to China. Peru had then no treaty relations with Japan, but threatened war unless Japan apologised and indemnified her. The British government, however, warned Peru that any hostile act on her part would invite retaliatory action by the Royal Navy; and the whole question was referred to France, who gave her verdict in favour of Japan. This case focussed public attention on the many unsavoury aspects of the emigrant trade, and also led to the opening of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.\n\nIt is necessary to remind ourselves that conditions in many of the emigrant ships to South-east Asia during the 1850's and\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206080, "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-1970", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n155\n\nnot a general practice, it was probably due to the easiness of running before the wind that the ships could become such large hulks. Unfortunately, we do not know who built them.\n\nBy the eighth century, the boats had become huge. \"Ladders several tens of feet high had to be used to get on board.\" The trade was organised. Foreign captains had to be registered with the Office of Trading Ships, which inspected manifests and collected export and import duties. These captains had legal powers to deal with offending passengers when at sea.\n\nIn 758, the Mohammedans had so much the upper hand in Canton that they yielded to the temptation of sacking and burning the city and making to sea with the loot. However, trade continued to flourish, the principal imports being, according to Soleyman, ivory, frankincense, ingots of copper, turtle shells, and rhinoceros horns (with which the Chinese used to make girdles), and the principal exports: silk and porcelain.\n\nThe foreign ships also carried as passengers Chinese Buddhists visiting the holy places in Java and India. In the biographies of sixty pilgrims composed by I Ching,12 37 of them took the sea route to India. Some of these went from the Tonkin delta region, but the majority started from Canton or returned thither. The compass was still unknown in those days, and the first mention of its use for navigation in Chinese literature occurs at the beginning of the 12th century.\n\nV. T'UN MUN\n\nIn the preceding sections, a picture has been given of the elements which made up the population of South China up to the end of the T'ang dynasty. We now come to our region — the peninsula South East of the Canton delta, and we must do our best to piece together such fragments of historical knowledge that we can find into a sequence which will indicate how its population developed and thrived.\n\nThe first historical reference to any place in the region occurs in a list of itineraries from China to the Persian Gulf collected\n\n11 Tang Kuo Shih Pu, by Li Chan.\n\n12 義淨,大唐西行求法高僧傳", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206242, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36\n\n53\n\nwhich were imposed upon their movement by the Chinese authorities. Their effect upon a sensitive person are readily apparent from the letters. The literary interests and charitable works of the writer and his relatives are also of interest, and the mentions of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China and the Medical Missionary Society remind us of the starting difficulties that surrounded the first of these ventures.\n\nBoth societies were inaugurated at meetings held among foreign residents at Canton. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China originated at a meeting of residents on 29th November, 1834. The Medical Missionary Society originated at a public meeting held in Canton in 1838 and, according to Samuel Couling, was \"the first society of the kind in existence\" in China. The Society was formed to develop and finance Dr. Peter Parker's ophthalmic hospital in Canton which had started in Singapore in 1834 and been moved to Canton the following year. (See Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1917, pp. 345, 520 for further details. An account of the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China is given in The Chinese Repository, volume 3, page 378).\n\nWith the kind assistance of Mr. H. A. Rydings, Librarian of the University of Hong Kong and Honorary Librarian of this Branch, it has been possible to trace the reference in the letter written from the ship Asia to the Compendium of General History printed at Singapore, being the first work of the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge in China. This is Koò kin wàn kwo kang kéén or Universal History, 244 leaves, Singapore 1838. This appears as No. 34 on page 60 of (Alexander Wylie's) Memorials of the Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, Shanghae, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867. Item 17 on page 58 is also relevant. Unfortunately, the mention of the Japanese Encyclopaedia, also in the long letter written on board the Asia, is too vague to allow for any identification.\n\nIt may be of interest to readers that in Volume 4 of this Journal (1964) we printed with Introduction and Useful Notes a recently discovered M.S. Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton 1839 which is considered to have been by W. C. Hunter, a resident of Canton and Macau contemporary with Stewart. Hunter published his reminiscences", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206506, "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-1972", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "48\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\ntendent of Trade for the Northern Ports and Superintendent of Trade for the Southern Ports would find some material of use in this section of the six-point memorandum. For instance, it states that at Newchwang, the staple trade commodity is soya-bean cakes, but that this trade is not open to foreign ships. Details of the suggested method of collecting and reporting the customs revenues of this port are then given. At Tengchow, the memorialists state, an illicit foreign trade has been going on for a number of years, unbeknown to the Court. Now that it has officially become a treaty port, officials must be appointed to administer foreign trade there. As regards the five original treaty ports of Canton, Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai, no changes in the regulations need be made. As regards the newly opened ports of Ch'iungchow, Swatow, Taiwan, and Tamsui, as well as Chenkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow on the Yangtze, the governors-general and governors in whose jurisdiction these ports lie should jointly memorialize with the imperial commissioner at Shanghai concerning officials to be appointed to take charge of these places. Monthly reports on the volume of foreign trade at these ports are to be sent to the Tsungli Yamen and the Board of Revenue.\n\nSuggestions are also made for arrangements to be made for trade with Russia at the newly opened trading places of Urga, Kashgar, and Kalgan.\n\nAccording to the treaties, twenty percent of the duties on foreign trade are to be held for the payment of the indemnity. A counterfoil will be provided so that the total amount of revenue collected can be checked against the amount withheld.\n\nThe memorialists then return to the point they were making near the beginning of point 3 [as translated above].\n\nThus, the amount of foreign duty collected each year being clearly shown, the officials through whose hands it passes will be unable to enrich themselves through peculation. Not only will they be deprived of the means of living, they will secretly resort to other malpractices. It is further feared that wily clerks, when they see there is no money to be made, may provoke trouble, thus endangering the public interest. If we do not clearly lay down regulations providing them with expenses for transacting official business, we very much fear that unforeseen malpractices will arise. It is therefore proposed to request that an order be given to the superintendent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206507, "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-1972", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TSUNGLI YAMEN\n\n49\n\nof trade at Tientsin and to the imperial commissioner at Shanghai to draft, in conjunction with the governors-general and governors of the provinces concerned, regulations to govern the payment of expenses involved in transporting revenue silver collected at the ports to the Board [of Revenue] and also for the salaries of customs inspectors, and clerks, for stationery and other items, and then to memorialize requesting permission to put them into effect, in the hope that this will speedily clear the withheld portion [for the payment of the indemnities] and lead to the eradication of abuses.\n\n4. In each province where foreign affairs are dealt with your servants recommend instructions be sent to the Manchu garrison commanders, the governors-general and governors that they should keep each other informed in order to avoid discrepancies. We note that hitherto, in the management of affairs involving foreign countries, because the Grand Council has not issued copies of memorials submitted and edicts respectfully received, the governors-general and governors have also not communicated with each other. Originally this was in order to maintain secrecy and to prevent leakage of information. Now, however, since instructions have been sent to the provinces, to the superintendent of trade and to the imperial commissioner that they should regularly report to the Tsungli Yamen at the capital, the Manchu garrison commanders, the prefect of Peking, and the governors-general and governors should regularly inform each other of whatever they ought to do, and only then will there be no discrepancies at all. Moreover, when one province manages affairs satisfactorily another province can copy it, when this province manages affairs unsatisfactorily that province can be on its guard against it. We note that in the second month of the ninth year of Hsien-feng, Ho Kuei-ch'ing, the former governor-general of Liang-Chiang memorialized that:\n\nhitherto all matters have been memorialized secretly, and that the authorities do not keep each other informed, and that there are no files which can be consulted. It has reached such a point that colleagues in the same office are not fully informed. As a result numerous discrepancies and complications have arisen. This certainly is a great source of abuses. Your servant requests that instructions be issued that those concerned should notify each other so that there is uniformity in this matter.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206510, "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-1972", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "52 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\ngeneral and governors to send monthly to the Tsungli Yamen foreign newspapers, both those printed in Chinese and in foreign languages, so that we can have at our finger-tips knowledge of the situation between China and foreign countries, and so that we can become more fully acquainted with the way to reform abuses and put right our failings. \n\nA memorial from Prince Hui and others in reply was received at the travelling headquarters on 20 January 1861, and an edict was issued on the same day. As no English version of this edict appears to have been made, a translation of it follows.17 \n\nToday we have received a memorial from Prince Hui and others to the effect that they have deliberated on the memorial of I-hsin Prince Kung, and others on restoring normal conditions and on regulations for trade. According to what they said all the items recommended by Prince Kung and others have a close bearing on the circumstances and that this really is the situation. They request that we should act according to the original proposals. \n\nWe have already issued an edict appointing Prince Kung, Grand Secretary Kuei-liang, and Senior Vice-President of the Board of Revenue Wen-hsiang to be in general charge of trade with the various countries. We have also appointed Ch'ung-hou to be superintendent of trade for the three ports [Tientsin; Newchang; Chefoo]. Let Hsueh Huan continue to control trading arrangements at the five old ports as well as at the newly added ones. In their memorandum Prince Kung and others recommend that Canton and Shanghai should each send two men who understand spoken and written foreign languages to come to the capital on official service. Also that the superintendents of trade as well as the Manchu garrison commanders, the governors-general and governors, and the prefect of Peking ought to report monthly on native and foreign trade conditions at those ports and send the foreign newspapers of the various countries and should communicate [this information and newspapers] to the Board of Rites which will transmit it to the Tsungli Yamen. Let the princes and ministers instruct the Board of Rites to this effect and let the Board communicate these instructions. We also authorize young men to be selected from the Eight Banners to study foreign spoken and written languages; instruct the Russian language school's to draw up appropriate regulations and zealously supervise their lessons. Whenever anyone is able to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206777, "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-1973", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "48\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nThe Forbes completed the last few days of her passage under sail, in order to reserve a few tons of coal for the river passage. When the Chinese pilot came on board to take her up to Lintin she was under steam with wind and tide against her. He showed no astonishment, however, and quietly gave the helmsman his orders as if everything was normal. At last the captain could stand his bland indifference no longer, and asked him if he had ever seen a steamship before. The pilot calmly replied that this mode of propulsion had once been common in many parts of China, but had fallen into disuse. He knew that everything was alright so long as black smoke came from the funnel, but as soon as white steam appeared he was uneasy. Chinese acquainted with 'pidgin English' came to call a paddle steamer like the Forbes \"outside walkee\", and a screw steamer \"inside walkee\".\n\nAlthough this attempt to beat the monsoon failed in terms of the charter, it was still considered a success. During the passage between Singapore and Lintin coal had been transhipped from the Jamesina to the Forbes three times, each transhipment taking 3 to 4 hours. It was thought that 2 or 3 days could have been saved by speedier bunkering at Singapore and speedier transhipment at sea. That the experiment was not repeated was due to several factors. One was the lack of suitable fuel at Canton; the Forbes burned wood on her return passage. Another was the prospect of objections from the Chinese authorities.\n\nThe most important factor, however, was the greatly improved sailing ships which were being built at that particular time. In 1829, just a year before the Forbes-Jamesina experiment, the first and most famous of the opium clippers, the Red Rover, appeared on the scene. In her maiden voyage the Red Rover made the round trip between Calcutta and Macao in 55 days, carrying 800 chests of opium. She had equally successful passages in the next two years, by which time she had at least three rivals on the run. From then no one thought of employing steamships against the north east monsoon in the South China Sea, and the success of the opium clippers kept steamships out of the opium trade for another twenty years. The Red Rover, like many of her successors and rivals was built in India, at the Howra Dock Company's yard. She was launched in September 1829, and for her first few years was owned by her captain, the famous Captain Clifton, in partnership with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207121, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE EUROPEAN GRAVE ON SHEK KWU CHAU, HONG KONG\n\nSacred\n\nTo the Memory of Elizabeth Ann The Beloved Wife of\n\nCapt. A. McIntyre\n\nWho Died at Sea\n\n21st of October, 1845\n\non Board the Ship “Castle Huntly” Aged 23 Years and 9 Days.\n\nThese words appear on a granite tombstone situated near the N.W. shoreline of Shek Kwu Chau, an island about two miles west of Cheung Chau. The island was generally barren and uninhabited until 1963, and the existence of the stone and inscription was unknown except, perhaps, to local fishermen. An old name for the island was Coffin Island, and it is tempting to think that the name was derived from this grave.\n\nThe island was taken over in 1962 by the Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts and it was quite by chance that a member of the staff, while exploring the territory, stumbled on the grave.\n\nSince then several people have made attempts to trace the history of the \"Castle Huntly”, but it was not until recently that any firm information came to light. An Australian friend, after visiting Shek Kwu Chau, thought of contacting the Board of Trade in Cardiff and they were able to provide the following details.