[ { "id": 204242, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n7\n\nwho stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany as well as to literary pursuits. It may not be generally known that it was as the result of the efforts of the Royal Asiatic Society that Government was persuaded to grant a piece of ground for a Botanical Garden which was projected in the time of Sir John Davis and carried into effect when Sir John Bowring was President. Following this precedent we had three excellent lectures illustrated with a wealth of coloured slides by the following:\n\nCaptain A. M. Macfarlane on \"Birds of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides and a tape record of bird songs and calls. Miss B. T. Chiu on \"Flowers of Hong Kong\" illustrated Mr. P. A. Nixon's coloured slides, and\n\nMr. J. D. Bromhall on \"The Marine Fauna of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides.\n\nThese lectures were in part designed to appeal to the educational circles and it is hoped that with wider publicity we may have the benefit of more members from the schools and colleges of the Colony.\n\nIn concluding my reference to the lectures and addresses I wish to record our deep gratitude to those who have contributed so richly and so readily to the success of our first year's record.\n\nAll except two of the meetings held last year were held in the rooms of the British Council and the Branch owes a debt of gratitude to the generous assistance of the British Council and of its Representative, Mr. R. E. Lawry, for affording us, free of charge, the use of these rooms as well as of the projector and operator for the slides in illustration of the lectures. Without this assistance it would have been difficult for the Branch to carry on as the moderate yearly subscription of $20.00 per member would not otherwise go far towards paying our expenses, including the hire of rooms and the issue to every member of a free copy of the Journal of the Branch.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch has no home of its own. It is indicative of the importance which Governments attached to the Royal Asiatic Society 100 years ago that the Government of Hong Kong granted to the Hong Kong Branch a room in the Supreme Court, where it could hold its meetings and house the valuable library which it built up and which it had eventually to hand over to the Morrison Education Society.\n\nIn Shanghai the Government granted to the North China Branch a parcel of land on which, with the aid of generous grants from The Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Council", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204244, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n9\n\nJ. D. Duncanson, who had laboured devotedly from the beginning as Hon. Secretary, resigned after the close of the year on his departure from the Colony and we were fortunate in securing as his successor Mr. R. E. Lawry, the Representative of the British Council. The Hon. Editor of the Journal, Mr. Cranmer-Byng, who as Chairman of the Editorial Committee planned the first issue of the Journal, left the Colony on leave in the summer. Since his return he has been obliged owing to ill health to resign his office, but the work in the mean time has been carried on by Mr. James Liu, together with the other members of the Editorial Committee, Dr. Marjorie Topley and Mr. Holmes Welch, who are jointly responsible for this first issue of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n98\n\nBUDDHIST ORGANIZATIONS IN HONG KONG\n\nby\n\nHOLMES WELCH, M.A.\n\nI. INTRODUCTION\n\nBuddhism has a long history in Hong Kong, going back at least to the fifth century A.D., when the monk Pui To1 is said to have set up a hermitage at Castle Peak. A few monasteries claim an antiquity of one or two hundred years. Most were established after the British acquisition of the Colony as a result of its growing wealth and population.\n\nHong Kong's census-takers have never attempted to discover the number of Buddhist monks, nuns, and their followers, nor has any question on religion been included in the census of 1961. For what it may be worth, the Hong Kong and Macau Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists estimates the number of Buddhists in Hong Kong at 500,000, among whom 5,000 are \"active, cultured Buddhists who not only believe in the Buddha but also devote themselves in earnest to the study and practice of the doctrines of Buddhism.\" On the other hand, a monk who has played a leading role in Buddhist organizations here for many years estimates that 100,000 people in Hong Kong are \"purely Buddhist\", while 1,000,000 are occasionally or partly Buddhist. He puts the ordained monks in the Colony at 250 and the nuns at 1,000. We do know that there are at least 116 monks, 324 nuns, and 3,400 purportedly Buddhist laymen, since these numbers have joined the Hong Kong Buddhist Association. Beyond this, we should not go in appraising the accuracy of the figures given above. Only one generalization seems safe to make: the number of active Buddhist laymen is growing, while the Sangha—or body of monks—is getting smaller.\n\nAs to the number of Buddhist institutions in Hong Kong, there are four lay organizations and, according to the list of registered temples, some 68 monasteries and 119 nunneries. Not all the Colony's monasteries and nunneries are on this list, however, and many that are might better be termed \"hermitages\". Only about nine monasteries and ten nunneries in Hong Kong can be considered \"large\", if by that is meant having more than ten ordained monks or nuns.\n\n1 Here and below, all romanizations are based on the Cantonese pronunciation. In a few cases, the conventional Wade-Giles romanizations are included in brackets.\n\n* Report from the Hong Kong and Macau Regional Centre, 1954-1956.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204379, "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-1962", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "Nevertheless the monthly meetings of the Society have been consistently well attended with audiences which often have more than filled this room and have averaged well over one hundred at each meeting. This regularity of attendance proves that there is in the Colony a reliable cross section of the community who appreciate what Professor Drake referred to in his inaugural lecture as the Study of Asia and our heritage.\n\nIn the earlier days of the Society up to 1859 when the Government of the Colony provided a home for the Society and its library it was honoured with the presence on its Council of the Governor, the Commander of the British Forces, the Chief Justice, the Bishop of Victoria, the Colonial Secretary, the Colonial Treasurer and the Attorney General, and it had the active support of the heads of the great merchant houses like Jardine, Matheson and Co. and Dent and Co. Although in these busier days we miss the successors of some of these eminent personages we are still honoured today by the patronage of His Excellency the Governor and the support of leading members of a more cosmopolitan community than in the earlier days. We particularly appreciate the keenness of the Hon. W. C. G. Knowles, who has recently joined the Council, and of the Honourable the Chief Justice whose athletic figure some of us recall striding along the slithery slopes of Lantao on the occasion of our archaeological excursion last year. We hope that this year we may provide a further opportunity for members who do not perhaps know one another as well as it might be desired, to join in a combined social and study expedition either to Lantao or elsewhere in the New Territories.\n\nDuring the year 1961 nine public meetings were held at which unusually interesting lectures were given, most of them illustrated with colour slides-\n\nJanuary 23rd\n\nJames Liu\n\n\"The Knight Errant in Chinese Literature\"\n\n\"Tibet As It Was (1936-1950)”\n\nFebruary 10th\n\nHugh Richardson\n\nApril 10th\n\nMay 13th\n\nMiss Mary Tregear\n\n\"Chinese Paintings in Formosa and America\"\n\nExpedition to Lantao to visit archaeological sites", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204381, "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-1962", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "should like to appeal to other merchant houses and individuals in the Colony, who probably need only to have the nature and needs of the Society made known to them to follow the generous example of our first benefactors. In the second place, the greater part of the amount of about $7,000 now in hand will soon be needed to cover the cost of the production and distribution of the Journal Vol. II, to a free copy of which each member is entitled by virtue of his subscription. We also urgently need a public address system, made necessary by the steadily increasing size of our audiences. We shall have to consider the purchase of projectors and apparatus for the exhibition of colour slides with which many lectures are now illustrated. Hitherto we have been fortunate in that we have been furnished with all the necessary equipment by the British Council, to whom and to their projectionists I wish to tender the thanks and appreciation of the Society. Furthermore, until now the British Council Room has been our home ever since the first preliminary meeting of the Society in 1959, and all except three or four of our meetings have been held here. Our lecture expenses in 1961 amounted to only $213.75, and most of this sum was incurred when a larger room had to be taken in the Hong Kong Club. Without the generous help of the British Council and its Representative here, Mr. R. E. Lawry, who is our Honorary Secretary, in placing this room and all its amenities at our disposal free of charge the Society could not have been in the financial position it is in today. On behalf of the Society I wish to express our deep appreciation to the British Council and to Mr. Lawry and his staff for all they have done in giving the Society a home for now over two years, and in the absence of a home of our own we hope that the Council will continue its generous support.\n\nFinally, there is one other matter of expenditure we have to consider—the building up of a library. We are already in touch with many learned societies all over the world who send us their journals and publications, usually in exchange for copies of our own Journal. These will form a valuable nucleus of a collection. We need and appeal for money and gifts of books to build up an Oriental Library worthy of the Society, a collection of books and periodicals which we hope may serve to supplement the more general library of the City Hall and which can be made available for research study and reading not only to members", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204474, "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-1962", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n95\n\n2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British\", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin.\n\nIt is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory.\n\nThe market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had \"seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc.\" Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs\". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there \"used to be over two hundred shops trading here\". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204481, "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-1962", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204502, "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-1962", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "BRITAIN AND CHINA\n\n119\n\nBut only once, in September 1950, has Britain voted for a resolution in the General Assembly calling for the admission of Communist China. From June 1951 the British representative has continued to vote in favour of postponement of discussion of the question, even when, on conclusion of the Korean war, the argument that China was participating in aggression against United Nations forces no longer held good. Mr. Luard well brings out, though unfortunately he does not try to explain, the expediency which guided western policies; how one argument was produced after another when the old ones went out of date; how the British government allowed itself to be swayed in this matter by the wishes of the Americans. He does not go into the intricacies of American internal politics, which are at the root of this matter—obviously he could not in a book about Britain and China—but without some understanding of them, Britain's behaviour, somewhat unfairly, seems feeble and misguided. Britain could have done more than she has to influence American public opinion, but to have brought China into the UN against the wishes of numerous Americans would only have devalued the institution in their eyes, and might even have resulted in earlier days in an American withdrawal of funds (upon which the U.N. is very dependent) or even, disastrously, of membership.\n\nSuch a criticism does not affect the discussion of Hong Kong, which is a matter purely for the British and the Chinese. As in the rest of the book, the historical background is only sketched in; the interest is all concentrated on wartime and post-war developments. Hong Kong is unique among British colonies in that since the war it has made no progress towards independence; having narrowly escaped being \"liberated\" by Kuomintang armies at the end of the war, the prospect of a more democratic constitution was shelved when the Communists overran neighbouring Kwangtung. As Mr. Luard points out, the constitution of the Colony remains, in all essentials, exactly what it was in 1843.\n\nAnd this is where the British government's devotion to commercial interests in its relations with China again becomes apparent. Now that Hong Kong has found a new lease of economic life in manufacturing, neither the British nor the Hong Kong government are prepared to do anything which may upset the present favourable climate for investors. It is generally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 204681, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "146\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA NOTE ON THE NAMES SAN ON AND PO ON\n\nBefore Hong Kong island and Kowloon were ceded, and the New Territories leased, to the British Crown, the region which is now the Colony of Hong Kong, along with the present-day Po On District on the Chinese Mainland across Deep Bay, formed a separate district of Kwangchou Prefecture. This district was called San On, a name by which it had been known since 1573, when it first acquired district status. Before this, from A.D. 716 to 1573, the region had been administered as part of Tung Kun District. Still earlier, from A.D. 331 to 716, it had been part of a larger division called Po On District 寶安縣.\n\nThis ancient name was revived in 1912 when San On District (or rather the small area that was left of it after the lease of the New Territories) was renamed Po On District. It is not unusual, even to-day, for the people of the New Territories to refer to themselves as natives of Po On District.\n\nPETER Y. L. NG.\n\nWHAT'S YOUR LINGO?\n\nMost of the etymological dictionaries of English published in this century derive the former cant-word lingo, now a contemptuous term in the standard language, for speech, language, from Provençal and ultimately, of course, from Latin lingua.\n\nSkeat's gloss, in his Etymological Dictionary, includes the following: \"Prov. lengo, lingo, speech (Mistral); lingo is the precise form used at Marseilles and lengo is Gascon (Moncaut.)”\n\nIf the dictionaries are right, lingo may have come into the thieves' jargon of English sea ports from the mouths of sailors who had picked it up from Sabir, the old maritime lingua franca of the Mediterranean which is said to have contained many elements from the Provençal dialect of Marseilles.\n\nHowever, while most of the modern dictionaries give us a Provençal etymology and merely ask us to bear in mind the Portuguese form lingoa, earlier works such as Dr. Johnson's,\n\n \n \n !\n \n \n i\n !", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204746, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "38\n\n10 Linguist purser.\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nSee note 39, (J.L.C-B)\n\n11 Elliot's last day. On 25 March Elliot formally requested the Viceroy that passports should be issued within three days for all the English ships and people at Canton and that if passports were not issued he would consider the men and ships of his country as forcibly detained and act accordingly. Blue Book, Correspondence relating to China, 1840, p. 367. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n12 Edward Elmslie. Secretary and Treasurer to the British Superintendents of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot and the Deputy Superintendent, A. R. Johnston, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n13 Houqua. Known to Westerners at Canton as Howqua 7. His family name was Wu Ch'ung-yüeh (1810-1863). He was the fifth son of the famous Hong merchant Wu Ping-chien whom he succeeded as head of the firm in 1843. For his biography see Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 867-8. (F.L.C-B.)\n\n14 Nam Hoe. Also written Nam Hoi. This means Nan Hai Hsien #i.e. the Magistrate having jurisdiction over the western part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included the area in which the foreign Factories lay. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n15 Kwang Hup. The author may be referring to the Kwangchou hsieh \"the Canton brigade\", and so to its commander. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n16 The Governor. The Governor of Kwangtung province at this time was I-liang (1791-1867). For his biography see Hummel, op. cit., I, 389. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n17 K'an-ch'o (J.L.C-B.)\n\n18 An-tsou (J.L.C-B)\n\n19 Columbia & John Adams. According to the Chinese Repository Vol. 8, p. 56 the Columbia was a U.S. frigate and the John Adams was classed as a sloop-of-war. The Columbia was commanded by Commodore George C. Read. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n20 Johnston, Alexander Robert Johnston, H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade. When the Government of Hong Kong was set up he was deputy first to Elliot and later to Sir Henry Pottinger and in this capacity he administered the Government of the Colony on various occasions from 1841 until 1843. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n21 Pwan Kei Kua. Probably the merchant whose name was also spelt by Westerners at Canton at that time Ponkhequa and Puan Khequa. This was P'an Chengwei (1791-1850). See Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 605, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n22 Saoqua. His family name was Ma Tso-liang and the name of his Hong was Shun Tai Hong A. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n23 Sturgis. Russell Sturgis (1805-1887) of Boston was first named Nathaniel Russell Sturgis, Jr., but he was always known as Russell Sturgis after his name was changed by decree of the Middlesex County Court. He graduated from Harvard in 1823, married in 1828 but was widowed four months later. After an extended tour of Europe he returned to Boston and for a while practised law. He remarried and in 1833 took his family to the orient where he became a partner of Russell & Sturgis of Manila and Russell, Sturgis & Co. of Canton. Later in 1842 when the latter firm became incorporated with Russell & Co., China, he became a partner in 1842. In May 1844 he retired to Boston, his second wife having died in Manila in 1837. Being far too young to give up work altogether he decided to return to China in 1849 but while passing through London he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204747, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n39\n\nwas persuaded to join the firm of Baring Brothers & Co. In 1873 he became senior partner of the house, finally retiring in 1882. (L.T.R.)\n\n24 Lin Tse-hsü's fate. Hunter long survived Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-hsü was dismissed from office in 1840 and later sentenced to exile in Ili in Chinese Turkistan, where he remained for three years. He was allowed to return to Peking in 1845. He later served as Governor-General of Yunnan and Kweichow, and retired from office in 1849. He died in 1850 at the age of sixty-seven. (J.L.C.B.)\n\n25 Heang-shan (Heungshan). Former name of the District in which Macao lies. Re-named Chung-shan in honour of Sun Yat-sen. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n26 Morrison. John Robert Morrison (1814-1843) was born in Macao, the second son of Dr. Robert Morrison and his first wife Mary (née Morton). He had some schooling in England but at the age of twelve he came back to Canton with his father in 1826. He became a fluent Cantonese speaker as well as a Chinese scholar, and on the death of his father in 1834 was appointed Chinese Secretary to H.M.'s Commission in China. In 1838 he became, in addition, Interpreter, and in 1841 succeeded Elmslie as Secretary and Treasurer to the Superintendent of British Trade in China. In 1843 he was appointed Chinese Secretary and member of the Executive Council of the newly founded Colony of Hong Kong and was recommended for appointment, by the Governor, as Colonial Secretary. Before the appointment was approved, however, he died in Macao in August 1843, and was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery there. (L.T.R.)\n\n27 Kwang Chow Foo. Kuang-chou fu The Prefect of the Prefecture of which Canton was the chief city. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n28 Kam Hay Hue. No such title. But I suspect Hunter intended to indicate the Namhoi Hien which title was sometimes written Nam Hoy Hien. See note 14. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n29 Pwan Yu Hue. Also written Punyu Hien. The magistrate having jurisdiction over the eastern part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included Whampoa and the foreign shipping there. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n30 Fearon, Samuel Turner Fearon was the second son of Christopher Fearon and Elizabeth Noad who were married on 14 May 1818 at the Streatham Parish Church. His father served as a midshipman at the Battle of Trafalgar and after being discharged from the Royal Navy he joined the Honourable East India Company's marine service. In this service he made a number of voyages to Canton and when he decided to take a shore posting there he brought his wife and family out with him. Samuel became a fluent Cantonese speaker and in 1838 was appointed Interpreter to the Canton General Chamber of Commerce. After the cession of Hong Kong he was appointed interpreter and clerk of the Chief Magistrate's Court and a couple of months later were added the duties of Notary Public and Coroner. Three years later he was appointed Assistant Magistrate of Police and on 1st January 1845 he became Registrar General and Collector of Revenue. In July 1845 he was granted a year's sick leave and while in England he was appointed Professor of Chinese at King's College, London, an appointment which he held from December 1846 until December 1852. (L.T.R.)\n\n31 Van Basel. Magdalenus Jacobus Senn van Basel, born in Groningen, Holland on 27 September 1808, was appointed clerk in the Dutch Consulate at Canton in 1826, and Vice-Consul in November 1831. He was later in partnership with G. M. Toe Laer and P. Tiedenan in the firm of Senn van Basel & Toe Laer & Co. In 1848 he became Collector General of Taxes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204780, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "72 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nbe shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss.\n\nFortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern \"Domesday\" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside.\n\nThere are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204781, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "# PENG CHAU\n\n73\n\nin this region in the late CHING. Their time is obviously short, and as much use should be made of their evidence as is still possible.\n\nIn this article I have attempted an outline study of an island community which, despite its small size and population at the time of the British lease, included groups of the various sea and land peoples who are common to this region. It is, for this reason, of particular interest, though by no means unique.\n\n## II\n\nPeng Chau *** is a small island lying off the south-east coast of Lantau, about four miles from the west end of Hong Kong harbour. Its land area is 213 acres (0.328 square mile), of which 23.13 acres were cultivated and 4.35 built over when, together with the rest of the New Territories, the island passed under British rule in 1899.6 At the 1911 census of the Colony of Hong Kong, the first accurate count of the population of the New Territories, the land population of Peng Chau totalled 642 persons.7\n\nThis article attempts to tell something of its history before 1899, for which purpose it is material to its theme to state that it was one of many islands, large and small, inhabited or deserted, which lay off the coast of the Kwangtung province, in this case within the boundaries of the San On district of which the island of Hong Kong itself was formerly an insignificant part.\n\nPeng Chau's past is shrouded in mystery. It is likely that its first, and for most of its history, its only users were the fishermen whose boats sheltered in its bays whilst their owners dried and mended their nets on shore or beached their boats at the water's edge with grass cut from the hillsides. Pirates and other lawless men may have visited it from time to time because of its remoteness. Eventually its regular use by the sea people must have attracted land dwellers, mainly Cantonese in the first instance it would seem, who set up shops to deal with the fishermen by supplying them with stores and provisions on credit and acting as middlemen for the disposal of their catch.\n\nWhen this first occurred is not certain. The first dated information now available comes from the local temple dedicated to Tin Hau the Queen of Heaven, a popular goddess with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204806, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "97\n\nHONG KONG BUTTERFLIES\n\nV. R. BURKHARDT\n\nRichard South, the author of the most popular handbook of British butterflies, prefaces his work by saying, \"Almost everyone admires the wild flowers that Nature produces so lavishly, and in such charming variety of form and colour; but, in addition to their own proper florescence, the plants of woodland, meadow, moor, and down have other blossoms that arise from them, although they are not of them. These are the beautiful winged creatures called butterflies, which, as crawling caterpillars, obtain their nourishment from plant leafage, and in the perfect state help the bees to rifle the flowers of their sweets, and at the same time assist in the work of fertilisation.\n\nEnglish butterflies rarely obtrude themselves on the stroller's gaze apart from the whites which devastate his cabbages, and the apparently aimless flight of the Meadow Brown, when crossing a hayfield. The real country lover passing through the leafless copse on a sunny windless day in February, may be heartened by the sight of the sulphur yellow of the male Brimstone which, as the \"butter-coloured fly\", gives its English name to the whole race. In Hong Kong, the most unobservant cannot fail to notice the brilliant \"aerial flowers\" referred to by the British naturalist, as the purple shot Euploeas, or the yellow Euremas pass him in the very centre of the city.\n\nThough the Colony lies just within the tropic of Cancer, at least seventy per cent of its butterflies are Palaearctic, that is to say, to be found normally in a zone running from Africa north of the Sahara across Europe and Asia to Japan and Formosa. The geology and climate of the Colony both militate against the luxurious vegetation associated with a tropical country. Though much has been done by the Government in the way of afforestation, there has not been time since the British occupation to produce the leaf mould and rich subsoil found in primitive jungle and forest, and the flora on which the larvae of butterflies feed is much more restricted than in countries like Malaya and Indonesia.\n\nEarly collectors identified about 140 different species of butterflies in the Colony, and J. C. Kershaw in his \"Butterflies of Hong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204855, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n133\n\nThe University of Hong Kong has from the beginning been handicapped by mixed aims and by financial difficulties. Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor of Hong Kong from 1907 to 1912 and the first Chancellor of the University, according to Professor Harrison \"advocated a university for Hong Kong on various grounds: it would help to serve the higher educational needs of an awakening China; it would be a lighthouse of learning, a symbol of the Western cultural tradition in the Far East and a meeting-place for Chinese and Western cultures; it would help to maintain British prestige in Eastern Asia; and, through its dissemination of modern knowledge and of the English language, it would indirectly benefit British business.\" The primary aim for many years \"was not so much a university of and for Hong Kong itself, as a university in Hong Kong for China.” (p. xiii)\n\nExcept in the field of medicine, the University of Hong Kong was not able, prior to the late 1940's, to provide a level of instruction that would draw students from China, where a number of universities of at least as high quality were developing at the same time. A large proportion of this University's students therefore have come from Hong Kong itself; and it would appear that as many students were drawn from Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as from China. Since World War II, particularly since 1949, thanks to the phenomenal economic and cultural growth of Hong Kong and to the active support of both the British and the Hong Kong governments, the University has developed rapidly, both in size and in quality. Today it stands among the recognized universities of Asia and of the British Commonwealth, and its sponsors and staff are determined to achieve an even higher level of educational and scholarly leadership. The colony is populous and rich enough now to justify and to support a great university.\n\nThe historical narrative is found principally in chapters III (The Beginnings, by George B. Endacott), V (The Years of Growth, by Brian Harrison), VI (The Test of War, by Sir Lindsay Ride), and VII (A New Beginning, by Francis E. Stock). Most of the other chapters are also essentially historical and supply details which elaborate or supplement the basic narrative, although there is some unnecessary duplication. One is impressed with the relative indifference of the colony toward the University during", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204902, "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-1965", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "4\n\nof the Editorial Board. It is true to say the Journal is a monument to his scholarship and editorial ability. In recognition of their eminent service to the Society, both Sir Robert Black and Mr. Cranmer-Byng were admitted as the first Honorary Members of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In the summer, Professor F. S. Drake of the University left the Colony on retirement. He had been a great inspiration to the Society and his inaugural address in April 1960 on \"The Study of Asia: A Heritage and a Task\" as well as his lecture on the Nestorian Crosses and his farewell address on the \"Jewish Colony at Kaifeng\", were memorable events. Before he left, Professor Drake was the guest at a dinner in his honour given by the Council. At the end of the year, we also had regretfully to bid farewell to Mr. Mallory-Browne, who had served on the Council and who had, through The Asia Foundation, given generous support to the Symposium in May, and had obtained another grant of HK$2,850 from the Foundation for the purchase of books for the library. We wish to record our appreciation and thanks both to him and The Asia Foundation for their generous support.\n\nWe have to thank other donors also for gifts of books for the library. Dr. L. A. Khan has presented seven books, mainly on the subject of the Qur'an and the Philosophy of Islam. Mr. F. A. Nixon, presented four rare volumes, bound in sheepskin, entitled The Museum of Antiquities (Astasiatika Samlingarna), being four volumes on East Asia antiquities, published in Stockholm, and dedicated to H.R.H. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden. Mr. Nixon has also presented to the Society a rare manuscript in Chinese characters, a fragment of one of the sacred books of Mahayana Buddhism, which had been deposited in the rock temples of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang. The manuscript has been examined by the Department of Oriental Printed Books & MSS. of the British Museum and pronounced a genuine document from the Tung-huang Monastic Library of the eighth or ninth century, but certainly not later. This is a very important acquisition for which we are deeply indebted to Mr. Nixon. The gift raises the question of the custody of such a document and of our collection of books, which is now increasing and which should be made available to members. We have, however, no library or reading room of our own and have no funds to rent one. We should like to make an appeal for a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204931, "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-1965", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "32 \n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING \n\nrace is thus augmenting, the causes which lead to the destruction of food, — such as the overflow of rivers, fires, ravages of locusts, bad seasons, and other calamities, — are to a great extent beyond the control of human prudence or human exertion. It would be difficult to show what new element could be introduced which would raise up the native supply of food beyond its present productiveness, considering that hand husbandry has given to cultivation more of a horticultural than an agricultural character.\n\nThe constant flow of emigration from China, contrasted with the complete absence of emigration into China, is striking evidence of the redundancy of the population; for though that emigration is almost wholly confined to two provinces, namely, Kwangtung and Fookien, representing together a population of probably from 34,000,000 to 35,000,000, I am disposed to think that a number nearer 3,000,000 than 2,000,000 from these provinces alone are located in foreign countries. In the kingdom of Siam, it is estimated that there are at least a Million and a Half of Chinese, of which 200,000 are in the capital (Bangkok). They crowd all the islands of the Indian Archipelago. In Java, we know by a correct census there are 136,000. Cochin China teems with Chinese. In this colony we are seldom without one, two, or three vessels taking Chinese emigrants to California and other places. Multitudes go to Australia, to the Philippines, to the Sandwich Islands, to the western coast of Central and Southern America: some have made their way to British India. The emigration to the British West Indies has been considerable; to the Havana greater still. The annual arrivals in Singapore are estimated at an average of 10,000, and 2,000 is the number that are said annually to return to China.