[ { "id": 206654, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe following letter appeared in the South China Morning Post, 10th April, 1972. — Ed.\n\nWHO HOISTED THE UNION JACK?\n\nIn today's (April 7) issue on page 20 you publish an article headed \"The Hongkong Club decides to go back to Victorian Era”. In the article you state \"The Club was founded in 1846, five years after the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Charles Elliot\".\n\nThe statement is not correct. It is true that Sir Charles Elliot issued a formal declaration of British sovereignty over Hongkong in January 1841 after the treaty of Chuenpi, but the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Belcher commanding H.M. survey ship, Sulphur, on January 26, 1841.\n\nThe account is given in Captain Belcher's book \"Voyage round the World\" published 1843, Volume II page 157. The following is an extract:\n\n\"The only important point to which we became officially partners was the cession of the island of Hongkong, situated off the peninsula of Cow Loon within the island of Lama,\n\n\"On the return of the commodore on the 24th we were directed to proceed to Hongkong and commence its survey. We landed on Monday the 26th January at fifteen minutes past eight, and being 'bona fide' first possessors, her majesty's health was drank with three cheers on Possession Mount.\n\n\"On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu de joie from the marines, and a royal salute from ships of war”.\n\nThere may be some uncertainty about the exact date. It is probable that the landing was on Monday, January 25 and that the more serious formalities took place on Tuesday, January 26.\n\nCaptain Belcher's history is preserved in the Colony in the names Belcher's Gardens, Belcher's Fort (and formerly Belcher's Creek)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207146, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n211\n\nNote the offices of the Nam-pak Hong Association on the left-hand side of Bonham Strand; the divided shops of the Chun Lung Sang porcelain business (1878) and the bamboo and rattan ware dealers further along, also the frontage of the Ping Heung Tea-house next to Ching Wah Kok.\n\nDuring this visit Members are advised to look around them, up as well as down, because there are all sorts of interesting little vistas to have had, often revealed by the removal of a house for redevelopment.\n\nFootnote:\n\n1) We will not be going to the Shun Tak District Commercial Association at 67, Queen's Road, West, as hoped, because a terrible blow; the furniture and fittings have already been cleared out prior to demolition of the building.\n\n2) The Tung Kwun District Commercial Association was founded as the Tung Yee Hop Tong in 1893 for charitable, including educational, work among persons of that district resident in Hong Kong. The present premises were purchased about 40 years ago. There is an interesting commemorative board above the window in the main hall presented by four shops in Liu Po New Market, Tung Kwun in 1912 in appreciation of flood relief work and settlement of disputes and of a defamation case by the Hong Kong Chamber. This shows that its influence extended beyond Hong Kong.\n\n3) The Nam-pak Hong Association in Bonham Strand, though in new premises that are of no appeal, is of great interest. This powerful commercial association was established in 1868 by merchants from different parts of China together with Chinese merchants from South-east Asia. This explains the name of the association which, in Chinese, means South-North Firms' Public Office.\n\nAdditional Notes for the Visit to Old Western District Carl T. Smith\n\n(a) The Development of West Point\n\nThe area we are visiting today was formerly dominated by two points of land. After the British occupation of Hong Kong they became known as Possession Point and West Point. Between the two was a steep hillside with a bay at its foot. The present Ko Shing Street approximates the original beach.\n\nDr. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, pp. 123-124, gives an account of the event which gave Possession Point its name:\n\nOn January 24, 1841, Commodore Bremer, having arrived at Lantao, directed Captain Belcher, in command of H.M.S. Sulphur, to proceed forthwith to Hongkong and commence its occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211069, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "105\n\nALPHABETICAL LIST OF PERSONS BURIED IN THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY, MAKATI, RIZAL\n\nTO BE TRANSFERRED TO MANILA MEMORIAL PARK\n\n \n Date of death\n Name\n Date of death\n Name\n \n \n 12.6.1944\n AARON, Margaret Tyre\n \n ADAMS, Henry\n \n \n Not known\n AEROBE (baby)\n 26.4.1886\n AHR-LEGER, Suzanne\n \n \n 5.10.1919\n AITKEN, Charles H W\n 2.3.1921\n AITKEN, Mary Louise\n \n \n 29.10.1952\n ALFON, Jose\n 21.4.1919\n ALKAN, Camille\n \n \n 3.10.1915\n ALLEN, George\n 15.4.1906\n ALLINSON, James\n \n \n 20.5.1918\n AMER, Basserody\n 14.11.1904\n AMOLOCHITIS, John\n \n \n 30.6.1962\n ANDERSON, James\n 20.11.1936\n ANDERSON, William\n \n \n 6.4.1908\n Roberts\n \n ANDREWS, James\n \n \n 27.1.1894\n ANDREWS, Richard\n 31.8.1900\n Montgomerie Henry\n \n \n \n ARMSTRONG, George\n 12.11.1920\n ATKINSON, Dorothy\n \n \n 20.6.1925\n AULE, John\n 30.9.1889\n AYLETT, William\n \n \n 20.8.1880\n BAALK, Emil Ch. M\n 13.8.1878\n BACKHOUSE, C\n \n \n 18.3.1903\n BAEL, Joe\n 25.9.1919\n BAENZIGER, Gustav Adolph\n \n \n 27.10.1899\n BALLEY, George\n 3.9.1909\n BARKAS, Gabriel\n \n \n 25.4.1938\n BARNES (still-born)\n 25.1.1923\n BARNETT, Edward\n \n \n 8.5.1936\n BARR, Robert\n 24.1.1926\n BARRIOS, Raphael Plaza\n \n \n 28.4.1960\n BATCHELLOR, John\n 8.1920\n BAUEN, G William\n \n \n Not known\n BENZIE, John M\n 12.5.1925\n BERGACKER, Johanna Maria\n \n \n 3.10.1963\n BERNARD, Son of M L\n 8.7.1881\n BERNSTEIN, Simon\n \n \n 13.3.1900\n BETZ, Max\n 11.9.1882\n BIERMANN, Fritz\n \n \n 12.1903\n BINDER, Heinrich\n 22.8.1892\n BIRD, Isaac J\n \n BLACK, John Gordon\n \n \n 22.2.1870\n BLANCO, Emilio Palomov\n 6.8.1964\n BOIE, Reinhold\n \n \n 14.9.1896\n BLAIR, William A\n \n BLOCH, Leon\n \n \n Not known\n BOLLWILL, DE\n 6.7.1887\n BOLTON, Edwin\n \n \n 10.12.1920\n BONIFACE, Mark Graham\n 15.1.1945\n BOUNTIFF, Eliza\n \n \n 13.11.1918\n BOWER, I H\n 19.3.1899\n BRAMHALL, J C\n \n \n 7.5.1868\n BRAMMER, Agnes\n 26.8.1902\n BARMMER, Heinrich\n \n \n 2.9.1898\n BRAMMER, Otto Franz Ernst Rudolf Hugo\n 15.9.1893\n BRAMMER, Pauline\n \n \n 8.10.1901\n BRAMMER, Richard\n 20.11.1900\n BRAMWELL, Geoffrey\n \n \n 17.1.1915\n BRAUN, Max Francis\n 12.4.1909\n BREMER, Adelisa\n \n \n 25.1.1962\n BREMER, Ann Marie\n 25.9.1961\n BREMER, Dennis\n \n \n 30.11.1941\n BRENNER, Issac\n 2.9.1915\n BRETTHAUER, G Luísa Gonzales de\n \n \n 6.1903\n BRIGENDIRE, Maria\n 10.1.1945\n BROUGH, Robert\n \n \n \n BRIDGE, Harry\n 27.12.1922\n BROOK, John Evans\n \n \n 24.2.1902\n BROWN, Bright\n 18.6.1921\n \n 16.12.1913", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211618, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "8\n\n00\n\n# HONG KONG, 26 JANUARY 1841: HOISTING THE FLAG REVISITED*\n\nK. J. P. Lowe\n\nThis article will attempt to investigate the circumstances surrounding the ceremony of the hoisting of the British flag on Hong Kong Island on 26 January 1841, following the cession of the island in the treaty of 20 January 1841. It will in the process shed light on some of the more immediate British reactions to the acquisition of the island. The first Opium War and the subsequent Chinese expedition of 1840-1 form the immediate background to this event, and these subjects are well covered in the contemporary China-coast English-language press, in quasi-governmental sources and in memoirs by those involved. Negotiations leading to the cession were carried out by Captain Charles Elliot1 for the British, and the Chinese commissioner Ch'i-shan. Yet the hoisting of the flag itself seems largely to have been ignored or played down at this stage, even though Hong Kong was taken by the British as a direct result of successful military action and the ceremony should have been an important gesture of victory. I wish to posit that although Elliot and J. Gordon Bremer, the naval commodore, were proud of the acquisition of Hong Kong (and steamed all round their island at the first opportunity2), most people were not, and considered it of little consequence. The downplaying