\n\nThe \"Castle Huntly” (or “Castle Huntley\") was a three-masted wooden carvel of just over thirteen hundred tons, built at the Port of Calcutta and owned jointly by Thomas Garland Murray of London and John Paterson of Castle Huntley, North Britain. John Paterson was her first Master. Later she passed through the hands of various owners and, in 1838, was re-registered at Bombay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207659, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "32\n\nDOUGLAS W. SPARKS\n\nChina to Thailand where he worked for a Teochiu trading firm. He came to Hong Kong in 1842 to establish his own import/export firm which became active in the extensive trading between Southeast Asia and the sea ports of China. This person, and the man who established a certain company still well known among Teochiu merchants today, (★★★), are treated as the first important Teochiu merchants in Hong Kong. The former was also one of the original founders of the Tung Wah Hospital (★###), one of the most important charitable and prestigious Chinese organizations throughout the history of British Hong Kong. In 1892 this man served as the Chairman of the hospital board, a reflection of the prestige accorded him. It is interesting to note that of his nine sons, two became prominent in Teochiu; one established a textile factory in the family's home town and the other became active in politics in Swatow during the 1911 Revolution and later owned a utility company in Swatow. (Ching Hoi Clansmen's Assn, 1970: 55-57). The success of the enterprises of the two sons is presumably related to the commercial success of the father's firm in Hong Kong. This example illustrates the manner in which commercial networks were established between China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia and also partially explains Teochiu specialization in international trading in certain commodities, such as Chinese medicines and Thai rice. Teochiu firms in one country are likely to consider Teochiu firms in another country as potential business partners (there are exceptions of course) and thus the latter may easily acquire a semi-monopoly over commodities shipped from the former. International Teochiu friendship and kinship networks are undoubtedly an important basis for this intra-ethnic trading. Present-day Teochiu domination of the rice importation, wholesale and retail trade in Hong Kong illustrates the extent to which local commerce has been influenced by the development of Teochiu international networks.\n\nThe following brief discussion suggests the outlines of the development of Teochiu commercial relationships between Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Most of the firms mentioned below were presumably located in Nam Pak Hong. Prior to the establishment of Hong Kong in 1842, trade between Thailand and China was dominated by Teochiu in Thailand. A Teochiu publication states that after 1842 many Thai Teochiu came to Hong Kong expressly to expedite trade between Thailand and China and that Hong Kong Teochiu soon handled most of this trade (Hung, 1961:3). Trading", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208114, "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-1977", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW - \n\nLONG ISLAND\n\n137\n\nthe top sawyer in the neighbouring sawpit, and we pass towards that smithy beneath a banyan tree. The sinuous roots of the tree clutch the rock and strain like the arms of some vegetable octopus, and there just below the hanging threads of aerial roots is a tilt, and a furnace. The anvil is curious enough. There is one of the orthodox Chinese pattern but the other is a shell from some field-gun, goodness knows where it was found.\n\nNow we are in the main street at its more irregular Eastern end, interrupted here and there by sharp right-angled turns, and small shops begin to line the way. On our right a coffin maker plies his trade, and his workshop has a most attractive \"line\" of coffins on exhibition which seem to tempt that Chinese grandfather getting on in life, and thinking of providing for the future. Europeans unconsciously avert our eyes from the varnished glory of huge specimens that look like four tree trunks grown into one, but grand-father regards it with quiet pleasure. Some more blacksmith's shops, and a flight of irregular steps, and we are on the terrace of the temple of the Heavenly Queen, already referred to. This terrace overlooks the bay, and is put to practical use, not only as a point of vantage, but also to dry fish and sweet potatoes, and some strange ambiguous stuff. We can see a junk hauled up on the slip-way which was screened by the houses-hitherto. For all the clumsy upperworks her lines are clean and smooth below water, and her big lifting rudder and centre board appeal to the yachts-men. Those cannon in the bows are not for ornament only, for these seas swarm with pirate junks.\n\nJust now we will not stop to examine the dusty interior of this temple. Instead we descend into the street once more and continue our westward way. Near this place is a small hospital, a series of clean and pleasant courts and pavilions supported by the Kai Fong. This body is the real ruler of the town, elected by street committees and containing representatives of each of the four tribes. In the street a good-natured crowd drifts along. There is a brown-faced fisherman ashore for a stroll, and to buy cordage or food. He loiters before the chandlers shops, and discusses all topics before coming to the real question of the price of that double block and sheave hanging in the dim place under the ceiling. There are villagers carrying loads of vegetables to the pier, shuffling along with two great loads, one at each end of a bamboo resting on a great callous patch on their shoulders. Women are carrying water", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208319, "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-1978", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895\n\n27\n\nestablishment of a Directorate for Military Affairs (Tu-pan chün-wu ch'u) in early November, 1894, did virtually nothing to alter the course of the war, and the nearly useless Naval Board (Hai-chün ya-men) was disbanded even prior to the end of the fighting. Neither body found it possible to effectively coordinate land fighting or to insure cooperation between the army and navy.76 Meanwhile, poor field communications and transport facilities, inadequate preparation, faulty intelligence, and widespread corruption in pay and supply, made it virtually impossible for Chinese forces to fight efficiently.77 Ammunition shortages, worthless shells, and lack of standardization in weapons proved especially troublesome at sea. On land, ammunition shortages seem to have been less acute, but morale undoubtedly suffered from the absence of a modern hospital corps and ambulance service such as Japan possessed.78\n\nSurprisingly, Chinese forces did not always do poorly, in spite of these handicaps. Portions of Li Hung-chang's Anhwei Army under Chang Kao-yüan, for example, performed admirably during the war, as they had done a decade earlier under Chang on Taiwan during the Sino-French hostilities. Chang, who had once served with the Ever-Victorious Army, received the praise of foreign observers not only prior to Sino-Japanese War but also during and after the conflict for his tactical ability and the training, discipline, and effective weapons of the troops under his command.79 I-k'o-tang-a, a Manchu general, also gained plaudits from foreigners, including the Japanese, who acknowledged that he had surprising tactical talent for \"a Chinese warrior of the old school.\"80 A few other Ch'ing commanders, such as Tso Pao-kuei, at least received praise for their bravery against the Japanese. But overall, Chinese troops were poorly-led and unsuitably trained. Lack of effective leadership exacerbated all of China's military problems and undermined both discipline and morale. The overwhelming majority of China's field commanders and middle-grade officers were not graduates of China's two infant military academies, and although some such individuals served with distinction in low-ranking positions, their mere presence within a given army was seldom enough to inspire confidence among either officers or the rank and file.81\n\nGenerally, the Chinese were extremely timid on land and sea, encouraging the Japanese to attempt daring and highly successful tactics that would ordinarily be considered too hazardous for use", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208386, "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-1978", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "94\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nbasis coinciding with the monthly publication of Hong Kong Worker and were known as \"discussions of our livelihood”. On June 29, 1973, a similar discussion occurred, this one concerning developments in Shansi province, printed and sent around in a circular by the Federation of Trade Unions. The article was also read aloud paragraph by paragraph, but the discussion was not as lengthy as that which accompanied the reading of Hong Kong Worker. The event seemed designed to promote national consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, and the news did not seem to so directly affect the lives of the art carved furniture workers as the articles in Hong Kong Worker,\n\nOn any given weekday evening at union headquarters, there may be three or four Chinese chess games in progress with a number of persons standing around giving advice on which pieces to move. Anyone near enough to give advice to one or another of the players usually does, and any given game serves as a focus for endless voicing and countervoicing of opinion as to what constitutes the right move. There is also a chance that when one enters the union premises there may be a game of bumper checker pool in progress, involving four participants and a great ruckus about the board. One may be teased to within an inch of one's life for a poorly executed shot.\n\nMah jong is significantly absent as a diversion at Union premises, although it is played regularly at union halls not affiliated with the pro-communist Federation of Trade Unions. It would not, however, be true to say that many pro-communist union members never play the game.\n\nUnion representatives come in from time to time with dues they have collected in their particular geographical area, laying the money and receipts before the treasurer who enters the transactions carefully into the books. The representative may also pick up the latest copy of China Pictorial or China Reconstructs to distribute to the union members in his area. He keeps a careful checklist of who's received one every month. Sometimes a union representative will bring an application form from a worker who has just joined the union, together with three pictures, one of which is pasted in a huge membership book along with a great deal of personal data, name, place of origin, age, date of first registration, address, etc., another affixed to a small certificate of membership, and a third", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208388, "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-1978", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "96\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nthoughts of the younger worker actually were on the matter, it was apparent that the older fellow eventually carried the day. His younger colleague eventually joined the union. Nor would he have done so simply on a whim. Association with a communist cause is not something casually assumed in the Hong Kong context. The episode shows clearly how the membership drive in progress was implemented at the factory level.\n\nIn the foregoing, one gets a feel for the role of the Woodwork Carvers' Union both as a carrier of a proletarian message and as an agent of Peking policy. Its close association with the Federation of Trade Unions is also highlighted. The union premises are the site of meetings of various kinds, political discussions and planning sessions all of which are oriented in one way or another toward the promotion and consolidation of a unified class conscious labor force, with the Peking government the object of its members' patriotism.\n\nThe use of the union premises as a center of recreation, the provision of board to its indigent members, the linkup with Communist Chinese bureaucracies like China Travel Service, are all examples of ways in which the union can cater to its members' needs.\n\nThe operation of a school in the union hall is particularly noteworthy. Traditional Chinese guilds often provided charitable services to their members, such as medical care, proper burials and relief to workers during periods of unemployment. It was not unusual for guilds to establish schools for children of their members (Gamble, 1921: 198) so that they might be able to better themselves, or more properly, the fortunes of their families. In this sense, the use of the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises as a site for the operation of a small primary school may be seen as a significant continuity with traditional guild practice. With curriculum updated in political content, and text and reading materials from the Mainland, the small patriotic school in the union premises turns our attention to the ways in which the union has adapted the practices of traditional guilds to the contemporary scene and incorporated them into its organizational repertoire.\n\nThere are two other occasions which are of special interest in highlighting this process. The first is the Woodwork Carvers' Union", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208843, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "204\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nhsü 12 (1886). In the Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple, the lintel is dated Kuang-hsü 15 (1889), and the altar Kuang-hsü 20 (1894); and in the Hang Hau T'in Hau Temple (besides the 1840 bell), the lintel is dated Kuang-hsü 1 (1875), a tablet Kuang-hsü 2 (1876), an altar is of the same year, a wooden board of Kuang-hsü 4 (1878), a shrine of Kuang-hsü 10 (1884), a pair of stone lions of Kuang-hsü 13 (1887), and a pair of incense burners of Kuang-hsü 20 (1894). The bell and the incense burner at the Tin Ha Wan T'in Hau Temple are both undated, but Mr. Ip Ch'un, who lived nearby, told us that the temple was already in disrepair over fifty years ago. Historical inscriptions found in Sai Kung and elsewhere in Hong Kong and the New Territories have been transcribed as a special project and may be found in David Faure, Alice Ng, and Bernard Luk, \"A collection of historical inscriptions in Hong Kong\". The report is available in the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and will, it is hoped, be published shortly.\n\n7\n\nMr. Hoh Taai of Ko Tong, aged over 60, knew of the whereabouts of a charcoal burner, but never saw it in operation (Int. 10.6.81). Lime kilns were reported in Wong Yi Chau, Wong Keng Tei, Tai Mong Tsai Tso Wo Hang, Tai Wan, Kiu Tsui, Sha Ha, Pak Sha Wan, Che Keng Tuk, Ta Ho Tun, Tai Tan, and Yau Yu Wan (Ints. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, 22.5.81, Mr. Wong Yung Ts'ing 20.5.81, Mr. Tang Kei Faat 25.6.81, Mr. Lei Yau 28.6.81, Mr. Wong Ping Lin 29.6.81, Madam Liu 20.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81, Mr. Tse Wing 9.6.81, Mr. Tse Shui Kam 24.6.81, Madam Lo Koon Mooi 21.6.81, Mrs. Hoh née Lei 28.6.81, Mr. Chung 23.7.81, and Madam Lam Yau Ch'un 19.8.81.) The Liu family at Kiu Tsui built the ancestral hall that can be seen today on the main road into Sai Kung Market. For an impression of the long history of lime making in Sai Kung, it should be noted that Madam Lo Koon Mooi was 85 and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 87 in 1981, and it was their fathers who were engaged in the lime business. Mr. Yau continued working the kilns until his early 40's. Brick kilns were reported in Chek Keng and Pak Tam Chung (Ints. Mr. Chiu Sz 7.5.81 and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, 22.5.81). The lime industry, of course, also provided income for fishermen who collected coral for the kilns. See \"Return of the approximate number of fishermen employed in taking coral and shell from the sea adjoining the New Territory\", in Hong Kong Legislative Council, Sessional Papers, 1901, p. 685.\n\n\"The best indication of the growing importance of the trade in pigs is a set of account books that belonged to Mr. Yung Sz Ch'iu of Pak Sha O, a photocopy of which is held by the Oral History Project. See also ints. Mr. Chan Tsz K'eung 28.5.81 and Mr. Hoh King 5.6.81.\n\n• There are many instances of seamen recruited by recruitment firms (haang shuen koon); see, eg. Mr. Chiu Sz (Int. 7.5.81). Remittance from abroad was sent back to the village through import-export houses (kam shan tsong), see Mr. Yau T'aai Hong (Int. 11.8.81).\n\n10 Mr. Cheung T'o's grandfather was a cook on Hong Kong Island, and his father was employed on the Kowloon-Canton Railway. Mr. Cheung, of Ho Chung, was c. 70 in 1981 (Int. 15.6.81). Mr. Tsang Yau of Tai Mong Tsai (age unknown, but who married before World War II) worked in a shop started by his father in Shaukiwan on Hong Kong Island (Int. 23.6.81).\n\n11 Ints. Mr. Cheng Chung Ting 21.5.81, Mr. Chan P'aang Hing 29.5.81, Mr. Chan T'aai 22.7.81; Bernard Williams, \"Visit to Ho Chung and Sheung Yeung villages in the Sai Kung area”, in Marjorie Topley, ed. Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Hong Kong, 1965, pp. 46-47, and \"The Chan family of Tseung Kwan O\", JHKBRAS 7 (1967), pp. 158-160.", "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": 209095, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "Plate 21. Another of the papers, a public notice from the Nan-hai magistrate (Canton) dated 1898.\n\n順及新庄義坐等號更恐暗中有孫義 致職等生意不前? 期行代法乃近有無恥之徒或殷正義 鎮北膠街廣豐行發售應百餘年並無分給示鏡 請分憲一儷存案如 除申請分憲備案外 此示 豐行所販 光緒二十四年十二月 廿日 高湯母違切知示 如有 示秒白\n\nPlate 22. A third paper, a 1900 registration with the Board of Trade and Agriculture.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209261, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "150\n\nWEI PEH-T'I\n\nSince the case of the Lady Hughes in 1784, foreigners had been decrying the barbarity of Chinese justice. On 24 November that year, a British vessel, the Lady Hughes, carrying cargo for the country merchants (individual merchants permitted by the East India Company to trade between India and points east), fired a salute to Chinese officials on shore at Canton. Unfortunately, the gun was loaded with live ammunition instead of blanks. The gunfire injured three minor Chinese officials, two of whom subsequently died from their wounds. By Chinese reckoning, the gunner of the Lady Hughes, in firing the salute, had committed murder, therefore he was subject to Chinese justice. After the British refused to surrender the gunner, Chinese authorities at Canton seized the supercargo of the British factory, isolated the factory itself, and stopped British trade. As a result, the British yielded and the gunner was surrendered to the Chinese. He met the fate of apprehended Chinese murderers, that of being put to death swiftly by strangulation. This incident brought to the fore foreign resentment against the Canton system and their having to submit to Chinese justice which they could neither understand nor condone. Subsequently, foreigners, the British in particular, were reluctant to hand over their nationals who had committed crimes against the Chinese to Chinese authorities. The Chinese meanwhile insisted on their right to dispense justice within their own land, thus leading to periodic impasses.