* \n\nThere is not only this enormous maritime emigration, but a considerable inland efflux of Chinese towards Manchuria and Tibet; and it may be added, that the large and fertile islands of Formosa and Hainan have been to a great extent won from the aborigines by successive inroads of Chinese settlers. Now these are all males — there is not a woman to 10,000 men: hence perhaps the small social value of the female infant. Yet this perpetual out-flowing of people seems in no respect to diminish the number of those who are left behind. Few Chinamen leave \n\n* Journal of the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, p. 286,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204972, "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-1965", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204987, "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-1965", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "86\n\nTHE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG\n\nSTEVE S. C. HUANG\n\nThe need for a university in Hong Kong teaching through the medium of Chinese has existed for many years. As the \"Report of the Committee on Higher Education in Hong Kong,\" published in 1952 by a group of British scholars led by Professor John Keswick and commonly known as the Keswick Report, said, \"Hong Kong is unique geographically and politically and its people have a more advanced cultural background than the peoples of most other colonies.\"\n\nThe vast majority of its inhabitants are Chinese, and the Chinese have a traditional love of scholarship, and a highly developed language, literature, and artistic sense. Hong Kong, it was thought, by reason of its location and circumstances, should certainly be a centre for the East and the West to meet, not only for commercial advantage, but also for cultural exchange. To accomplish this, a university with Chinese as the medium of teaching was considered as important as a university with English as the medium of teaching; each would make a valuable complement to the other,\n\nEver since the inception of the University of Hong Kong, even among the British residents in the Colony, there have been many who have advanced the idea of establishing a university which would teach through the medium of Chinese, or a university which would teach through the medium of both Chinese and English, in all branches of learning. The Keswick Report gave strong support to such an idea. For various reasons, however, this recommendation of the Keswick Report did not lead to immediate action.\n\nNevertheless, the need existed. Since 1949, social and political conditions in China have undergone a great change. In addition to the large number of young men and women of college age who could no longer return to China for their higher education as earlier generations did, there were thousands who emigrated from\n\nThe author, a former student of Journalism and History at the University of California, Berkeley, and City Editor of the Hong Kong Tiger-Standard, is currently Assistant Registrar of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204999, "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-1965", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "98\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\nindication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today.\n\nThe years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved.\n\nA feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the \"unequal treaties\" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is.\n\nAn interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205000, "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-1965", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841 - 1962 99\n\nwas actually protecting local Chinese. The Colonial Office had no desire to see the indigenous population handed over to the power of the Hong Kong British business interests. It was not considered until the 1870s that the Chinese might have a part to play in the function of government, the Colonial Office believing that \"the testimony of those best acquainted with them represent the Chinese race as endowed with much intelligence but very deficient in the elements of morality\" (Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir John Bowring). The first Chinese member of the Legislative Council was not appointed till 1880, and he, so a Colonial Office minute tells us, was a cipher. While obviously it was not practical to give much in the way of electoral power to either the British or the Chinese communities in the nineteenth century, it seems a pity that more was not done between the two world wars when it might have been feasible. There was a certain broadening of the Executive Council by greater community representation soon after the first war, and significantly, as Mr. Endacott points out, what had been the continuous representation on the Council since 1850 of Jardine, Matheson was interrupted in 1921. But the slump in Europe, its effect on the Colony's trade, and the rising militarism of Japan all discouraged progress.\n\nIt is true that the Colony has gained some measure of independence over the years from control from London. It is financially self-supporting, and since 1958 the annual estimates have no longer been submitted to the Secretary of State. Representation on the two Councils, Legislative and Executive, has been broadened, though there is still no elected element. Furthermore, an effort has been made to bring local people into the ranks of the Civil Service, though it has not met with the success of similar efforts in, for example, former African colonies.\n\nMr. Endacott notes that in 1952 for the first time a locally recruited officer was promoted to be the head of a government department; unfortunately, he does not tell us which department, or how often this has happened again in the succeeding thirteen years. For many and various reasons, the recruitment of Chinese to the Administrative Service in particular has been slow. At first sight, though a self-governing Hong Kong is an impossibility in view of the international situation, a largely Chinese territory might", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205067, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "18\n\nJOHN J. NOLDE\n\nlarger problem. That this may have been the case is reflected in a memorial to Peking from an “unknown writer\", a translation of which appeared in The Chinese Repository of April, 1838.24 The author states that the present sad state of affairs dates from the disastrous fire of 1822, the uprisings of minority tribes on the Kwangtung-Kwanghsi border (which I have not mentioned) and the devastating floods of 1833 and 1834. The memorialist urged Peking to take strong action, included in which should be the suppression of the opium traffic.25\n\nFrom 1840 to 1842, the Opium War probably dominated the day to day life of our Hong Kong-Macao-Canton area. The Royal Navy controlled the river from Canton to the sea. The city itself underwent a kind of siege in 1841, and British troops and elements of the local militia actually clashed on the heights north of the city in May of that year. Hong Kong became a British colony. The local histories report almost nothing but the activities of the barbarians, as do the official memorials and edicts.\n\nYet one wonders whether or not this is a case of the \"big news story stealing the headlines\". Except for the episode of May, 1841, the local populace was rarely and only peripherally involved. After the May incident, the British action was conducted in the north and Canton was outside the main stream of events. The best we can say is that we don't know,\n\nWhen we come to the late 1840's, the historian is faced with the same problem that confronted him in the 1820's and 1830's. The standard documents seem to suggest that the dominant theme was again barbarian-oriented, and the historian's emphasis has generally been on the post-war treaty settlement, the reopening of trade, and, especially, the anti-foreign movement which culminated in the \"Canton City Question” of 1849.26\n\nBut what was really happening?\n\nIt would seem rather obvious that the diplomatic negotiations of the time were of little concern to the average villager along the river. Similarly, the reopening of trade per se could have had only a minor impact. But the anti-foreign movement seemed to have been another matter, one in which the populace was directly involved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205087, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "38\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nmen temples were built and dedicated to them in many parts of the effected area. In the New Territories there were three such temples - one at Sha Tau Kok,10 one built by the Kam Tin lineage of the Tang Clan,102 and a third in the market town of Shek Wu Hui known as the Chau Wong Yee Yuen,103 which was built by the five clans and endowed by them with land for its upkeep. It was not the five clans as clans which did this, but rather lineages of the five clans which came together and each purchased a share in the temple.104 The Man Clan took two shares in the temple, one purchased by each of the two lineages; as was the case with the eastern Tangs.105 The Pangs, Hau* and Lius each had one share. Not only was land purchased and a temple106 built with this money, but also a ferry boat was bought to assist all members of the five clans to cross the Sham Chun River107 to get to the large market town of Sham Chun, with which all had dealings. The share-holding lineages took part in an annual feast at which the business of the temple was discussed, the feast being paid for out of temple funds. As might be expected, however, the history of this temple association has not all been peaceful, and recently a major dispute has arisen, three members108 claiming complete control of the funds to the exclusion of the others.109 The matter quickly escalated to a point where both sides hired lawyers and placed vituperative advertisements in the Colony's newspapers. Eventually, after three years of argument, it was settled in 1963.\n\nThe second example of cooperation between the clans is of the army which they raised between them to oppose the arrival of the British when they took control of the New Territories in 1899. Under the leadership of literati of the Tang Clan, working from the ancestral hall of the Ha Tsuen lineage,110 they mustered men, arms and supplies in quantity and attacked the British at their landing point in Tai Po. Unfortunately they lacked training and could do no more than fight an ignominious retreat back over the hills. Some records of the organisation of this force are still available through documents captured by the British at the time, and it is obvious that all the planning was done by and communications established at the level of the literati of the five clans. It seems that these men kept up some kind of informal contact, and there is mention of an organisation called the Tung P'ing Kuk112 in the first British reports on the area, which was said\n\n*Hau is the correct spelling, not \"Haus\". I've made the correction. \nPlease let me know if you need further assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205123, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "74\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nIn 1873 the first Japanese missionary arrived in the Middle Kingdom. His name was Ogurusu Kocho and he had been sent to look over the situation in Shanghai by the Higashi Honganji sub-sect of Jodo Shinshu (the larger of the two main Pure Land sects). The following year he paid another visit to Shanghai and also went to Peking.\n\nIn 1876 the Higashi Honganji drew up a new creed that could be interpreted as a bid for collaboration with the state. Among other things, it emphasized that glorious death in military service would be rewarded by rebirth in the Western Paradise. It spoke of brotherhood with the Chinese in face of the unfilial barbarians. In May that year Count Otani, the hereditary patriarch of the subsect went to Tokyo accompanied by Ogurusu Kocho, and consulted Terashima Munenori in the Foreign Ministry on the problem of missionary work in China. We are not told the substance of their conversation, but in August a branch temple opened its doors in Shanghai, staffed by six priests, including Ogurusu. It was \"the first Japanese religious organization in China.\"2\n\nAfter China's defeat by Japan in 1895 a trade agreement was signed that gave the Japanese the right to construct temples in all the Treaty Ports. In 1896 Nanking had a Honganji temple.3 Shanghai got a Nichiren temple in 1899 and a second Honganji temple in 1906. According to one source special efforts were made to build temples in Fukien province, where the Japanese were trying to create a sphere of influence across the straits from their newly acquired colony of Formosa. Their missions were often able to attract parishioners because they could offer the same protection as their Christian counterparts, but did not require anyone to give up ancestor worship. The aim, however, was not merely parish-building, but use of the missions in the same way as the European powers. Thus in the autumn of 1900 a Japanese temple in Amoy was mysteriously destroyed by fire. A few hours later Japanese marines landed from a warship that had been waiting in the harbor and occupied the city. Only the strongest British representations induced Japan to withdraw her troops and bring her first \"missions case\" to a close.\n\nA more subtle approach was already on its way. In 1899 the East Asian Cultural Alliance had been established to create an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205169, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "120\n\nOLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nOn 19 January 1861 a ceremony took place at Tsim Sha Tsui, a village on the Chinese mainland directly opposite the British Colony of Hong Kong. On that day a mandarin of the provincial government at Canton handed over a paperful of soil in token of the cession of the Kowloon peninsula to Great Britain. In this way a tiny fraction of Chinese territory passed under British rule.\n\nIt is not the object of this article to give a comprehensive account of the development of Old British Kowloon as the area became known after 1898 when another treaty transferred the adjoining area of Chinese territory to England; for this could not be done within the confines of a short article. Rather, it is my intention to give a short description of the peninsula and then to turn to a more detailed examination of some of its villages, with special reference to the origins of the settlers, their way of life, and their local institutions.\n\nWhat was the Kowloon peninsula like in 1861 when it passed under British rule? A contemporary description reads:\n\n44\n\nThe land may be briefly described as being about 2,366 yards in length and 966 in breadth: its surface being extremely rugged from the presence of numerous small hills divided by ravines and patches of marshes and rice fields; rocky and precipitous on its southern and eastern shores and gradual shelving off on its western one to a fine sandy beach.\n\nA good idea of the unpromising terrain may be had from a drawing by Lieut. Collinson made from the Kowloon foothills behind Kowloon City about fifteen years earlier (see the illustration to this article).\n\nA specialised account of the newly acquired territory was sent home to the British Government. This was the report of the Anglo-Chinese Land Commission of April 1862. Due to the\n\nThe author is an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Government service.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205174, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n125\n\nto raising pigs and poultry. His daughter used to go to the vegetable fields at Tai Shek Kwu nearby where, in return for helping others to water their fields, she was given the outer leaves and spoiled vegetables to take home for pig food. Pig rearing, it appears, was as chancy a business in the 19th century as now,21\n\nAs a rule, however, the villagers produced crops and produce for the Hong Kong urban populace and for the growing townships in Kowloon itself, such as Yau Ma Ti and Hung Hom. It was fortunate for the village people that the Colony's rapidly increasing urban population required the three basic staples of rice, firewood, and vegetables.22 As Wells Williams wrote in 1883:23\n\n\"The supplies of the island are chiefly brought from the mainland where an increasing population of Chinese... find ample demand for all the provisions they can furnish.” The arrival of vegetable boats from Kowloon has for long been a feature of the Hong Kong waterfront.\n\nThese three staples, then, provided local people with the means to a livelihood; but they also had a wider effect. If they could summon the effort, villagers from further afield could and did share in meeting the urban demand, whilst local charitable and community organisations in Kowloon got part of their income from public weighing scales used for measuring vegetables and firewood destined for Hong Kong. Above all, the staples provided an opportunity for social advancement to those villagers with the necessary talent to exploit the business opportunities offered to them.24\n\nThe Colonial Government administered Kowloon with a loose rein. So far as I am aware, there was no seconding of administrators or magistrates there in the 19th century, and the police and other government departments with personnel available in Kowloon seem to have been on call when necessary in emergencies such as a fire, armed robbery, and serious crimes against the person, but were not otherwise obtrusive.25 The government did not see fit to appoint district officers to look after the people, as it was to do later in the New Territories. The advantages of doing so were suggested by a Land Commission in 1886, but never acted upon.26\n\nIn consequence, the internal management of these villages appears to have been much the same in Old Kowloon as it was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205181, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "132\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nsettlements and missions from the earliest days of the Colony, the Kowloon peninsula must have been the scene of much missionary effort. Five years before the cession of Kowloon Captain Fishbourne wrote:47\n\n44\n\nMissionaries of all the Protestant denominations, English, American, Dutch, Swedish, German, were in the habit of itinerating through the villages in Hong Kong and islands near.\n\n**\n\nFrom various accounts it seems that these missionaries were often well received and, as William Burns wrote on one occasion, some of the local villagers were said to be \"very friendly to the new or foreign doctrine\".48\n\nOne group which made the Hakkas their special field of endeavour was the Basel Mission, a German body which took up work in the Hong Kong region in 1847.49 Although its activities spread gradually over much of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, it also established chapels and schools in Hong Kong, Kowloon, and later the New Territories. One of my informants (b. 1897) has been a member of their church since his earliest years and his father was a member before him. The son has told me that early in this century the Ho Man Tin area was known as \"the Christian Valley\", presumably because of the sustained efforts made by members of the Basel Mission. The work amongst these people is said to have been conducted from an out-station in Sham Shui Po, a small market town on the north side of the Sino-British frontier of 1860.50\n\nIn conclusion, I would like to observe that Kowloon has many points of interest—I have not, for instance, touched on the early commercial and industrial enterprises that were established there in the course of the last century51, and I hope that this short account of various aspects of its history under British rule will encourage others to make their specialist contributions to the study of that hitherto neglected subject: the history and institutions of the Chinese inhabitants of 19th century Hong Kong.52", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205185, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n135\n\n24 With regard to the quantities of firewood brought on foot into Kowloon from as far afield as Sha Tin, see Sessional Papers 1903 p. 209 which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each estimated at 70 piculs (approx. 93 lbs.) as being carried over the hills in 1902. The Sham Shui Po Kaifong, through operating the Mo Tai (A†4) temple's public weighing scales, got its revenue from the vegetable and livestock market there. Much of the produce sold there crossed the harbour to Hong Kong. (See the Registrar General's Report for 1907 in Sessional Papers 1908, p. 194. Other information supplied by elders). I am also informed by Mr. WAI Tau Shue (b. 1885) that in his youth the Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in the Kowloon City market. In each case the proceeds were supposed to swell public funds for charitable work. For social advancement see the career of WONG Lan-shang described in this article.\n\n25 The Third or Kowloon Police Magistrate was not appointed until 1925 (Colonial Estimates 1924-1926). For an example of police assistance in an emergency see the press reports of the two big fires at Hung Hom village on 11 and 16 December 1884 (Hong Kong Daily Press).\n\n26 See Report from the Hong Kong Land Commission of 1886-87 on the History of the Sale, Tenure and Use of the Crown Land of the Colony published in Sessional Papers 1887 pp. XXVI-XXVII.\n\n27 Between 1853 and 1862 the Hong Kong government paid village elders as tepos (18) in an endeavour to enlist their services in the public interest. See G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong 1841-1962, Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong Press, 1964, pp. 37-38. The Colonial Estimates for the period, under Registrar General's department, show that payment was not extended to the elders of the Kowloon villages acquired in 1860.\n\n28 Eitel, p. 160.\n\n29 See, for instance, pp. 8 and 9 and note 40 of my typescript article \"Some villages in the North Western Part of the Kowloon Peninsula in 1898” presented to the International Conference on Asian History held at the University of Hong Kong, August 30-September 5, 1964. See also note 37 below.\n\n30 The temple was re-erected in Shantung Street Kowloon in 1927 on a site provided by Government which also gave a grant of $6,000 towards the reconstruction. The rest of the money required for the new building was supplied by the Kwong Wah (Tung Wah group) Hospital, to whom the management of the temple was entrusted.\n\n31 Shui Yuet Kung (KA) is an alternative name for a Kwan Yin temple. See S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, Canton; Office of the Chinese Repository, 1856, p. 650. See also E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, New York; The Julian Press, 1961, pp. 225-227.\n\n32 See E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese, London; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920, pp. 196-197, and S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary under p. 308 and p. 581 under A.\n\n33) E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London; T. Fisher Unwin, 1905, p. 86. See also W. Stanton, The Chinese Drama, Hong Kong; Kelly & Walsh, 1899, pp. 5-6 for a brief description of the position in \"China and in the villages of Hong Kong\".\n\n34 Robert Morrison, A View of China for Philological Purposes. Macao; Hon. E. I. C. Press, 1817, p. 105.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205306, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205307, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "62\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\nIllegal immigration in the countries of Southeast Asia and elsewhere seems to have been rather difficult in the post-war period. With regard to legal immigration, people from the New Territories have one advantage in their competition with the crowds of recent immigrants from China. A Hong Kong Chinese who can prove that he was born in the Colony is able to claim British nationality. In the 1950s, an increasing number of New Territories residents left Hong Kong to seek employment in Great Britain. This movement reached a peak during 1961-62 when at least 2,270 people are known to have left for work in Britain. Most of these emigrants take up jobs in the restaurant trade. The Chinese-style restaurants in Britain have boomed since 1957, at which period some 50 establishments are said to have existed in the whole country, whereas the corresponding figure today is differently estimated between 1,000 and 2,000. It is said that pre-war London had only about eight or nine Chinese restaurants, but at the present time the number in the capital city may be some 300. The Hong Kong Chinese in Great Britain are now supposed to exceed 30,000 and the whole Chinese community there is estimated at about 45,000. The main part of the Hong Kong Chinese are from villages in the New Territories.33\n\nNearly all young and middle-aged men in the area of study have left their home communities and are now working in Britain. This absence of grown men is one of the most striking features of all Hakka villages in this particular mountain area. The village scene is completely dominated by women of all ages and small children not yet in their teens. Old men are found there, but generally they seem to prefer an indoor life. Sometimes one may meet a young man on an occasional visit to his home village. Agricultural work is entirely carried out by the women. At harvest, the children assist. A few of the old men, however, also work in their fields; one is a non-emigrant in Plum Grove Village who has devoted all his life to farming, the two others are masons in Grass Field Village, who work their fields when the masonry trade is not so good. It is difficult to estimate the efficiency of the women in their work in the fields, as compared with that of men. Some elderly men do not think too much of woman-labour, but on the other hand, Hakka women have traditionally taken part in all kinds of agricultural activities, and their toil in the fields is no innovation.34 What is certain is that during this last", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205309, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "64\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nemigrants who had left the Colony. The masons in Grass Field Village, who had their village within a day's journey, naturally had a word in all village affairs; but the Big Stream men working in Vancouver or on Aruba in the West Indies had a very limited influence on decisions made in the home community.\n\nVI\n\nTraditional leadership in these Hakka villages was gerontocratic in nature. There were no formal isu (M) or fang (M) leaders. An informal council of old men met occasionally in the ancestral hall to discuss current problems. These persons' influence was directly correlated to the distribution of economic control within the community. As long as this differentiation was small, all elders would have had fairly equal status. Age differentiation within the group does not seem to have been of vital importance.\n\nThe process of emigration created new economic groups. In Big Stream Village, where emigration abroad early dominated the scene, the informal council of village elders is made up of four former overseas Chinese. Two of them have worked in the United States, one in Canada, and one on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. The last-mentioned man has quite a good house and has apparently had some resources, but he is in poor health, struck by rheumatism, a fact he ascribes to excessive use of alcohol in his younger days. His sight is bad and is hardly improved by the smashed pair of spectacles on his nose. This 76-year-old man said that he was 'willing to accept anything, whatever it is and whenever it comes.' He has no children. His influence on village affairs is apparently very limited. It seems as if he is taking part in the village council meetings merely to represent the first minor lineage, even if I was never able to confirm a strict rule that all fang (M) should be represented there.\n\nOf the other three leaders, two are men who have spent much time in New York in the United States, and one who has been working in Vancouver, Canada. One of the New York men is Village Representative and the official spokesman with the British administrative authorities. He is 73 years old and a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205322, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n77\n\nincome of this man is then at least HK$25. It is also interesting to note that costs in the villages are often estimated in terms of British currency.\n\n40 See e.g. Baker 1965, p. 30.\n\n41 Marriage connections were then cast outside the standard market area of Tai Po. This is in contradiction to an assumption by G. W. Skinner (Skinner 1964/65, p. 36), who suggests that standard marketing communities were endogamous in traditional times.\n\n42 Sometimes children by this mating were brought back to the village. In Big Stream Village there is a man whose mother was a Jamaican woman, and his features are quite distinct. However, I have the impression that he is fairly well integrated in the village. He was, for instance, the only male I saw performing ancestral rites at the graves at the Ch'ing Ming festival. He is working as a policeman in Sha Tin. Otherwise I have not come across any secondary marriages in the valley.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBAKER, H.\n\n[1965] 'Marriage and the Family', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d.\n\nBALL, J. DYER\n\n1925 Things Chinese, or Notes Connected with China, 5th edn, rev. by E. C. T. Werner, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh).\n\nBARNETT, K. A.\n\n1957 'The People of the New Territories', Hong Kong Business Symposium, a Compilation of Authoritative Views on the Administration, Commerce and Resources of Britain's Far Eastern Outpost, J. M. Braga (ed.), (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post).\n\n1958 'Introduction on Hong Kong Place-names', Hong Kong Gazetteer to the Land Utilization Map of Hong Kong and the New Territories, with Chinese and English Names, T. R. Tregear (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nBot. Report 1906\n\n1907 'Report on the Botanical and Forestry Department for the Year 1906', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1907, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers).\n\nCensus 1911\n\n1911 'Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1911, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers).\n\nCHEN TA\n\n1939 Emigrant Communities in South China, (New York, Institute of Pacific Relations).\n\nCHIU TZE NANG\n\n1964 'Land Use in the Extreme East of the New Territories', Land Use Problems in Hong Kong, S. G. Davis (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nEITEL, E. J.\n\n1895 Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882, (London and Hongkong, Luzac and Co.).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205323, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "78\n\nFRANK, H. A.\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\n1925 Roving through Southern China, (New York and London, The Century Company).\n\nFREEDMAN, M.\n\n1958 Lineage Organization in Southeastern China. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 18, (London, The Athlone Press).\n\n1966 Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 33, (London, The Athlone Press).\n\n1967 Personal Communication, 2. 1. 1967.\n\nGROVES, R. G.\n\n1965a Report of Field Work in Hong Kong, London-Cornell Project, mimeographed.\n\n1965b 'The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d.\n\nHAYES, J. W.\n\n1962 'The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2.\n\n1966 'Old British Kowloon', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 6.\n\nHong Kong 1963\n\n1964 Hong Kong. Report for the Year 1963, (Hong Kong, Government Printer).\n\nHong Kong 1964\n\n1965 Hong Kong, Report for the Year 1964, (Hong Kong, Government Printer).\n\nHSU, F. L. K.\n\n1945 'Influence of South-seas Emigration on Certain Chinese Provinces', Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. v.\n\nHUI KIM-BING\n\n1963 'The Lion Rock and the Deserting of the Coastal Strip and Subsequent Re-occupation of the Region during Early Manchu Rule' Hong Kong and its External Communications Before 1842, Lo Hsiang-lin (ed.), (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture).\n\nINGRAMS, H.\n\n1952 Hong Kong. (London, H.M.S.O.)\n\nIZIKOWITZ, K. G.\n\n1963 'Expansion', Folk, Vol. 5.\n\nKUO SHOU-HUA\n\n1964 (Chinese Article), English title: History of Hakka Chinese, 4th edn., Taipei.\n\nLEE, R. H.\n\n1960 The Chinese in the United States of America, (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nLockhart Report\n\n1899 'Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong', Government Notification No. 204, The Hongkong Government Gazette, Vol. xlv.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205347, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "102\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n2 This figure is given in the table at p. 145 in Sessional Papers, i.e. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, for 1906 (Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., Government Printers) included in \"New Territories: Land Court, Report on Work from 1900 to 1905\". The figure is for all private lots demarcated, and includes house lots as well as agricultural land.\n\n3 Colony Census of 1911 in Sessional Papers 1911, pp. 103 (22, 26 and 37-38).\n\n4 See Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong in The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899 at p. 541. Also Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JHKBRAS), Vol. 3 (1963), pp. 144-145 and Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 146-150.\n\n5 This information is based on my own extensive enquiries in the Hong Kong region. They corroborate the usual accounts given in many books, among them E. T. Williams, China Yesterday and Today (London etc., Harrap & Co., 1923) pp. 118-136, Chapter VI, \"The Village Republic\" and E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese (London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920), pp. 161-165, \"Local Government”.\n\n6 See p. 12 and notes 15-17 of my \"The Settlement and Development of a Multiple-Clan Village\" (Shek Pik on Lantau Island) in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (Hong Kong, Hong Kong Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, n.d. but 1965),\n\n7 See also my note \"Village Credit at Shek Pik, 1879-1895\" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, No. 5 (1965), pp. 119-122, for interest rates of 50% of principal per annum, simple interest, from a money loaning Tong in the same area. This Tong's varied means of doing business are paralleled in the surviving papers showing Cheung Kwong-chuen's agreements with local farmers,\n\n* See Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China, Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 33-38, \"It would not be an exaggeration to say that in Ch'ing times practically anybody who could afford a little over 100 taels could obtain the chien-sheng title and the right to wear the scholar's gown and cap\", p. 34.\n\n* For more details of the area see my article \"A Mixed Community of Cantonese and Hakka on Lantau Island\" in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, cited at note 6 above.\n\n10 His name heads the list of twenty-six persons who presented a commemorative red and gilt board on the occasion of the last major repair to the Tin Hau temple at Ham Tin, Pui O dated the equivalent of 15 January 13 February 1915.\n\n11 For a brief account of this village see the article referred to in note 6 above.