[
    {
        "id": 204531,
        "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-1963",
        "page_number": 12,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "The keen and active interest in the Society shown by our patron, Sir Robert Black, and members of his family is very gratifying and is warmly appreciated. Despite the exacting calls on their time they have been attending our meetings, and this is a noble example to other busy people in the Colony. We appreciate also the zeal of many other prominent personages including the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Hogan, and the Hon. W. C. Knowles who is a member of the Council and whose business house has provided us with both an Honorary Treasurer, Mr. T. J. Lindsay, and an Honorary Librarian, Mr. John Le Mare. I should like also to refer to the interest in the Society taken by members of H.M. Forces and particularly to the interest taken by Col. Halliday and Col. Mackenzie, both of whom have now left the Colony, but it is greatly hoped that this interest will be sustained by their successors. In this connection it may be interesting to mention the first office-bearers of the Society in 1847:\n\nPresident: Sir John Francis Davis (Governor); Vice-Presidents: Major-General D'Aguilar, Major H. P. Burn, John Stewart, Dr. Kinnis; Council: Lt.-Col. Brereton, Peter Young (Colonial Surgeon), W. T. Mercer (Colonial Treasurer), J. C. Bowring (Son of Sir John Bowring); Secretary: A. Shortrede; Corresponding Secretary: Capt. Clark Kennedy; Chinese and Foreign Secretary: Thomas Wade;* Treasurer: F. Bevan; Curator: C. T. Watkins.\n\nIn conclusion I wish to thank all the officers and members of the Society for their loyal and wholehearted support. I am probably in a better position than anyone to appreciate and also to pay tribute to my colleagues on the present Council, in whom you have a hard working and active body, and each of whom pulls his or her full weight in the furtherance of the objects of the Society.\n\n* Afterwards Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., British Minister at Peking from 1871 until 1883, and later first Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211121,
        "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": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "157\n\nthat the cruisers might become involved in some incident which would impinge on British sovereignty,\n\nA consul in Hongkong could supervise the collection of duties less expensively and more efficiently, but their request was consistently opposed by the Hongkong Government and foreign merchants.\n\nWHEN A BLOCKADE HITS OPIUM SMUGGLING\n\nIn 1874 a petition signed by eighteen Chinese merchants and the resolutions of a public meeting held by the European community in Hongkong were sent to England.\n\nBoth protested against what was termed \"the blockade of Hongkong.\" They pleaded with Her Majesty's Government to take decisive action to stop what they believed to be the deliberate harassment of Hongkong by China.\n\nThe Chinese petition, drawn up with the assistance of Messrs. Caldwell and Brereton, solicitors, was originally handled in a hush-hush manner. It received no publicity and copies were not given to the press, though it was sent to a few influential residents.\n\nWhen, about a month after the petition had been submitted, the editor of the China Mail saw a copy, he immediately drew the public's attention to it.\n\nHe questioned the secrecy which had surrounded it.\n\nIn that day suspicion was the usual reaction to activities within the Chinese community. The editor laid it down thus: \"Either the Chinese are working with us or they are not. If they are, they must learn that the surest way of bringing their complaints to the notice of the executive is to make them as public as possible.”\n\nThe reason for avoiding publicity may simply have been to prevent the Chinese authorities from learning of it.\n\nIt was later stated that when they did hear, two mandarins were",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    }
]