\n\nJuan Yüan's first criminal case involving foreigners and local residents was a straightforward one, for the offenders were Chinese, and their offense was comparable to those committed by coastal pirates Juan Yuan had known on the Chekiang coast earlier. An American ship, the Wabash, secured by Puiqua, was docked at the anchorage at Taipa Island off the Port of Macau. Apparently, a group of Chinese on shore hurled insults at the seamen on 19 June, 1818, then proceeded to board the vessel, and plundered it. The raiding party left three Americans wounded, one of whom later died. Among the spoils taken were sycee silver and a quantity of opium. The presence of opium, a contraband, complicated the case considerably. It also provided Juan Yuan with the ammunition to deal harshly with the hong merchants.\n\nMacau was within the administrative jurisdiction of the district of Hsiang-shan, in Kwangtung. The Select Committee and a representative of the American merchants in Canton, referred to by Morse as \"the American consul\", brought the American complaint against the Chinese to Juan Yuan through Puiqua. Cognizant fully of the reality and implications of the circumstances, that the Chinese were wrong in boarding and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "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": 209430, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "# THE STRIKE AND RIOT OF 1884\n\n# A HONG KONG PERSPECTIVE\n\nELIZABETH SINN*\n\nIn the autumn of 1884, Chinese dock workers in Hong Kong staged a strike against French ships. The strike spread, bringing trade to a standstill and creating much animosity. After a few days, a riot broke out in the Central and Western districts. This caused great excitement; the military was called out, the fleet was put on the alert, and the government passed new legislation for preserving the peace. The local press became almost hysterical. It became a diplomatic issue between Peking and London, and questions about it were raised in the House of Commons.\n\nYet, despite the uproar these events created, relatively few historians, including historians of Hong Kong, have paid attention to them. This paper is an attempt to reconstruct this dramatic episode, and to examine its significance.\n\nIn 1884, the war between China and France over Annam dominated the horizon of East and Southeast Asia. The year before, the Chinese had despatched regular troops quietly into Tongking. As negotiations broke off, the Chinese court feared a French attack on China itself, and important officials were sent south to consolidate the front. P'eng Yu-lin,** a president of the Board of War was appointed Commissioner for the Coastal Defence of Kwangtung, and in the following year, 1884, the conspicuously pro-war Chang Chih-tung became Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Officials and people both of Canton and the surrounding region responded excitedly to every move the French made.\n\nOn 5th August, 1884, French warships bombarded Keelung,\n\n* Miss Sinn is a Ph.D. candidate of the University of Hong Kong, currently working as Resources Officer in the History Department of that University.\n\n** All Chinese names/words will be Romanized according to the Wade-Giles system except where there are other transliterated forms in common usage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209897, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "134\n\nBoard (in manuscript), p. 121 kept in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong as Hong Kong Record Series 206. Pages 120-141 of the Proceedings relate to a hearing held on 6th June 1893, \"Claim to a Temple at Apleichau\".\n\n10 The same man also said that Ap Lei Chau 'was built about 1850' (ibid, p. 122). However, as stated in my text, the Hung Shing temple on the island appears to date from the 18th century and another local resident (b. 1825) who gave evidence to the Squatter Board (ibid, p. 132) said that it was enlarged in 1847. The temple originally stood on its own little island, later joined by reclamation to Ap Lei Chau. See JHKBRAS 7 (1967) p. 170, footnote.\n\n11 W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King - The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (London, Trubner & Co., 1867) p. 49. 'Boat building and general trade' are listed as the principal concerns. The \"Ap-le-chow\" and \"Shek pai wan\" (Aberdeen) entries in this work are bracketed. The latter had 160 houses and 205 boats and the total recorded population for the two places, together with the boat people, was 1,664. See also information given in the printed proceedings of a court case over ownership of land on Ap Lei Chau given in Sessional Papers August 1886 - September 1887\" (Appendix to Report from the Land Commission of 1886-87) pp. 33-35.\n\n1* See the Hong Kong Government's printed Sessional Papers for 1897 and 1911, pp. 484 and 103 (23) respectively.\n\n1 Sessional Papers 1901, No. 39 of 1901. pp. (6), (18) and (20). Of the 947 vessels, 787 were fishing boats. At that time, there were 2,799 land persons living in and round Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau.\n\n11 Sessional Papers 1897 and 1911 at pp. quoted at note 12 above. For similar organizations of M. Freedman's article \"Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-century Singapore\", Comparative Studies in Society and History, III (1960-61), 25-48; and for other coastal market centres in the Hong Kong region, Hayes 1977, chapters 2 and 3 dealing with Cheung Chau and Tai O respectively.\n\n10 See the account given in the printed Ap Lei Chau Hung Shing Festival brochure for year (1983) now in Hong Kong Collection, University of Hong Kong Library,\n\n10 Squatter Board proceedings, p. 138. The word \"Kaifong\" (#) or street association was commonly used in South China to describe (a) all the inhabitants of an area (b) the voluntary organization of leading residents which managed the affairs of that community, e.g. the Kaifeng looked after the interests of all kaifongs. On Ap Lei Chau, the Kaifong and the Fongs' leaders seem to have been one and the same. For Kaifongs in the Hong Kong region see Hayes 1977, pp. 64-69, 81-84, 96-98, 171-172 and 218 note 27. Also, Hayes 1983, pp. 45-46 and 56-59.\n\n18 For divining blocks, see J.J.M. De Groot, The Religious System of China (Ch'ing Wen reprint, Taipei 1976) Vol. VI, pp. 1285-1287.\n\n1o See Hayes 1977, p. 219, note 41, for similar honours paid to leading office bearers reported from Canton (1902).\n\n* The shopkeeper petitioners who came to see the Registrar General in 1893, as recorded in the Squatter Board proceedings, stated that \"The temple is the property of the inhabitants of Ap Lei Chau and the boatpeople who subscribe”.\n\nThe Ap Lei Chau section of this article is based mainly on the oral statements of Messrs. CHENG Kam-kwu ($##) b. 12.10.1887, CHENG Lim () b. 17.12.1891 and LUN Shing-fun () b. ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210167, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "117\n\nmight, then, depend on the existence of a local junk trade. Such a trade existed east and west of the island, before and after British rule, and though it cannot be proved that they did act in this way, there were certainly fearful attacks outside the Lyemun Passage in the 1840s and after, with piratical craft from or operating out of Shau Kei Wan blamed among others.11 At the least, the town's shopkeepers probably victualled pirates and helped to sell or dispose of stolen goods.\n\n41\n\nAn experienced official wrote at a later time:\n\n\"Previous to 1866, Piracy in Colonial and neighbouring waters was of common occurrence, and Shau Kei Wan bore a very bad name as the centre where Junks fitted out for piratical purposes. Its close proximity to the Lyemun Pass enabled Masters of heavily manned and armed Junks to follow vessels that had been ascertained to have opium, or other valuable cargo, on board. These were too frequently come up with and attacked at night, stinkpots and arms of all descriptions being freely used.\" Governor MacDonell's \"notice was [then] attracted to the unenviable character Hong Kong bore as a Pirate resort.1,42\n\nThe demands of agriculture and shopkeeping, and the pleasures of occasional or indirect piracy apart, the main pursuits of Hong Kong at the time of its cession were the production and export of granite building slabs and the trade in fish, landed by fishing vessels at the coastal market villages, and there dried and salted, and then graded, warehoused and subsequently shipped out to major centres of population in the surrounding and adjacent parts of China. Quotations from contemporary sources confirm the position. Charles Gutzlaff, Prussian missionary and civil servant, holding at the time the appointment of Chinese Secretary to the Government of Hong Kong, wrote in 1846:\n\n\"The only produce of Hong Kong, for exportation, is granite, and, though a very contemptible article, still it employs many hands, a great number of boats, each about 70 to 100 tons, and some capital. There are seldom less than a hundred of the above craft which monthly leave this with a full cargo for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210890, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "224\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nSecretary of the On Tai Insurance Company. He remained at this post until his retirement in 1898.\n\nDuring these years he was involved in many other business ventures and in community affairs. He was an enterprising entrepreneur and financier, as well as a prominent public personality.\n\nThe organisation of the On Tai Insurance Co was one step in the latter part of the 19th century of the intrusion of Chinese into areas of commerce and finance formerly monopolised by foreign merchants.\n\nWith the introduction of steam vessels into the China trade, more and more Chinese firms began to ship by them rather than by junks. Insurance as practised in Western trade was not a feature of traditional Chinese business methods. The more progressive Chinese merchants, however, realised its value. They began to patronise the established marine and fire insurance companies.\n\nThese insurance companies were profitable ventures and paid substantial dividends to shareholders. The Chinese, however, found it difficult to acquire shares. They were shut out. The excuse was given that the companies could not determine the financial standing of prospective Chinese shareholders because of the secrecy and complicated arrangement of their firms.\n\nIn 1871 a group of Chinese merchants in Hongkong secured the services of the American firm of Olyphant and Co to assist them in organising the Chinese Insurance Company and in providing foreign management for it. At its organisation the board consisted of five foreign merchants and two Chinese.\n\nThe press recognised its formation as a revolutionary move in the balance between Chinese and foreign business in China. \"The step will mark an important era in the history of commercial affairs in China; as there can be very little doubt that the plan will be followed in other matters besides insurance. It is already well known that the Chinese merchants are large supporters of some of the most important companies, and their adoption of the plan of organising companies consisting avowedly chiefly of Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211110, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "146\n\nThe Chinese desire to have a consul in Hongkong was tied to the much larger problem of the opium trade. Hongkong had a special place in the trade. As a free port immediately next to the Chinese mainland, it was an excellent base for smuggling opium into China.\n\nThe Chinese Government had for many years prohibited its importation. However, it reluctantly agreed to its legalisation by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. There was the hope that, if legalised, China could better control the trade.\n\nA heavy duty was levied on it, however, and to avoid payment, large quantities continued to be smuggled from Hongkong in Chinese junks.\n\nThe smuggling was difficult to control. Hongkong regarded it strictly as China's problem. It saw no reason why it should be responsible for its suppression.\n\nIt was the peculiar situation of Hongkong that made enforcement by the Chinese difficult. In Hongkong there were ample storage facilities for the drug. The processed opium could be purchased from the Government opium monopolists. There was little difficulty in putting it aboard a junk in Hongkong and delivering it to agents somewhere along the coast or in an inland waterway.\n\nTwo types of charges were levied on opium. There was the duty on goods imported in foreign vessels to the treaty ports. The Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs became responsible for collecting this.\n\nIn addition, there were provincial levies called likin. These varied from province to province and were subject to change at the will of the provincial administrators.\n\nThis is the background for the intermittent suggestion that a Chinese official be placed in Hongkong to supervise the collection of duties imposed by the Chinese upon goods shipped from Hongkong and thereby to check the blatant smuggling.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211358, "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-1988", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "50\n\nBut Mr. Scholfield stuck to his opinion. \"I would not give a single thought to it. The only thing I would think of was the ten cents I would receive at the end of the day.\"\n\nWhen the resolutions proposed by Mr. Bowley were put to the meeting, only Mr. Scholfield voted against him. He told the meeting that if the suggestions were to be implemented it would mean money **and would depend on the maintenance of the opium revenue**. If that was stopped, what would they do?\" Up to that date Hong Kong had depended upon the income from the opium trade to finance itself, now there was heavy pressure from the Home Government to abolish the traffic in opium.\n\nThe editor of the Daily Press commended the small group of Hong Kong expatriates who were concerned about social problems, though his views were expressed in the colonial attitudes of the day.\n\nFar removed from the centres of civilization and surrounded by people alien to us in manners, customs and ideas, there is a natural tendency to lose that sense of communal responsibility which is steadily developing in the land from which we spring. It is well, therefore, that we have in our midst some whose interests are not limited by sport or commerce to remind us of the thoughts and aspirations of our more progressive fellow countrymen at Home.\n\nProposals of the Sanitary Board 1919\n\nMr. Bowley was a member of the Sanitary Board and used his position to try to get passed some regulations on child labour. He used a back door approach by proposing that the regulations be based on sanitary grounds. As the name of the Board suggests such concerns came within its province.\n\nOn the 19 March 1919 Mr. Bowley had posed the following question, **Does the Medical Officer of Health consider it desirable in the interests of public health of the Colony that the ages, hours and conditions of employment of women and children in factories, workshops and work-places in the Colony should be regulated and controlled?** The Medical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211684, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "74\n\nConcession\". We even opened offices on board and transacted business, which for the most part was concerned with collecting monies due against outstanding accounts. A large proportion of the foreign import trade with China was done on a basis whereby credit was allowed to the Chinese merchant, until he in his turn had time to collect the proceeds of the sale from the final customer or consumer. The foreigner thus injected into the stream of Chinese trade a stimulant, which was certainly not without advantage to the recipient.\n\nThe disturbances at Kiu Kiang and Hankow received world-wide publicity, and led to the Chen-O'Malley negotiations under which it was agreed to return these two Concessions to China. Photographs had been taken of the looted interiors of the houses in Kiu Kiang, providing evidence, which could not be refuted, of the damage; and the new Chinese government of General Chiang Kai Shek agreed to pay compensation of 40,000 dollars, Chinese currency,\n\nOn March 24th part of the Revolutionary Army under General Cheng Chien entered Nanking, and there looted and committed excesses, which included the murder of several American and British subjects, the violating of women, and the wounding of the British consul. To cover the escape of the remaining foreigners, who were being attacked in a house on Socony ridge, British and American cruisers, from the river, put down a barrage round the hill. These demonstrations of uncivilised behaviour, coming on top of the incidents at Kiu Kiang and Hankow, caused the Revolutionary Government a severe loss of face.\n\nA few days after, a split occurred between the conservative wing of the Kuo Min Tang party, led by Chiang Kai Shek, and the Russian influenced Communist elements. In Shanghai some thousands of Communists, who had provided the spearhead for the almost bloodless occupation of the Chinese city, were executed or murdered through the agency of two powerful secret societies, the Green \"tong\" and the Red \"tong\", with whom Chiang Kai Shek appears to have had a close affiliation.\n\nOther members of the Kuo Min Tang, who had remained with the seat of government at Hankow, where Russian influence was strongest, declared their wing of the Kuo Min Tang to be the only legitimate one, and they proceeded to expel Chiang Kai Shek from its ranks. They were, however, unable to carry the army with them, and by July the situation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211763, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\n153\n\nPP.\n\n12 The inscription recording the rebuilding is at Faure, Luk and Ng, op. cit. Vol. I, 128-129, but it is unreadable through weathering, except for the heading and date.