\n\n12 The Census of 1911 lists 5,694 Cantonese and only 944 Hakka out of an estimated land population of 6,710. See Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (22). I have my suspicions about the Hakka figure but have not yet counter-checked by other means. For alleged Cantonese domination see inter alia K. M. A. Barnett, \"The Peoples of the New Territories\" in J. M. Braga (ed) The Hong Kong Business Symposium (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 1957), pp. 261-265, and G. N. Orme's \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 44 where he says that the imposition of British rule led to the freeing of the neighbours of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205349, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "104\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nBy the REV. Mr. Krone\n\n(Editor's Note. Beginning with Vol. 5 (1965) the Society made a start with reprinting selected articles from the Transactions of the old China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which existed in Hong Kong between 1846-59. The only known complete extant sets of the Transactions in the Colony are the microfilmed sets recently acquired by the Library of the University of Hong Kong and by the Society. The article reprinted below is taken from pp. 71-105 of the sixth and last volume of Transactions, published in Hong Kong in 1859. It is a valuable contemporary account of the north-western part of the San On (Hsin An) district (新安縣) and will be of special interest to readers of this Journal in that it describes something of the history and conditions of life in the area just beyond the present Sino-British frontier in the New Territories. Its re-appearance in print will also provide scholars with the text in a more accessible form than the microfilmed sets which are available here and elsewhere. The author was a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society which, according to the account of its history given in The China Mission Hand Book (Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1896) pp. 272-275 came to South China in 1847. From this account, Mr. Krone appears to have come to China about 1850 and worked there for upwards of ten years. He seems to have gone on leave thereafter and died in the Red Sea on his way back to China from Germany. The article is reprinted here exactly as it appears in the original, despite a few obvious errors and inconsistencies).\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nRead before the Society, February 24th, 1858\n\nTHE District of Sanon, to which the mainland opposite to the Island of Hongkong belongs, is one of the fourteen districts of the department of Canton. During the Han dynasty, and at the time of the Three States, the present Sanon District, together with those of Túng-kun and Pok-lo, formed only one large district, bearing the name of Pok-lo *.\n\nand Túng-kun\n\nUnder the following dynasties, Sanon ✯✯ constituted one district, which was denominated Túng-kun 東莞 ★, afterwards Po-on, and since the 2d year of the Emperor Chi-tok of the Tong dynasty, Túng-kun ✯ £. 東莞. Hung-mo, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary in the 27th year of his reign to appoint an officer with the title \"Shou-yu-sho\"-Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205395, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "150\n\nLIN SHU-YEN\n\nfamilies the men and women were in their fifties. In the third, the son, who is about thirty, did most of the work.\n\nThe leaching process, Lin tells us, was carried out mainly by natives of Lantau Island and was the only method inherited from their remote ancestors. In 1962 I was able to speak to an old lady who came in 1898 at the age of 16 to the village of Leung Uk, at the south-west edge of the salt pans, to be married to one of the villagers. She told me that men and women from the locality worked in the fields, some of them from Leung Uk. Not many people worked in the fields at that time, and they were operated by an outsider. The workers were paid on a piece work basis depending on their output, but it was customary for the company to advance money for daily food and deduct the sum from the final wage.\n\nFor how long the local village people, as opposed to outsiders, carried out the work on the salt-pans is not known. The Leung Uk settlement, since it is named after the Leung family, it is reasonable to suppose that they were the first inhabitants of the present settlement, was apparently settled about 1800. This estimate is based on calculations from a genealogy which also states that the first ancestor came to Tai O from a village near Shum Chun Market to the north of the present Sino-British frontier. These people are Hakkas. The other villages in the Tai O basin, adjacent to the market town, are the similar small settlements of Nam Chung, San Tsuen, and Wang Hang, and it is unlikely that they are earlier than Leung Uk. At the 1911 Colony census, the population of these three small villages was recorded at 50, 42, and 90 respectively, whilst the population of Leung Uk was 104 persons. There were other, larger villages a little further afield, and some of their inhabitants may also have worked at the pans.\n\nSince writing the above, I have chanced upon a note in The Hong Kong Naturalist, also in Vol X (1940), by Father R. Maglioni, the noted archaeologist, in which he offers some comments upon Lin's article and an earlier one by Dr. C. M. Heanley on some of the problems connected with local, i.e., Hong Kong archaeology. He writes:\n\n\"About the furnaces described by Dr. Heanley in The Hong Kong Naturalist (Vol. VI, Nos. 3-4), I must confess that I am not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205411, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nheld office for many years on the main advisory bodies representing the Chinese community in the Colony, including the District Watchmen's Committee, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee and the Po Leung Kuk.15\n\nSir Show-son CHOW's son, Mr. CHOW Yat-kwong, J.P. has kindly given permission for members to visit the house in the New Village which contains the family's ancestral hall,\n\nIII. THE Hung Shing Temple And AP LEI CHAU\n\nThe Hung Shing Temple, The Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau, judging by the temple bell, dates from the 18th century.16 It appears to have been enlarged in 1847 and some wall-tablets show that it was given a major repair in 1888. The present building dates from that time or earlier. Its origin is uncertain because it is not clear who built it in the first instance. Records show that the Ap Li Chau land population was \"no more than two or three families of Hakka grass cutters\" before 1841, so that we must look elsewhere for the builders. It could have only been built and supported by the joint efforts of the local (i.e. Aberdeen) land people and boat population. The former only amounted to a few hundreds before the British came, but the boat population was probably as considerable before 1841 as after, e.g. 415 boats and 2,243 persons at the 1856 census18 and 424 boats and 4,130 persons in 1866.19\n\nThe temple is interesting in that it has old-style flagpoles still standing in front of the building. Old prints frequently show this kind of pole; but though a few bases can still be seen nowadays in Hong Kong, Macau and the New Territories these could be the only ones left with the poles and their basket-like tops still in place.\n\nAp Lei Chau before 1911. The present land settlement on Ap Lei Chau was founded in the early decades of British rule. By the mid-1860's there were 60 houses there, which implies that several hundred residents were living on the island at that time.20 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123 rising to 1,437 at the Colony Census of 1911.21 This population gained its livelihood to a great extent from concerns directly associated with the fishing industry, such as boat-building yards, ship chandlers and rope and sail works, and from provision shops and general stores that also catered for the fishermen's daily needs.22 There was very", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205418, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n173 \n\nand its raison d'être: why we find rows of burial urns placed on the hill-sides of the \"Territories, and why more permanent omega-shaped graves are scattered rather than in neat burial grounds. \n\nThe individualism and competition of geomancy in relation to the ancestors is to some extent balanced in another aspect of ancestral care with which the author deals: ancestor worship itself. But even so, at every level of a complex lineage, it seems, segments may be in competition with each other in ancestor worship. Differences in social status and ambition are shown in the way the very ancestors are admitted to the ancestral halls (through their tablets) and in the performance of the grand rites for such lineage forbears. \n\nTwo other sections, again well illustrated by New Territories material, should be of particular interest to people here. One is on social status, power and government, and the other on relationships between lineages. We are told of the rivalries between powerful higher-order groups, with illustrations taken from the Tang and the Man groups which have a history of mastery of large parts of the county from which the New Territories were cut out. Most of us know of the Tang lineage in Hong Kong; if not by name, at least by one of its villages in Kam Tin — the walled village often visited by tourists to the Colony. The large Man community at San Tin, near the border, is also becoming popular with visitors. \n\nThe strength of such lineages was not only in their man and fire power, as the author says, but in the command also of economic resources and call on political influence through scholarly ties with the traditional bureaucracy. But smaller communities might also combine with other weaker groups to form more powerful organizations to stand up to high-order lineages. These groups are what the author calls \"yeuk combinations\". In Cantonese yeuk (*) popularly means a pact, but it appears the term might have deeper political associations — a question Freedman goes into. Several yeuk combinations existed here: one at Taipo, and others at Tsuen Wan, Sai Kung and Sha Tin. Some of the armed resistance to the British when they first arrived in the 'Territories was bound up with such complexes. \n\nThe author warns us that this book does not represent the end of the story. I would say, however, that his skill in drawing on \n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205467, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "Colony in not losing more than 53 ordinary and two life members in 1967 and to gain 59 ordinary and three life members. It is hoped that, in the year 1969 which will be the tenth year after the revival of the Hong Kong Branch of the Society, we may achieve a membership of 500.\n\nThe Journal of the Society (which has now reached its seventh issue) covering the year 1966 came out in 1967 under the editorship of Mr. Hayes and has maintained its high standard and interest.\n\nFrom the Hon. Treasurer's report it will be seen that on the working of the year there was a small deficit of $738 due mainly to the doubling of our expenditure this year on the Society's publications, the Journal, the Volume on the 1966 Symposium and the reprinting of Sir Lindsay Ride's article on the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao, from the sale of which we expect to replenish our finances. Our efforts to build up a library available for the use of members have this year shown some promise of success. We have now a collection of over 300 volumes of standard works on China and the Far East including, in particular, works on South China and Hong Kong and a valuable collection of exchange journals. Our collection has been enriched with the books purchased with the generous grant of $2,850 from the Asia Foundation and with about 100 books from the library of the late Colonel Burkhardt and Madame du Breuil generously presented by Colonel Burkhardt's daughter. Our thanks are due once again to Mr. F. A. Nixon who has enabled us to receive from the Fung Ping Shan Museum of the University five albums containing photographs of his collection of Nestorian Crosses which are housed in the Museum. The British Council have come to our aid by kindly providing space in their library for the greater part of our books, while some of the rarer books and reference works will still be kept for the time being in the University Library. The accommodation given to our library by the British Council is the best temporary solution of our library problem until some kind benefactor appears to give us a room of our own with sufficient funds to provide for a part-time librarian. Before the original branch of the Society was wound up in 1859 it had a substantial and valuable library which was presented to the Morrison Educational Society and it was fortunate then in having good friends in its first President — Sir John Davis — and the Chief Justice who provided a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205536, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI\n\n73\n\nevidently of later date. The sherds with partially preserved glaze appear to represent a local attempt to imitate Yüeh ware, while one or two of the smaller glazed fragments are of better quality and may be imported from kilns further north and are definitely of T'ang date.\n\nIt need only be added that one fragment, of soft pinkish earthenware, is certainly proto-historic; and that the attribution of the whole of the fragments to the T'ang Dynasty or earlier raises the question whether the earthwork, or at least that part where the cutting was, may not date to the troubled period at the fall of that dynasty. If so, it might be that the Sung army re-used and strengthened an old fortification, very likely adding the high rampart with its ditch, counterscarp, and glacis at the north end, where an attack was evidently expected. The total absence of Sung pottery is certainly an unexpected feature, and if any part of these earthworks still survives, a few trenches dug across them would reveal enough pottery to prove or disprove this view. The turf and spoil removed could easily be put back, as is done in most modern excavations.\n\nOne thing is certain: the work at the north end faces Kowloon City, so cannot be a defence work for the salt depot there, as the wall on the Kowloon T'ong gap west of the city was. There was Sung pottery on the hill when the writer saw it, so that an earthwork thrown up in 1276 should contain some pieces of it. The small number of 13 pieces found may well be not enough to yield a satisfactory basis for a conclusion: yet the total absence of both Sung and later porcelain among them points at least to the extreme scarcity of such porcelain at the time the earthwork was thrown up. As the evidence now stands, it is reasonably likely that the earthwork is connected, like the watch-tower recorded as erected on the summit rock, with the defence of the palace of the last Sung emperors.\n\nAcknowledgement\n\nMy thanks are owing to the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, for their expert advice on the pottery from the beach and the earthwork cutting, to which this paper owes much of its value.\n\nBiographical Note\n\nMr. Schofield served in Hong Kong as a Cadet (Administrative) Officer in the Civil Service between 1911-38. He is well-known for his published articles on the archaeology and geology of the Colony in pre-war years, and is M.A. (Liv. and Oxon).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205589, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "126\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\ncase put by Fei Hsiao-tung and others who were influenced by the \"orthodox\" Marxist-Leninist interpretation is now convincingly shown to be oversimplified and misleading; and if not wholly unsatisfactory, at least open to serious question. Nevertheless, by his change of title, Potter exposes himself to the criticism that his original choice of field and the data he drew from it may not have been an adequate testing ground for so large an hypothesis. He asserts that in all relevant respects, the situation of Ping Shan resembled that of villages in the hinterland of other Western Treaty Ports; and although he acknowledges the fact of the security of land-tenure given by the British registration of all holdings in the Colony, he is inclined to minimise its importance. Villages in the Chinese mainland, however, had no such security, and, more importantly, lacked the benefits of the Pax Britannica. Hong Kong's peaceful development was interrupted only by the Japanese Occupation, and Potter recognises that as a watershed of change: how much greater changes must have been caused in China by the long series of upheavals that took place there?\n\nPotter's objections to the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of rural China's economy are otherwise well-founded. He shows that while in some areas rural handicrafts were destroyed, the extent to which peasants depended for their livelihood on rural handicraft industries was in general very slight: relatively few areas were as dependent as was Fei's Kaihsienkung on the silk industry. There is, in fact, evidence for the stimulation of China's rural industries by the presence of the Treaty Ports. Similarly, absentee landlordism was not so major a problem as has been supposed. Potter adduces data from a wide variety of sources on other villages in comparable situations, and concludes that the \"orthodox\" interpretation is invalidated by its failure to take into account the tremendous complexity and diversity of the data. He could indeed have brought his point home by citing the wide variety of reactions to modernisation apparent within the limited compass of the New Territories themselves.\n\nPotter has tackled a problem which is of major significance not only to the history of modern China but to the worldwide impact of the developed upon the undeveloped nations. It is not only the student of China who will welcome his eclectic approach and thorough re-examination of accepted views. He has made us aware of the diversity of China's rural scene before 1949, the com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205620, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n157 \n\nThe only study of the question which has any pretence to authority is that by Sayer in his work on the first 20 years of Hong Kong under British rule. In that study he makes use of various contemporary descriptions and accounts to fix the site of the first building to which the name 'Government House' has been given on the location of the Victoria District Court at the top of the present Battery Path. Though I do not contest that the site was so used for a period, it would appear that Sayer's conclusion is at variance with other contemporary material which should have been available to him. The problem stems partly from a failure to distinguish between the offices where the Governor performed his official functions and the residences where he lived. When Sir Henry Pottinger, the first Governor, arrived in 1841, he spent one night in a tent. When he returned to Hong Kong after the successful conclusion of the war against China, he lived in a number of houses, though there is positive evidence only about one of them. Though visual evidence from drawings of Hong Kong suggest that he may have resided in a house in the possession of Major Caine, the Chief Magistrate, there is no documentary evidence of the fact and I am not concerned with it; if he did so reside, he must have done so gratuitously, for the Government Accounts of the period do not record any rent payments which might be attributed to this.\n\nSayer is able to state confidently that \"the first Government House has disappeared without trace” as a preamble to his attempt to re-trace it. The Canton Press of January 1842 reported that “a public office to serve as a temporary residence for the head of the Government\" had just been finished. The same newspaper shortly after this referred to this building as \"Government House,\" but added that it had changed its name to the \"Record Office\" since \"the late Acting Governor has been metamorphosed into a Lieut.-Governor.\" The reference is to A. R. Johnston, who administered Hong Kong during Pottinger's absences from the Colony. Sayer concludes from this that the building referred to by the newspaper must have been the house undeniably built by Johnston at the top of Battery Path. He further supports this by pointing out that, on Collinson's Map of 1844, Johnston's House is marked 'Government House.' Lest, however, this should seem to answer the question beyond further argument, I have a few observations to offer.\n\nAs early as the end of 1841, Johnston was writing letters dated 'Government Hill' and there is no doubt that this was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205703, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "Council in February of this year, and more recently both Mr. J. S. Lee and Mr. M. S. Cumming have resigned owing to their many other commitments, and in the case of Mr. Cumming owing to the likelihood of his being away a good deal from the Colony during the year. Of the original Council of 1959 there are only two left - Dr. Marjorie Topley and myself. The Council is a hard-working body; it meets at least once a month and its activities involve a great deal of time and labour. It is essential for the future of the Society to fill the vacancies with persons who have real interest in the work of the Society and are prepared to share the work in furthering its interests.\n\nIn concluding I want to thank all my colleagues on the Council for their unremitting work, the British Council for their traditional help in a variety of ways and for the use of their premises for the meetings of the Council and their Library to house the greater part of the Society's books, and last but not least Mrs. O'Hara, also of the British Council, for her ever-willing and ready help and secretarial work which have been most valuable.\n\n28 April, 1969.\n\nLectures in 1968 comprised:-\n\n15 January\n\nProfessor Michael Sullivan.\n\n\"The Cave Temples of Maichishan (with slides).\n\n26 February\n\nJ. R. JONES\n\n\"The British Treaty with Siam of 1855\"\n\n16 March\n\nMr. Robert Bruce.\n\nVisit to Chinese Vegetarian Halls (chai-t'ang) and the Sects of Former Heaven (Hsien-t'ien Tao).\n\n18 March\n\nDr. Philip Mao.\n\n\"Some Aspects of Ching Dynasty Porcelain of the Kang Hsi, Yung Cheng & Ch'ien Lung Periods\" (illustrated with slides).\n\n8 April\n\nAnnual General Meeting.\n\n29 April\n\nMr. T. C. Cheng.\n\n\"Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in Hong Kong up to 1941\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205707, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE COUNCILS IN HONG KONG UP TO 1941\n\nT. C. CHENG, O.B.E., M.A.(LOND.)*\n\n(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 29 April 1968)\n\nOn 5th April, 1843, Her Majesty Queen Victoria granted to Hong Kong a Royal Charter which declared Hong Kong a separate Colony. The main provisions of this Charter, published in Hong Kong in June 1843, included, among other things, the following:\n\n(i) There should be a Legislative Council to be composed of the Governor and of such Public Officers within the said Colony, or of such other persons as shall from time to time be named or designated by Her Majesty for the purpose;\n\n(ii) An Executive Council should be established to advise and assist the Governor, who was authorized to summon as an Executive Council such persons as may from time to time be named or designated by Her Majesty.\n\nIt was, however, not until January 1844 that the Legislative Council first met, being composed of all officials, viz., the Governor (Sir Henry Pottinger), the Lt.-Governor (Major-General D'Aguilar) and the Chief Magistrate (Major Caine). The Clerk of Councils was the Legal Adviser to the Governor (R. Burgass).\n\nMajor-General D'Aguilar and Major Caine were also appointed members of the Executive Council.\n\nIn June 1850 the first British unofficial members were nominated to the Legislative Council. They were Messrs. David Jardine and J. F. Adger, both elected by the unofficial Justices of the Peace. Even at this early period of the history of Hong Kong, dissatisfaction was already expressed, mainly among the British community, with the small number of unofficials serving on the Council. In the case of the Chinese, they were, however, inarticulate because there were then very few Chinese who were educated through the medium of English and who could communicate adequately in that language.\n\n\"Mr. Cheng has been President of United College in The Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1963. Prior to that he was in Hong Kong Government service since 1939, his last post being Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205709, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nAs things turned out, Gibb did not return to Hong Kong, and Ng Choy was therefore appointed on a three-year term. This appointment was unfortunately interpreted by some members of the British community as an attempt to create an anti-English party feeling in Hong Kong.\n\nIn May 1880 when one of the magistrates went on leave, the Governor replaced him temporarily by Ng Choy who thus became the first Chinese to hold a senior appointment in the Hong Kong Government. This led to a question in the House of Commons as to why Ng Choy should combine a paid official post with an unofficial seat in the Legislative Council; but by the time these explanations were required the original holder of the post had returned to the Colony.\n\nThe attitude of the British community towards him and the Governor as a result of his appointment to the Legislative Council as well as this parliamentary question must have embarrassed Ng Choy very much. During this time, China having suffered repeated defeats from the hands of foreign powers, there was a movement in China to promote western technology and to modernize China, and any Chinese who had been trained or educated abroad would be welcome back to China. Thus when an invitation came from China for him to serve China, Ng Choy accepted it gladly. He left Hong Kong in 1882 before the expiry of the 3-year term in the Legislative Council, and later sent in his resignation from Tientsin.\n\nNg Choy became Secretary and Legal Adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang, one of the most important Chinese political figures of the time. Now known as Wu Ting-fang, he soon rose to become Chief Director of Railways and later Ambassador to the U.S.A. After the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, he held important appointments respectively as Minister of Judicial Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Financial Affairs. In 1917, when China entered the First World War, he was for a short time nominated as Premier. In 1922 he became Governor of Kwangtung and died the same year in office, soon after General Chan Kwing-ming's revolt in Canton.*\n\n* In his The Chinese (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1909) p. 196, John Stuart Thomson praises Wu and styles him \"the Chesterfield of China in all the graces of speech and manners.\" Ed.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205714, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "14\n\nT. C. CHENG\n\nAnother advance was made in 1904 when several prominent Chinese, led by Dr. Ho Kai and Mr. Chau Siu-ki (the late father of Sir Tsun-nin Chau), collected the necessary funds, and, also with a land grant from the London Missionary Society, started the Alice Memorial Maternity Hospital, the first maternity hospital in Hong Kong.\n\nIn 1907 when the Chinese started another hospital, along the lines of the Tung Wah Hospital, in Kowloon the Kwong Wah Hospital Dr. Ho Kai was the motivating force and he became the Chairman of the first Board of Directors of the new hospital. In this important venture, he had the staunch support of the Honourable Wei Yuk, his Chinese colleague in the Legislative Council, and Lau Chu-pak, both of whom served as directors of the first Board.\n\nHaving received a western education himself, Dr. Ho Kai was very keen to spread such education among the Chinese youth. Apart from being an active member of the governing body of Queen's College, he and other Chinese leaders, including Tso Seen-wan, founded St. Stephen's Boys College in 1902. In 1901 a number of leading Chinese, including Dr. Ho Kai and Mr. Tso Seen-wan, had submitted a petition to the Governor setting forth their view that a need had arisen for a Chinese High School run on western lines. The fees were to be sufficient to keep the school without cost to the Colony. In such a school the sons of influential Chinese parents could be trained for public service and be instructed in all that was best in both British and Chinese cultures. The scheme was approved in principle and the Church Missionary Society stepped in to help and established St. Stephen's Boys College on Bonham Road. In 1928 it moved to its present site in Stanley with extensive playing fields. It has catered to Chinese children from wealthy homes and has tried to establish something of the tradition of the English public school. It has since occupied a unique and important place in Hong Kong as an exempted and independent school.\n\nIn addition, Dr. Ho Kai was a very far-sighted land developer. Just before he died, he and Au Tak,13 a prominent merchant who was a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1908, formed the Kai Tak Land Development Company to plan the development of the area in the neighbourhood of the present Kai Tak Airport,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205716, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "16 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nDr. Ho died in September 1914 at the age of 55 leaving over ten sons and daughters by his second wife who was a Chinese. \n\nThe fourth Chinese to serve on the Legislative Council was Wei Yuk, son-in-law of Mr. Wong Shing. He had another name Wei Bo-shan17 and Po Shan Road is named after him. He was born in Hong Kong in 1849 of a wealthy family, his father, Wei Kwong, being compradore to the Hong Kong branch of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China (now the Mercantile Bank Ltd.). After many years of Chinese studies under private tutors, he entered the Government Central School. In 1867, at the age of 18, he proceeded to England to attend the Leicester Stoneygate School. In 1868 he went to Scotland and studied for four years at the Dollar Institution. After a European tour, he returned to Hong Kong in 1872 and then worked in China for a short period. When his father died in 1879 he succeeded him as compradore to the bank. He was a very public-spirited citizen, well-known for his charming manners and pleasant personality. In 1880 he was elected a director of the Tung Wah Hospital and in 1887 became its Chairman. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1883. \n\nWei Yuk's appointment to the Legislative Council was additional to and not in replacement of Ho Kai, and came about as follows. \n\nDuring 1894, the Governor, Sir William Robinson, forwarded to the Secretary of State a petition signed by the Honourable Messrs. Thomas Whitehead, Paul Chater, Ho Kai and other residents in the Colony, asking for unofficial membership in the Executive Council; \"free election of representatives of British nationality in the Legislative Council\"; \"a majority of such representatives in the Legislative Council\"; and freedom of the official members to vote according to their conscientious convictions.18 \n\nThe Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, criticized the petitioners' demands as lacking in clarity on the ground that the petitioners \"asked for the free election of representatives of British nationality without reference to the qualifications of the voters\". Thus if the petitioners intended that only those from the British Islands should vote and be eligible for election, this would exclude the Chinese who comprised nine-tenths of the entire population. He dismissed the claim to have a majority of elected representatives,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205723, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\n23\n\nmerchants in this Colony. In all necessary measures to that end, I know that I can rely upon the whole-hearted support of this Council\". At the same meeting, the Senior Unofficial member, Sir Henry Pollock, paid the following tribute to Sir Shouson Chow and Robert Kotewall; \"During the last seven months, in particular, we have felt indebted not only to Sir Shouson Chow but also to his Chinese colleague on the Council. We, Sir, behind the scenes, can appreciate perhaps more fully than the general public the work of the Chinese members of this Council during the period I have referred to”. \n\nOn 9th July 1926, Sir Shouson Chow was also appointed the first Chinese member of the Executive Council, following the death of Sir Paul Chater who had served on that Council since 1896.26 Although the appointment was made on personal grounds, it was evident that political considerations also came in, viz., to pacify anti-British sentiment in China and to further encourage the loyalty of local Chinese towards Hong Kong. \n\nSir Shouson Chow served on both Councils until 1930, when he resigned from the Legislative Council. He continued, however, to be a member of the Executive Council until he retired in 1936. He died many years after the war, in 1959, \n\nWhen Lau Chu-pak retired from the Legislative Council in 1922, he was succeeded by Ng Hon-tsz who was born in 1877 and was compradore to Shewan, Tomes, Ltd. He was a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1907 and was a founder of the Tsan Yuk Hospital. He was at various times a member of the District Watch Force Committee, the Sanitary Board and the Council of the University of Hong Kong. He served in the Legislative Council for only two years and died in 1923 while in office. After his death, Sir Henry Pollock remarked at the Legislative Council meeting held on 10th May 1923 that Mr. Ng had always been a \"wise, sound and faithful councillor”. \n\nMr. Robert Kotewall, who succeeded Ng Hon-tsz as a member of the Legislative Council in 1923, was born in Hong Kong in 1880. Educated at the Central School as well as the Diocesan Boys' School, he was a noted English as well as Chinese scholar and was a very good speaker. After a distinguished career in the Hong Kong Government until 1916, he turned to business and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205724, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "24 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nfounded a company named after himself. He was also General Manager of Chinese Estate, Ltd., and adviser to the Hong Kong and Yaumati Ferry Company. He was Honorary Adviser to the Chinese Government as well as the Kwangtung Provincial Government. In 1924, he turned down a Chinese offer to be ambassador to England. He was a member of the Legislative Council for 13 years, from 1923 to 1936, and a member of the Executive Council for 5 years from 1936 to 1941. He was created a knight bachelor in 1938.\n\nThe big strike of 1925 was followed by a boycott of British goods and shipping in China until 10 October 1926, resulting in a serious economic depression in Hong Kong. Mainly through the persuasiveness of Robert Kotewall a special loan of £1,600,000 with an interest rate of 5½%, was arranged from the British Government to assist the merchants of the Colony until normal trading was resumed. Because of this, the Chinese gave him the nickname of \"Silver Tongue\". Sir Robert Kotewall died after the war in 1949,27\n\nIn 1929, the Legislative Council was enlarged through the initiative of the Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, who was a noted Chinese scholar. The number of officials was increased from eight to ten, including the Governor, and the number of unofficials was increased from six to eight. Of the two additional unofficial members, one was to be a Chinese and the other a Portuguese. Thus the number of Chinese unofficials was increased from two to three and the Portuguese community was represented for the first time on the Council by Mr. Jose Pedro Braga.