of the formal possession ceremony in contemporary accounts reflects this, and it was only when the colony started to be a financial success and stable social entity in the 1870s that the ceremony of possession took on a new significance.3\n\n6\n\nReminiscences of the Chinese expedition by officers in the navy and the army are common. Good examples of this type of literature by naval officers are the books by Edward Belcher of HMS Sulphur,4 by John Elliot Bingham who had been first Lieutenant of HMS Modeste,5 and by William Bernard who had been on board the Nemesis. Of these three, unfortunately only Belcher was in Hong Kong on the requisite day to witness the ceremony because Elliot had commandeered the Nemesis to take him to the Second Bar for his meeting with Ch'i-shan (also on 26 January), and Elliot Bingham had fractured a leg during enemy action on 10 January and had been taken to Macao. Belcher\n\n* I should like to thank Jardine Matheson and Co. Ltd. for permission to use their archives, and Eugene McLaughlin for his help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211619, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "recounts that the crew of the Sulphur landed on Hong Kong island on Monday 25 January” and as 'the bona fide first possessors' drank the health of Queen Victoria on Possession Mount. Then 'On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island, by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu-de-joie from the marines, and a royal salute from the ships of war'.\" Bremer himself was no more expansive. In his official despatch to R. More O'Ferrall M.P. at the Admiralty, written on 24 February but received only on 8 June 1841, Bremer reported that on 26 January he proceeded to Hong Kong ‘and took formal possession of the island, and hoisted the colours on it, with the usual salutes and ceremonies'.\n\n12\n\nNews of the acquisition of the island of Hong Kong became public knowledge in England on the morning of Friday 9 April 1841, but yet again there was no description of the ceremony of possession. On this day Elliot's circular of 20 January was printed in The Times, and it was discussed in an optimistic editorial: it was considered good news because Hong Kong was much more convenient for trade than Macao and a settlement there would be able to maintain itself independently of the Chinese.\" By the following day the tone of the editorial had changed. Its author wrote that 'the nominal cession of the island of Hong Kong to the British crown, though apparently promising considerable advantages to our mercantile interests, has been clogged with conditions which in practice may substantially defeat them', and then referred to the island as an 'insulated and unfrequented locality'. One factor which may have been decisive in settling on Hong Kong in the negotiations was, as the merchant James Matheson noted, the Chinese language, for such, he felt, is its ambiguity that it is difficult to fix in it a definite meaning.\" Matheson believed that, when Ch'i-shan remarked in one of his communications ‘as we have granted you territory you do not now require another port', Elliot in consequence gave up thoughts of British access to a port in northern China in the hope that he could hold Ch'i-shan to an interpretation of the Chinese characters which meant that the British had been granted the territory of Hong Kong rather than merely being given a trading factory there.'5\n\nTwo letters to The Times published in the same week expressed dissatisfaction with the new British acquisition. The first was dated Macao, 22 January and was presumably written by a merchant: 'Regarding the terms of Captain Elliot's treaty with the Chinese, I have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211625, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "15\n\nhas not materialized is a testimony to the fact that the present and the future in Hong Kong have always been more important than the past, with the result that the recovery of information on Hong Kong's history is now very difficult.\n\nCHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE\n\nNOTES\n\nSee C. Blake, Charles Elliot R. N., 1801-1875 (London, 1960).