\n\n(4). Loe An-lim (羅安廉) (42), Qianren Wenxian (千人文献), ÑÍAL. [Collected Writings of Men of Past Ages], unpublished manuscript collection, Vol. 2, ff. 75a. (Copy in library of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Kowloon Central Library, Hong Kong). Lee An-lim was a villager of Sheung Wo Hang.\n\n(3) Lee An-lim, Qianren Wenxian, op. cit. ff 73-78.\n\n+\n\nAs honour board recording the donors to the 1920 repair has recently been found. It lists the donors by village. Every village in Ta Kwu Ling donated (except Ping Che, Chuk Yuen, Nga Yiu Ha, very probably included with their lineage brethren in Tong Fong, Law Fong, Ping Yeung), as did the villages close to the road both in the Sha Tau Kok area (Shan Tsui, Yim Tso Ha, Yim Tin, Wo Hang, Nam Chung, Luk Keng, Wu Shek Kok and Sha Tau Kok Market) and in the Sham Tsun area (Sham Tsun Market, Lo Wu, and Wong Pui Ling). Shek Wu Hui from further away also donated. See Win Wen Wei Pao (SCHEW) of 17 September, 1991.\n\nU¿÷\n\n16 Detail from the tablets commemorating the departed leaders of the monastery, and from information given by the recently deceased resident nun. The tablet of Kuk Shan Kit reads: 羅浮山寶積古寺監裤正宗第上三代主持上谷下山潔老和尚莲座. The tablet Kuk Shan Kit placed to commemorate his deceased predecessors names the \"ordained monks\" HIBA · MAZA\n\n+\n\nJ\n\n# and Ki£*, all of whom were dead by the date of erection\n\n+\n\n1\n\nof the tablet, and ✯, at that date still alive, as well as predecessors as rulers of this monastery\" ALLKILMINER and \"those monks who founded this monastery\", A WILDFORIKA BAIMM-\n\nL\n\n17 See P.H. Hase, “Notes on Rice Farming in Shatin', in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 21, 1981, pp. 196-206; D. Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China: Trade Increase and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. 46-57 and 212; and Hong Kong Annual Report: Report by District Commissioner, New Territories for Year Ending 31st March, 1950, Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, 1950, p. 5.\n\nTH The Ho clan of Tsung Yuen Ha descends from Ho Chan, the Earl of Tung Kuan in the early Ming, and the Ho family history (CBMGKR — a manuscript volume in the University of Cambridge Library) suggests this area was in Ho Chan's hands before the end of the Ming. It was certainly in Ho family control before 1393 when Ho Chan's family were proscribed. The Tang family has occupied the Lung Yeuk Tau villages, Loi Tung and Tai Tong Wu since the fourteenth century at the latest. A Tang clan also occupies Au Ha (PUF Aoxia) and Wang Kong Ha (Huanggangxia). I have not been able to discover if these two villagers are genealogically connected with the Loi Tung and Lung Yeuk Tau clan, although this is unlikely. The Man family has occupied Ping Che for **18 generations\", according to village elders, i.e. probably from the fourteenth century. The same family occupies Tong Fong, Heung Yuen Wai, and Lin Tong, Liantang), and a branch of it was resident at Man Uk Pin (**Man Family Houses\") before the present residents, the Chung (鍾) clan moved there in the early eighteenth century. The To clan has been resident at Chau Tin village for **500 years\". Local villagers consider that the Lei family has been resident at Lei Uk for as long as the To and Man clans have been at Chau Tin and Ping Che. All these clans are Punti, although sections of the Man clan at Tong Fong, and those at Heung Yuen Wai and Lin Tong, now speak Hakka. Shan Kai Wat (Lam surname, 林), Fung Wong Wu (Yip surname, 葉), and Law Fong (Law surname, 羅), are all included in the list of villages in existence in 1661 included in the 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, along with Au Ha, Tsung Yuen Ha, Ping Che (Ping Yuen 平遠), and perhaps Ping Yeung (坪洋) (Gazetteer, Ch. 3, f 12-13). Other Punti clans in the Ta Kwu Ling area (Wong, 黃, Chan, 陳, and Law, 羅, at Kan Tau Wai, and Hau, 侯)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211893, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 308, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "283\n\nBatavia Roads to carry to and fro from the ship to the shore. These boats are always used by ships in Batavia and are paid four rupees or guilders a day. They are pulled by four Malays except when the wind allows sailing. The head man came on board. They had plenty of rice and fish with them which they ate with their fingers, as all Musselmen do. They are regular Mohammedans,\n\nThe one who stayed on board could speak a little English, and on the next evening I got alongside of him to try what I could make of him. I asked him a few questions but could not understand his answers, so I thought I would give up. At last he said, \"You not know her! You not sabby her? Her name Roleston. Not you sabby Roleston?\" I was very much surprised, as you may imagine, to hear him repeat that name, and how to think of it I could not imagine. What, thought I, can he know about Roleston, and whoever could he be talking about? At last I made out that there is a mercantile house in Batavia of that name, who have a ship of the same name, and this man had served the ship with his boat only a few days before, during the time she was loading. He was a fine intelligent-looking man, for a Malay.\n\nThe captain became more unbearable every day. From morning to night it was nothing but curses, grumbling, bullying, and threatening.\n\nOn Saturday night, June 30th, we stopped off Amsterdam, a small island about 12 miles from Batavia. Here I sat on deck and with the glass looked over the island, which was about a quarter mile off. It looked very pretty by moonlight. There were several native huts on the shore and in the interior, and at night each had a light burning, which looked pretty among the trees.\n\nIt is very pleasant to be sailing among these islands, all covered thick with trees wherever there is room for one to grow. It is truly sailing as the poet says:-\n\nAmid the green islands of glittering seas\n\nWhere fragrant forests perfume the breeze.'\n\nOn Sunday, July 1st, we had several boats come off to the ship from parties in Batavia who were canvassing for trade and patronage. One of them brought a Portuguese, who from being born and brought up in the tropics was as black as a negro. He delivered his card, and was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212199, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "118\n\n1 left by steamer for Canton, the great southern Chinese town, which sprawls along the shore of the Pearl River; and spent a few days on the Shameen mud-bank, just off the city, where the small British and French Concessions are. The Concessions were untouched; but, across the narrow creek that separates them from the shore, the city had suffered heavily from bombing, and from the fires which raged furiously in the congested native districts after each raid. One morning I crossed to the South bank and took the branch line to Samshui on the West river, where I caught the steamer for Wuchow in Kwangsi province.\n\nAlthough owned by a Chinese company, the small river steamer flew the British flag. That was a phenomenon common enough on the inland waters of China. The foreign flag protected the ship from being commandeered by the local war lord. Sometimes for months on end steam traffic, on this water-way or that, would be completely disorganised. The Chinese ships would be impressed to carry the troops of the various armies contending for power. It was only under a foreign flag that they could find the security which would justify their remaining in operation at all. The British government did not welcome this use of the British flag, and introduced regulations to control abuse of the privilege. In order to qualify for British registry a ship must at least carry a British captain and a British chief engineer, and must comply with the Board of Trade regulations in regard to safety measures. But even so, the Chinese owners would make every effort to obtain British registry for their ships, thus in one direction taking advantage of the treaties between Britain and China while, in the other, probably contributing to the Kuo Min Tang party funds, which were used to denounce the iniquities of those very same treaties. In order to comply with the letter of the regulations, the particular ship I now found myself on carried three British officers, whose aggregate age exceeded 200 years. They were, of course, mere figure-heads, the actual work being done by the Chinese officers and crew. These river-boats kept communications open and provided a measure of security for travellers - owing to the presence of British gunboats these small ships moving on inland waters were seldom attacked by bandits which otherwise would have been lacking.\n\n―\n\nIn Kwangsi the road system had been extended to connect Wuchow with the other large towns of the province and I left by car for Kweilin, the capital. An American aviator, who had been down to Hongkong on a shopping expedition, travelled with me as far as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212311, "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "230\n\nVan Horne threatened, \"I will crush you. Don't you attempt to start a steamship line of your own. If you do, we will run you off the Pacific.\"\n\nDodwell retired from the East in 1899, the year his firm became a limited company.\n\nIt has continued to prosper. But much of its success in earlier days was due to the personal contribution of Dodwell himself. Profits increased from his shipping department. He also played a prominent part in the shipping world as a whole. G.B. Dodwell, a man of high principles, died in 1925.\n\nGilman's\n\nRichard James Gilman, a tea-taster, who worked for the old established company of Dent's in Canton, set up a partnership, known as Gilman and Bowman, in a Canton factory in 1840. By 1863 the firm was also represented at Kiukiang, Hankow and Tientsin, employing 21 staff. In many ways the firm was similar to Dodwell's, but on a smaller scale, and it was substantially involved in shipments of tea from Shanghai and Foochow in the 1870s.\n\nGilman's was also active in the import-export trade and shipping, and in 1862 it was appointed agents for Lloyd's at Canton, Hankow, Foochow, Hong Kong and Macau. In these ports its reputation in shipping circles was high, especially after the famous tea race of 1866. 'Taeping (sic) Yeung Hong' (KF) (Great Peace Foreign Firm) chartered the 'Taiping' (named after Gilmans) which beat 'Ariel', the rival ship, by 20 minutes over a 99-day voyage from Foochow to London.\n\nGilman's also played an important part in promoting the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, when it was established in 1864, and it was represented on its Board in its earlier days.\n\nGilman's failed, however, to heed the warning that there was a growing preference for Indian and Ceylon teas in Britain, and, heavily indebted to its London agent Ashton & Company, it came close to bankruptcy. Gilmans had to abandon its Shanghai and Hankow branches in the 1880s. But, with the huge demand for joss sticks in Southern China, the agency for the Australian Sandalwood Company helped", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212391, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "310\n\nDr Elizabeth Sinn explained at intervals during the three-day trip something of the history of Amoy. Together with Ningpo, efforts were made by the British to establish the two towns as centres of trade before Canton secured commercial dominance in 1757. The Canton monopoly was broken in 1842, with the Treaty of Nanking, by the opening of not only Amoy and Ningpo but also the Treaty Ports of Foochow and Shanghai. From and to these ports, among other commodities, were shipped tea, silk, and opium.\n\nBut before then, in the late 17th century, Amoy had been the lair of freebooting, swashbuckling Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who not only drove the Dutch from Taiwan to make it an anti-Manchu base but also attempted to wrest power from the Qing Dynasty. Today, the People's Republic is trying to proclaim that Koxinga, who had a Japanese mother, was no common pirate but a national hero.\n\nAmoy also played a big part in the infamous, so-called in Chinese, 'pig business'. The first Chinese contract coolies left Canton in 1845, but they were soon being shipped from other ports in southern China. Recruiters frequently shanghaied labourers who departed for various countries, including Hawaii, Trinidad, British Guiana, Jamaica, and British Borneo. The journey to Peru or Cuba took about 130 days. Conditions aboard, because of overcrowding, were unimaginable. With a lack of food, unsanitary conditions, and harsh treatment, and 500 men crowded into a hull with barely room to lie down, riots and murders sometimes occurred. Over one-quarter of the labourers are said to have died aboard in their 'pens'.\n\nMany others, however, emigrated from Fujian under somewhat better conditions, and today most families in Xiamen have relatives living overseas. But the Province's most famous son has to be Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), well known for his philanthropy, which is evident in several parts of town, including Xiamen University. This was completed in 1919 on its 100-hectare campus. Tan (pronounced Chan in Cantonese) was born just north of Xiamen to a father who had emigrated to Singapore and was engaged in the rice, pineapple, and rubber business. At an early age, Tan Junior also transferred to the British Colony, as it was then, where he later had four wives and fathered 17 children. Although he spoke neither Mandarin nor English, for business convenience, he became a British subject in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212458, "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-1991", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "demonstrated when we appealed for volunteers to help the Antiquities and Monuments Board to grade buildings in Hong Kong which may have some historical interest. Around 20 volunteers have so far come forward and they have already been put to work. We need to thank Dr. Dan Waters for co-ordinating this project and hope that those who carry out this task will find their visits interesting enough to the extent that they may like to lead a Society trip sometime or even publish some brief notes for the Journal.\n\nLast year I reported on our efforts to stimulate interest from corporations, and create a category of corporate membership. The idea was that for the comparatively small sum of $10,000 p.a. it was intended to give certain privileges to corporate sponsors particularly in the area of acknowledgement in our publications. Amongst the reasons for this move, apart from putting the Society on a firmer financial basis, was to bring to those corporations' attention the Society's achievements and interests. I regret to say that we have not made much progress on this, but the matter will be receiving the attention of the Council during next year.\n\nOur Treasurer, Mr. Robert Nield will give you a detailed report shortly on the state of our finances. We are indeed fortunate to have them so professionally managed, to the extent that the Council now has computer graphs of our financial progress since the resuscitation of the Society in 1960. He will inform you, I hope, that our finances are in a reasonable state but the overall situation does need to be watched. You will notice therefore that later on this meeting we will be asking for approval to raise the annual subscriptions from $250 p.a. which was last set in January 1991 to $300 p.a., with corresponding increases in other category of memberships with effect from January 1993: this works out at a 20% rise over the two years which is around the rate of inflation over this period.\n\nYou will notice from the Librarian's report, by Mr. Y.C. Wan that the Library continues to be in a satisfactory state. However I regret to say that the books, although well kept, are still at the rather inaccessible Kowloon Central Library and not in the City Hall Central Library in a special collection room. It was hoped that by this time we would have knowledge of a definite move but in view of the possible re-development of the City Hall area it is not known whether the original plan will take place. It is intended to take this matter up further and I hope to be able to report on this more encouragingly next year.\n\nxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212477, "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-1991", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "11\n\nthat all men must die and not knowing when I may be called away, I deem it right while still in bodily health and full possession of mental faculties to make my will.\n\nWei A Kwong, the father of Wei Yuk, had a typical story of success. He was a Zhongshan native; he left his hometown and worked in Macau as a teenager. His father was a comprador to two American merchants, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks and Oliver H. Gordon. It was known that Wei was forsaken by his family and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau. He was later sent to Singapore where he studied under the auspices of the Morrison Education Society in a school of the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions. This changed his life. He returned to Hong Kong and began his career. He served as comprador in Bowra & Co. and then in the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China until his death. Wei wrote his will in 1866. He prefaced it with a brief account of his life, particularly mentioning that he was the first student of the Morrison Education Society and that he first came to Hong Kong in 1843. He had \"ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government.\" Though we cannot prove to what extent his exposure to Western culture was related to his Christian education, he succeeded in becoming a leading member of Chinese society in Hong Kong. This contrasts with the will of Sung Chin Tseung, which reads.\n\nSung Chin Tseung, otherwise literary appellation Sung Ching, otherwise Ngok Shan, native of Kat Tai village, of Kong Sheung Division, Heung Shan District. I followed my deceased father, Mr. Shau U, to Hong Kong in 1842 to trade in foreign business as compradore. Further, in 1854, thanks to the kind support of Mr. Ryrie and others of Messrs. Turner and Co., Hongkong, I took over the office of compradore and up to the present thirty odd years.