\n\nIn addition to Sir Shouson Chow and Robert Kotewall, Dr. Tso Seen-wan became the third Chinese member of the Legislative Council in 1929. Dr. Tso, born in 1868, studied law in England. In 1896 he started his practice as a solicitor in Hong Kong together with a partner named Hodgson. In 1902, he, Dr. Ho Kai and some other Chinese leaders were responsible for the founding of St. Stephen's Boys College. He served on the Sanitary Board in 1918 and was appointed a J.P. the same year. As early as 1916, he was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. by the University of Hong Kong, and in 1928 and 1935 was awarded the O.B.E. and C.B.E. respectively. He served on the Legislative Council from 1929 to 1937 when he resigned.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205738, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "38\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nMany of the points mentioned above can be further developed. What interaction was there between gentry leadership, she-hsüeh, and kinship? How were the 'catchment areas' of she-hsüeh established? Is there a relationship between these elements and marketing communities? What was the pattern of consultation which preceded the mobilization of militia? What sorts of relationships were invoked and in what order? How effective were militia as fighting units? How was logistic support provided? Such questions are relevant, not only to moments of opposition to the British, but also to a more complete understanding of social structure and organization in rural Kwangtung at this time. The resistance to the occupation of the New Territories constitutes a 'case-study' which, in conjunction with Wakeman's analysis, provides a further opportunity to attempt at least partial answers to these questions.\n\nDescription of the New Territory.\n\nThe New Territory, it was originally styled in the singular, though currently used in the plural, is an irregularly shaped peninsula jutting down from the coast of Kwangtung toward Hong Kong Island.37 The extremity of the peninsula had been ceded to Britain by the Convention of Peking, 1860. In 1898 an additional 356 square miles were added to the Colony's land (see map at rear of volume).* The territory is surrounded by water on all but its northern boundary and 33 islands account for about one-quarter of its area. Rugged hills and mountains range across the peninsula from northeast to southwest. The eastern section is, therefore, an area of hills and small valleys, while the western and northern sections comprise a large and fertile plain which extends across the Sham Chun river to the mountains in the north of the district.38\n\nJ. H. Stewart Lockhart, Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong at the time of the lease, estimated the population of the territory to be 100,000, living in 423 villages.39 This population was not evenly distributed. For instance, the western plain supported 23,020 people, living in 59 villages. The much larger eastern section of the territory is said to have had a population of only 20,870 living in 182 villages.40\n\n* Plate 21.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205742, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "42\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\ncoterminous with the standard marketing areas mentioned above, each taking its name from the appropriate market town. The fourth tung, Sheung U, was larger. It included much of the eastern section of the territory, from San Tin and Sheung Shui in the north to Sai Kung in the southeast. Within it were the markets of Shek Wu Hui, Tai Po, and Sai Kung. The extent to which these divisions were the units of organization for the resistance movement will be discussed in the conclusion.\n\nThe Occupation of the New Territory in 1899.\n\nThe resistance to the occupation of the New Territory is one of the forgotten episodes in the Colony's history. Present-day government publications dismiss it with a line: \"the British take-over in April 1899 met with some initial ill-organized armed opposition...\"5 Major-General W. J. Gascoigne, who commanded the British forces in Hong Kong at the time, took a different view: \"I am confident that if this rising had not been so promptly met from all sides as it was, it would have assumed very formidable proportions, as it is now discovered that it had been most carefully planned beforehand.\"52 In the paragraphs below an attempt is made to reconstruct the development of the resistance movement, the sequences of events being divided, for purposes of exposition, into three phases: Prelude to Resistance; the Resistance Movement; and the Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath.\n\nPrelude to Resistance — August 1898 to 27th March, 1899,53\n\nAlthough the Convention of Peking was concluded in June 1898, the take-over of the New Territory did not occur until April of the following year. In the interval there were various portents of impending British rule which can have done little to reassure the inhabitants of the territory. In August of 1898 Stewart Lockhart toured the territory and made enquiries about many aspects of social life. At about the same time agents of a Hong Kong land syndicate began to operate in the area. Their object was to acquire land which might appreciate in value as a result of either government purchase, or, the expansion of commercial activities. Unscrupulous methods were used to persuade reluctant owners to sell their land. For example, the syndicate's agents were the authors of a rumour that the Hong Kong government intended to expropriate all privately owned land. It was believed that the syndicate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205754, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "54 \n\nR. G. GROVES \n\nOn 2nd June Rev. Schaub wrote that the \"literati of Pan T'in had a meeting with the headmen of the six large market places in their neighbourhood.\" He continued, \"most of the collected elders of the various villages were very reluctantly promising some help, but after all they came to an agreement that they would send 500 men from each market place when the Indian troops should really come to Pan Tin.\"3 Meanwhile, the villagers of Pan T'in were constructing trenches between their village and Li Long. \n\nOn 5th June Rev. Schaub reported that fortification work was still in progress. He had heard that \"members of the rich and prosperous clan Tang in the city of Tung Kun ... are behind the scenes, that soldiers and weapons are coming up from there.\" Rev. Schaub continued, \"last Saturday a messenger came from one of our out-stations, 15 miles from here... to bring us the news that the various market places in that region had also a gathering to discuss their plans.\"74 \n\nRev. Schaub enclosed his own translation of a gentry placard posted in a nearby market town. It begins with a denunciation of the barbarians, and continues: \n\n44 \n\nTo fight the barbarians, I propose in a rough way: (1) to get the funds. It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is also not right that the various confederations should pay the costs. Some of these places have a large population, and many fields... but for instance Thonglak (alias market of peace) could not do this. It is a small place and there is not a large population... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together to ask our Government for help \n\n**75 \n\nBy the end of June it was clear that the British did not intend an expedition against the villages of the interior. The occupation had, however, become involved in larger diplomatic issues between Britain and China. It dragged on throughout the summer until 13th September, when the last of the British forces withdrew behind the frontiers of the Colony. In the interim much of the Sham Chun valley was left without any form of Chinese government. On the day the British forces finally quitted the valley \n\nPage 60\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205762, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "62\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\n44 Skinner, op. cit., Part 1, p. 27. The markets of the northern district of the New Territory seem to have been dependent primarily upon Sham Chun, rather than upon several intermediate markets. This may be an example of what Skinner terms a marketing system in a \"topographic cul-de-sac\". Ibid., p. 21.\n\n45 Baker, Hugh D. R. \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. VI, 1966, p. 31.\n\n46 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 82ff., gives an account of the origins of the Ts'at Yeuk. The character yeuk may be translated as 'covenant', or 'agreement'. The seven covenants' were a confederation of seven groups of villages within the Tai Po marketing area.\n\n47 Papers Extracts, op. cit., p. 192.\n\n48 Hayes, \"The Pattern of Life.\", op. cit., p. 9.\n\n49 Freedman, op. cit., p. 81.\n\n50 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 201ff.\n\n51 Hong Kong 1963, Hong Kong, 1964, pp. 363ff.\n\n52 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 587-8.\n\n53 The following account has been assembled, somewhat in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, from two sources: Hong Kong. Correspondence (June 20, 1898 to August 20, 1900) Respecting the Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, Eastern No. 66, Colonial Office, London, 1900; Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899. Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1900. Specific references will be given only for quotations.\n\n54 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. A brief discussion of the activities of the land syndicate mentioned in the preceding paragraph is to be found in Endacott, G.B., A History of Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, London and Hong Kong, and Paperback Edition, 1964, p. 265, who says: \"The main problem of the take-over was not military but administrative. A land syndicate of Chinese among whom it was suspected Ho Kai [Dr. Ho Kai, a Chinese unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong] was one, had bought land at a fraction of its value by spreading the rumour that the British would seize all land. Blake threatened to restore this property, but the land problem proved too baffling for him to carry out his threat.\"\n\n55 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. Wakeman, op. cit., Chap. V, discusses similar charges made against the British at Canton almost sixty years earlier.\n\n56 One recipient was Liu Wan-kuk, of Sheung Shui. His support for the resistance appears to have been half-hearted throughout. On at least two occasions he protested: \"the villages in our Division have no plans. Moreover, our commissariat and arms being insufficient, how can we offer effective resistance? We request your Division [Yuen Long] to decide on the plan of campaign and we will follow your instruction\". The dominance of the Yuen Long Division—and of the Tang lineages within it—was to become increasingly obvious as the resistance movement developed. Papers Despatches, op. cit., p. 72.\n\n57 Translated in Correspondence, op. cit., pp. 138ff.\n\n58 Baker, op. cit., pp. 35ff.\n\n59 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 147.\n\n60 Ibid., p. 148.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205771, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "TUNG KWU ISLAND\n\n71\n\nit was chipped on each edge to take a rope or rattan band, indicating later use as either a net-sinker or a hammer; perhaps both, as it seems water-worn. The material is a welded tuff, a very common rock type in Hong Kong.\n\nFrom shore below sand cliff at south end of isthmus, which had been cut through: hand hoe, found below the original centre of the sandbank, roughly chipped from a pebble of banded rhyolite, and showing slight signs of wear at the acute angles of the trapezoid formed by its outline.\n\nRounded stone of hard welded tuff, worked into shape by pecking to make a rolling-stone of the type used in the Polynesian game known as 'LAFO' in the Uvea and Tonga islands, or the game of bowls practised in the Hawaiian islands. This rolling-stone was found on the west beach about 20 yards from where the hand hoe lay, and near the sand cliff.* It appears slightly roughened at the centre of each smooth side, possibly to give a better grip. This is not the only rolling-stone found on the Colony's beaches: another in my collection comes from Castle Peak, and is close in shape and size to the specimens shown in the British and Honolulu museums.\n\n3. Found loose: exact find position not known:\n\nStone of pentagonal shape, sides unequal, with signs of hammering at the long point and on one edge. The side between the point and the worn edge has been flaked to some degree of sharpness, while the other sides are left flat. The rock resembles a fine-grained grit, and must have been imported.\n\nTwo small stones shaped like the point of a knife, one of a fine-grained shale, the other of a thin-bedded shale with lenticles of grit. The former shows edges polished and curved so as to meet at a point, now broken off. Possibly used as grave goods. Semi-circular stone of gray shale with pinkish stains, chipped on outer edge, and with inner edge hollowed out by chipping or pecking. The shape is very roughly that of the ritual jade (#), the image of the god of the North in the belief of Chou times.\n\nStone axe polisher of white muscovite-bearing sandstone, originally used for arrow straightening and polishing; four of its five used sides have been slightly worn hollow,\n\nStone adze, half-shouldered, with one side polished flat from butt to edge, and showing chipping on its edge caused by use; made from a fine-grained hard gray shale,\n\n*It can be seen in the centre of Plate 3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205794, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "94\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nnecessary for the late King? He would be welcome then, that is in 1852. At the same time he took the initiative in improving trading conditions. Monopolies were partly removed and duties on imports and exports reduced. For a moment it seemed that Siam's foreign relations could be improved without formal treaty and the British Government did not press the matter. But in fact there was much to be done, and with a new British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong it was opportune to resume discussions.\n\nSir John Bowring was a very different diplomat from his three British predecessors, Crawfurd, Burney and Brooke or the American envoys Roberts and Ballestier. He was an intellectual, a radical reformer, a disciple and editor of Jeremy Bentham, a linguist who could prattle in a dozen languages, an ex-Member of Parliament and a writer of hymns, an inveterate talker, a man with limitless energy and a Victorian capacity for pomposity and self-glory. After a career of business, politics, writing and self-appointed diplomacy in the courts of Europe, Bowring, being short of money, accepted public office as Consul at Canton. That was in 1849 when he was fifty-seven. Some five years later he became Governor of Hong Kong, Superintendent of Trade and, most glorious of all, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary responsible for relations with China, Japan, Siam and all countries in the Far East.\n\nBowring's five years' Governorship of the island colony on the coast of China was anything but successful. Some of his senior officials were incompetent and even corrupt, and he was unpopular among the British merchants. Worst of all he precipitated the second Anglo-Chinese war by sending warships to bombard Canton over a quite unworthy incident. But he was completely successful when he sailed to Bangkok in March, 1855, to negotiate a treaty with the Siamese.\n\nMost of the detailed business of the negotiations was done by Bowring's young assistants, his son John C. Bowring, an employee of Jardine, Matheson and Co. in Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, his secretary, who was later to have a distinguished career as Consul at several ports on the China coast, (Mongkut referred to the young men as \"Mr. Parkes and Your Excellency's upspring\".) But it was Bowring and King Mongkut who created the favourable atmosphere which allowed progress to be rapid and the discussions congenial. It was clear from the start that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205833, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "THE MAPPING OF HONG KONG\n\n133\n\ndid not exist, with contours at 5 ft. vertical intervals (or spot-heights on flat reclaimed land) and adding contours to the detail sheets already surveyed by ground methods, and\n\n(1) mapping all of the New Territories* not already mapped (including the islands) below the 600 ft. contour, at a scale of 100 ft. to 1 inch with contours at 10 ft. intervals and adding contours to the detail sheets already completed by ground survey.\n\nThis involved a total of:\n\n(1) 364 new sheets (detail and contours) at 1/600 scale (50 ft. to 1 inch) and adding contours to 173 more at that scale, and\n\n(2) about 730 new sheets (detail and contours) at 1/1200 scale (100 ft. to 1 inch) and adding contours to 347 more at that scale.\n\nThe air photography, taken at altitudes of between 2700 and 4000 feet, depending on the terrain and the scale of mapping, was completed by early February 1963. The next stage was the fixing of control points (co-ordinated on the Colony grid and with accurate levels) to form a framework on which the plans would be plotted.\n\nThe supply of the control point data, and the precise identification of each point on the photographs was the responsibility of the Survey Branch. This work was completed in early 1968, by which time a total of some 1,550 control points had been fixed.\n\nThe photogrammetric plotting was carried out in the contractor's offices at Boreham Wood in England and the first \"machine-plots\" were forwarded by air freight to Hong Kong in July 1963. Each sheet had to be checked on the ground and any detail which could not be clearly seen and identified on the photographs had to be surveyed by surveyors from the Survey Branch. In areas where there were many trees a considerable amount of important detail was obscured from the air and on some sheets several weeks' field work was required.\n\n* Excluding a strip near the Sino-British frontier where air photography was not permitted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205841, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "141\n\nTHE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTERI*\n\nOn the Centenary of the Copy in the R.G.S. Collection\n\nRONALD C. Y. Ng†\n\nIn 1860 a young Italian priest arrived in the British Colony of Hong Kong to join the Mission of the Propaganda in the Roman Catholic Diocese there. Interrupted frequently by ill health, he stayed only a few years in the Colony and in the adjoining Chinese District of San On (Hsin-An Hsien, now known as Bau-An Hsien) in the Province of Kwangtung, in preparation for a later distinguished career in northern China. Compared with those long years of successful missionary work in the capacity of Bishop of Honan, Fr. Simeone Volonteri's early efforts were little remembered and his biographer devoted only a small section in an introductory chapter to the description of his labours in Hong Kong and its vicinity.\n\nPadre Ho, a name derived from the transliteration in the local dialect of the first syllable of his surname, was a well-liked priest among the Hakka rice farmers in the District. He was a man of tremendous zeal and was reputed to have converted an entire community on an island off the coast and nine other villages to the Catholic faith. His youthful keenness and his love of the country and the people led him, together with his interpreter and colleague, over land and water to almost every settlement in the District. A most remarkable fruit of his four years' professional labour was undoubtedly the San On District Map 'drawn from actual observations', a frequently consulted historical and geographical document for those interested in the area, especially of the period before the New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898. However, his modesty dissuaded him from acknowledging directly on the map his due share of the credit in bringing to the public this 'first and only map hitherto published'. Within two years of\n\n*This article was first published in the Geographical Journal Vol. 135, Part 2 (June) 1969, pp. 231-5. It appears here with the consent of the author and the kind permission of The Royal Geographical Society who have also provided the full-scale reproduction of part of the original map that appears as Plate 15 of our Journal.\n\n† Dr. R. C. Y. Ng is Lecturer in Geography, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205927, "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": 7, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "EDITORIAL\n\nWriting to me recently, Mr. Cranmer-Byng, first editor of the Journal and now Professor of History in the University of Toronto, commented that there had been a great advance in recording Hong Kong's recent past in the last ten years'. Happily these ten years have exactly coincided with the period since the Journal first began publication, and the decade has indeed seen a notable change in the condition and extent of Hong Kong studies. A considerable number of post-graduate students and faculty members, mainly from American and British Universities, have spent varying periods of time here and most have published the results of their studies, in learned articles, books, and doctoral theses. Students and staff in our own two universities have also conducted research into Hong Kong subjects, although the main impetus has come from outside the Colony.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch has continuously sought out these scholars to take part in its lecture sessions and symposia; and to get them to place this work in the Journal. In both these aims we have been generally successful, and the lecture lists and Journals over the last ten years show that we have served to bring their work to the attention of members here in Hong Kong by means of the spoken and the written word, and to a wider public abroad. In this way, the Branch has provided a convenient outlet for new work on local subjects, whilst the regular appearance of the Journal has encouraged these scholars to entrust their work to us for publication.\n\nAs Editor, I would like here to thank my colleagues on the Council whose knowledge, contacts, and good offices have helped to bring the Branch into contact with visitors engaged in local research, and to extend my appreciation to the scholars themselves for their willingness to place their findings before us. If the Branch has been of assistance to them, they may also be assured that they have been of service to us. A Journal is as good as its contributors, and we have been singularly fortunate in the calibre of our authors over the past decade. To them we offer our thanks. We hope, too, that they will continue to make their work available and that they will encourage their research students and colleagues", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205962, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n37\n\nand those on leave, in order to discover, at any moment in time, the actual number of cadets administering the affairs of the colony. However, they formed an administrative corps d'élite: a minuscule band of officials with the same values and from the same social background. They were always in short supply: but in time they changed the style of government in 19th century Hong Kong and routinised its operations. The object of this paper is to examine some changes brought about by the introduction of Sir Hercules Robinson's cadet scheme in 1861,3 and to explore the lives of a few expatriate officials, those who formed the apex of a colonial society with its complicated gradations of race, caste, class, occupation and office.\n\nSuch a research task is not a supererogatory one: Sir Ralph Furse, Director of Recruitment, Colonial Service 1931 - 48, affirms that 'in most colonies the Civil Servant is the Government, and not the servant of Government'24 Sir Ralph's obiter dictum is particularly applicable to Hong Kong in the late nineteenth century. At that time it was a small territory with a population squeezed into a few urban enclaves, where everyone lived cheek by jowl and officials were highly visible and often met in the street. In such a constricted society the quirks of an official, given the system of government, often influenced important administrative decisions, over which the general public could exercise little control. The inclusion of the New Territories in 1899 within the administrative framework of Hong Kong did not substantially alter these facts of life; for a long time, certainly until the re-establishment of British rule in 1945, the New Territories remained curiously peripheral to the older, established areas of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula.\n\nThe cadet scheme instituted by Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of Hong Kong from 1859 - 1865, grew out of a pressing need for correct interpretation and translation in government, especially in the courts. For the first twenty years of its existence, the Colony had very few officials apart from the notorious and devious D. R. Caldwell (at one time General Interpreter to the Government and Registrar-General) who had adequate command of Cantonese and were able to communicate with the mass of the immigrant Chinese population, most of whom were Punti and Hakka. The actions of government were stultified by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205963, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "38 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nmutual incomprehension of Chinese and Europeans. Only a few missionaries had a working knowledge of the Chinese dialects spoken in Hong Kong; but missionary effort went mainly into the evangelisation, conversion and education of the Chinese, and most missionaries, many of whom were not British, were antipathetic to the Colonial Government, whose raison d'être in their view, judging by the contents of the contemporary publication The Friend of China, was to protect the opium interests of the great European hongs. Eitel claims there was in 1854, apart from the missionaries, 'not a man left in Hong Kong thoroughly acquainted with both the written and spoken languages of China'; and in 1859 there were said to be only three men in government service, (excepting Lobschied, the Inspector of Schools) who had some knowledge of Cantonese; but only one, the Interpreter of the Supreme Court, 'was at all acquainted with the written language and that imperfectly'. The Chinese could not bridge the gap either: there were few educated Chinese and fewer who could understand English. In 1867, an editorialist in the China Mail averred that 'we can safely assert that the average knowledge possessed by the compradore class in Hong Kong is almost entirely useless in any situation of official responsibility'.8 \n\nAbove all else Hong Kong needed a group of officials with competence in spoken and written Chinese, especially the former; and, although this was less understood at the time, it lacked officials with an understanding of the structure of Chinese society (of what we would call today the social anthropology of the Chinese). Sir Hercules argued, in defence of his scheme, that it was quite impossible to conduct the government of 120,000 Chinese without proper interpreters who knew their language; but Eitel probably comes closer to the nub of the matter with his declaration: “English education among the Chinese people of the Colony, and Chinese knowledge among the English officials of Hong Kong are the two factors upon which the success of the general scheme of English colonial policy to a great extent depends....\" Communication with the Chinese was needed not merely for social and cultural contacts but for reasons of social control over a Chinese lumpenproletariat, without a stake in the Colony. \n\nThe scheme initially propounded by Sir Hercules to the Hong Kong Legislative Council on 23 March 1861 was designed primarily to establish a staff of interpreters, to be used in the courts,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205969, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "44 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nHong Kong, needless to say, was not Africa, and the Hong Kong cadet did not spend his working life in the bush adjudicating the disputes of unsophisticated natives. He worked mainly, unless one of the District Officers in the New Territories, in a many-layered urban society, in which were to be found a number of extremely rich and some highly erudite Chinese. The population of Hong Kong was related in terms of race, language and culture to that of China, the home of an ancient civilisation; and cadets spent two impressionable years learning the language of that country and something of its splendours, and its miseries as well. I suspect many cadets were deeply impressed by their contact with the culture and civilisation of the Chinese, that a process of 'mandarinisation' often took place, especially among those working in the Registrar-General's Department (the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs) where official documents were published in the same form and style as those of the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy.31 I suggest that cadets were paternalistic towards the local population, but that their paternalism was Confucian in spirit and understood by Chinese. Their background and training, in its historical context made this era of cadets not unacceptable to, though not necessarily liked by, Hong Kong Chinese with memories of the behaviour of Chinese officials across the border. British officials acquired in Hong Kong, then, a gloss from the population they ruled. Sir Frederick Lugard, 'in gentle derision', called cadets 'the twice-born';32 and Reginald Stubbs, on a special mission from the Colonial Office to Malaya and Hong Kong, exclaimed in 1910 that they were prepared to advance claims to act for the Almighty'.33 Exposure to life in an English public school and then to life in an Eastern Colony, led not unexpectedly to this consummation of belief. \n\nThe contribution made by cadets and ex-cadets to sinology and scholarship in general is impressive. One has only to take note of the publications of such officials as Alfred Lister, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, R. F. Johnston, G. R. Sayer,34 S. F. Balfour,35 Walter Schofield,36 Soame Jenyns,37 R. A. D. Forrest,38 and K. M. A. Barnett.39 Many were also members of learned societies; and a substantial number acquired not only compulsory Cantonese but a knowledge of other Chinese dialects, such as Hakka and Mandarin; a few specialised in Japanese; and those who worked in the Police, Hindi or other Indian languages.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205978, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n53\n\n19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937.\n\n21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health.\n\n22 James Legge \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173.\n\n23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: \"The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”.\n\n24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912.\n\n25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: \"Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings\".\n\n26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5.\n\n27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6,\n\n-55", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205994, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINATOWN IN HONG KONG:\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\nDAFYDD Emrys Evans\n\nIt seems unrealistic to talk of a 'Chinatown' in a place as obviously Chinese as Hong Kong. But for a very long time, there was indeed an area thought of by the Europeans as a part of the city into which they would not normally go. This area has, right from its inception, been known as \"Tai Ping Shan' or Mountain of Peace, after the Chinese name for the mountain the Europeans called Victoria Peak. When the British arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of 1841, the north shore of the island was substantially unoccupied, there being nothing more than scattered huts between the village of Sai Ying Pun in the west and Wong Nei Chung in the east. The principal site for the new city lay in the present Central District of Hong Kong, and the first areas built up by the Europeans (apart from the waterside godowns and houses which extended from the Central Market to Causeway Bay) lay around the present Central Magistracy but rapidly extended within the first three years of the Colony's existence east and west of that spot. Although a small number of Chinese obtained grants of land in this area it is true to say that the town was exclusively European (with, of course, a number of Parsee merchants from British India) from the line of the present Garden road as far as the present Aberdeen Street and up the hill to Hollywood Road. At the time of the Colony's inception there were never more than a few hundred Europeans contrasted with several thousand Chinese who came as tradesmen and artisans. Where, then, did the Chinese live?\n\nApart from the small town that Jardine, Matheson & Co. built out at East Point, there were three principal areas where the incoming Chinese settled at first. It is known that in the early days after June, 1841 a good many matshed huts sprang up on the hillside to the west of the area later to be the site of the main part of the town (and these were destroyed by the great typhoon in August, 1841) and one stretch of the waterfront was 'taken over'. As early as August 1841 the 'Lower Bazaar' was forming in the area of what later became Jervois Street and Bonham", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206078, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH \n\n153\n\nmigrations, keeping only a semi-Chinese culture in the walled cities such as Pun Yü.\n\nEven in the Tang dynasty from the seventh to the tenth centuries it is not possible to trace any record of migration of peasants from the North. The earliest families must have died out or have been cut off so completely that they forgot their kinsmen. The settlement of peasants was accompanied by much fighting with the aborigines. At that time elephants and crocodiles existed in South China. The vegetation was tropical and the work of deforestation for agriculture was tremendous.\n\nHowever, the task was begun by soldiers. At various points garrisons were established by the T'ang emperors to protect the coastal trade and to keep the natives in order. These garrisons were known as T'un (屯) or soldiers who were settled on the land. We shall be able to give an example of the importance of these garrisons in attracting the settlement of peasants when we describe the history of Tun Mun or Castle Peak.