\n\n2. W. D. Bernard, Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843, I (London, 1844), p. 304.\n\n3. When the British flag was hoisted on Chusan on 5 July 1840, the name of the person responsible for hoisting the flag also went unrecorded as it was considered unimportant. See G. Graham, The China Station (Oxford, 1978), pp. 127-8. I am grateful to Alan Reid for this reference.\n\n4. Captain Sir Edward Belcher, RN, Narrative of a Voyage round the world performed in HM's Ship Sulphur, during the years 1836-1842 (London, 1843).\n\n6. J. Elliot Bingham, Narrative of the Expedition to China (London, 1842).\n\nBernard, Narrative, op. cit. Bernard wrote the book from the notes of W. H. Hall who had commanded the Nemesis, and included his own observations.\n\n7. Bernard, Narrative, op. cit. I, p. 291.\n\n8. Elliot Bingham, Narrative, op. cit. II, p. 120.\n\nIn the text 26 January is misprinted for 25 January.\n\n19. Belcher, Narrative, op. cit. p. 148. This account is the one usually quoted in an account of the cession of Hong Kong. See for example G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (London, 1937), p. 93 and J. R. Jones, “Who Hoisted the Union Jack?“, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 12 (1972), p. 196.\n\n|| Supplement to The Times of 12 June 1841. This expression appears to be formulaic as Bremer uses identical words in a letter to the Earl of Auckland who was Governor General of India of 10 March 1841. See Duncan McPherson, Two years in China (London, 1842), p. 274.\n\n12. The Times of 9 April 1841. The editorial went on to say: 'the recognition of a territorial right in the British crown, as well as the terror of the British name, will give our countrymen advantages which were never possessed by the Portuguese in China'.\n\n13. The Times of 10 April 1841.\n\nE. Jardine Matheson Archives, Cambridge University Library (hereinafter JMA), C5/6, James Matheson's private letter book, 54.\n\n15. Ibid., C5/6, 60, 22 January 1841.\n\nThe Times of 15 April 1841.\n\n17. JMA, C5/6, 69.\n\n18. The Times of 13 April 1841.\n\nMcPherson, Two Years in China, p. 76 and W. W. Mundy, Canton and the Bogue:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215514, "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": 291, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "241\n\nA REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT OF CEMETERIES IN HONG KONG: 1841-1950\n\nKO TIM-KEUNG\n\nHong Kong had been claimed for the British Crown even before the First Opium War (1839-42) was formally brought to an end. A naval party under Sir Gordon Bremer landed on the island on 26th January 1841. A form of government was organized and a chief magistrate and a harbour-master appointed, and in June the first land sale took place to create the impression of permanency. The port was declared a free port, and merchants, both foreign and Chinese, were encouraged to settle and trade there. However, little significant building followed, the main deterrent being the island's insalubrity and a high death rate from 'Hong Kong Fever.' Hong Kong, quite unexpectedly, became the last resting place of many of these early settlers and troops.\n\nThe Burial Ground in Wan Chai\n\nThe first years in Hong Kong had a distressing aspect for the British, particularly its army, because of disease. The setting up of the first barrack areas along the north coast of the island led to severe epidemics of fever among the troops. 183 of them had died in 1841. Consequently, a burial ground for the dead was urgently needed. A notice was proclaimed in August 1841:\n\nA piece of land to the eastward of Cantonment Hill having been allocated by Government as the ground for the burial of the dead of Europeans and others, Notice is hereby given that persons burying their dead in any other unauthorised place will be treated as trespassers.\n\nJno. F. Mylius, Land Officer, Hong Kong 30th August 1841.\n\nA 19th-century publication also records: \"Deaths now [1841] became frequent occurrences also among the European community; hospitals had to be hastily constructed, and the first cemetery (near the present St. Francis' Chapel, above Queen's Road East) began to fill...\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]