\n\nBoth Wei and Sung were natives of Zhongshan. They came to Hong Kong for business in the early 1840s when Hong Kong was already a British colony. Though they lived in Hong Kong, they maintained connections with their hometown, as Sung's father, Soong Ke, stated in his will written in 1864:\n\nIn the 21st year of Tao Kwong (1841), I came to Hong Kong and employed myself in business all the time with foreigners, always being diligent and making little profit sufficient to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213092, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "141\n\nwith some happier notes.\n\nJuly 23rd\n\nBy this time we had broken down the opposition and matters began to run smoothly\n\nAnd after a long gap, the final entry,\n\nSeptember 3rd\n\nI left for Japan about this time spending all September in Colony In Japan the guest of the Japanese Government and made a national hero Valuable presents numerous and suite of rooms in the Imperial Hotel\n\nThis red-carpet treatment must have been recommended by Kitasato in appreciation of the help given him by Lowson in making the discovery that earned him international fame\n\nHaving read the diary, I learnt more about the situation as it developed from day to day but it came as a surprise to me that so much had gone on behind the scenes arising from clashes of personalities The three important people whose responsibility in the fight against the Epidemic was no less onerous than that of Ayres or Lowson were called: fools, cowards and nonentities. They were the Governor, who was in overall charge as head of the administration, the Colonial Secretary, who was the Governor's principal assistant, and the Chairman of the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board which was set up to recommend on legislation Were the accusations justified? We do not know, but it would be interesting to find out something about these three.\n\nSir William Robinson was Governor of Hong Kong from December 1891 to January 1898. His governorship covered a most difficult period in the history of Hong Kong, during which 'misfortunes after misfortunes assailed the colony in swift succession', to quote from Sayers. The year 1894 was a particularly bad one for Robinson and Hong Kong. His wife died but not from plague. Two very severe typhoons struck Hong Kong in September and October, causing much devastation and many casualties. Above all, there was the Epidemic with its effect on the economy and other aspects of life in the Territory. Robinson reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that 'Without exaggeration, I may assert that so far as trade and commerce are concerned the plague has assumed the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213123, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "173\n\nwas destroyed in the 1937 typhoon, it was rebuilt as an imposing two-storey building. Even in the 1920s, however, it dominated the seafront of the town, facing the sea between the two piers (the public pier to the west, and the Customs pier to the east), separated from the Tin Hau Temple by an irregular strand with two huge banyan trees.\n\nAt the foot of the public pier, between the Customs station and the Tin Hau Temple, was a small kiosk where tickets for the Sha Yue Chung ferry were sold. The Shap Yeuk let the operation of the ferry, and the right to collect the fares, every so often. In the 1930s the fare to Sha Yue Chung was high - 480 per person, plus extra for goods carried. This was because of the difficulties involved in the ferry travelling from Kuomintang to rebel-held territory, and later because the ferry had to travel very close to, or even across, Japanese lines. Much of the freight carried at this date was smuggled kerosene. The other ferries - to Kat O and Kuk Po - collected fares on board the boat.\n\nThe fish laans were just a paved floor, with a tiled roof supported on brick pillars. There were no walls. Each of the fish laans occupied a part of the floor. When the fishing boats arrived in the early morning, the fishermen would carry their catch inland, past the Customs Station, into the laans, to sell to the laan or laans with which they were accustomed to deal. Some of the laans only dealt in the wholesale trade, and only had offices and stores apart from their share of the trading floor. Others also had retail shops in the town.\n\nAs well as the fish faans, there was another wholesale market in the town in the 1920s. This was the grain market. This was, like the fish faans, just a paved floor with a tiled roof supported on brick pillars. It stood beside the sea, just behind the Man Mo Temple. Villagers with grain to sell would carry it here on market days (the 1st, 4th, and 7th days). The grain dealers from the market would come here and buy, and carry it to their stores in the town, either to sell there by retail, or else to arrange to have it carried to Sham Chun. The town weigh-beam was kept here, in a shed next to the market – it was normally only used by people buying or selling grain, who paid a few cents for the use of it.\n\nOpposite the grain market was a row of blacksmiths' shops. These were built here, separated by an alley from the other buildings of the town, for fear of fire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213130, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "180\n\nthe town would bring baskets of vegetables to sell retail on street in Wang Tau Street. Some sold their vegetables at Yim Liu Ha - even before the hawkers started to migrate across the frontier there was some trading here. The saltworkers had no fields, and had to buy all their food - since there was about 100 of them, this represented quite a market. Usually, those villagers trading vegetables with the saltworkers at Yim Liu Ha would exchange their vegetables for salt, which they then hawked around the villages away from the market. One or two villages specialised in this vegetables and salt trade. Yet others specialised in exchanging vegetables for fish (usually the poorer quality, or broken, fish), which they then hawked around villages away from the market.\n\nThe villages further from the market found the vegetable trade difficult, and they usually did not take part in it. Their specialty was fuel. The villages near the market had cut all the trees in the vicinity of the village, except for the untouchable Fung Shui groves, long before, and they were seriously short of fuel as a consequence. The remote mountainside villages of the Shap Yeuk area, however, still had plenty of wood, but were usually short of cultivable land. The economy of these villages depended, essentially, on exchanging firewood for rice. Village women would leave these villages at day-break, carrying loads of about 75 catties of wood, cut and dried, and prepared to suit the particular needs of the specific market aimed at. The boat-people required wood cut into very small and even billets, to fit the tiny stoves on board their boats. The saltworkers needed wood cut to larger sizes to feed their furnaces and stoves. Individual villager or shopkeeper households needed wood cut to medium sizes. Individual fuel-selling villages tended to specialise in one or other of these markets. The best-placed fuel-selling villages, those whose wood reached the market first, tended to sell their wood in whole loads, 75 catties at a time. Those who reached the market later tended to have to sell their wood retail, catty by catty, originally in Wang Tau Street, later from the Railway Station forecourt. It was the custom that, if someone bought a whole load of wood, then the seller had to carry it all the way to the buyer's house, no matter how far from the market. Individual seller villages tended to develop a close relationship with individual buyer villages and households - often buyers would look out for sellers they knew, and order a load of fuel for the next market day. As with vegetables, so villagers who sold fuel to the saltworkers or fishermen sometimes exchanged their wood for salt or fish, which they then hawked through the villages away from the market.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213190, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "and a platform for members to publish, and in this connection may I draw your attention to Vice-President, Reverend Carl Smith's book recently \"Chinese Christmas\" which can be bought at all leading book stores, and also at the back of this room. In addition one of Hong Kong's oldest members and of this Society, Dr. Dan Waters, has published his own memories entitled unashamedly \"An Old Hand's Reflection\" - again it can be bought at all leading bookstores and at the back of this room.\n\nIn addition we have an excellent quality library with many interesting books and, not only is this steadily augmented by our past roving President, Dr. James Hayes, from Australia, but in this past year we have been given a magnificent collection of books on China and Hong Kong from Mr Archie Graham, who at the age of 91 has emigrated to New Zealand. All these books are now in a special room on the 3rd floor of the City Hall, High Block; and at this point I would like to give a sincere thanks to the Urban Services Department and their library staff in particular. In the past year not only have they moved the Society's library from the rather inaccessible Kowloon Public Library to the City Hall library in Central but they have computerised the collection and altogether made the whole collection far more accessible than it has been in the past. I really do urge you to visit this and see for yourself what is there, and of course members can borrow most of the books. For this improvement in our library facilities I must also thank our Librarian Mr. Y.C. Wan who has been very helpful in making all this possible.\n\nI said earlier that the Society makes its views known to the public: I should also add that public and Government organisations also seek the views of the Society, not only on an individual basis, but also on a collective one. I mentioned last year the assistance we gave to the Antiquities Advisory Board in helping them to grade some of Hong Kong's older buildings. At one time the Society had 20 members involved in this, but as I understand it since many of the eligible buildings have been graded then the members have declined: this project has been led by Dr. Dan Waters and we owe him and his team a vote of thanks for their hard work.\n\nOn a collective front the Society has continued to be very active in monitoring the situation over the Public Records Office. Last year I reported to you that we thought we were making some progress and the position at the moment, whilst not completely satisfactory, is considerably better than we hoped for two years ago. The Public Records Office is\n\nXI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213219, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "20\n\nLane, Crawford Restaurant and for several years in the 1930s it was known as the Exchange Restaurant, but in 1935 the name reverted again to Cafe Wisseman (details of management, location and name are from notices of the Spirit Licensing Board published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette).\n\nAn incident took place at the Cafe in September 1914, just after war was declared, which placed three German nationals under suspicion. They were observed throwing down a copy of the China Mail and stamping on it because it contained a report that the British had compulsorily bought two battleships then being built for the Turkish Government (CO129/413, Information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on list, 8 Oct. 1914).\n\nFirms\n\nI have tried to reconstruct the history of these firms from the records available in Hong Kong. The average reader may not be interested in the detailed account of change of partnership, location and other minutia, but as most of this material has not been published previously, I presume to do so now in the hope that there may be some who have an interest in the firms may learn more about them. The information and references may provide a starting place for those who might wish to write a fuller history of particular firms.\n\nThough Germany was not a colonial power in Asia, its merchants carried on an active trade there. Throughout the nineteenth century German firms became increasingly competitive with those of other western countries. In the opening decades of the century Canton was the centre for trade, but it declined in importance when the ports at Hong Kong and Shanghai developed.\n\nWhen war was declared between Britain and Germany in August 1914 citizens of enemy countries were placed under parole but in October new laws were enacted enabling the Hong Kong Government to place German nationals who held reserve status in the military to be interned. Representatives of German businesses in Hong Kong sent a letter dated 30 October to the American Consul General there asking him to submit it to the British authorities. The merchants appealed for a reversal of the orders on the grounds that they had contributed through the years to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213223, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "24 \n\nthe business in 1876 and died at Dresden in June 1886 (DP 17 June 1886, 31 Dec. 1895).\n\nBernard Harkort established a firm of his own at Shanghai in 1857 when he took over the business of Trautmann and Co (FC 30 June 1857). He retired in 1863 and returned to his home at Leipzig where he died in 1865 (CM 5 Feb. 1863, 7 Dec. 1865). Gustav von Hitzeroth became a partner of Carlowitz and Co. in 1864.\n\nThe importance of the firm in the German trade with China is indicated by the presence of successive partners of the firm on the Board of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation from 1879 to 1914. A branch of the firm was opened at Shanghai in 1877 under the management of Alfred F.O. Krause (DP 3 Apr. 1877). Mr. Krause and Bernhard Philipp Schmacker became partners in the company in 1881 (CM 3 Jan. 1881). Chemical dyes have long been a specialty of the German trade. In 1880 Carlowitz and Co. advertised themselves as the agents for the Aniline Dye Co. of Berlin (DP 30 Apr. 1881). The company represented German financiers in arranging a five million mark loan to His Excellency Li Hung-chang in 1887 (DP 28 Feb. 1887). It also represented the Krupp armament firm in 1912 for a loan of six million marks with the head of Chekiang Province (DP 15 May 1912).\n\nThe enlarged business interests of the firm were accompanied by the admission of additional partners: Charles Von Bose 1883, Eduard Jean Mac Paquin 1887, Gustav Adolph Degenes, retired 1899, H. Caesar Erdmann, retired 1900 but remained a dormant partner, Friedrich Carl Paul Sachse 1893. This list is not exhaustive. When the firm was placed under liquidation in 1914 the partners were M. March, R. Lenzmann and A. Schultz, all of Hamburg, T. Rusmore in New York, B. Rosenbaum and R. Laurenz in Shanghai, A. von Bohuscewiez in Tientsin and C. Landgraf in Hong Kong.\n\nSiemssen and Company\n\nPustau and Co. was the first German firm to open an office in Hong Kong. Siemssen and Co. followed them from Canton some nine years later (FC 31 Mar. 1855). George Theodor Siemssen had established himself at Canton in 1849. In 1855 he bought a lot on Queen's Road near the present Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building. Until the building he\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213229, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "30 \n\nMrs. T.C. Meyrick of Fareham, Hants, England. He was educated at University College School, London, from where he went to Brasenose College, Oxford in 1900. He arrived in China in 1907 to join Arnhold, Karberg and Co. He was a keen supporter of racing with his brother Harry Arnhold. They ran a stable in Shanghai for many years under the nom-de-guerre of \"Winsome and Hasty\". He was the last Chairman of the Shanghai Race Club before the change of régime in China. At one time he was a member of the Shanghai Municipal Council and Vice Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai. He came to Hong Kong in 1949 and the head office was then transferred here. He had been interned at the Haiphong Road Internment Camp in Shanghai. He supported the British Orchestra and the Hong Kong Concert Orchestra. He was born in London in 1881.\n\nSince 1888 a member of the firm of Arnhold, Karberg and Co. had been on the Board of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank though, of course, after 1914 German firms were not represented. The firm also represented German financial interests in the negotiation of foreign loans to China. Its \"Teutonic thoroughness\" is shown by the number of offices the firm had in China in 1908 — Hong Kong, Shanghai, Canton, Hankow, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Wuhu, Kiukiang, Newchwang, Chungking, Mukden, Peking, Tsinanfu, Kirin etc. It had buying offices in London, New York and Berlin. Dr. Frank King in his history of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation designates the firm as an \"Anglo-German\" company. Like other large China-based German firms it found it advantageous to establish strong links with Britain. It was about the only German firm able to continue its trade after 1914, principally because the two Shanghai partners were born in England.\n\nBourjau, Hubener and Co.\n\nAdolph Bourjau and Carl Albert Hubener were authorised to sign for L.E. Lebert and Company at Canton in 1858 but by the next year they were in business in Hong Kong under their own name (FC 18 Mar. 1858, 31 May 1859). They are mentioned as emigrant agents in 1866 (DP 1 Nov. 1866). Mr. Bourjau continued as a senior partner until his death on 14 February 1873 (DP 5 Apr. 1873).