\n\nThe colonisation of Fukien by Chinese peasants occurred much more rapidly than that of Kwangtung. There is in fact no record of any conflict between the aborigines and there is reason to believe that the Chinese were even welcomed by the inhabitants, In fact Min Yüeh became during the T'ang dynasty a Chinese colony. The Chinese settlers must have intermarried with the inhabitants. The cause of this may well have been the migration south west into Kwangtung of the early fiercer tattooing and water-fighting aborigines due to the pressure of more civilised peoples. In any case the blending of the Northern Chinese and Min Yüeh cultures had the effect of making the Chinese for the first time a maritime nation. During the Tang dynasty the Chinese began to build boats and to open a new centre of trade, Ch'üan Chow, which began to compete with the older centres of Canton and Chiao Chih.\n\nBut to return to Nan Yüeh. During the T'ang dynasty until almost the 10th century the pure Chinese population of this region must have been comparatively small. It consisted of garrisons, officials appointed to collect dues from the foreign traders, traders and exiles. In addition, there must have been a large semi-Chinese\n\n10 Li Chi-Formation of the Chinese People.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206123, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "196\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nBut in a local and a directly utilitarian point of view, the author is encouraged to believe that his work should not be placed as a candle under a bushel. This wealthy and most important Colony stands in the midst of the Sun-on District, and it seems to betoken a feeling in rear of the age, that the topography of the immediate neighbourhood should be a matter of perfect indifference. To the naturalist, the traveller, the sportsman, and the Missionary, the information should be acceptable, to say nothing of its political value. Besides, for police purposes in dealing with the all prevailing evil of piracy, when the subtlety of the Mandarin is considered, the author cannot doubt the value of his work to the British authorities.\n\nHe therefore calls attention to his Map, and solicits the favor of subscriptions to enable him to publish it.\n\nREVD. S. VOLONTIERI, Mission, Apost.\n\nHongkong, 10 May, 1866.\n\nA CASUALTY OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION\n\nBefore the New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898 the villagers on the British side of what became the new border area at the market village of Sha Tau Kok were accustomed to worship in the Man Mo temple (X) there. After 1898 this temple was located on the Chinese side of the Border, but this apparently made little difference to the religious practice of local people thereafter, even after the Communist take-over in 1949.\n\nOne of the images in the temple was that of Tin Hau (A), the Queen of Heaven who is a popular goddess among boat people and villagers near the seashore in the Hong Kong area. The people of three Hakka villages on the British side of Sha Tau Kok, namely Tan Shui Hang, Tong To and Sha Tsui which in 1961 had a total population of around 1,000 persons, were particularly accustomed to visiting the Man Mo temple to worship Tin Hau. When the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution developed in China in 1966 Red Guards singled out temples for particular attention, and it seems that iconoclastic activities also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206125, "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nknown geologist and archaeologist. A few notes and articles from his pen on Hong Kong subjects appeared in Vols. 8 and 9 (1968 and 1969) of this Journal.\n\nThese pile houses are the habitation of Tanka,(4) the boat people of South China, and Tai O has long been a considerable fishing port and market town, indeed the principal and only one of any size on Lantau Island. At the 1911 census of the Colony the land population was 2248 persons and was probably outnumbered by the floating population which stood at 5413 for the whole of Lantau. The pile huts were probably there long before the British took over the New Territories in 1899 following the Convention of Peking, 9th June, 1898. One of the early administrative reports of the District Officer, South (1911) mentions taking over responsibility from the Harbour Office for issuing licences to pile dwellers at Tai O Creek, when 221 new matshed permits were issued at $1 p.a., and in 1916 it was stated that there were still as many as 350 matsheds there.\n\nFires were always a hazard to these dwellings of wood and palm leaves. A big fire was noted in the 1916 report and it is no surprise to read in a later report of a really big one in 1926 when 300 matsheds were destroyed. Fortunately there was no loss of life, due, it was related, to it being high tide at the time of the fire.\n\nTyphoons, too, were a constant menace to these frail structures and in 1927, the year after the big fire, the District Officer notes that a typhoon caused great damage to the matsheds.\n\nThe photographs at plates 26 to 29 are by Mr. Schofield, and the plans at Figs. 1 and 2 are re-drawn from his notebook. I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Katherine M. Schofield for permission to reproduce her husband's valuable notes. The italicised sentences are my additions. The aerial view of Tai O Creek at plate 25 is by courtesy of the Hong Kong Government.\n\nMr. Schofield's Text\n\nThe accompanying plan (Fig. 1) is of a typical shed at Yee Chung (二涌) Second Creek, Tai O. It measures 9′ in width and 29′ 2′′ in depth (32′ 5′′ including the 1 metre deep veranda) and is 7′ high. It is 8′ above the waters of the creek at mid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206263, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\n\nCarl T. Smith*\n\n(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 15 March 1971)\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe opening of Tung Wah Hospital (1872)† marks the terminal date for this study of the emergence of a Chinese élite in Hong Kong. We are concerned, therefore, with the first thirty years of the colony's history, 1841-72.\n\nThe first decade was characterized by economic and social problems partially created by a shifting and generally irresponsible population. During this period, there was, however, a small number of settlers who were establishing themselves and their families with the purpose of making Hong Kong their permanent home, of acquiring capital, and of investing in real estate. As the Colony entered into the 1850s, this group increasingly assumed a position of leadership. It was recruited from a few successful contractors and builders, several government servants, compradores of foreign firms, and Chinese Christians attached to missionary groups.\n\nThe second decade of Hong Kong's history was marked by an influx of population and capital caused by disturbed conditions in South China created by the Taiping Rebellion. This influx turned into an exodus when hostilities began between the British and Chinese in 1857. But war brought more compradores to Hong Kong as foreign firms moved down from Canton.\n\nIn the third decade, there was a revival of trade, and a growing merchant class provided its share of élite. By the end of the\n\n* Rev. Carl Smith is Lecturer in the Theology Division in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and has been associated with the College since 1962.\n\n† It is difficult to know what date to give to the origin of Tung Wah Hospital. In 1869, a committee of concerned Chinese was organized. In 1870 (the usual date given for the foundation of the Hospital), the Tung Wah Hospital Ordinance was passed and the foundation stone was laid by the Governor. The Hospital was formally opened by the Governor on 14 February 1872.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206267, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "78\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nfor the surname is, but the English in Hong Kong spelled it Tso, while the Portuguese in Macao used Chow. Thus in Hong Kong records a name is likely to appear spelled one way and in Macao yet another. For the period covered in this study, there was no officially approved system of Romanization in Hong Kong. Romanization was also influenced by the dialectal variations in the Chinese language itself: the spelling of a name might vary according to the place of origin of the individual, whether Hakka, Tiuchau, Fukienese or Cantonese. The sources often have a number of variations in the Romanized form of a name. I have used the form that occurs most commonly. The Chinese characters have been given wherever they are available, but they are not given on all source documents or other records.\n\nGOVERNMENT AND THE ÉLITE\n\nIn China there was traditionally a close connection between the government and the élite group. With the introduction of the imperial examination system the élite or gentry were recruited from the ranks of the scholars. Success in the examinations, appointment to government office, and the accumulation of capital and economic power were usually concomitants.\n\nObviously this relationship could not be duplicated in Hong Kong. In the years following the establishment of the Colony, there was a radical hiatus between the Chinese population and the colonial government. Their points of contact were few. As long as the Chinese did not create trouble, the Government was content to let the Chinese community manage its own affairs: the hope being, of course, that the management would be in the hands of responsible leaders. However, the social and economic conditions within the community, both before and after British seizure of the Island, mitigated against control being exercised by responsible individuals.\n\nOfficial government structures on the local level were at a minimum before the arrival of the British. Hong Kong was one of many \"barren rocks\" on the edge of San On (later called Po On) District, one of the least important in the Kwang Chau Prefecture. Originally San On had been a part of the Tung Kwun District but it had been separated in 1573. The separation left it small and insignificant. The limited exercise of government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206269, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "80\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nto the preservation of the national integrity; uneasy under the restraint of law and unscrupulous of the means by which they live, they abandon without hesitation their hearths and household gods, their birthright and their father's tombs, to wander, unrespected, whither gain may call them. The unsettled state of the Colony, and the vast amount of crime during its infancy afford abundant proof of the demoralizing effects of their presence... (More recently) Hong Kong has been invested by numbers of the Triad Society, the members of which under shelter of a political maxim ‘overturn the Tsing... and restore the Ming' perpetuate the grossest enormities. I have satisfied myself that most of the burglaries have been planned and attempted by members of this dangerous association.3\n\nFearon mentions in his report a person named Aqui as the most influential and wealthy of the native residents. He had rapidly risen from the lowly status of a bum-boatman. William Tarrant, an early historian of Hong Kong who was well acquainted with the early days, writing in 1861 comments that\n\n— there were some curious fish among the earlier native settlers; the leader of them is still living in Victoria, Loo Aqui, alias See Mun King. If all reports be true, Aqui was monarch of all he surveyed on the water about Hong Kong prior to our taking possession — that is to say, he was the Sea King who took toll from all that passed his squadron. This is of course rumour only; and we but mention it to say that the presence of Aqui on the island had much to do in keeping people of better character from settling, or even visiting the place.+\n\nGeorge Smith, the future Bishop of Victoria, visited Hong Kong in 1844 and gives an equally critical description of Aqui's activities.\n\nHe possesses about fifty houses in the bazaar, and lives on the rent, in a style much above the generality of the Chinese settlers, who are commonly composed of the refuse of the neighbouring mainland. During the war, Aqui acted as purveyor of provisions to the British armament and acquired some wealth. After the peace, he was at first afraid to return to the mainland, lest he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206271, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "82 \n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\ncollecting rent on over a hundred shops and houses. But in 1855, he was declared bankrupt. He had stood security for the administration of the estate of the Chinese merchant Chinam; the administrator had misused the property of the estate, and Loo Aqui had to pay up, throwing him into insolvency. However, anticipating this, he had previously transferred most of his property to his relatives. After his bankruptcy, he no longer appears as a public figure, although two near relatives, perhaps his sons, Loo Shing and Loo Chew (or as he is sometimes called \"Young Qui\") are on several of the later lists we have used to determine elite status. One of Loo Chew's sons was compradore for David Sassoon, Sons and Company in the 1870s; another son, Loo Kum Chun, in 1872 was Secretary to the Tung Wah Hospital.\n\nThe family of Loo Aqui was from Whampoa, and they were most likely Tanka or boat people. The Rev. Karl Gutzlaff, Chinese Secretary to the Superintendent of Trade, reports that \"the most numerous class who have, since our arrival, fixed themselves on the island, are from Whampoa; many of them are of the worst characters, and ready to commit any atrocity\".9 They had defied the Mandarins' edicts prohibiting Chinese citizens from supplying provisions or other services to the British forces. However, it is not surprising they seized the opportunity to make a quick profit by collaborating with the enemy. They were a secondary caste within the Chinese social structure and were deprived of certain rights. As boat people, they had had a long association with foreign shipping. In recognition of their valuable services to the British, they, along with others, were allotted land in the new town. The Tanka, on leaving their boats for land, soon put aside their distinctiveness and merged with the general population, though they long maintained control of trade in cattle, fish, and prostitutes.10\n\nHong Kong government authorities were much concerned in the first ten years of the Colony's existence about the type of Chinese who came here. Conditions were not conducive to attract substantial Chinese of respectable background, who could strengthen Hong Kong's economy by promoting local and south-east Asian trade in Chinese products. There had been some optimists who believed that the Chinese would welcome the opportunity to live and trade under an \"enlightened, benevolent government\", but they had underestimated traditional Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206272, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\nxenophobia and inbred loyalty to China as the motherland.\n\n83\n\nDescriptions of the type of Chinese settler are found in numerous reports Government officials submitted to London. In 1844 the Colonial Treasurer writes,\n\nIt is literally true that after three years and a half's uninterrupted settlement there is not one respectable Chinese inhabitant on the island.... The policy of the mandarins on the adjacent coast being to prevent all respectable Chinese from settling at Hong Kong; and in consequence of the hold they possess on their families and relatives this can be done most effectually. At the same time, I believe that they encourage and promote the deportation of every thief, pirate and idle or worthless vagabond from the mainland to Hong Kong.... No Chinese of humbler class will ever bring their wives and children to the colony. The shopkeepers do not remain more than a few months on the island, when another set take their place; there is, in fact, a continual shifting of a Bedouin sort of population, whose migratory, predatory, gambling, and dissolute habits utterly unfit them for continuous industry, and render them not only useless, but highly injurious subjects, in the attempt to form a colony.11\n\nIn establishing British government at Hong Kong, it was hoped that Hong Kong could lure away from Macao and Canton the larger part of the junk trade and thus make Hong Kong a centre of trade for the whole coast of Kwang Tung Province. Though a small beginning was made, this trade soon languished. Remarking on the absence of a substantial local trade with Canton, Gutzlaff states that this is because\n\nthere are no Chinese large firms at Victoria to receive goods in charge, and sell them as soon as there is a demand. Attempts to found such establishments have also been made, but have not succeeded from want of encouragement or on account of considerable individual loss. At the present moment (April, 1845) there remains unfortunately not one single large merchant from Canton in the settlement who is able to promote by his capital and influence such a desirable state. The whole business is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206277, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "88\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\none of the leading brokers and charterers of emigrant ships. In front of his lots he erected a wharf which he leased to the Hong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company after its organization in 1865. In 1860, he appeared in the Courts on the charge of piracy. In response to a request of the Mandarin of his home district in Hoi Ping for assistance in suppressing some Hakka bandits, Achoy had chartered the vessel Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy from Kwok Acheong, the P. and O. Company's compradore. Engaging some Europeans in the Colony he took them up to Hoi Ping where they attacked some Hakka villages. Achoy pleaded that he had not realized that this would be against British law and therefore threw himself upon the mercy of the court.19 He again assisted his home district in 1865 by supplying the local militia with western-made armaments. This earned him official recognition and a biographical notice in the Hoi Ping Gazetteer. In later years his constitution was affected by habitual opium smoking and he did not participate actively in public affairs. He died in 1871, leaving a large fortune.20 In 1857, the editor of The Friend of China described him as being \"no doubt the most creditable Chinese in the Colony\".\n\nTang Aluk, another contractor, though not as much of a community leader as Tam Achoy, was a generous benefactor of worthy projects. He was the largest contributor to the Chinese school book fund of 1859, contributing sixty dollars; Tam Achoy contributed fifty dollars and Kwok Acheong, the P. and O. compradore contributed twenty dollars; all other contributions ranged from ten dollars to fifty cents. The fact that Tang Aluk's name was that of \"Number Six\" indicates he was of humble origin. He began as a stone cutter. Most of them were Hakka, and it is probable that Aluk was of this group. In time he built up a successful contracting business. At his death in 1887 he left a large estate, much of which was in landed property. The administration of his estate involved many lawsuits among his heirs. A newspaper commentator observed that the estate was a gold mine for the legal profession as suits and appeals dragged through the courts for several decades after his death.2\n\nTHE MERCHANTS GROUP\n\n21\n\nHong Kong had difficulty in attracting merchants with capital. We have mentioned the abortive efforts of Chinam and several", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206283, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nChinese society, were eager customers. Purchased degrees was an easy way to acquire a social status which had previously been reserved for the scholars, government officials and gentry. The account of the Governor's visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878 published in The Hongkong Government Gazette states that \"there were present nearly three hundred influential Chinese residents from all classes of the community. Of those present some fifty or sixty were in their mandarin costumes.\"\n\n**\n\nWhen the second Sino-British War broke out in the late 1850s, the foreign firms at Canton moved down to Hong Kong bringing with them their compradores. This influx was an impetus to the already significant role compradores were assuming as leaders in the Chinese community. The compradores of the old-established Hong Kong firms formed the core of this leadership.\n\nIn the early days of the Colony the two leading foreign firms were Jardine, Matheson and Company and Dent and Company. One would expect, of course, that their compradores would be among the elite of the Chinese community. The earliest compradore of Jardine's that I can definitely identify is Ng Chook alias Ng Choong Foong alias Sooi Tong. At the time of the opening of the Tung Wah Hospital the newspaper account states that he was the oldest man on the committee, although his name does not appear on the official list of committee members. He died some months after the opening. His estate was administered by his son Ng Seng Kee (A), who was living in Shanghai. The first date I find for Ng Chook in Hong Kong is his purchase of the lease of the Central Market in 1848. I do not know if he is connected with Ng Sow and Ng Lok, both compradores originating from Macao, who bought and sold a great deal of real estate from 1842 to 1847. Nor if Ng Wei alias Ng Wing Fui (**) alias Ng Ping Un (e), who was a compradore for Jardines at Foochow in the 1860s and subsequently at Hong Kong, was a near relative of Ng Chook. Ng Wei was a member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee in 1883 and died in 1897 at Canton.\n\nIn 1861, two of the compradores of Dent and Company, the rival of Jardines, provided capital for a significant real estate development in Hong Kong. The large property where Dent and Company had their stables and residences for their Taipans was bought up by Chiu Wing Chuen and Yeong Lan Ko along with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206321, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "132 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nand workers. In one case, a District Watch Inspector arrested a member of the Secret Strike Party (the so-called Labour Commission) carrying illegal dispatches to union members, a fact duly noted in the Secretary for Chinese Affairs' report for 1925. \n\nIt is difficult to see how the Hong Kong government could have coped as well as it did with periods of economic recession after 1918, with years of labour unrest, with the rising tide of nationalism emanating from Nationalist China, without the strong support of the Committee, whose members between them sat on most of the ten other official Chinese committees and boards. The members of the District Watch Committee were strongly entrenched in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Clubs and they played a significant role in the Chinese Manufacturers' Association. They also occupied important positions in district associations, benevolent societies, guilds of employers and business associations. The power and influence of the Committee ramified down through such associations, so that the few were able to exercise political control over the many62. Thus the power of the Committee was diffused through many associations, helping to maintain what no doubt the government would call 'sensible attitudes' among the Hong Kong-born Chinese, the group that formed the vertebra of the Colony. \n\nThe District Watch Committee was re-established after the return of the British administration in 1945, the Committee containing the same names as in 1941. No further nominations were ever made. A hundred and one District Watchmen reported for duty in 1945-6 and carried on with their normal duties: patrolling streets, conducting enquiries in connection with boarding houses, guilds, and the protection of women and girls, and making general investigations on behalf of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. In addition, the force assisted the rice controller in checking black marketing in government supplies; they were also put on static guard duties at various premises requisitioned by government. But the pre-war system of soliciting private subscriptions for the upkeep of the force was abandoned in 1945: henceforth it was financed entirely by the government; and government soon decided that the strength of the force should gradually be reduced to about fifty men, which would be sufficient to deal with the special requirements of the Secretariat for Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206329, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "140\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\n44 Sir Robert Ho Tung was never a member of the District Watch Committee although he was at one time chairman of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee. Sir Robert's brothers—Ho Fook and Ho Kom Tong—and other relatives became members of the Committee.\n\n45 Sir Chau Tsun-nin, who served on the Committee, was the son of Chau Siu-ki, a prominent financier and member of the Committee until his death. Chau Siu-ki (1863-1925) was killed in the collapse of a house during an abnormally heavy rainstorm.\n\n46 I think one may conclude that by the time the Committee met the Registrar General most of the problems to be discussed had been thrashed over previously, most likely at the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce or at the Chinese Club, both located in Connaught Road. There was also a Compradores' Club.\n\n47 For an account of Ho Kai's involvement in Chinese politics see Harold Z. Schiffrin, \"The Enigma of Sun Yat-sen\", in M. C. Wright, ed., op. cit., pp. 246 ff.\n\n48 The Hong Kong Chinese General Chamber of Commerce was in close touch with the Canton Chamber of Commerce and members flitted between one and the other. Many members of the District Watch Committee had offices and businesses in Canton and invested heavily in Kwangtung enterprises. Many bought land.\n\n49 Ho Kai, however, believed in the 'Open Door' policy in China, which he thought would be beneficial to both China, Hong Kong and the West. See the letter sent to Lord Charles Beresford in Beresford's book, The Break-up of China, London, Harper and Brothers, 1899, pp. 216-233.\n\n50 This is made clear, I feel, by a perusal of the commissions of enquiry into the workings of the Po Leung Kuk and the Tung Wah Hospital. In both cases Ho Kai worked in concert with Lockhart to protect the interests of the Chinese community. Ho Kai was no yes-man. On the other hand, he did use his inside knowledge of government activities to line his own pockets. Endacott states that Ho Kai and his cronies were suspected of spreading rumours about British intentions in the New Territories before the takeover in order to reduce land prices. Endacott, op. cit., p. 263. See also Despatches and other papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, Sessional Papers, No. 32 of 1899, p. 20.\n\n51 For example, Ho Fook, Chau Siu-ki and Wei Yuk all died in office.\n\n52 This board was set up to oversee the working of the managing committee and to see that continuity in policy was maintained.\n\n53 See note 52. An important function of the Advisory Board was to see that money was spent wisely.\n\n54 The Committee controlled fee-paying cemeteries at Aberdeen and Tsun Wan. Burial was reserved for Chinese who had been permanently resident in the Colony.\n\n55 This Committee, like the others listed above, was under the chairmanship of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. Chinese temples were controlled, in accordance with Ordinance No. 7 of 1928, by this Committee.\n\n56 The Chinese Recreation Ground was an open space situated off Hollywood Road. Funds derived from the rents of stalls in both Hollywood Road and the Yaumati Public Square in Kowloon.\n\n57 Before 1941 there were 9 Chinese Public Dispensaries controlled and maintained by a committee under the chairmanship of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. They were originally established to help combat plague.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206350, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A SHORT HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN HONG KONG\n\nJAMES HAYES*\n\nOn the occasion of the disbandment of the Hong Kong Volunteer Corps in May 1866, His Excellency, after expressing his thanks for time, exertions and money spent for objects so essentially Public, went on to express his belief that the spirit which originated the Volunteer movement would be found to exist fresher and stronger than before, if any real and urgent necessity were to arise for defending, by force of arms, the rights of the Crown, or maintaining the supremacy of the Law in this Colony. The Hong Kong Volunteers would doubtless in such emergency come to the front again more numerous and efficient than ever!\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThere have been military volunteers in Hong Kong for almost as long as there has been a Colony. Hong Kong was occupied in 1841 and the first volunteers were established thirteen years later, in 1854. However, the existence of a Volunteer force does not make Hong Kong unique. In this respect, as is shown below, it takes its place in the great movement which, in its modern re-incarnation, was created by patriotic fervour in the British Isles\n\n* Mr. Hayes is a member of the administrative branch of the Hong Kong Civil Service. He is a reserve officer of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) and has been Hon. Editor of this Journal since 1966.\n\n1 The Hongkong Government Gazette, 26th May 1866, G.N. No. 81.\n\nThe footnotes to this article are given at the foot of each page. The following abbreviations are used:-\n\nVol — The Volunteer, the current journal of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force published annually since 1950. Y.B. = Year Book of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps 1934-40.\n\nS.P. = Printed Sessional Papers of the Hong Kong Government, being papers presented to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.\n\nHan. Hong Kong Hansard, being the published proceedings of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. These were printed in the Government Gazette and the Hong Kong Daily Press. There are bound annual volumes in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206351, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "152\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nin 1859 and spread outwards through the self-governing and other territories of what became the Commonwealth and Empire. It extended to Britain's Eastern Colonies and to the foreign communities of the treaty ports of China and Japan where, from time to time, various alarms and excursions added self-preservation to the list of factors motivating the continuance or periodic resuscitation of volunteer corps.\n\nIn Hong Kong the Laws of the Colony early provided for their existence as a constitutional force. A succession of Ordinances established volunteers on a proper basis. The earliest of these was No. 2 of 1862, which was repeated with slight variation in No. 18 of 1882. An important re-modelling was carried out by No. 6 of 1893. This was followed by a Volunteer Reserve Ordinance No. 25 of 1910. Both these Ordinances were replaced by a further Volunteer Ordinance No. 2 of 1920, still modelled largely on the important 1893 Ordinance.\n\nVolunteer forces were the rule in the various foreign concessions in China, though save in the larger ones local volunteer forces tended to be formed and reformed whenever events seemed to warrant it. For example, the Shameen Defence Corps was formed after a serious riot in 1884 and was reformed from time to time, e.g. in May 1911 due to the unsettled state of affairs in Canton (see Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen 1859-1938 compiled by H.S.S. and privately printed about 1938, pp. 19-26).\n\nThe largest of the China volunteer units was, in time, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This originated at two public meetings held in April 1853 and its early doings are described in Chapter XXXV of Lanning and Couling's The History of Shanghai, Part I (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1921).\n\nInteresting details of its development are given here and there in Brigadier J. V. Davidson-Houston's Yellow Creek, The Story of Shanghai (London, Putnam, 1962). As in Hong Kong, the passing of the first emergency resulted in the demise of the Corps. \"Enthusiasm for the Volunteer Corps sank to a low ebb, members neglected to turn up for training and it was soon practically defunct\" (p. 58). The Corps was again raised in August 1860 with the onset of the Taiping rebels, when 107 volunteers came forward for enrolment (p. 65). However, after the successful operations against the rebels the Corps \"wilted and died\" and was wound up in 1867 to \"pay for its debtor's balance by selling its rifles\" although the rifle club continued to function (p. 90). The Corps was again formed in 1870 following the Tientsin massacre and continued in being thereafter, its numbers fluctuating between 250-350 for the rest of the 19th century (pp. 92-93). It then continued to grow in size, like the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to meet the difficulties of the troubled 1920s and the war with Japan.\n\nThe number of foreign residents in China is relevant to the size and location of Volunteer Corps. Some figures are given at pp. 292-295 of J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China, 4th edition, Hongkong, Kelly and Walsh 1903. There were, for instance, 4,424 foreigners in Shanghai (exclusive of those living in the French Settlement) in 1895 and 6774 in 1900. The Hong Kong Census of 1891 listed 10,446 British and foreign residents.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206356, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n157\n\nstatue now in Victoria Park at Causeway Bay which, up to 1941, stood in Statue Square, beside the Hong Kong Club in the centre of the city.\n\nContinuing with our survey, the period from 1893 up to the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914 was one of great activity for the Hong Kong Volunteers. It was one in which a great many important persons in the local community joined the Corps and when, reading between the lines, it was not only the 'done thing' to join the Volunteers but might be remarked upon if one did not. Pressure came from the Governor himself. When the Volunteer Reserve Ordinance of 1910 was in passage, Sir Frederick Lugard ended his statement by saying \"I think that every young Englishman in this Colony ought to join the Volunteers, and every Englishman who is no longer young ought to join the force which I hope will at once be enrolled when this bill has been read a third time.\"14\n\nThe Volunteer Corps' annual inspection reports for the period are available in Hong Kong. They were printed for tabling at Legislative Council, itself an indication of an important activity. They make interesting reading and show the vitality of the Corps and its impact on Hong Kong European polite society and on the Establishment.15 As stated, the Governors of the time took a keen interest in the Corps and it was Sir Mathew Nathan himself (Governor 1902-07 and formerly an officer of the Royal Engineers) who is credited with inspiring the formation in 1906 of the Mounted Troop—known irreverently as \"Mathew's Mounted Mugs\"16—and the institution of the Volunteer Reserve Association which was eventually embodied by Ordinance in 1910. Another, more temporary, inspiration in 1899 had been the calling out of the Volunteers to assist the Regulars in repelling an expected attack on Kowloon by New Territories' villagers in arms against the British take-over, and their part in the occupation of the Kowloon Walled City later in the same year.17\n\nMuch of this resurgence in the popularity of the military—a phenomenon which is usually held to be un-British—\n\n14 Han., 1910, p. 91.