\n\nArthur Booth was a partner in 1862/3 and Oscar Booth from 1866 to 1869. Ernest Behre was the managing partner at Shanghai in the 1860s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213712, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "36\n\nIn 1921, 1,528 (36%) of the male boat-people in the islands were recorded as born outside the New Territories, and 893 (26%) of the females.7 Of the 1,528 males and 893 females born outside the New Territories, 444 males and 279 females were born in Hong Kong or Macao, 956 and 578 respectively in the Delta, and 101 and 10 in the Hoi Fung/Chiu Chau area. From every area from where people born outside the New Territories came, the number of recorded males was far higher than the number of females: there were 95 New Territories-born floating population females recorded for every 100 males, but only 50 Macao born females for every 100 males, 41 for every 100 San On-born males, 31 for every 100 Tung Kun males, and so on. In the recorded populations from some areas unmarried people greatly outnumber the married (i.e., 72% of the 316 males, and 54% of the 199 females from San Ning District were unmarried, and 74% of the 195 males and 62% of the 175 females from Heung Shan District), again making it clear that we are dealing with temporarily resident populations. The extreme disparity of the male female figures from the Hoi Fung / Chiu Chau area also suggests this; in this case, however, the number of married persons (51% of males, and 50% of females) suggests that many of those recorded had families in their home districts. Many of the people from this area were in the Southern District as seamen on board coastal cargo and large fishing junks.\n\nThus the 1921 Southern District floating population records support the 1911 Southern District land population statistics to confirm that the Islands had an essentially urban population structure, dominated by significant numbers of temporarily resident immigrant groups, mostly young adult males, and that therefore the Islands population had much in common with the City, and was sharply distinct from the settled, agricultural, population of the Northern District. This is a finding which is confirmed by analysis of many other parts of the records of the censuses.\n\nThe Villager's World\n\nSince most trade in traditional South China was by family owned and operated sampans and junks, the places where people found resident in the New Territories were born gives an indication of the area the traditional New Territories villager was in contact with. Table 13 shows this area. It shows the places (other than the New Territories themselves,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213993, "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-1997", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "28\n\nscaffolding. The Construction Industry Training Centre, in conjunction with the Vocational Training Council, does conduct trade tests for bamboo scaffolders at Aberdeen. A Guidebook to Trade Tests for Bamboo Scaffolders has jointly been produced by the Vocational Training Council, the Building and Civil Engineering Training Board, and the Construction Industry Training Authority.\n\nAccording to the 'Code of Practice':\n\n...every scaffolder should therefore be required to wear a safety harness or belt (plus suitable lanyard) attaching to an independent life-line or a secure anchorage or fitting, or a secure fixing point at all times.31\n\nThis is how they are taught in the Construction Industry Centre. Actually, outside on the job, few scaffolders use safety belts. Most say that, because when erecting or dismantling a scaffold they have to move around so much, if they are ‘anchored down' with a safety belt and attachments, it slows them down. In practice, a scaffolder puts his leg over or around a bamboo member and 'secures' himself like that (see Plate 4).\n\nAlthough erecting bamboo scaffolding is a respected trade, one not only needs to be properly trained but also one has to be physically fit and mentally alert in order to prevent accidents. When one old master scaffolder was asked how he proved that he was properly trained without a certificate he burst into laughter 'If you are going to work 30 floors above the ground, standing on slim pieces of bamboo, you had better be properly trained,' he guffawed.\n\nThe trade of the scaffolder has been described as blending lofty ideals with a lonely life. Certainly 'up there', to a large extent you are on your own. The danger is that tradesmen take short cuts to get the job completed more quickly. If workers have a fall or an injury they normally quit because of psychological pressures. Nevertheless, most accidents are caused by carelessness. Most of those injured are workmen of various trades who use the scaffolding after it has been erected, not the scaffolders themselves. Sometimes the scaffolding may have been altered or tampered with by other tradesmen. For example, a bricklayer removes a tie from the scaffolding to a building because it gets in his way.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214879, "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": 294, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "264\n\nthat it is, per se, the record of a money loan association. He considers that the sums involved are too small to represent the principal plus interest, and suggests that if indeed the list does relate to an association, it may represent outstanding debts on the repayments of principal and interest.\n\n(b) The list is merely a list of debtors made by someone loaning money\n\nAlternatively, Dr. Hase thinks it possible the sums merely represent small amounts loaned by an unknown person, who drew up the list as an aide mémoire to chasing up the defaulters.\n\nThe crossing out of the one name, implying repayment by the person concerned, could fit either of his interpretations.\n\nTo put these amounts into some kind of perspective, it may be helpful to compare them with the daily wages recorded at a particular time. For this purpose, I have taken the year 1900, this being, as Dr. Hase agrees, the mid point of the period 1870-1930, to which the scrap of paper most likely belongs.\n\nIn that year, according to the Hong Kong official Blue Book daily wages for labourers varied between 20 cents and one dollar. Wages for artisans were in the scale 20 to 75 cents, dependent upon trade, but unlike labourers' remunerations, theirs were with board and lodging.\n\nEither way, these figures show that the sums shown on the list were modest, even paltry. Therefore, the chance that they represent small loans is high.\n\nOn the other hand, I still favour the money-loan association option, but with two possibilities regarding the small sums set down in the list. First, there is Dr. Hase's suggestion that they represent outstanding amounts due by certain members on principal plus interest, persons who had repaid most of the loan sum but not yet the whole.\n\nSecond, there is my own further thought that these sums only represent the interest due to be paid by the various parties on the list. This would presuppose that the principal sum was not included, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215277, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "2\n\nThere is one exception to these generalisations, a deviant case which has never been analysed by the economists who deplore the underdevelopment of the colonial empire. The amazing economic growth of Hong Kong since its liberation from the Japanese occupation in 1945 is well known, but it is widely assumed that before the war the Hong Kong economy was almost entirely based upon the entrepôt trade transporting goods to and from China and that its transformation from a trading mart to a manufacturing centre began with the post-war arrival of industrialists from Shanghai fleeing from the chaos of China's civil war. In fact, the development of industry had begun in the nineteenth century and by 1939 Hong Kong had built up a flourishing export trade in manufactured goods to China and neighbouring Asian countries and was even successfully competing with British firms in a few items in the British home market.\n\nThe growth of Hong Kong industry was accelerated in the 1930s by decisions taken at the Imperial Economic Conference which met at Ottawa in August 1932. The conference was called to find ways of combating the worldwide economic depression by stimulating trade between the countries of the empire after the British government had decided to abandon its long-standing commitment to free trade and to impose a ten per cent tariff on foreign imports. The conference was mainly occupied with bargaining between Britain and the dominions over the terms on which agricultural products from the dominions would enter the British market and the access of British manufactured goods to the dominions.\n\nThe ministers meeting at Ottawa also decided to impose stringent restrictions by tariffs and specific duties on imports of textiles and other goods from Japan which were beginning to penetrate empire markets, displacing British and Canadian manufactures. Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong took advantage of this attempt to exclude Japanese goods from dominion and colonial markets to export large quantities of cheap footwear and textiles to the empire. This provoked indignant complaints from industrialists in Britain and Canada who demanded that restrictions should be placed on the supercompetitive Hong Kong manufactures.\n\nHong Kong's successful penetration of empire markets forced the British government for the first time to consider what its policy should be towards the industrial development of the colonial empire. Two interdepartmental committees of civil servants were set up in 1933 and 1937, but no authoritative decision was reached by the cabinet before the outbreak of war in 1939. Officials at the Colonial Office defended the right of the colonies to diversify their economies by moving into manufacturing, but the Board of Trade and the Treasury were generally unenthusiastic about such schemes where they might result in a reduction of British exports.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215286, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "II\n\nasked that Britain should approach Australia to secure for Hong Kong the same tariff preference as Britain enjoyed, in accordance with article 15 of the Ottawa agreement. He pointed out that Hong Kong had granted Australian brandy a preference in the excise duty of three dollars a gallon and had received nothing in return. Cunliffe-Lister refused to take any action minuting that he was not prepared to press for equal treatment in the dominions for British and colonial industries like shipbuilding in which owing to different standards of living the levels of cost were necessarily different. This attitude shocked the civil servants in the Colonial Office. One senior official minuted, 'I have always assumed that the Secretary of State would be the advocate of colonial interests.' The matter was not allowed to rest there in spite of the views expressed by Cunliffe-Lister. Officials consulted the Board of Trade and when that department raised no objection a letter was sent to the Australian High Commission asking for the grant of preference. The Australian government was most unwilling to extend preference to a territory with oriental wages even though it was part of the empire, but eventually granted all the colonies preference at the same rate as Britain in respect of vessels over 500 tons only.\n\nIn 1933 Hong Kong manufacturers followed the lead of the Singapore factory in vigorously expanding their exports. Sales to Britain grew from HK$16,190 in 1930 to HK$454,252 in 1933 and to HK$1,823,874 in 1934. British manufacturers protested to the Board of Trade about this competition in their home market and the Board of Trade passed on their complaints to the Colonial Office. Cunliffe-Lister suggested that Britain should confine its preference to primary products and that entry free of duty should be refused to colonial manufactured goods which could compete with an efficient British industry. This proposal did not find favour with the civil service. Instead officials proposed that an interdepartmental committee should be set up to consider the whole question of the industrial development of the colonial empire. The committee was composed of officials from the Board of Trade, the Department of Overseas Trade, the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office. The first meeting was held in January 1934. R.V. Vernon of the Colonial Office was the chairman and was said to have been largely instrumental in drafting the committee's report.\n\nThe committee concluded that industrial development in the colonial empire was an inevitable contingency which could not be prohibited or indefinitely retarded; but the committee saw no reason why a conscious policy of the artificial encouragement of industry should be undertaken by the institution of a tariff high enough to protect the products of local industry from imports from Britain or elsewhere. The interests of British manufacturers and of colonial consumers who would have to pay a higher price for products previously imported should also be considered. So the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215289, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "14\n\nCanadian products. To counter this competition the British government in 1934 instructed the colonies to institute a system of quotas for 'piece goods containing 50 per cent or more of cotton or of artificial silk, or of cotton and artificial silk combined'. The annual quota allowed in any colony should be the average imports over the years 1927 to 1931.\" This covered the period before Japanese textiles began to flood into colonial markets. British textiles and empire textiles were excluded from quota, provided that they had 50 per cent imperial content. This measure aroused considerable opposition in many colonies since the poorest customers would be deprived of their only source of cheap clothing for the benefit of the British textile industry. The official majority was used to carry the bill through the colonial legislatures in the face of opposition from the unofficial members. In Ceylon, where elected unofficials had a majority in the legislative council, quotas were imposed by an Order in Council issued by the British government. In spite of its long history as a free port Singapore agreed to impose quotas on imports retained in the colony. Hong Kong refused because of possible damage to its entrepôt trade, much to the annoyance of the colonial secretary, Cunliffe-Lister.52\n\nIn 1936 the Colonial Office asked for reports from all colonies on the effects of the quotas imposed two years earlier. The replies from governors indicated that quotas had been generally successful in excluding Japanese and foreign textiles, but this had had very little effect in increasing the trade of Britain and Canada. As happened when discriminatory duties were imposed on rubber shoes the chief beneficiary was Hong Kong. Imports of shirts, singlets and hosiery from Hong Kong had made their appearance for the first time and were now the dominant supplier at the cheaper end of the market.\" The governor of Jamaica complained that imports of ready-made apparel were driving the local garment industry out of business and suggested specific duties or quotas on Hong Kong textiles on the same lines as the restrictions against Japan.\n\n34\n\nAfter the Ottawa conference other Hong Kong goods besides rubber footwear began to appear in the British market. The Import Duties Act 1932 had allowed free entry into Britain to imports provided that at least 25 per cent of their value was derived from materials grown or produced or from work done within a part of the empire. This provision enabled a number of small manufacturers in Hong Kong who had previously exported their products to China and Asian countries to turn their attention to the British market. Exports of wearing apparel to Britain increased from HK$2,000 in 1932 to HK$498,000 in 1933, and HK$1,169,000 in 1935. Exports of electric torches went up from none in 1932 to HK$30,000 in 1933, HK$128,000 in 1934, and HK$131,000 in 1935.\" The Board of Trade feared that foreign manufacturers such as Japan were shipping goods substantially", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215291, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "16\n\nsufficient to qualify for preference in colonial 'native' markets then it is a very bad outlook for us as I cannot see how the growing population of Victoria and Kowloon are going to find employment without industrial development,\n\nI therefore consider it as politically important as it is, from our point of view, economically advantageous to give the Hong Kong Chinese a commercial attachment to the empire. Our military and naval defences are designed against external aggression, but if relations with China ever became antagonistic there would be an enemy totalling over one million within the fortress gates, unless their bread is liberally spread with Empire butter.\n\nThe governor's plea for Hong Kong's manufacturing industry was warmly supported by all the Colonial Office officials who wrote minutes on this despatch. It was quickly passed up to the colonial secretary, W. Ormsby-Gore, who endorsed it as 'an admirable letter' and gave instructions for copies to be sent to the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade.\" Officials made frequent use of Caldecott's argument of imperial interests when attempting to repulse proposals from the Board of Trade and other departments to place further restrictions on Hong Kong's manufactures in the years that followed.\n\nBritish textile manufacturers continued to protest that they were suffering from unfair competition in the British and colonial markets and demanded that Hong Kong exports should be excluded by tariffs or quantitative restrictions. In order to fend off these pressures the Colonial Office suggested to the governor of Hong Kong that all cotton and artificial silk piece goods exported to Britain and the colonies should be accompanied by a certificate that they had been made from cloth which had been spun, woven and finished within the empire. This proposal posed difficulties for Hong Kong. There were no spinning mills in the colony and more than half the cotton yarn used in the production of piece goods and hosiery was imported from Japan and Shanghai. In order to continue to enjoy the benefits of imperial preference, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce secured the manufacturers' agreement to switch their purchases of yarn from China and Japan to cotton mills in India which were within the empire. But the manufacturers of goods made from artificial silk protested strongly that the only alternative to yarn from Japan was British yarn which was double the price ($1.70 a pound compared to 85c). This would destroy their competitiveness with Japanese products in British Malaya, the African colonies and the West Indies and drive them to bankruptcy. The Colonial Office put its case to the Board of Trade which refused to compromise, asserting that if Hong Kong was to continue to enjoy the advantages of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215292, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "quota system which kept out their Japanese competitors they must pay the same price as British textile manufacturers and use British-made rayon yarn.\" So from June 1937 the 'spun, woven and finished within the empire' requirement was enforced for all cotton and artificial silk garments if they wished to qualify for preference as empire products.\"\n\nApart from boots and shoes, forches, cotton and artificial silk clothing and hosiery there were many other Hong Kong manufactured products exported to the colonial empire which were able to claim the benefits of the imperial preferential tariff. They included hats, umbrellas, leather bags and purses, suitcases, furniture, mats, lamps, rope, firecrackers, paper, books, cigarettes, perfumes, medicines, condiments, sauces, biscuits, preserved foods and refined sugar.\" Complaints of the abuse of this privilege continued. In June 1938 the Colonial Office issued instructions that Hong Kong goods should be admitted to preference only if the suppliers' declaration that the article had a 50 per cent empire content was supported by a detailed statement of costings certified by a chartered accountant and countersigned by an officer of the Hong Kong government.\" It cannot have been easy for a workshop in the back streets of Kowloon to afford the fees of a chartered accountant and get all the paperwork in order. Many justifiable claims to imperial preference must have gone by default. The Colonial Office was under pressure from the Board of Trade active on behalf of British manufacturers who found their trade threatened by Hong Kong's success. It sought to defend the principle that all parts of the empire should be treated equally. It could not stop the self-governing dominions from discriminating against Hong Kong, but it prevented the colonial territories from doing the same. The price it had to pay was the elaborate documentation required to prove that Hong Kong goods were genuinely made in the colony and were not products transhipped from China or Japan.\n\nIn 1937 manufacturing industry in Hong Kong received an unexpected stimulus from the Japanese invasion of China. Industrialists transferred production from Shanghai to Hong Kong when their factories were attacked by the Japanese. When Japan blockaded the Yangtse river and seized all the coastal ports in East China, Hong Kong became a vital entry point for military supplies. Factories were quickly established to provide clothing and equipment to the Nationalist forces. Factories were set up to produce steel helmets, gas masks, mess tins, webbing and military uniforms. Parts for lorries, trucks and even aircraft were imported and assembled in Hong Kong. The Commercial Press moved from Shanghai and began printing currency notes for the Chinese government. The number of factories employing more than 20 workers went up from 642 in 1936 to 864 in 1938, 925 in 1939 and 1,143 in 1940. Domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1938 totalled at least HK$91,610,000 (about £6,000,000).**", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215293, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Though the 1934 interdepartmental committee report had not been officially approved by the cabinet, the Colonial Office regarded it as an authoritative guide to policy. Governors were instructed to refer all proposals for industrial development to London before any changes to tariffs or excise duty were submitted to legislative councils, or any promises of financial or other assistance were made to the promoters of the project. Entrepreneurs also approached the Colonial Office directly with their own schemes for industrial development. Officials examined the proposal to see if it was economically sound. Normally the Board of Trade was consulted for advice as to whether British exports would be adversely affected. Expert advice was sometimes obtained from outside government. If the colony was receiving a grant from Britain to balance its budget, the views of the Treasury were sought. The general attitude of the Colonial Office was an exceedingly cautious one, but if the project appeared to be economically viable, officials did not feel justified in preventing its development.\n\nWhen a proposal was rejected by the Colonial Office, a governor could still protest at the decision, arguing that the special circumstances of his colony should be taken into account. Governors often submitted counterproposals suggesting a lower protective tariff or a different mix of financial incentives to enable the project to go ahead. Governors were insistent on the need for industrial development, and the Colonial Office was always very reluctant to overrule a governor who persisted in pressing his views on what was in the best interests of his colony. In 1936, the colonial secretary wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer suggesting that the cabinet should reconsider the 1934 Report, so that when writing to governors, he could refer to the principles laid down in the report as having the authority of the whole government. The Federation of British Industries had also written to the Treasury complaining about competition from dominion and colonial manufacturers which enjoyed free entry into the British market. Treasury officials believed that the Colonial Office was too ready to sanction the establishment of industries in the colonies which might adversely affect British exports, ignoring the fact that Britain bore the whole cost and responsibility for the Royal Navy and colonial defence.68\n\nA new committee was set up, which, unlike the 1933 committee, included representatives from the Treasury and the Bank of England. It met for the first time in February 1937. The committee tried to formulate general principles, but found that in every case they examined, special considerations could be adduced to justify the new industrial development. For example, a brewery in the Gold Coast which competed with imported British beer was defended by the governor as a means to turn the natives away from gin and neat drinks to (cheaper) beer; the capital investment of £250,000 would be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215296, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "21\n\nKenya 33 per cent, Nigeria 58 per cent, Ceylon 52 per cent, Jamaica 60 per cent.\n\n7. For example Nyasaland in 1929 raised the duty on imported soap from 5 shillings to 7 shillings to protect a newly established factory. In 1931 the duty was increased to 8 shillings a cwt. The Colonial Office first heard of these increases in 1932 when Unilever complained. Memo IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2.\n\n8. CO137/780. Georgina Waylen, 'Colonial Policy towards industrialisation between the wars: the case of Jamaica', Manchester Papers in Politics (University of Manchester, Nov. 1987, mimeo).\n\n9. In 1931 a local company proposed to establish a cement factory in Kenya which required a protective tariff and a guarantee that a very high anti-dumping duty would be imposed on Japanese cement which dominated the market. The Colonial Office refused the request for protection on the advice of the Board of Trade because the local factory if successful would take over government orders, depriving British cement manufacturers of the last remnant of the market. CO533/417/18. In 1933 the Colonial Office rejected a scheme to erect a cotton spinning and weaving factory in East Africa which required a capital subscription of £500,000 from the governments of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. IDC(37)No.8, T160/763/F14811/2. A proposal for a soap factory in the Windward Islands was disallowed because it involved the colony being given a preference over the UK in other colonies from which the copra was to be exported. IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2.\n\n10. Hong Kong Blue Book 1846 (PRO, CO133/3), 226, stated ‘A large number of Chinese are employed in their respective shops and houses in the exercise of industrial trades and manufactures and there are scarcely any ordinary wants of the inhabitants which do not meet with a ready supply within the town.'\n\n11. These dates are taken from the Return of Manufactures, Mines and Factories in the Blue Books compiled every year for submission to the Colonial Office. Not all the manufacturing enterprises were successful: the cotton spinning factory closed in 1914 and removed its machinery to Shanghai. But new manufacturing ventures soon took their place. Sir William Robinson (governor 1891-98) in his first address to the legislative council spoke of the advantages that would accrue from a further encouragement of local industries. 'The community may rely upon my aid and assistance in fostering in every legitimate way the development of such enterprises.' Hong Kong Legislative Council Debates, 25 Jan. 1892, 97. This was done by selling public land by private treaty at a discount for industrial development, H.K. LegCo. Deb., 4 Dec. 1893, 1–2.\n\n12. CO129/379, 377-384 and 392-755.\n\n13. Hong Kong Blue Book 1930. Blue Book 1932. The largest factory was that of the Green Island Cement Company which could employ 1,470 men when working at full capacity.\n\n14. Statistics on imports and exports were first collected in 1918. Publication was discontinued in 1925 and resumed in 1931, but no distinction was made between re-exports and domestic exports until 1959. Estimates of gross domestic product were not made by government statisticians until 1961. Domestic exports have been calculated from Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, compiled by the Imports and Exports Department (Hong Kong, 1933), CO133/103, by identifying all categories where exports exceeded imports, on the assumption that the surplus must represent Hong Kong domestic production. This calculation certainly understates local production since it does not take account of manufactures consumed locally. Also the trade figures do not include the very large volume of goods smuggled into China to avoid payment of customs duty.\n\n15. Memorandum in Clementi to Cunliffe-Lister, 20 Sept. 1933, CO323/1232.\n\n16. Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor to Enquire into the Causes and Effects of the Present Trade Depression in Hong Kong, February 1935 (Hong Kong, 1935), 88-89, CO129/554/5.\n\n17. Trade Depression Report, 75.\n\n18. W.K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs Vol II, Problems of Economic Policy 1918-1939, Part 1 (Oxford, 1940), 87.\n\n19. CO129/344. CO129/370. CO129/392.\n\n20. F. V. Meyer, British Colonies in World Trade (Oxford, 1948), 9–11, 18–19.\n\n21. Hancock, 125. Meyer, 10-11.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215297, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "22\n\n22. The requirement of an empire content of 25 per cent to qualify for preference was set in consultation with the Board of Trade, which pointed out that some British manufacturers using foreign sources of raw material would not qualify for preference if the empire content was set at 50 per cent. CO323/1192/11.\n\n23. L.M. Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–1939 (London, 1972), 92; Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Industrial Development of the Colonial Empire, Colonial Office Confidential Print 445, CO885/40.\n\n24. Secretary of State to all colonies and protectorates, 4 Feb. 1932, DO35/242/4, PRO.\n\n25. Minutes of a conference at the Colonial Office, 27 June 1932, CO323/1193/2.\n\n26. The texts of the agreements are in Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa Cmd4175 (London, 1932), 19–76.\n\n27. Canada agreed to extend to the colonies and protectorates the preferences accorded to Britain, but in practice raised objections when requested to do so by the British government. See for example CO323/1099/16, CO852/51/9 and CO852/251/10. Cunliffe-Lister minute, 22 Oct 1933, CO323/1232/8, 'Canada has done less than nothing to implement the most essential part of the Ottawa accords.'\n\n28. See the comments in paragraphs 18 and 30 of the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee.\n\n29. Confidential Circular Despatch, 29 Sept. 1932, CO854/174. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister is better known by his later title, Viscount Swinton.\n\n30. Secretary of State to Governor of Ceylon, 27 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to High Commissioner, Federated Malay States, 30 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to Barbados, 24 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Jamaica, 10 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Windward Islands, 24 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. A clause was drafted for inclusion in the 1933 Finance Bill to allow Britain to withdraw preferences from any colony if it did not grant the Ottawa preferences to empire products, CO323/1230/3.\n\n31. Officer Administering Government, Leeward Islands to Secretary of State, 19 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n32. Governor Barbados to Secretary of State, 17 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n33. Governor Windward Islands to Secretary of State, 21 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n34. Stevens to Cunliffe-Lister, 17 Nov. 1932, CO323/1193/11.\n\n35. Cunliffe-Lister to Stevens, 8 Dec. 1932, CO323/1193/11.\n\n36. Hong Kong Trade Returns show exports of rubber shoes to the British West Indies as follows: 1932 - HK$4,894; 1933 - 116,670; 1934 - 643,337; 1935 - 574,376; 1936 - 1,071,932; 1937 - 1,427,634.\n\n37. High Commissioner for Canada to Cunliffe-Lister, 15 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n38. Cunliffe-Lister to High Commissioner, 27 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Canada later succeeded in excluding Singapore shoes by setting a fictitious high rate of exchange for the Singapore dollar. See minute by Calder, 8 June 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n39. Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, 13 Nov. 1933, CO323/1231/16.\n\n40. Minute by Vernon, 21 Dec. 1933, CO323/1231/16. R.V. Vernon was an Assistant Secretary who joined the Colonial Office in 1900. He had previously expressed his disapproval when Cunliffe-Lister refused to approach India and South Africa to ask for imperial preference for Hong Kong's rubber shoes: 'The Secretary of State is placed practically in the position of a trustee who is bound to act with the sole regard to the interests of the colonies and is not at liberty to abstain from any claim on the account of the interests of U.K. industry or the susceptibilities of dominion industrial interests.' Minute, 9 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/3. The attitude of Cunliffe-Lister may be contrasted with that of Alan Lennox-Boyd (Colonial Secretary 1954-59) who threatened to resign if Hong Kong was forced to accept a limitation on its textile exports to Britain. Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1954–1959 (London, 1971), 739-43.\n\n41. CO323/1294/3.\n\n42. Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, 1933, 1934.\n\n43. Minute by Cunliffe-Lister, 7 June 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n44. Edgcumbe (Department of Overseas Trade) to Eastwood (Colonial Office), 18 April 1936, CO323/1298/10.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215298, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "23\n\n45. Cabinet Minutes, 6 June 1934, 23(34)6, 13 June 1934, 24(34)6, 3 Oct. 1934, 33(34)5, CAB23/79, PRO.\n\n46. Confidential Circular Despatch, June 1934, CO323/1298/10 and CO854/175.\n\n47. Colonial Office to Governor Hong Kong, 6 April 1934, CO323/1298/11.\n\n48. Information from R.R. Todd, an administrative officer in Hong Kong 1924-56, interviewed in 1986.\n\n49. CO323/1298/11. CO852/16/10.\n\n50. CO852/219/13.\n\n51. Circular Despatches, 13 April 1934, and 15 May 1934, CO854/175.\n\n52. Havinden and Meredith, 188-90. Governor Hong Kong to Colonial Office, 2 May 1934, CO323/1290/6.\n\n53. Circular Despatch, 19 Sept. 1936, CO854/170.\n\n54. Governor Jamaica to Colonial Office, 6 July 1936 and 11 Aug, 1936, CO852/51/9. Governor Jamaica to Colonial Office, 3 June 1937, CO852/106/19.\n\n55. An Economic Survey of the Colonial Empire, HMSO Colonial No 95 (London, 1934), 137. Economic Survey Col. 109, 170; Economic Survey Col. 126, 170. Hong Kong Trade Statistics 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935.\n\n56. Circular Despatch, 13 March 1933, CO323/1230/11.\n\n57. Letters and Memorandum from Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce in Caldecott to Colonial Office, 25 July and 4 Aug. 1936, CO852/51/9. McKenzie (Custom House) to Eastwood (Colonial Office), 18 Sept 1936. Rydderch (Custom House) to Colonial Office, 26 Feb. 1937, CO852/107/1.\n\n58. In 1936 exports of electric flashlight torches totalled HK$2,930,000, including India HK$595,000, Netherlands East Indies HK$379,000, and Britain HK$167,000. Hong Kong Trade Returns 1936.\n\n59. Minutes on Caldecott to Clauson, 15 Oct. 1936, CO852/51/9. Clauson commented: 'It is all too seldom we get from a colonial governor so thoughtful and comprehensive a review of the future of the colony he governs.'\n\n60. Officer Administering Government, Hong Kong to Colonial Office, 30 Sept. 1937, with enclosures, CO853/109/5. King (Board of Trade) to Eastwood (Colonial Office), 13 Nov, 1937, CO852/109/5.\n\n61. Circular Despatch, 2 June 1937, CO854/176.\n\n62. Memorandum by Hamilton (Superintendent of Imports and Exports Hong Kong), 22 April 1937 CO852/106/19. Hong Kong Trade Returns 1937.\n\n63. Circular Despatch, 24 Feb. 1938, CO854/177.\n\n64. Minute by Caine (Financial Secretary Hong Kong 1937-39), 24 Jan. 1940, CO852/215/3. Gas masks, CO129/580/9. Aircraft assembly, CO129/571/15 and CO129/580/4.