\n\n15 See S.P., 1894-1908.\n\n16 Vol, 1954, p. 50.\n\nwas\n\n17 See S.P., 1900, pp. 637-638, Y.B., 1940, p. 23, and Vol, 1954, p. 43.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206363, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "164\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nforeign nationals offering their services and having them accepted, the Rules and Regulations published in 1899 provided (Section 8) that no person was eligible to become a member of the Corps unless, inter alia, he was a British subject. It is interesting that neither the 1920 Ordinance nor its Regulations continued this requirement. It reappeared in the 1933 Ordinance, but only to the extent that all officers had to be British subjects, nothing being said about the men. We have corroboration that there were members who were not British subjects in the 1930s because the Commandant's Report in the 1937 Year Book mentions that 31 Dutch and German members had resigned during the past twelve months because they \"were in danger of losing their national status should they continue to serve\"39\n\nIt is not certain who was the first Hong Kong Chinese to join the Volunteer Corps. As stated above, he would not have had to have been a British subject until 1893. After that date he would have had to have been one and, in addition to age and health requirements, would have also had to be proposed by two members of the particular unit of the Corps to which he sought admission and be approved of by the Commanding Officer of the Unit and of the Commandant of the Corps, with his name, and those of his proposers, posted for not less than five days before admission (Section 9 of the 1899 Regulations). It is unlikely that these rules were designed to keep out Chinese. Indeed the thought that they might join probably never entered the framers' heads. It was not likely that Chinese would have been interested anyway, unlike Europeans other than British subjects, some of whom may have looked back with regret on the free and easy days of early volunteering in the Colony. As it happened, Hong Kong Chinese had more chance of admission than foreigners, as Hong Kong birth provided British nationality; and by this time many sons of the educated, well-established Chinese business families of the Colony would have qualified for entry had they been sufficiently interested in what, after all, would have been a strange environment. The 1920 Ordinance made no stipulations on nationality, which probably explains why a faded picture of the Armoured Car Company in 1926, shown at the Centenary Exhibition in 1954, features the late Sir Man-\n\n39 Y.B., 1937, p. 6.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206364, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n165\n\nkam Lo (1893-1959) as a private.40 He was Oxford-educated and a prominent barrister, related through marriage to the Ho Tung family, and thus could fit in. He was no doubt persuaded to join because of the emergency created by the General Strike of 1925-26; that is, if he had not joined earlier. It would be interesting to know whether he was the first, or among the first, Hong Kong Chinese to join the Corps.41\n\nBecause of the empire-wide Volunteer Movement and because of or perhaps despite two World Wars, the British volunteers have often been ex-Regulars, ex-Militia or, mostly, ex-Volunteers either at home or in other places. A few examples will show this general tendency over the years. H. H. Read, who sent a letter and photograph of the 1882 Volunteers for the 1937 Year-book, mentions that he had come out from England in 1882 “and having served in the 2nd Norfolk Rifle Volunteers (Windsor Review 1881) I joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Artillery which was commanded by Col. Crawford, R. A.”.42 Sir John Carrington, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, who was Commandant of the Corps 1896-1901, had served with the British Guiana Militia before coming to Hong Kong.43 Arthur Chapman, Commandant from 1907, had come to Hong Kong in 1889 as Assessor of Rates and had served in his native Yorkshire for some years as a member of the 1st East Riding of Yorkshire Royal Garrison Artillery (Volunteers).44 Many other examples could be quoted, including His Excellency Sir Thomas Southorn, Colonial Secretary and Officer Administering the Government in 1935 who, in his address to the Corps printed in the 1935-36 Year Book, was described as \"a Volunteer in Ceylon for many years\".45\n\nIn the later period, because of two world wars, the amount of previous military experience met with in the Volunteers has been considerable, particularly in the period between the wars when there were many persons in the Colony who had seen much service in 1914-18. When the Volunteers got going in earnest\n\n40 Vol, 1954, p. 240.\n\n41 But see note 28 above.\n\n42 Y.B., 1937, p. 28.\n\n43 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2 Vols, 1898): see index.\n\n44 Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 277.\n\n45 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206369, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "170\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nsupplied as Commandant.56 This trend intensified in the period after 1893. Indeed, in general terms, the 1893 Ordinance marks the transition from a private army to a public body subject to full military discipline and supervision and official financial scrutiny. This did not mean that public funds were to be spent lavishly on the Volunteer Corps. In the 1930s the Year Books speak rather wistfully of the fact that the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps was not treated so generously by its Government as were the Volunteers of the Colonial Governments of the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, and did not have 'a fairy godmother' such as the Shanghai Volunteer Corps possessed in their Municipal Council57 (though in fairness it should be stated that their economies were more prosperous than Hong Kong's at this time). For instance, the need for a new Headquarters was pressing at this period and negotiations with Government were slow but had by February 1936 reached the stage when, as R. S. M. Parkinson observed sardonically at the Sergeants' Mess Annual Dinner 'they could confidently expect the building up within the next decade'.58 Like other departments of the public service, the Volunteers had to present their case for funds and take their turn in the queue.\n\nThis account is no more than an introduction to the subject, which is large and important enough to deserve a full-length study similar to those of regular regiments of the British Army by professional military historians such as C. T. Atkinson, S. H. F. Johnston, and Marcus Cunliffe. However, even a short article demonstrates that Hong Kong Volunteers have a long and interesting history which in its military, community and social aspects is so much interwoven with the development of the Colony at large.\n\nFinally, Volunteering is required to generate its own momentum. In the pages of the pre-war Year Books, the post-war Volunteer Magazine and the letters and reminiscences of former Volunteers, there is abundant evidence of the spirit which has\n\n56 Endacott, p. 209.\n\n57 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 7 and 1938, p. 8.\n\n58 Y.B., 1938, p. 35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206389, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "180 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nChinese Customs' service, and a greater energy which has of late years been manifested by the Chinese Government itself. I have been told that the Customs' cruisers confine themselves to the inner waters, and act against smuggling and not piracy. It may be so; but smuggling and piracy may be considered as frequently only different branches of the same profession, the members of which will take to either as they think it safer, and likely to be more profitable for the occasion. That law and order are the rule increasingly in Hongkong and along the coast is a growing impression, and that impression is a surer preserver of the peace than the gallows, the axe, and the sword. Bad men are kept habitually obedient to the law by the form of justice armed with power in their mind's eye more than by outbursts of indignation occasionally aroused against them, and from which they always hope to escape.\n\nEre I leave the subject of crime, I may be permitted to say a few words on the police force of the colony. All along its history, the good organization of this has been perhaps the most difficult part of the duties of the Government. Experiment after experiment has been tried as to the constituents of the force; and as long as I can remember, that is, since the very first attempts at its formation, charges have been advanced against it of inefficiency, drunkenness, and openness to bribery. My own conviction has been for many years that the strength of the police force ought to consist of Chinese. I pressed my views on this point on Sir Richard MacDonnell soon after he arrived in the Colony, and he put them on one side. I stated them to the Commission which held its sittings on the subject during the present year, and I was glad to find that about one half of its members were disposed to coincide with me. I believe that the Chinese people are in the mass law-abiding and fond of order. I believe that there is a large body of Chinese merchants who have as great a stake in the Colony as the British and merchants of other nationalities have. I believe that by a cordial communication with them a body of native policemen might be obtained who would be sufficiently reliable, and who, with a smaller number obtained from home as the Government has lately done, a considerable proportion of its present force would keep the Colony almost free from crime. Give me a superintendent well skilled in the business of his department, and able to communicate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206400, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n191\n\nbut the area of those in China, so far as already ascertained, amounts, it has been said, to 400,000 square miles. All that will yet come in for the benefit of the world at large, and I hope in the first place for the benefit of the nation itself. If the movement of its Government seems to be thus far mainly in the way of military preparation, can we blame it? It would all be found but a very feeble affair in another struggle with ourselves; but I like to see the manifestation of a purpose in China to try and hold its own:-she is the gnarled oak, the growth of four millenniums, which will not bend to us as the sapling of Japan is doing.\n\nAnd we have given the Japanese little reason to do anything but love us, while we have given China much reason to fear us and hate us. I am not here to-night to express my views on the opium traffic, but I may surely ask, without giving offence to any one, whether, if we had forced that traffic on Japan as we have done on China, the relations between Japan and foreign nations would be what they are to-day. If there be a man here who thinks that there does not glow in me as true a British patriotism as in himself, I only say he does not know me; but I thank God that the United States preceded us in the opening of the Japanese Empire. Their treaty of the 29th July, 1858, recognizes the prohibition of the importation of opium, and that made by Lord Elgin, on the 27th of the following month, does the same, and with a very stringent addition. Thus one thing which has embittered and fettered our intercourse with China, and will continue to do so, so long as it exists, has had no place in our intercourse with Japan; and the result has been accordingly. It is in the evidence of Sir Rutherford Alcock before a parliamentary commission, that again and again Prince Kung declared to him that take away opium and Christian Missions, and there was no concession which the Government was not prepared to make to further the extension of legitimate commerce. We are suffering at this day in Hongkong from the opium traffic, as from nothing else. The Custom houses at the two entrances to our harbour do the greatest injury, I am persuaded, to the development of a healthy and extensive trade with all the seaboard of the south. They were founded on the ground of the smuggling of opium from the Colony. Take that away, and there is no locus standi left for their continuance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206460, "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": 8, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "the help they have rendered to the Society in its learned and cultural activities:\n\n20th January\n\n15th February\n\n15th March\n\n27th April\n\n19th May\n\n18th October\n\n17th November\n\n15th December\n\nProfessor L. Carrington Goodrich\n\n\"The Ming Biographical Project\"\n\nMr. James Hayes\n\nAn informal talk on the scope and activities of the 28th International Congress of Orientalists held in Canberra in January 1971 (illustrated with slides).\n\nThe Rev. Carl T. Smith\n\n\"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong”.\n\nDr. Hui-Ching Lu\n\n\"T'ai Chi Chuang: Its Principles and Practice\", (illustrated by a 15 minute film show).\n\nProfessor Woodbridge Bingham\n\n\"The People of T'ang China as we know them today\".\n\nDr. F. I. Tseung\n\n\"Chinese Medicine and its contribution to Modern Medical Science\".\n\nMr. M. J. Smithies\n\n\"Village Mons of Bangkok Province\" or \"The Survival of Good and Bad Ghosts Beyond the Traffic Jams\", (illustrated with slides).\n\nMr. P. H. Collin\n\n\"A British Officer in China, 1857-58\", (illustrated with slides).\n\nCouncil: During the period under review your Council met nine times and, naturally, much of the business dealt with was of a routine nature. There were however in addition a few important matters of general interest which called for the consideration and action of your executive body and these are now mentioned separately here.\n\nHon. Secretary. On the departure of Mr. J. L. H. Webster from the Colony (as foreshadowed in my last Report), Miss E. M. Bellord, also a member of the staff of the local British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206461, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Council office, was appointed to fill the vacancy of Hon Secretary as required by Article 11 of our Rules. You will, however, not find her name on the Council list in the papers sent you relating to the business of this Annual General Meeting, for she left the Colony on transfer, only a few months after taking over the duties of Hon. Secretary. We were fortunate in being able to persuade Mr. Michael Smithies, a member of the administrative staff of the University of Hong Kong, to undertake the secretarial duties. We are indeed fortunate in obtaining his services.\n\nThe Journal. During the first decade of its existence, The Journal has rightly become a recognized repository for information concerning eastern Asia, and is to be found in the shelves of many libraries of cultural and academic institutions throughout the world. Like all such publications however, the cost of maintaining its size and standard has risen tremendously of late and your Council has very reluctantly had to raise the selling price per volume from fifteen to eighteen dollars to meet this additional expenditure. This has been done however without affecting the free issue of one volume per member per year. Members are only affected if they wish to have extra copies; then they, along with non-members, will have to pay at the increased rate for both new issues and for back numbers.\n\nAccommodation. This is as much an institutional problem in Hong Kong as it is a problem for private individuals and business firms.\n\nThe problem affects us in two ways: accommodation for our library and the storage of our journals, and accommodation for our meetings. Regarding the former, for years we have been fortunate in having help from the Librarian of the University of Hong Kong, and from the Hong Kong Representative of the British Council. But in both these cases, our increasing needs can no longer be met without detriment to the space requirements of our friends. We have, therefore, now had to rent godown space for our own bulk needs, although the British Council has very kindly agreed to continue to house our library books on its shelves for the convenience of members. We are most grateful for this help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206491, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\nNo one dissented, whereupon\n\n33\n\nMuda Hassim then drew forth his sabre, and raising it, proclaimed in a loud voice, that any one who contested the Sultan's appointment, his head should be split in two. On which ten of his brothers drew their krisses and flourished them\n\n+\n\nAs we have seen James Brooke acquired Sarawak as a private individual; but there is little question but that elements within the Brunei court, centered upon Hasim and Bedruddin, which came to be known as the \"English party\" wished to bring the British into an alliance with them to further their own political ends, and they saw Brooke as an agency by means of which this goal might be pursued. Although given a pseudo-political mission by the Singapore authorities Brooke undertook no official duties for Britain until 1844 when he was appointed \"agent near the person of the Sultan of Borneo\", a \"special and temporary office\", and was commissioned to find a site for a naval station along the northwest coast of Borneo.\n\nWhen Labuan was purchased from Brunei and created a British colony Brooke became its first governor in 1847. The same year he negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan and was named consul to Brunei. His dual appointment from the Foreign and Colonial Offices came largely as a result of the reputation he enjoyed in England as a result of his successful battles against Borneo pirates. Not only was he popular with officers of the Royal Navy in the East who aided him in his anti-piracy warfare on the coast. His exploits had also been well publicised at home. In 1847 he returned to England, the hero of the day. He was fêted, given the freedom of the City of London, presented at Court at Windsor Castle, where the Prince Consort found him an interesting conversationalist, and was knighted.\n\nAt the end of the 1840s, then, Brooke found himself the possessor of three posts. He was Raja of Sarawak in his own right, and an officer of the Crown as Governor of Labuan and Consul to Brunei. The nature of his responsibilities in the three positions very soon created a conflict of interest situation and in 1854 he resigned his crown appointments.\n\n5 Aberdeen to Brooke, 1 November 1844, Foreign Office Series 12, Volume 2 (FO12/2).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206492, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "34\n\n!\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nThe issue of Brooke's status revolved around, firstly, the question of whether or not a subject of the Queen could hold the position as a sovereign prince of a foreign state; and, secondly, whether Brooke was in fact an independent ruler or a vassal of the Sultan of Brunei.\n\nThe issue, however, was not a burning one in the ministries of Whitehall. Despite the fact that Borneo was of concern to Britain as the guardian of the eastern flank of the South China Sea route to the China coast, and was to assume, gradually, more strategic value as first France and later Germany began colonial operations in the area, at mid-century Britain possessed a colony and naval station at Labuan and a (“good strong”) consular treaty with Brunei which gave her a certain measure of control, if she chose to indulge it, in Brunei's relations with foreign states. Most of the Colonial and Foreign Secretaries in London, until the 1870s were not very interested in defining precisely Raja Brooke's status,\n\nFor the most part, Whitehall grudgingly approved of Brooke's “civilizing influence\" in Borneo. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in 1846, offered naval support for the suppression of piracy, and during a later term of office gave standing orders to the Eastern squadron to visit Sarawak at regular intervals. But the Foreign Office generally held to the view that \"it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government that British subjects should possess territory on the mainland of Borneo\".\n\nLord Clarendon, when Foreign Secretary in the mid-1850s, came close to disavowing Brooke's position in Sarawak. In 1853 the Raja took issue with a Foreign Office statement that seemed to assume that Brooke was a vassal of Brunei. Clarendon minuted,\n\nIt seems to me that the various documents tend to prove how cautiously the government abstained from recognizing his (Brooke's) independence although in various ways the anomalous character of his position has been admitted.\n\nBut Clarendon did not leave it at that. When in 1855 Spencer St. John succeeded Brooke as Consul in Brunei he suggested to the Foreign Office that he also be accredited to Sarawak as an independent state. The Raja agreed and insisted that the new consul must receive his exequatur from him. This act would render the desired\n\n6 FO to Admiralty, 24 July 1846, FO 12/4.\n\n7 Clarendon minute upon Brooke to FO, 27 September 1853, FO 12/13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206494, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "36\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nSarawak. Was Brooke an independent sovereign prince, or was Sarawak a vassal state under the suzerainty of the Sultan of Brunei? And if a vassal, was it quite proper for a subject of the Queen to occupy such a position?\n\nThe Raja was anxious to make Sarawak over to Britain as a colony or a protectorate and so ensure the continued political stability of his state and the progress of his people. Very much in the tradition of Raffles in his Java period from 1811 to 1816, Brooke sought the extension of British interests in Southeast Asia, not merely for the sake of commerce and trade, but for the civilizing effect that the presence of British rule of law entailed. Like Raffles he found little to admire in Dutch colonial rule either in Java or Borneo. He wrote,10\n\nIf the British public be indifferent to the sufferings of this unhappy race, now for the first time made known to them they are not what I believe them to be, and what they profess themselves.\n\nIt was necessary to establish \"a proper British influence\" in Borneo.\n\nI conceive that policy dictates these measures at the present time, because in case of any delay it will no longer be in our power. From the distractions of Borneo, some European state must very shortly interfere in their concerns, and the supremacy of the Dutch government would be the knell of the British trade which now is carried on, and effectually stop all measures of improvement.\n\nAnd later, to tempt British strategists, he added,\n\nWe shall have a post in time of war highly advantageous as commanding a favourable position relative to China—we shall extend our commerce—suppress piracy and prevent the present and prospective advantages falling into other hands—and we shall do this at a small expense.\n\nWhen ministers in London answered with a cold \"no\" to all of Brooke's requests for a colony or a protectorate the Raja became angry and bitter. He threatened to sell Sarawak to Belgium or\n\n10 James Brooke, A Letter from Borneo, (pamphlet published by L. and S. Sealy, London, 1842), copy in FO12/1.\n\n11 James Brooke, Memorandum on piracy, 31 March 1845, FO12/3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206498, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "40\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\ngoverns it so well and cheaply for them, they will do nothing for him or Sarawak.\n\nWhen first France and then the United States and Germany showed signs of intruding into Borneo, or when they came close to a potentially threatening position over the important British lines of empire north and south through the South China Sea, or when the Foreign and Colonial Offices in London felt the hot breath of imperial competition, it was then that the offshore colony of Labuan and a by now weak little consular treaty with Brunei were found to be inadequate to justify, in the international arena, Britain's position in Borneo. Sarawak along with North Borneo and Brunei were incorporated into the British empire as protected states. Still for many years Britain assumed no responsibility for the internal administration of Sarawak, and adamantly refused any expenditure of imperial grants for the privilege of colouring these areas pink on the imperial maps of the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206517, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n59\n\nent Chinese he was largely instrumental in reorganizing the District Watchmen Force (a body of watchmen paid for by voluntary subscriptions from the Chinese community) and he obtained the appointment of twelve leading Chinese gentlemen as a supervising committee; he remodelled the Po Leung Kuk (a voluntary association concerned with the welfare of girls and young women); and he helped in the reformation of the Tung Wah Hospital and strengthened its committee of management.11 He was active, then, in setting up a number of official Chinese committees, linked to government through their special relationship with the Registrar General's Department, of which he was head. The Registrar General in all cases was ex officio chairman of the committees.\n\nLockhart's views on the importance of the Chinese element in the population are to be found in a trenchant report he submitted in 1894 to the Governor, Sir William Robinson, 'on the subject of a petition addressed to the House of Commons praying for an amendment of the Constitution of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.' This petition from Hong Kong taxpayers to the House of Commons owed its origin principally to the imposition upon the taxpayers in 1891 of an additional military contribution of £20,000 a year, a decision that irritated and excited particularly the European business community. In 1894 T.H. Whitehead,13 Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council and leader of the business faction, was granted six months' leave of absence from the Council and he took with him to England a petition signed by 363 members of the community — (in Lockhart's words) ‘284 British, 10 Anglo-Chinese, 3 American, 4 Portuguese, and 47 British Indians.' The petitioners sought the election of representatives of British nationality in the Legislative Council; freedom of debate for the Official members with power to vote as they desired; complete control in the Council over local expenditure; the management of local affairs; and a consultative voice in questions of an Imperial character.\n\nWith great dialectical skill Lockhart took the petition to bits and exposed the vacuity of its arguments. In his memorandum to the Governor he averred: 'Most of the taxes fall almost entirely on the Chinese. The only tax to which the British and other residents as a whole are subject in the same manner as the Chinese is the tax of 13 per cent levied on the rateable value of house", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206518, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "60\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nproperty in Victoria, a smaller rate being levied in out-stations. This tax yields annually about $470,000, of which over $350,000 are contributed by the Chinese and the balance by all the other nationalities combined. The petitioners, who are not in some instances British, and who do not in many cases contribute directly to the taxes, claim \"the common right of Englishmen to manage the local affairs and control the expenditure of the Colony.\" They have, however, carefully omitted to point out that the local affairs include Chinese affairs of which, as has been stated, they are generally ignorant and which the Chinese have shown no desire that the British merchants and other residents should manage, and to indicate that to the expenditure of the Colony of which they desire the control they contribute a very small portion. Petitioners do not surely wish to maintain that Britishers have an inherent right to control all expenditure be their contributions to the revenue however small! It would be interesting to know in what period of our constitutional history such a right has been asserted to be allowed.\"4 Lockhart went on to state that there was one male adult Englishman to every 160 adult Chinese and that the British population in Hong Kong was by no means a permanent one: 'the number of persons to quote the petition \"who have passed large portions of their lives in the Colony\" is very small. Their object in coming to the Colony is to acquire wealth and to return to Great Britain as soon as they possibly can. The most telling point made by Lockhart was that it is not surprising that knowledge of Chinese, their customs and their peculiar requirements should be a sealed book to the British resident, whose intercourse with the Chinese is of the most limited nature, being almost exclusively confined to a discussion of markets, goods, and prices carried on a jargon called “pidgin” English.'16\n\nLockhart's main argument, which was endorsed by the Governor in a despatch to the Secretary of State, was that a small group of European businessmen could not be allowed to exercise control over a mainly Chinese population; that this would be both unjust and unacceptable to the Chinese themselves; and that the Hong Kong government had a moral obligation to safeguard the legitimate interests of a predominantly Chinese population. The petition was rejected.\n\nLockhart's rise in the colonial service, as I have stated, was rapid. In 1889 he was gazetted an official member of the Legislative", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206526, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "68\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nLondon. His official rank corresponded with that of a Lieutenant-Governor, so that he received a salute of only fifteen guns compared with the seventeen of first-class Crown-Colony Governors, such as that of Hong Kong. But, as R.F. Johnston pointed out: 'his actual powers, though exercised in a more limited sphere, are greater than those of most Crown-Colony Governors, for he is not controlled by a (Legislative) Council.'33 Lockhart's official duties, which of course kept him extremely busy, were nevertheless limited in nature, and the tempo of life in the Territory did not change dramatically during his tenure of office, for after the lease was signed, little was done with the Territory. At first, it was thought that the port could be transformed into a fortified naval base like Hong Kong, but to do so would have been extremely costly and would have involved the construction of a long breakwater and extensive dredging work in the harbour. In fact, the port was never utilised as a strategic naval base; it became merely a naval rest centre and a place where the British China Squadron lay at anchor when it paid its annual summer visit to North China. A few visitors also arrived from time to time and stayed at its European-style hotel, and an English school34 attracted boys from China, Japan, and Hong Kong.\n\nLockhart was administering a mainly agricultural region, equivalent in area to a small-sized Chinese district magistracy (hsien). The leased Territory, with its population composed principally of fairly well-to-do peasant farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and artisans, was in composition like that of the New Territories which he had left. Lockhart did not feel called upon to alter drastically the life of this old, settled community, nor indeed was it the intention of the Colonial Office that he should. The Order-in-Council under which British rule in Weihaiwei was inaugurated stated: 'In civil cases between natives, the Court should be guided by Chinese or other native law and custom, so far as any such law or custom is not repugnant to justice and morality.'\n\nLockhart attempted, then, to preserve as much of the fabric of Chinese society as was possible. In his report for 1902, he wrote: \"With the policing of the territory at Hong Kong as a guide, it might have been thought that this question (the maintenance of peace and good order) was one easy of solution; but it required no long residence here to reveal that the conditions existing in the new territory of Hong Kong and those of Wei-Hai-Wei are widely different. In the former case, the natives had lived for about half a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206527, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n69\n\ncentury in close proximity to Hong-Kong, and were acquainted with its methods of administration and system of law and police, many of them, indeed being engaged in trade or working as labourers in that Colony. In the latter case, the Chinese of Wei-Hai-Wei had never had any experience of British administration until the territory was leased in 1898, and were, therefore, quite ignorant of the principles underlying that administration. Again the Chinese of the new territory of Hong Kong did not enjoy a good reputation for orderly behaviour, whereas the natives here have shown themselves law-abiding, docile, and orderly. After due deliberation I came to the conclusion that the most effective and economic plan would be to continue the system of policing the territory through the headmen of the villages and to retain it so long as it continued to work satisfactorily, instead of dotting Police Stations throughout the territory in charge of Inspectors, who would be unable to communicate with the people except through interpreters, a system which almost invariably results in corruption and malpractices. That system, which is suitable to the whole of the territory, except the town of Port Edward and the island of Liu Kung, is based on the fact that the unit of society is the family or village and not the individual as in the west. Headmen are appointed for each village or group of villages and are held responsible for the maintenance of peace and good order in their villages. If any trouble arises, the headman reports the matter and aids in making any arrests that may be necessary.\n\nThe principal source of revenue, as in the New Territories, was at first the land tax. In Weihaiwei this was based on the old land registers handed over by the Chinese magistrates. For many years past, R.F. Johnston wrote, 'every village had paid through the headman or committee of headmen a certain sum of money which by courtesy is called a land-tax. How that amount is assessed among the various families is a matter which the people decide for themselves on the general understanding that no one should be called upon to pay more than his ancestors paid before him unless the family property has been considerably increased.'35 The Territory under Lockhart's administration prospered, for in four years the Imperial Grant-in-Aid was reduced to less than one-third of its amount at the time when he first took office; however, owing to the reduction of the British Fleet in China in 1906 and the less frequent visit of men-of-war to Weihaiwei, the business of Port Edward was\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206538, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "80\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\n8 E. T. C. Werner, Autumn Leaves: An Autobiography, Shanghai, 1928, pp. 487-8. Werner, a student interpreter, studied Chinese in Peking in 1884. With him were two Hong Kong cadets -- Henry Francis May and Thomas Sercombe Smith. May became Governor of Hong Kong and Smith Puisne Judge in the Straits Settlements.\n\n6 E. H. Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others, London, 1903, p. 210.\n\n7 Ibid., p. 211.\n\n8 Lockhart's preface to A Manual of Chinese Quotations, 1st edition, 1893, p. iii. Lockhart also states: 'my attention was first called to the Ch'êng Yu Kao by my late teacher Mr. Ou-yang Hui.... I commenced to translate it under his guidance.'\n\n9 A report of Ho Kai's speech is given in one of a series of articles called Old Hong Kong by 'Colonial', published by the South China Morning Post (June 17, 1933-April 13, 1935). Mimeographed copy, University of Hong Kong Library,\n\n10 See, for example, T. O. Ranger, ‘African Reactions to the Imposition of Colonial Rule in East and Central Africa', in L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan (eds.), Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960, Cambridge, England, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 293-324; Lord Hailey, An African Survey, 2nd edition, London, 1945, pp. 527-8; and also J. D. Legge, Britain in Fiji 1858-1880, London, 1958, especially his ch. ix, 'Native Authority Systems'.\n\n11 For a more detailed account of Lockhart's design see my article, \"The District Watch Committee: \"The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xi, 1971, pp. 116-141.\n\n12 Hong Kong Sessional Papers (cited henceforth as Sessional Papers), no. 26 of 1896, pp. 425-427.\n\n13 T. H. Whitehead (1851-1933). See obituaries in the Times of 17 May, 1933, and in the South China Morning Post of 18 May, 1933. He was from 1883 to 1902 manager of the Hong Kong office of the Chartered Bank. Whitehead, a great imperialist, was a member of the Royal Empire Society, the Fellowship of the British Empire, and the China Association. The Times speaks of him as a typical Scot, of rugged energy and determination, and of great intellectual force.... In the domestic politics of Hong Kong Colony he took an active, not to say aggressive part.... In his retirement he was active in promoting emigration to the Empire, especially of boy scouts.\n\n14 Sessional Papers, no. 26 of 1896, p. 431.\n\n15 Ibid., p. 428.\n\n16 Ibid., p. 429.\n\n17 Most of the clerks in the Registrar General's Office were recruited from Queen's College. 'In March 1900, at the Queen's College Prize Giving, the Hon. Stewart Lockhart, C.M.G., said: \"I do not know what the Government would have done if it had not had the College to turn to when it wanted a staff at work in the New Territory, and I cannot give them any higher praise than to say they are carrying on their duties in a manner worthy of the College in which they received their education.\" See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College, 1862-1962, Hong Kong, 1962, p. 66.\n\n18 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit. vol. 2, p. 461.\n\n+3\n\n19 See 'Extracts from a Report from Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 9 of 1899.\n\n20 Ibid., p. 198.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206539, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n81\n\n21 'Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 32 of 1899, p. 13.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 36.\n\n23 Ibid., p. 65.\n\n24 Ibid., p. 69.\n\n25 'Report on the New Territory during the first year of British Administration', Sessional Papers, no. 15 of 1900, p. 252.\n\n26 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901', Sessional Papers, no. 22 of 1902, p. 4.\n\n27 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921.\n\n28 Alfred Hancock and his brother Sydney were partners in the firm of A. and S. Hancock of Queen's Road, Hong Kong. In 1906 Alfred Hancock had resided for over fifty years in Amoy and Hong Kong. In the 1920s the firm had moved to Des Voeux Road and the chief partner was H. R. B. Hancock, Lockhart's brother-in-law. The firm was still active in 1940.\n\n29 The walled city of Weihaiwei, captured by the Japanese in 1894, by the terms of the 1898 Convention was not under British jurisdiction but nominally under a Chinese sub-district deputy magistrate. The British sphere of influence extended for an area of 1,500 square miles east of the Leased Territory.\n\n30 On the Chinese Regiment see: Captain A. A. S. Barnes, On Active Service with the Chinese Regiment, London, 1902; C. E. Bruce-Mitford, The Territory of Wei-Hai-Wei, Shanghai, 1902, pp. 22-24; R. F. Johnston, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, London, 1910, pp. 82-3; and Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1906. The only servicemen left in Weihaiwei after 1906 were the small body of Royal Marines of the Island Guard,\n\n31 Johnston, op. cit., p. 82.\n\n32 L. K. Young, British Policy in China 1895-1902, London, 1970, p. 73.\n\n33 Johnston, op. cit., p. 80.\n\n34 The Weihaiwei School was opened with only four pupils in 1901 by a Mr. H. J. L. Beer. In 1903 a new school house was built near Port Edward, partly with the aid of a debenture loan subscribed by British subjects in Shanghai. The new school had dormitories for forty boys. The school, which took boys between ages of 8 to 14, was mainly for the sons of British expatriates. Pupils came from places as far apart as Mukden, Canton, Kobe, and Chungking. The school closed in 1925 when it became apparent that the rendition of Weihaiwei was close at hand. Weihaiwei's fine climate contributed to the school's success with expatriate parents.\n\n35 Johnston, op. cit., p. 96.\n\n36 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, K.C.M.G. (1874-1938). Johnston was educated at Edinburgh University and Oxford. He arrived in Hong Kong as an Eastern Cadet, fresh from Magdalen, on Christmas Day, 1898. In 1904, Robert Walter, Secretary to Government and Magistrate at Weihaiwei, was seconded for service as Emigration Agent at Ch'iu-wang-tao for the Transvaal Government and Johnston was appointed to take his place. In 1906 he was appointed District Officer and Magistrate and resided in the heart of the Territory. In 1919 when he took up his appointment as tutor he was Senior District Officer. In 1927 he returned to Weihaiwei as Commissioner. After the rendition of Weihaiwei in 1930 he became Professor of Chinese, University of London, and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Studies, 1931-37.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206542, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "84 \n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE \n\nMorrison of Peking, Sydney, 1967, p. 186. There is a blunt letter from Lockhart to Sun Yat-sen, who had protested against his banishment from Hong Kong in 1896, given in Harold Z. Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley, California, p. 145: 'I am directed to inform you that this Government has no intention of allowing the British Colony of Hong Kong to be used as an Asylum for persons engaged in plots and dangerous conspiracies against a friendly neighbouring Empire, and that, in view of the part taken by you in such transactions, which you euphemistically term in your letter \"emancipating your miserable countrymen from the Tartar yoke\", you will be arrested if you land in this Colony under an order of Banishment issued against you in 1896.' One feels that although this was an official letter it expresses precisely what Lockhart felt. \n\n70 Cadet officers (administrative officers) are still expected to learn Cantonese but the present standard is that reached after an eleven-week course at the Government language school; before the war cadet officers usually went to Canton for a two-year full-time course. \n\n71 Since writing note 46 above, I have found another reference to Lockhart's scholarship. James Dyer Ball writes in the second edition of his Cantonese Made Easy (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1887): 'Great care has also been exercised in a careful revision of the lessons, and here the author must acknowledge the great assistance rendered to him by the Hon. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, C.M.G., who kindly volunteered to assist him.' \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206547, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF\n\nHOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe pattern of residential development in Hong Kong today is the cumulative result of historical forces which began to exert their influence almost from the time when the colony came under British jurisdiction in 1842. It is therefore towards an appreciation of the current housing situation that this study outlines Hong Kong's efforts to provide homes for its people over the past 130 years. In tracing the course of history in this particular field it will be found that the dreadful living conditions which persisted in many districts in the last century, and even in more recent years, have been the combined result of an overwhelming demand for and critical shortage of accommodation; the general poverty of the population; the inadequacy of utility services; the exploitation of families desperate for a roof over their heads; and the difficulty of enforcing (and sometimes the lack of) suitable regulations governing standards of building construction, the provision of household facilities and overcrowding. However, on the basis of recent achievements the future seems much brighter.\n\nFounding of the Colony\n\nThe sea routes between Europe and China, first established by the Arabs in the 7th Century A.D., were reopened in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese who settled in Macau in 1557. Spanish, Dutch, English and French traders soon followed but during the eighteenth century the British merchants captured most of the China trade which comprised mainly exports of tea and silk. The East India Company initially held the monopoly of trade and Canton became the centre of business for the British merchants.\n\n*Dr. E. G. Pryor is Senior Planning Officer in the New Territories Planning Section, Crown Lands & Survey Office, Hong Kong. This monograph has been extracted largely from his Ph.D thesis, \"An Assessment of the Need and Scope for Urban Renewal in Hong Kong.\" The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Government of Hong Kong. Author's copyright.\n\nPlates 8-12 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206548, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "90\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nBesides their wider trading interests, the British in Canton had established a thriving trade in opium brought from India. The Chinese government regarded this trade with considerable concern, on the grounds that it was harmful to human welfare and also a serious drain on the country's finances. Early attempts by the Chinese government to stop the opium trade failed but in 1839 a Special Imperial Commissioner was appointed who forced the British traders in Canton to relinquish their supplies of the narcotic. The British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Elliot, consequently withdrew the English merchants to Macau and later transferred them onto ships anchored in Hong Kong harbour; subsequent events led to open hostilities between Chinese and British forces.\n\nIt was decided by Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, that a satisfactory settlement of the dispute would require either a commercial treaty with adequate guarantees to protect the interests of British merchants or the cession of one or more off-shore islands from which the traders could operate without restriction. A British expedition was despatched to China in 1840 to back up these demands and in January 1841 negotiations were held in Canton between Captain Elliot and Keshen, a Manchu Commissioner, whereby it was agreed by the Convention of Chuenpi that Hong Kong Island was to be ceded to the British (Figure 1).* A British naval force took possession of the island on 26th January 1841,\n\nThe Chuenpi terms were accepted by neither side. Elliot was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger and hostilities were renewed. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking on 29th August 1842 by which the island of Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity to the Crown and four additional ports besides Canton were opened to British traders. The island was formally declared a British Colony on 26th June 1843 and Sir Henry Pottinger was appointed the first Governor. Hong Kong was declared a free port and by the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue the Chinese were given free access to the island for trading purposes.\n\nThe Housing Problem Takes Root: 1841-1881\n\nAlmost from the day Captain Elliot raised the British flag on the northern shores of Hong Kong Island, a steady stream of artisans and labourers made their way to the Colony from the southern provinces.\n\n*Figures 1-8 will be found at the rear of the text.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206550, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "92\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nwith the law particularly, also, as the government lacked sufficient staff of adequate competence.\n\nThis situation became a source of some concern to Dr. Murray, the Colonial Surgeon, who in 1859 reported that:\n\nHong Kong presents no feature either in climate or position which should make it peculiarly unhealthy. Because of its situation, its natural advantages and its weather, Hong Kong should be the best drained, the best watered, and in every way, the best regulated of towns from a sanitary point of view.... Ordinance No. 8 of 1856 makes it unlawful to construct or reconstruct a house without a sufficient water closet and ashpit to the satisfaction of the Surveyor General. Houses recently built have been allowed to be erected without the slightest regard to any one of these particulars. The fact is there is legal machinery enough to enforce any and every reasonable requirement and to ensure the sanitary condition of the Colony but there exists an unaccountable objection to putting that machinery into action.\n\nIn 1860, the Kowloon Peninsula up to Boundary Street came under British sovereignty under the Convention of Peking (Figure 1) and this provided more room for urban growth which the prospering trade of the port had stimulated. Yet more Chinese came from the Mainland to seek employment in Hong Kong and, after a few years, to return to their families. Despite the continual outflow of people, the newcomers arrived in such numbers that by 1865 the population had increased to some 125,500 persons of whom 63% were adult males, which reflected the \"frontier\" character of the Colony. Demand for accommodation became more acute and, in the continued absence of the adequate enforcement of building regulations and the general lack of satisfactory water supplies and other public utility services, the general sanitary condition of the Colony became the cause of some concern particularly to Dr. Murray who, during his term of office from 1858 to 1872, repeatedly drew attention to the exceedingly unhealthy state of Hong Kong.\n\nMcCoy took over as Colonial Surgeon in 1872 but died soon after, and his place was filled by Dr. Phineas Ayres in November 1873. Ayres was outspoken over the state of the Colony's public\n\n1 Quoted in Wellington A. R., Public Health in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1930, p. 13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206552, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "94\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nThe Governor was favourably inclined to the petition but at the same time wished to \"save face\" for his Surveyor General. He thus expressed the view that he \"... would be glad to learn that the memorialists could see their way to conforming to the essentially Chinese style of dwelling . . . and which, while economising space to the utmost, admits of a certain amount of light and ventilation through the small square spaces left at the back, called smoke holes.\"4\n\nIt is worth taking some note of the contents of the petitioners' statement, particularly in respect of the \"deep rooted\" living habits of the Chinese and the limited capacity of the tenants to pay rent as both these issues emerge in subsequent chapters of Hong Kong's history.\n\nBy 1876 the population of Hong Kong had increased to over 139,000 of whom 93.5% were Chinese. Steady growth occurred over the next five years so that by the time of the 1881 census 160,400 persons were resident in the Colony, representing an increase of 15.3%. It is relevant to note at this juncture that over the period under review (1841-1881) development was heavily concentrated along the western part of the northern coast of Hong Kong Island and that, in view of the steep terrain, a series of reclamations had to be formed to provide room for new urban growth (Figure 2). The expense and difficulty of creating building sites consequently placed a high premium on land and this, in turn, provided developers with a good reason to justify the fullest exploitation of their properties.\n\nThe Chadwick Report\n\nAfter some 40 years of growth and general neglect over both the enforcement of building and health regulations and the provision of sanitary services, the condition of the city by 1881 was extremely bad. The British Government therefore sought the services of a sanitary engineer, Osbert Chadwick, who presented a report in 1882 giving his assessment of the situation in Hong Kong. Chadwick's report provides some most interesting information which is worth considering in depth in view of events in subsequent years.\n\n4 Ibid., p. 372.\n\n5\n\n5 Chadwick O., Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1882.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206615, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n157\n\npay during his suspension to the date at which his post was abolished, but he could do no more. The injustice was acknowledged but, as the Friend of China put it, it was \"but miserable redress in a pecuniary light.\"32\n\nTarrant's connection with the Central Market ceased on 28 December 1849 when he assigned his quarter share of the profits to Chow Aqui, one of Hong Kong's biggest Chinese businessmen at that time.33 Chow had extensive property interests in the Lower Bazaar area, had run Hong Kong's first theatre and had had the opium monopoly for a few years. Curiously enough, allegations had been made a few years previously that he was able to use Government police officers to protect his monopoly and Caine was inevitably linked with the allegation. The lease of the Market came to an end in 1850, the term being expired but Chow was given a renewal for two years from 10 March 1851 at the same rent and the lease was further renewed on two subsequent occasions.35\n\n16\n\nThis account illustrates two quite diverse matters. First, it shows the extent to which Chinese in Hong Kong adapted themselves to the institutional demands of a British colony. Although the whole system of law was alien to them, the transactions memorialised in the Land Office show the extent to which the possibilities of English Law were utilised to their commercial advantage, even though on some occasions it is difficult to follow at this remove the complexity of their dealings. If they did sometimes find themselves on the losing side in the Supreme Court, there were a significant number of Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong itself whose names recur over the years and who were, presumably, successful. Several have been named in this article but there were perhaps about a dozen or so in this category.* They, in addition to the Europeans, learnt to take advantage of the British system.\n\n37\n\nThis account also touches on the problem of the integrity of the colonial Government of the time. While it is true that the Chinese who came to the island may not have expected what the European would have regarded as an incorrupt government, it is also true that the circumstances of the colony in its early days gave opportunities for corruption which some were not slow to use. Though there was little at this time or later that could definitely be proved against\n\n* On this subject see Rev. Carl T. Smith's article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" at pp. 74-115 of the 1971 Journal. (Ed).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206616, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "158\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nCaine, allegations were repeatedly made of his complicity with persons of ill-repute, in particular with Daniel Caldwell, for many years a Government servant and consort of the 'Jonathan Wild' of Hong Kong, a Chinese called Wong Akee (or Machow Wong).\n\nAfter this incident of the Market extortions, which most wanted to believe anyway, Tarrant turned his attentions towards the Press, becoming—how is unexplained—the owner of the Friend of China on the departure from the Colony of the editor who had taken his side in market dispute, John Carr. Tarrant was able to use the editorial columns to pursue Caine and his subordinates on every possible occasion but in the end it was Caine who won. In 1859 he was forced out into the open and instituted a Crown prosecution for criminal libel against Tarrant. This ended with Tarrant being jailed for one year. When he was released before the end of his sentence Tarrant was a broken man and left the colony for Canton, where he continued to publish the Friend. He paid a visit to Hankow in 1861 and settled later in Shanghai but his journal never flourished thereafter.\n\nIt is, perhaps, a pity that the issue of corruption in government in Hong Kong, some of which was so devastatingly exposed by Sir Hercules Robinson, a later Governor, in 1861 in his Report to the Home Government on Civil Service Abuses in Hong Kong, was so clouded by the personalities of those who concerned themselves with the issue. The undoubted corruption which government servants like Caine permitted, even if they did not actively participate in it themselves, could have at least received a check if the then Governor, Sir John Davis, had had the courage of his own convictions and the confidence of the public and ordered a proper investigation into the Market scandal. Instead, the rumours which had started in 1841 when Caine was alleged to have allowed piratical activities for a price, rumours fed by the Lock Hospital scandal and the Tarrant affair, continued unabated until 1861, by which time most of the objectionable public servants had left the service.\n\nNOTES\n\nA Friend of China, 19 June 1842.\n\n2 The Lower Bazaar, located in the present Bonham Strand area, came into existence when A. R. Johnston, who had control of the administration of the island when Sir Henry Pottinger was absent from the colony prosecuting the war against China, allowed Chinese who had helped the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206617, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n159\n\nforces during hostilities against China to settle and allotted them small lots on the waterfront. The Upper Bazaar which lay in the area of Graham and Stanley Streets consisted also of relatively small areas granted to Chinese who were presumptively useful to the nascent colony as tradesmen. The Lower Bazaar was almost totally destroyed in the great fire at the end of 1851 and the Upper Bazaar was removed in 1844 and its inhabitants resettled in Taipingshan.\n\n3 See Gordon to Pottinger, 10 February 1844 [CO129/V/f.141].\n\n+ Evidence given by Colonel Malcolm to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China, answer to question 4633.\n\n5 Davis sought to let as many monopolies go as possible to private individuals for what they were prepared to give. Thus, in addition to the markets, he let out also opium, salt, and quarrying monopolies.\n\n6 Lease Register Volume C, f.94. The lot was leased as Marine Lot 38. The lease registers referred to are the Registers of the Land Office in which all dealings in crown land were recorded. The actual transactions themselves are also recorded separately as 'Memorials' and reference is made to them by number. The numbering was done according to the order in which they were registered. I am indebted to the Registrar General of the Government of Hong Kong for allowing me access to the records of the Land Office and for permission to publish material derived from that source.\n\n7 Memorial 122.\n\n8 Memorial 143.\n\n9 Memorial 258.\n\n10 Friend of China, 7 July 1847.\n\n11 Memorial 383.\n\n12 In this article, the romanisations found in the Land Office records are used even where they do not correspond to those either in the Wade-Giles system or current usage.\n\n13 Memorial 304.\n\n14 Ibid.\n\n15 Memorial 345.\n\n16 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n17 Friend of China, 14 July 1847.\n\n18 And in so doing, incidentally, infringing the provision of the Treaty of Nanking, 1842, which allowed British subjects to proceed only to the \"Treaty Ports\" and to nowhere else in China.\n\n19 Friend of China, 14 July 1847. Tam Achoy's market was known as the Kwang Yuen and in the disastrous fire in December 1851, the fifty-one houses which comprised the market were destroyed: see Hong Kong Register, January 1852. Tam was referred to a few years later as the \"most respectable Chinaman\" who made a practice of going into the witness box to speak for the character of accused persons. He remained in Hong Kong until his death in the 1870's and was one of the founders of the Tung Wah organisation, a charitable body still functioning in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n21 Hong Kong Register, 19 October 1847; Friend of China, 23 October 1847 and 18 December 1847.\n\n22 The Editor of the Friend (John Carr) claimed to have seen Hwei's accounts and that they revealed the \"squeeze\" payment.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 206659, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n201 \n\nA NOTE ON AGRICULTURAL CHANGE IN HONG KONG. \n\nIt is trivial to point out to those who are somewhat acquainted with the situation of Hong Kong that the British Crown Colony is in the midst of an intense process of change, embracing most if not all of the sectors of the society. This does not apply only to the city areas on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, where the postwar explosion of industrialization has left an easily observable impact on the urban landscape and on the people who have congregated there. Even the New Territories—some 360 square miles of open country—have been involved in the spectacular process of change, and not even the most remote villages have remained unaffected by the larger society's striving for new economic achievement. Thus it is not only a question of certain minor industries moving away from the costly land in the industrially and commercially developed areas along the Hong Kong harbour to find new locations in the New Territories. Social life has changed there.\n\nA feature of change, which is easily observable in the New Territories, is a common switch-over from the cultivation of rice to horticulture and floriculture. This replacement of one agricultural system for another has been hinted at repeatedly in the literature on the New Territories. However, these remarks have hardly been accompanied by a penetrating analysis of this phase of change. Therefore, in this short paper, it is my intention to engage in a brief discussion on the economic-agricultural transition which has taken place in the Sha Tin valley in the New Territories where I conducted fieldwork in two stages between 1967 and 1969. I shall argue from the baseline of the social anthropologist rather than that of the rural economist. My focus of interest will be on social forms which could be seen as resultants of processes involving economics.\n\nIt goes without saying that vegetable growing is no recent innovation, neither in the Sha Tin Valley nor in other areas of the New Territories. Higher level land on the sloping mountain sides has always been used for the cultivation of certain vegetables. Evidence at hand seems to indicate that these vegetables were planted entirely for local consumption. Today this is definitely so in many mountain villages in the area. It is clear also that this production of lesser importance occupied land of no vital interest. Rather, horticulture gave subsidiary crops only. The primary land was the irrigated rice land, and to this, villagers allocated most of their interest and their work. The present-day situation is very different, and the Sha", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206660, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTin Valley is characterized today by the everywhere existent, superbly thriving garden beds.\n\nThe development of intense vegetable farming in the traditional society of China seems to have been linked to the proximity of urban central places with great agglomerations of people. Urban marketing has, so it seems, been a prerequisite for a one-sided specialization on vegetable production. The geographic distribution of horticulture has been limited by one particular cultural barrier. Chinese palate calls for very fresh market goods, and every tendency in the marketed products to perish will considerably decrease the saleable price. Thus transportation to the city markets must be short or rapid. As a consequence, the urban areas were often surrounded by limited zones of intense horticulture.\n\nDuring the latter half of the 19th century, the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon emerged as a result of foreign intervention and planning. Their growth was related to the attraction the new Colony had on a countryside impoverished under the strain of a fast-increasing population. The appearance of the new urban districts stimulated the interest in the surrounding rural areas, which later were to become New Kowloon and the New Territories, for the cultivation of cash crops. This was within a sector with reasonably good communications to connect with the city markets. According to available information, the start was made on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, where the old villages seem to have taken advantage of the new development quite early. The continuous spread of the network of transportation, initiated after the British territorial expansion to the New Territories in 1898, when new roads were constructed and the Canton-Kowloon railway was laid out through the district, gave rise to new opportunities and the possibility to expand the zone of intense vegetable cultivation beyond the Kowloon Foothills. The Sha Tin valley is located just behind this range of mountains, but, contrary to what one might expect, vegetable farming was not to become important there until recently, in the post-Pacific War period. The obstacle against a switch over to horticulture may be found on the managerial side of production, but this by no means accounts for everything. An important barrier to change may be found in the social values and knowledge of the village population.\n\nIn the Sha Tin valley, paddy fields are still to be seen scattered around in the area. The New Territories are situated in the double-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206742, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "TRANSACTIONS OF THE\n\nCHINA MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY, 1845-6\n\nH. A. RYDINGS*\n\nThe connection between the China Medico-Chirurgical Society and the original China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society has been related elsewhere in the Journal (1). Until recently, however, it was not possible to learn much in Hong Kong about this predecessor to our own Society.\n\nNow the University of Hong Kong Library has obtained a Xerox copy of the Transactions of the China Medico-Chirurgical Society, from the original volume in the Library of the Royal Society of Medicine, one of only two copies recorded in the British Isles (2). This Xerox copy will be kept in the University's Hong Kong Collection. The volume runs to 80 pages, slightly smaller than those of this Journal, and the title page, here reproduced, gives the names of the officers and committee. Two names appear as Secretary because the first, Dr. B. Hobson, had to return to Europe for family reasons during his term of office (3).\n\nNot a great deal has come to light about most of these leaders of the medical profession in the early days of the Colony, though it has been possible to find out what each of them was doing in Hong Kong. Dr. Tucker, the first President, was Surgeon on H.M. Hospital Ship Minden, which arrived in Hong Kong on 7th June, 1843 from Chusan. He died on board the Minden on 10th Sept. 1845, whilst still holding the office of President, in which he was succeeded by Dr. Dill. Francis Dill was Hong Kong's second Colonial Surgeon, appointed to succeed Dr. A. Anderson in 1844 on a date so far unknown, but probably between 7th May and 25th June. He may also possibly be identified with the \"Mr. Dill, surgeon of the 'Atlas'\" mentioned in a letter of Dr. Robert Morrison dated March 19th, 1822 from Canton (4).\n\nThe Society's first Secretary, Dr. Benjamin Hobson, was in charge of the Medical Missionary Society's Hospital, first in Macao,\n\n* Mr. Rydings is Librarian of the University of Hong Kong and has been Councillor and Hon. Librarian of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society since 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206746, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "CHINA MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY\n\n17\n\nabout 96°, and likened by Alcock to the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle, or Barège in the Pyrenees. An analysis of three samples was carried out, and is recorded on p. 72-5 of the Transactions. As far as can be ascertained, there has been no later publication in western scientific literature on the mineral springs of Foochow, and very little on other Chinese spa waters, so this remains an important record.\n\nIt is interesting to speculate how Alcock came to be involved in this matter. His personal concern with health and sanitation derived from his training under the distinguished surgeon G. J. Guthrie at the Westminster Hospital, and later service as an army surgeon during the Peninsular campaigns of 1832-37. He was thus by training a medical man, though it is as a diplomat that Sir Rutherford Alcock is remembered today, finishing his consular career by appointment as British Minister to Japan, 1859-65. Alcock passed through Hong Kong in October 1844, and no doubt met some of the medical men during his brief stay in the Colony. Probably he remained in correspondence with some of them, for when writing in September 1845 he refers to previous letters of May and June between Dr. Hobson and himself. In appreciation of Alcock's contribution, the Society elected him to honorary membership (Transactions, p. 58).\n\nPerhaps of greater interest in the history of western medicine and medical education in China are the activities of the Society towards the promotion of a medical school for Chinese in Hong Kong. Foremost amongst the proponents of this scheme was Dr. Benjamin Hobson, whose letter on the subject dated June 15, 1845 appears on p. 16-18 of the Transactions. “If we are to effect any change in the low empirical state of Medical science in China,” wrote Hobson, \"it must be in my opinion by educating the Chinese in the principles and theory of the Medical Art, according to the more modern practice of the West. And in Victoria there are facilities and advantages to secure this interesting object of our hopes, which no other place possesses.\" Dr. Hobson pointed out that there were several hospitals, military, naval and other, where \"I am authorized to say, the Chinese Medical Student will be welcome to study not only forms of disease as they affect European constitutions, but their treatment and pathology.