\n\n65. Hong Kong Blue Book 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940.\n\n66. Calculations made as in note 5 from Hong Kong Trade Returns 1938 omitting all raw materials, unprocessed agricultural products and exports of banknotes (valued at HK$36,000,000).\n\n67. Clausen described the policy of the Colonial Office in these words when speaking at a meeting of the Overseas Trade Development Council, 31 July 1935, CO852/16/7.\n\n68. Colonial Office to Neville Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1936. Federation of British Industries to Warren Fisher, 14 Feb. 1936. Minutes in Treasury file T160/763/F14811/1.\n\n69. Minutes of the second meeting of the committee, 23 April 1937, T160/763/F14811/1.\n\n70. CO852/16/13, The inventor approached the Colonial Office directly and officials referred the project to the governor of Trinidad. The governor appointed a committee which doubted if the project was feasible. The Colonial Office received a number of similar proposals in the 1930s. Often the entrepreneur was eager to set up a factory provided that he was granted a high protective tariff, an exclusive license, part of the capital costs, subsidised freight rates and other financial privileges. In effect the businessman was asking the colonial government to bear all the risks while he would enjoy the profits if the project was successful. See for example CO852/16/9, a proposal to set up a factory in Nyasaland to process sisal into binder twine. An official commented that this was a last desperate attempt by a bankrupt farmer to keep his own sisal estates going.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215344, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "69\n\nexamination candidates, he also became an entrepreneur in and around the port of Xiamen [Amoy] at a time when taking part in foreign trade was illegal. He owned a fleet of cargo junks known as 'ferryboats' in order to circumvent the law. His supercargoes contracted business for him, in particular in South-east Asia, and he became sufficiently wealthy to ignore the law forbidding trade with foreigners and contacts with local coastal pirates.\n\nd] The Saintly Lord of the Dragon's Tail, Longwei Shenggong\n\nhas only been seen on the altar in two temples both Hainanese and both in Singapore where he is said to be prayed to for protection and general benefits. However, several devotees claimed that a medium had discovered that Longwei Shenggong should be specifically approached by those whose parents are thought to be suffering in Hell as the deity had proved to have contacts and had even succeeded in being their saviour.\n\nHe appears to have no personal and unique legend. His image portrays him as a standard seated mandarin with a wispy black beard but no unique characteristics, and is either the main deity on a secondary altar or a minor deity on the secondary altar, co-located with Shuiwei Shengmu in one temple, and in another he was accompanied by his consort, Longwei Furen AA.\n\ne] An image of Hai Rui, another minister banished to Hainan, has only once been noted on a temple altar, a side altar in a small coastal temple in Singapore dedicated to the Nine Emperors, and run by and for Chaozhou Chinese. His image, which depicts him as a standard seated mandarin without any unique characteristics, is attended by aides. Hai Rui, also known in temples as Hai Rui Gong was a Ming official whose reputation as a just and impartial magistrate was based on his belief that laws should be enforced at all levels irrespective of rank or blood, and his criticisms of extortion and abuse of public revenue made his name a slogan for immeasurable honesty for later generations. He is the hero of a lengthy novel 'The Story of the Scarlet Robe' in twenty volumes. Hai Rui was born in Qiongzhou [Kiungchou] in Hainan and died a natural death at the capital, Nanjing in 1587. His tomb is in the western suburb of the northern port of Haikou, at Pintian on his native Hainan where he is still revered and offered supplicatory prayers by devotees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215409, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "135\n\nthe town of Pontevedra into prominence during the first half of the sixteenth century. They provide interesting insights into the social factors that favoured the development of this kind of structure, and remind us of Macao's pre-eminence in the region due to the trade with Japan.\n\nFrom Late Gothic times the town became the centre of a cofraria or confraternity of Pontevedra seamen in the southern region of Galicia. Its wealthy trading ships sailed to Portugal, France and Italy and the church's construction by the cofraria was a direct result of the city's commercial prosperity.7\n\nCornelis of Holland and Juan Nobre, probably a Portuguese, started work on the façade of the church in 1541. These master masons and their team of artists actually superimposed their large carved Late Gothic decoration onto the front of an early sixteenth-century church.\n\nThis highly decorative \"stone altarpiece\" is in fact fitted, in imitation of a real main altarpiece, into the apse-like space created by the wall of the church and the two large plain buttresses framing it. Apart from its function as a refined embellishment to the church and city, the sole reason that such a large decorative work should be erected outdoors on top of a high hill was evidently that it could be seen for miles around and from the river below, especially by seamen and traders aboard ship.\n\nIt is divided into five bays, comprised of a large central bay and two adjoining narrow ones at either side, divided horizontally into five storeys. The three lower storeys are sculptured and stand forward, away from the two upper ones executed in lower relief. Stone steps lead to a sumptuous terrace and to an equally sumptuous façade (Fig. 3).\n\nIn spite of its 1541 date, rather outmoded Early Plateresque baluster columns are used throughout. But there is little one can say against the delightful Netherlandish fantasy of these columns and their carving (Fig. 4).\n\nMore important to my arguments are the reliefs of its central bay. They have as focus a depicting the Dormition of Mary, which in style recalls Gothic retables of the School of Cologne and others (Fig. 5).8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215548, "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": 325, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "275\n\n11-4\n\nTHE CHINESE CEMETERIES QUESTION, The China Mail, 12th July 1901.\n\nLau was listed after Ho Kai and Wei Yuk in the Board, see Arnold Wright (ed) (1990), 20TH CENTURY IMPRESSIONS OF HONG KONG, Singapore: Graham Brash, p. 174. (The book was first published in 1908.)\n\nus The Hongkong Weekly Press and China Overland Trade Report, 17 April 1909.\n\n116 HKGG Notice 229 of 25 July 1913. The rules and regulations of the cemetery\n\nare given in the same notice.\n\nThis may partly be due to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902.\n\n18 Davis, S.G. (1949). HONG KONG IN ITS GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING.\n\nLondon: Collins, p. 96.\n\n119 HKGG Notification 12 of 20th January 1911.\n\n120 The first Japanese burial in the Colonial Cemetery was a young second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army who died in Hong Kong in 1878 while on the way back to Japan. His grave lies in §27 section in the cemetery.\n\n121 A small number of Japanese were buried at Caroline Hill Cemetery, whose remains were later reinterred in the Colonial Cemetery, when former was cleared.\n\n122 Between 1878-1945, there were about 465 Japanese buried in the Colonial Cemetery. For details of the Japanese burials, see £#✯ (1988), #* • * 人基地一船員墓碑中心,港日關係之回顧與前瞻,香港日本文化協會二十五週年紀念特集,香港:香港日本文化協會,pp.132-141.(The article was originally written in 1973 when the author was posted to the Japanese Consulate General in Hong Kong.) Also see a local Japanese newspaper, WEEKLY HONG KONG, 5 October 2000, p. 7.\n\n123 A highly interesting article on the subject, titled THE EXHILARATING TOPIC OF GRAVES', can be found in The Hongkong Telegraph, 10th November 1909, p. 4. It was also reported and discussed in The Hongkong Weekly Press and China Overland Trade Report, 20th February 1909, p. 142 and 17th April 1909, pp. 311-312.\n\n124 Hong Kong Hansard 1909, pp. 168-169.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215595, "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": 372, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "322\n\nracing through the Gorges make this section difficult and dangerous both at low and high water. Chongqing, the chief commercial port of western China and an important distribution centre, was opened to foreign trade by an Additional Article [1890] to the Chefoo Agreement of 1876. This stretch also includes the River down to Chongqing from its junction with the Min River at Yibin [Suifu].\n\nThe fourth and final stretch, the Upper Yangzi of 1,600 miles, is torrential almost from its source in Eastern Tibet far to the west, down to Yibin. It has several major tributaries.\n\nWe, however, are interested in the Gorges. They have long been regarded by Chinese junkmen and especially foreigners who had travelled through them as passengers on river junks, as one of the most difficult stretches of river navigation on earth, with a current in places running at 13 knots.\n\nOur story concerns two British expatriates in China who, as far as we know, never met as they were of different social circles. One is Archibald Little, a British Shanghai merchant, married to a British lady and William Mesny, a struggling entrepreneur also in Shanghai but married to a Chinese. Paul King wrote that 'One of the foreign tea-tasters who each year visited Kiukiang [Jiujiang] was Archibald Little, who was never very successful in business but found himself in Yichang in the uphill work of establishing as a fact that the rapids in the upper reaches of the Yangtze could be negotiated by steam craft. In my [King] time the Navy was represented in Yichang by H.M.S. Kinsha - the famous pioneer merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze owned and operated by the late Archibald Little.'\n\nThe first steamer to ascend the upper waters of the Great River, the Yangzi, through the Gorges above Yichang and as far as Chongqing during the low water season in the month of March 1898 was the 9-ton steam launch, Leechuen [Li Chuan], the property of Mr. Archibald Little who travelled aboard the steamer with his wife.\n\nArchibald John Little was born in London in 1838, and arrived in China in 1859 where he remained, apart from short visits back to Britain, until 1907 when he returned there and died the following year. He was a merchant, traveller and writer and is as well known to some as the", "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 }, { "id": 216093, "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": 392, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "326\n\nso \"starchy\" and where you did not have to dress for dinner. French ships called at Saigon and Jibuti and the voyage ended at Marseilles. Italian ships berthed at Genoa. Other passengers preferred freighters. These were more relaxed still and life was not so \"organised.” Not more than 12 passengers were allowed or there had to be a doctor on board. Whereas most airports look similar, with a freighter you called at interesting, out-of-the-way little ports, each with its own special smell. By freighter, the journey from Britain to Hong Kong could take up seven or eight weeks. Halcyon days indeed!\n\nHong Kong\n\nto\n\nWhen I arrived in Hong Kong World War Two had ended less than a decade before. Yet some Britons living here still believed there were two kinds of expatriates. There were those who had been “in the bag\" (prison camp) (where, in Stanley for example, some of my younger friends were born) and, secondly, those of us who came to Hong Kong after the War. The fact that some of us in the second group had seen more action than many of those who had been interned did not really count as far as old Hong Hands were concerned.\n\nThe camaraderie which develops when people face danger or privation together came to the fore when I received a ticket for parking in King's Road. When I later told my old boss he said, 'Pity: the case has gone too far now. If you'd told me earlier I could have got it quashed.\" My boss had a friend, a senior police officer, who had been in prison camp with him.\n\nIn 1954, Hong Kong's population was something like two-and-a-half million, compared with 600,000 at the end of the War. Immigrants were coming here from China in frantic attempts to evade communism. Accommodation was terribly overcrowded with people in some cases sleeping, on a shift basis, three to a bunk. With China all but cut off from the rest of the world we had lost our entrepôt trade and,\n\nwith backs to the wall, it was a case of export or starve. There was considerable unemployment.\n\nReligion was burgeoning although many were said to be 'rice Christians.' Namely, joining for the handouts. People knew life in Hong Kong was not perfect. But it was a jolly sight better than living", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216335, "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-2003", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "43\n\nThieving was common. Even the coolies who unloaded the cargoes into custom-house boats for weighing, and the boatmen who took them in covered and locked boats up to Canton, had a bad reputation, one witness even affirming that 'the Chinese exceed greatly the watermen upon the Thames in filching and chicanery,' which, Parkinson has observed, was of course saying a great deal.57\n\nNaval and military personnel of the Delta\n\nWe come now to another class of involved person, the commanders and personnel of war junks of the provincial navy, and of the many military forts and guard-posts in the Delta and up the rivers. Despite being natives of the province, they were not noted for their good behaviour towards the local land and boat populations. Indeed, the recital of exactions, inducements and \"squeezes\" that we have seen to be routine in the old China Trade is merely a reflection of what passed on the wider scene for much of the time. This culture of corrupt and bad practices is corroborated by recorded local history.\n\nOld persons in Hong Kong's outlying island communities interviewed in the 1960s recalled several instances of the petty corruption practised upon local people by soldiers from the military posts there before 1898. The Peng Chau post made an unlawful levy on boat people at their regular monthly \"burn offs\" of marine growth from the hulls of their craft, whilst their brethren on Cheung Chau extracted cash from vendors at the local market-place.5\n\nMore serious breaches against the boat people are mentioned in surviving commemorative tablets in some of the temples in the Delta area, erected for the public record by the wearied local communities with the consent of the responsible senior officials.\n\nOne such (1834) at a temple on Peng Chau near Hong Kong forbade the practice of commandeering two fishing craft each month and putting soldiers on board them, for cruises to entrap pirates whilst posing as innocuous traders, to the great inconvenience of the family members and temporary loss of their livelihood. Another (1826), placed outside a temple near the Barrier Gate at Macau, prohibited the unlawful charges and exactions being levied by the crews of salt gabelle patrol boats and the personnel of no fewer than 28 military posts along one stretch of\n\n59", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216477, "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-2003", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "186\n\nalthough for the first few years after their wedding, the family home remained in Suffolk while he went to sea. It was in the village of Hoxne that their eldest son Robert Benjamin was born in 1860 to be followed by Emily Ada in 1864. Young Samuel came along in 1866 after the family had moved to Framlingham and was given the second name Cornell. It would appear from an entry in Harriet Plant's New Ladies' Memorandum Book 1829 in which she recorded important family events, that Cornell was a family name, possibly the maiden name of her mother or Samuel's mother. One entry records a visit to Chedburgh, a village in Suffolk, by a Mr and Mrs TH Cornell. Whatever the origin, Cornell was the name by which he was known throughout his life both inside and outside the family. Cornell's younger brother Charles Henry was born in 1870 and it was not long after that time that the family moved to London and into a house in Tottenham. Perhaps this move away from the country into the big city came about as a result of Samuel Plant's promotion to becoming a ship's master.\n\nIn 1881 he was in command of the Iron Ship Reigate, made of iron but powered by sail, for the trade with India. It so happened that the 1881 Census took place on the very day that Reigate was in Middlesbrough when, in addition to Captain and crew, those on board included Harriet Plant, the Master's wife, with Cornell and Charles, the Master's sons, all shown as passengers. But in truth, none of them were passengers - the 14-year-old Cornell had joined the ship for his first voyage while his mother and brother were there to see him off.\n\nThe start of a life at sea\n\nThe Reigate set sail from Middlesborough in early May, 1881 for the long passage round the Cape of Good Hope to Madras with no stops along the way. This was young Cornell's introduction to a life at sea and being a dutiful son, he spent some time every Sunday writing a few paragraphs of a voyage letter to his mother in strong, well-formed copper plate writing. It is a remarkably well written letter for a fourteen-year-old young man that now forms part of the Plant Archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Although the letter is in good condition, the writing on one side of the paper occasionally obscures the writing on the other side but it is still clear enough to make a full transcription. The letter is almost 2,000 words long but the following extracts give some idea of the young man who wrote them and the dramatic events that he experienced.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]