\"\n\nHobson went on to propose \"That the premises of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and the Medical School be (at least till farther", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206941, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "6\n\nsuch facilities. Our representative on the Arts Centre Management Committee is Mr. David Gilkes, our Hon. Treasurer, who reports that because of the constantly increasing costs of building in Hong Kong (currently about 35% a year) and because of difficulties in fund-raising (always a problem with cultural projects in the Colony) building is not likely to start until April 1974. The Society is of course keeping an eye on developments. Because of this delay we are not now proposing to raise our subscription rate from $30 to $50 until January 1976 (we had originally intended to raise it in 1975). At present we continue to be extremely grateful to the British Council for the facilities they provide to us, both in the use of an office for Council meetings of the Society, in clerical assistance, and in housing part of our library. We are also grateful to Hong Kong University for the various facilities they provide, including housing more than half our library collection.\n\nIn early December the Arts Centre held an exhibition at the City Hall at which constituent-member Societies each had a space to demonstrate their own activities or display examples of their work. Mr. Tony Rydings, our Hon. Librarian arranged our own exhibition most effectively and provided show cases. One of the items we showed was our Tibetan scroll obtained from the late Mr. F. A. Nixon, a former member of the Society (you will see from the Hon. Librarian's report that we are also indebted to him for a large donation of books from his estate). We also had samples of our Journal and symposium publications on display. A book was provided for people who wanted further information on the Society, to write their names and addresses. Nearly 100 people expressed interest and all were sent information.\n\nMEMBERSHIP\n\nOur membership increased this year, probably due to the interest shown in the Society at the Arts Centre exhibitions and to the Laos tour. At this time last year membership stood at 555. It is normal, in this very mobile community, for us to have our gains and losses during the year. During the last annual period we lost eight members through resignation, one through death, and thirty-two did not renew their membership: thus there were forty-one losses in all. Again I would urge members to avail themselves of that useful facility, the banker's order: both useful to our treasurer who has to chase up tardy members to discover if they have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206978, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n43\n\nWhen the King had started upon his homeward passage, the Hong Kong police went from house to house collecting the pinchbeck orders which his Majesty had scattered broadcast among his acquaintances; and these pieces of jewelry they subsequently sold by auction for the benefit of the goldsmith who had fashioned them, for the King, like many of his prototypes in history, had proved himself to be a bad paymaster.40\n\nThe Duel\n\nDid Mayréna and Morès fight a duel in Hong Kong? We do not know for certain; we can only use circumstantial evidence to argue that they probably did. In his memoirs Des Voeux would hardly admit that he allowed a duel to take place in a British colony by his negligence, for under English law duelling was a criminal offence.41 But an encounter between the two adventurers could have easily occurred without attracting public attention—early one morning, say, at Deepwater Bay, then a crescent of lonely sparkling sand, not overlooked by any residence; or in a clearing in the sylvan Glenealy Ravine, a solitary spot frequented only by a few health-conscious walkers.\n\nMayréna and Morès were expert in the use of the foil, épée, and sabre; each, previously, in single combat had killed his man; former soldiers, they were extremely brave men, not likely to slink away from an affront. It should be stressed, however, that duelling was a ritual, designed primarily to remove a public stain from a man's social character: the end of a duel was not copious blood-letting, but rather an affirmation that a gentleman had preserved his social standing and the integrity of his personality.42 To utilise theological concepts again, duelling was a type of sacrament: it was a consecration of the gentleman, and of the core element in this class of person—honour. It seems plausible, then, to suggest that the two duelled but only under certain limiting conditions set out in the procès-verbal. A procès-verbal was the set of rules, established beforehand by the seconds of the duellists, which defined the conditions of the duel—often a single shot fired over the opponent's head or blithely into the distance, a thrust or a parry, would suffice to accomplish the ritual. No doubt Mayréna and Morès did simply that—they flexed their muscles, brandished their spurs in public. Then all was over; honour satisfied; each returned to the Hong Kong Hotel and to loud wassail.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207017, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "82\n\nROBIN MCLACHLAN\n\nthen a junior officer in Orlando's regiment but later to become the British Minister at Peking and Sir Thomas, was to teach Orlando to play the flute.17 But as Wade was busy with his Chinese language studies the flute lessons had to be postponed indefinitely. About the same time the music lessons were being considered, Orlando met Elijah Coleman Bridgman.18 This Bridgman was the first American missionary in China, arriving in Canton in 1829, and is probably best remembered for his part in the founding and editing of the Chinese Repository. Although the American spelt his name without an \"e\", Orlando still considered it a rare event to meet someone of the same name who was not a relation. It is unlikely though that he would have been anxious to claim a relationship with a man he described in his letter as a \"beast\".\n\nWhen writing of his commander in the war, General Hugh Gough, and the naval commander, Admiral William Parker, Bridgeman was equally caustic in his remarks. Writing in October from Chusan, where the British force had collected before proceeding on to Hong Kong, he commented:\n\nThe whole force is collected here now, with the exception of the Genl. and Admiral who are delaying as long as they can because they are each putting £30 a day into their pocket and as soon as they get to Hong Kong they will cease to receive this.19\n\nUnfortunately, there are very few comments, either favourable or unfavourable, on the Chinese people and their way of life. In his first letter home from China, he complained that he didn't get to see anything of Nanking and the Chinese people he had seen were only the \"lowest of the low.\"20 Later he confessed that what \"pity\" he had for the Chinese, on account of their heavy losses in battle (\"The slaughter was frightful ... .”), was lost \"since they proved so dreadfully treacherous\" with their kidnapping on Chusan.21\n\nDuring his time at Hong Kong, Bridgeman continued this lack of interest in things Chinese and only occasionally commented on Chinese customs and ways. For example, his interest in Chinese tea led him to describe to his sister the Chinese tea stands that dotted the colony and how, according to his observations, no Chinese could pass one without having several tiny cupfuls of tea.22 But such sketches of Chinese life in the colony are rare in his letters; the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong seemed scarcely to exist for Bridgeman.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207044, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n109\n\nplexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article.\n\nIntroduction*\n\nFor present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map).\n\nAt the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4.\n\nIn time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th\n\n1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations.\n\n2 See Groves, pp. 52-55.\n\n3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46.\n\n4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196.\n\n* For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207046, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n111\n\nOctober 1860, and again by the lease of the New Territories by the Convention of Peking in June 18981.\n\nThe population of the region was probably around 100,000 in 1898, including boat people. These persons inhabited — in round figures — a thousand villages and a number of market centres. Seven hundred of these settlements were located within the present New Territories of Hong Kong, with many others around Sham Chun and in Hong Kong island and Kowloon. The Punti or Cantonese-speaking element accounted for rather more than half the land population, with Hakka speakers comprising most of the remainder. The boat population, mainly Tanka, lived afloat in the main.2\n\nDescriptions of the geography and climate of the present British Crown Colony are generally applicable to the Hong Kong region. They have long been given in the Hong Kong annual reports. The most recent is supplied in the opening sections of chapter 18 of the report for 1974.3\n\n1. The Hong Kong Region in the wider scene: some historical and geographical considerations\n\nIn Ch'ing times Hsin-an was one of the 14 hsien of the Kuang-chou prefecture. The designation fu or 'prefecture' was adopted only at the start of the Ming dynasty but the area of Canton and the Delta had long been administered under various designations that changed through the centuries and with dynastic change. The oldest of its hsien, Nan-hai, was established in the Sui dynasty in the year 590-591; the next, P'an-yu in 703-704 during the Tang; with the rest becoming separate districts at various times until the first year of Wan Li of the Ming (1573-1574) when, finally, Hsin-an was created from one of the former commanderies of Tung-kuan district (a hsien of 973-974) established in the 27th year of the first Ming ruler (1394-1395).\n\n1 The relevant documents are given in Alabaster, III, pp. 2-4 and 6-8. 2 See Baker 1968: 3-4. Also the Colony Census for 1911 in SP1911: 103(27-36) and (37-38), though it does not list all the villages of the Southern District of the New Territories or of New Kowloon.\n\n3 CR1974, pp. 176-178.\n\n4 See e.g. TCITC 41/1 and KCFC 6/10.\n\n5 KCFC 6/1-10 and YCKC 4/1-9.\n\n6 KTTC 2/93 and KTKKCY 1/1. The administrative areas to which the Hsin-an district belonged from the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B.C.) onwards are shown in KCFC 6/24 and in HNHC 1/1. The date of the establishment of the commandery is given as Hung Wu 27 in HNHC 1/3, KTKKCY 1/1, TCITC 41/3 and KTTC 2/93, but as Hung Wu 14 in KCFC 6/24.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207058, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n123\n\nPirates continued to be a local nuisance, however, and there seems to have been no end to their depredations throughout the 19th century. An inscribed tablet dated 1834 outside the Tin Hau Temple at Peng Chau, off southeast Lantau, records a petition from fishermen against the local officials' practice of using their craft as decoys to catch pirates; and the Viceroy's instruction that the commandeering of craft for this purpose should stop and that boats should be built for the work. A few years later, in the early years of the Colony, the Hong Kong authorities and the British naval forces at their disposal were constantly having to take notice of piracies and attacks, great and small, that happened on their very doorstep. The pirates of the 1840s and 1850s were often in fleets, as in Cheung Po-tsai's time.2 The Royal Navy was frequently involved in their suppression, and some major expeditions were mounted against the leading pirate fleets. Grace Fox's British Admirals and Chinese Pirates gives an interesting account of the period from the establishment of the China station in 1834 up to 1869.3 It was not until controlling legislation on the registration of native craft was enacted and enforced in the late 1860s that it became more difficult for pirate craft to operate from Hong Kong's ports.4\n\nThe local population was the usual victims of these pests. In 1856 the captain of H.M.S. Sampson reported an action off Tsing Yi, close to Hong Kong, with a number of pirate junks wearing the flag of the Taipings. They were identified as pirates with stolen property by a local fisherman and others, whereupon they were pursued by the Sampson's boats and five of their number destroyed. The boat crews freed two market craft with several passengers who had been confined by the pirates for several days, and at least one fishing boat that they had taken from its owner. Wade, then Chinese Secretary to the Hong Kong government, records (1852) how persons returning to their homes for the lunar new year preferred to travel by steamer than by passage boat, for this reason.6\n\n1 Tablet dated Tao Kuang, 15th year, 7th month, 19th day. It was apparently one among many erected at this time in places along the Kwangtung coast.\n\n2 See the striking account given in Illustrated London News, 28th March 1857, p. 283.\n\n3 For local events see the chronological record for Hong Kong's early years in Mayers, Dennys and King, pp. 55-115.\n\n4 SP 1888, p. 258.\n\n5 Schofield papers.\n\n6 Fox, p. 120.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207138, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n203\n\nAt this time the population of Ha Wan was 4861 (G.N. 21 of the Government gazette for 5th March 1859).\n\nObservation Point must be the Observation Place shown on the Map accompanying Mr. Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, published by the Colonial Office in 1882. The map shows Ha Wan as District No. 6 and Wanchai as District No. 7. This indicates that Wanchai was taken from it at some date between 1857 and 1882. Observation Place is shown at p. 46 of the Index to the Streets, House Nos., and Lots in the Colony of Hong Kong, 1903, and may be identified with the lower end of the present Tin Lok Lane, near its junction with Hennessy Road, then seashore.\n\nWanchai was one of the first districts to be developed after the British Occupation of the Island in 1841. The Reverend Carl T. Smith has kindly provided an account of this development, based on his original researches into Hong Kong records. This is attached as a separate Note.\n\nThe Itinerary and Places of Interest\n\nThe party will follow a circuitous route among the back streets, steps and terraces of old Wanchai between Monmouth Path in the west and Stone Nullah Lane on the east.\n\nAmong the places of interest to be visited are several Chinese temples and shrines as follows:\n\n1) The Pak Kung Shrine at the side of No. 7, Star Street. This was established before the War, probably upwards of 70 years ago. The shrine is a To Tei Miu (±普普) or altar to the earth god. The main festival of the year falls on the 2nd day of the second lunar month when the management committee of local residents organises a religious and social celebration.\n\n2) Hung Shing Temple, Queen's Road East. This temple is one of the oldest of the area and may even have existed as a shrine before the British Occupation of the Island. According to Carl Smith there was a small settlement nearby which may have provided the body of regular worshippers, along with visiting boat people.\n\nThe present structure dates from Hsien Feng 10th year (1860-61), repaired in T’ung Chih 6th year (1867-68) when the persons responsible are listed as 'the whole body of devout Hong Kong believers'. These dates point to an earlier origin, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207243, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "3\n\nApril he arranged a visit to old Wanchai, one of the oldest districts of British Hong Kong. Under the name of Ha Wan or \"lower bay” it was one of the 5 bays or \"circuits\"-a terms used in the 1850s and 1860s to describe the residential and commercial areas largely developed by the new Chinese population of the island. Places visited included the Pak Kung Shrine in Star Street, established before the war and probably upward of 70 years old; the Hung Shing Temple, one of the oldest of the area, perhaps even existing as a shrine before the British occupation; the Sui Tsing Pak temple housed in several dwellings in a terrace and of the late nineteenth century; the Yuk Hoi Kung Temple to Pak Tai, God of the North and of early origin; and various terraced houses and individual buildings.\n\nIn May Mr. Hayes arranged another excursion to the Diocesan Boys' School-D.B.S.-and La Salle College. D.B.S. originated in 1869 with the Diocesan Home & Orphanage for English, Eurasian Chinese and other scholars, male and female and had links with an earlier body, the Diocesan Native Female Training School of 1860-58. In 1900 the Diocesan Girls' School opened and DBS no longer took girls. The school moved from Bonham Road to its present site in 1926. La Salle dates from 1932 but its connection with Catholic Education in the Colony is much longer. The La Salle brothers had already a record of 42 years work at St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong.\n\nIn June Mr. Hayes organised a visit to old Western District which included tea in a traditional tea-house. The original Chinese tea house was a place where many kinds of tea were served together with tim sham, small tidbits or literally \"to point to the heart\". It is gradually being replaced by new establishments usually combining a Chinese restaurant with tea-house business. Later, in July, a visit to a tea-house was also arranged to hear typical Cantonese music and \"southern songs” traditionally played to clients of such establishments and also sadly disappearing in modernising Hong Kong.\n\nDuring the June visit to Western, many shops for traditional crafts and wares were visited or observed. Many have since been pulled down in this area scheduled for urban renewal. In July, Miss Helga Werle, a member of our Council, arranged with a colleague, a visit to Aplichau the small island-just still an island-off Aberdeen. Members visited the Hung Shing Temple, probably built in 1773; and the Shui Yuet Kung Temple (Shui Yuet is another name for Kuan Yin) probably dating from the early days of Aplichau town developing in the 1850s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207301, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "THE GREAT PLAGUE OF HONG KONG\n\nE. G. PRYOR*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThroughout its relatively short history as a British colony, Hong Kong has had to withstand many crises of a diverse nature. Typhoons, droughts, floods, economic recessions, war, influxes of refugees and riots have, at one time or another, created emergency situations for both the administration and the people of Hong Kong. However, one crisis now long forgotten, but for the records kept in dusty annals in the Colonial Secretariat library, is the outbreak of bubonic plague which first appeared in the Tai Ping Shan district in the early months of 1894.\n\nBubonic plague swept through Europe during the sixth, fourteenth and seventeenth centuries and was responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. For good reason the disease caused conditions of near panic and hysteria for once contracted the outcome in the great majority of cases was a relatively quick but agonising death. A graphic description of the symptoms of bubonic plague is given by Wilm in his Report of Plague in Hong Kong compiled in 1896. Wilm observed that:\n\n\"At the outset of the disease the tongue usually became swollen, bright red at the tip and edges and was covered with a greyish white fur. Usually, on the second or third day of the disease, the fur became brownish or black, and dried in a crust. The tongue becomes cracked and fissured so that it soon resembles that seen in typhus or in enteric fever about a third week of the disease. The lips soon became dry and often fissured, the mucous membrane of the mouth and the pharynx was usually bright red. The appetite disappeared. There was frequently uncontrollable vomiting and great thirst, with a lower part of the abdomen. The vomit was sometimes watery, sometimes bilious, sometimes like coffee grounds. Diarrhoea was frequent at the outset and again in the later stages of the disease Blood,\n\n+\n\n* Dr. Pryor is currently Assistant Director, Redevelopment & Planning, Housing Department, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207332, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "92\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\ncolony of Hong Kong. In 1845, Charles May, a London police officer, was brought out to organise the new force. Most of the early police recruits were obtained locally from the army, navy, and merchant marine; but in time policemen were recruited directly from Britain or from other colonial territories. The quality and morale of the force was never high. Norton-Kyshe writes that in 1850 a European constable got only $15 a month,\n\nvery far below what the humblest in the Colony required, so that, in the case of steady men, they only accepted the position in the hope of something better turning up. But to this class, unfortunately, the chief objection was the readiness with which they yielded to the temptation offered by the many public houses about, and many of the deaths among the European constabulary were ascribed to their excessive indulgence in ardent spirits, a great portion of which, sold by the low tavern-keepers, was of the most abominable and deleterious description.4\n\nBecause of the demoralised state of the police, Sir Richard MacDonnell, Governor of Hong Kong, reported in 1869 to the Secretary of State that he intended to substitute Scottish for English constables. Altogether forty-five Edinburgh constables were enlisted in 1872. But the Scots contingent proved as susceptible as their English colleagues, for the next year several were dismissed from the force. As a group, they, too, had succumbed to the blandishments and corruptions of Hong Kong. In 1897 it was found that almost all the police—European, Chinese, and Indian—were receiving money illegally from Chinese gambling syndicates, including a British Deputy Superintendent of Police.\n\nBecause of the general shortage of European personnel in Hong Kong, police were often seconded to, or allowed to apply for, positions in other departments. The scarcity of suitable Europeans was, in the main, a consequence of the growing attractiveness of Australia as a land of opportunity, especially after the discovery there of gold in 1851, and of the rapid development of Shanghai, which soon became viewed as an arena more accommodating than Hong Kong for the adventurous and ambitious. Turnkeys at Victoria Gaol were often policemen; and the various Inspectors of Brothels (a post established in 1858), who came under the control of the Registrar General, were in nearly every case former police officers, for the principal duty of such functionaries was to detect", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "94 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nemployment; but few stayed with the department. Most took to their gypsy life again, once they had accumulated a few dollars, and left for either Shanghai or Singapore, or simply went to earth in Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai until disinterred by the police, always on the look out for European destitutes. \n\nThere were always some troops on garrison duty in the colony or manning the various fortifications designed to repel a seaborne invasion. The garrison normally was small and numbered usually less than 1,500 men. But numbers fluctuated markedly at times. In March 1860, for example, over 14,000 troops (10,000 British and 4,000 French) were being drilled in a vast tented camp on two square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, leased from the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and awaiting transportation to the theatre of operations in the north. A witness of these events wrote that 'the streets of Victoria were thronged by soldiers and sailors; commissaries and staff officers were to be seen everywhere; all as busy as mortals could be'.7 \n\nIt was a policy of the government and the military to keep troops if possible out of European Victoria—the central commercial district—and to confine their debaucheries to special areas of the colony. Thus five brothels were specially opened at Wan Chai in the 1850s when soldiers at that time were prohibited by their officers from entering the central districts of the city. For soldiers on outpost duties access to Victoria was difficult in any case: \n\nGarrison life at these outposts is usually melancholy; society is impossible, as the fortifications are eight miles by water from the city, and communication over the mountains is arduous. It is not a question of which is the better of the two, but which the worse, to be of the British Garrison Artillery or the Chinese Lighthouse Service.& \n\nThere were usually more sailors than soldiers ashore in Hong Kong, or afloat in the harbour, at certain times of the year. During the three winter months, the British China squadron was stationed in Hong Kong; in summer most naval vessels left Hong Kong for the north and other stations. The large number of sailors, who at times outnumbered the civilian European population, was supplemented by merchant seamen of many nationalities; for by the 1890s Hong Kong had become, after London, Liverpool, and Port Said, the fourth largest port in the world in terms of seagoing tonnage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "100 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nbesides music-halls and lodging-houses, the haunts of vagabonds well known to the police.19 \n\nThe spectacle of Jack Tars, returning from the grog-shops of Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun, tipsily and rowdily weaving their way along Queen's Road, affronted respectable Britons. A Wesleyan missionary complained in 1894 that the colony was always upset by the arrival of a fresh man-of-war whose crew once ashore would behave like wild animals. \"They drink like fishes,\" he complained, \"ride round the town in rickshaws, making night hideous with their shouts, eat over-ripe fruit from street stalls, are stricken with cholera, and die in a few hours.\" He insisted that for soldiers and sailors (and possibly for most others in the East at the present moment) \"total abstinence is a duty\".20 \n\nThe Wesleyan missionary, a fervent supporter of the temperance movement, misunderstood the reasons for excessive drinking among servicemen in Hong Kong. It was not due to innate depravity or irreligion. Soldiers and sailors drank because of the tedium, the hideous boredom they had to endure as pariahs in Hong Kong. They were totally excluded from polite European society; there were no young white women of their own class to walk out with; there were few entertainments, except lugubrious church or mission functions, provided for them. Off duty the only pleasures available, apart from a climb up the Peak, a jaunt in a sampan, or a visit to the Botanical Gardens, were the drinking dens and brothels of the more welcoming Chinese quarters of the town. \n\nSailors, in particular, led almost completely isolated lives in the Far East. News from home could take months to reach their ships. Often they spent over a year without going ashore on leave. Walter White, a ship's painter, joined H.M.S. Scout at Sheerness in 1859, left England in that year and did not return from service on the China Station until 1864.21 His experience was typical. He spent New Year's Day, 1862, in Hong Kong and put up at the European Hotel, a hostelry overlooking Tai Ping Shan. From the verandah of his hotel, he wrote home, \"you can sit and look down upon the teeming, squalid living, jangling and evil smelling Chinese quarters.\"22 But it was in this teeming quarter that White and his naval companions were obliged to spend their evenings of leave, \n\nMajor Henry Knollys epitomises the life of the British gunner in Hong Kong in the 1880s thus:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "102\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nRow in Tai Ping Shan was then known as 'Samshu Corner' because many Europeans resorted to it for cheap topping. The commissioners ascertained that much drinking went on in barracks, troops sending Chinese 'boys' out to buy bottles of samshu or whisky for them. Drunkenness was a direct consequence of boredom and idleness.\n\nThe problem of venereal disease was related to that of drinking, for bars and brothels clustered together. From 1867 to 1887, the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, patterned on the English act of 1866, was in force in the colony to protect the health of British servicemen. Briefly, the 1867 ordinance made all prostitutes working in licensed brothels for Europeans only (Chinese brothels for Chinese only were exempted) subject to compulsory medical inspection at the Lock Hospital. European prostitutes, on the other hand, could undergo examination at home. It was claimed that the repeal of the Hong Kong ordinance in 1889, following the repeal of the English act in 1886, led to an upsurge in the rates for venereal disease. In 1895, admissions into hospital for venereal infection in the home army were 173.8 per 1,000; in India, 522.3; in Hong Kong, about the same figure.\n\nIt follows, then, that the chance of a male member of the European lower orders becoming infected with venereal disease was always high during the period under review here, 1842-1900. The police, for example, were so prone to catching this social disease, almost an occupational disease for them, that at one time they were also subject to compulsory medical inspection. The practice was stopped in 1873, but before that date, there was a monthly examination of all foreign members of the force.\n\nMiddle-class Europeans did not escape entirely from all these afflictions from alcoholism, syphilis, boredom, and loneliness. Both classes Taipans and pong-paan — also fell victim at times to a variety of diseases, such as malaria, typhus, cholera, and bubonic plague, as the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley amply testifies. But the well-to-do could at least escape to the Peak from Hong Kong's enervating summer, or recuperate in cooler latitudes, in Japan or northern China; and since many of the prosperous were respectably married and lived a normal family life, cosseted by a houseful of servants, they were protected to some degree by domestic circumstances from the temptations that soldiers, sailors, seamen, and their kind, had to face day and night in the city.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n103\n\nThe European lower orders were not, of course, totally neglected by their superiors. The church and the various missionary societies, such as the Mission to Seamen, did their best to elevate the moral tone of the less fortunate. Various institutions were established to cater to their needs—a Sailors' Home at West Point, close to the Seamen's Church, St. Peter's, and a Soldiers and Sailors' Rest at East Point. By the end of the century, there was also a Union Jack Club, a Royal Naval Seamen's Club, a United Services Club, an Institute of Marine Engineers, complete with technical library and librarian, and a branch of the British Mercantile Marine Officers' Association (the last two catered for a merchant navy elite). A Seamen's Hospital had also been opened.\n\nThe military authorities, in turn, strongly backed the work of the Army Temperance Association and the Independent Order of Good Templars, a society of abstainers formed in America in 1851, which had ramified over the Anglo-Saxon world. No doubt all these associations, societies, and clubs did sterling work and restrained some servicemen from seeking the scabrous temptations offered by Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai; but they did not offer enough to the average soldier or sailor, only tea and buns, prayers and uplift, draughts and dominoes, and the ministrations of lay missioners, missionary ladies, and army and naval chaplains.\n\nIn 1889, the Hong Kong Ladies' Benevolent Society was founded 'for the purpose of rendering assistance in cases of sickness, want, poverty, or distress arising from time to time amongst persons other than members of the Portuguese or Chinese communities'. The society helped defray the passage home of destitute Europeans and educated orphaned European children; in some cases, it paid the rents of the hard-up and obtained employment for those stranded in the colony.\n\nWhat the government felt about poor whites is mirrored in the report prepared by Dr. Eitel in 1880 on the treatment of paupers in Hong Kong:\n\nIn the case of British destitutes, anything done by the Government over and above what is now being done in furnishing such destitutes with board and lodgings in the Gaol, would tend to make the condition of a 'beach comber' or destitute here more eligible than the lot of the hardworking seaman or stoker, and consequently put a premium on loafing and idleness... I would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207347, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n107\n\nof the underdog Portuguese or Eurasian communities. The one social event that united—for one evening—all classes of European was that great Scots tribal festival, the St. Andrew's Day Ball. Celebrated on November 30, it ushered in the Hong Kong season, a season that closed with the Volunteer Ball.* The St. Andrew's Day Ball was open to any Scot or his friends who could afford the price of a ticket. Held in St. George's Hall, a spacious ball-room within the City Hall edifice, it was attended normally by over a thousand adults. Although an Army chaplain inquired plaintively: \"Why should pig-iron turn up its nose at ten-penny nails (in Hong Kong)?\" for one evening at least status distinctions between retailers and wholesalers were partially ignored, although the proceedings were always dominated by the chieftains of Jardine, Matheson and Co., the patriarchal Scottish hong,\n\nThe European lower orders were excluded not only from the more amusing social life of the colony, they also had little say in its government. In 1885, for example, the total number of ratepayers was eighty-two: from this small group the unofficial members of the Legislative Council normally were elected or chosen. The pong-paân were thus totally unrepresented in this, a British colony. Their names, moreover, are not found on the lists of Justices of the Peace, Special Jurors, and those of members of official and other important committees. They were of course sworn in on occasion as common jurors.\n\nWhy did the European lower orders experience such treatment from the well-to-do and influential? Partly, it was a consequence of social attitudes formed in the homeland: Victorian notions about the ordering of social classes and occupational groups, such as are analysed in Thackeray's The Book of Snobs. However, in early Hong Kong another notion was also prevalent: the view that there were 'dangerous classes', a term that connoted the lumpenproletariat, a class of persons spawned in the new industrial cities of Europe, 'those who had so miserable a share in the accumulating wealth of the industrial revolution that they might at any time break out in political revolt as in France'.32 Predictably enough, working-class Europeans were often viewed with some suspicion; there was fear that middle-class control over them would cease to prevail in certain\n\nFor the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force see James Hayes' article in this Journal Vol 11, 1971: 151-171.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207352, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "112\n\n10 Ibid., p. 31.\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\n11 Fifty Years of Progress: The Jubilee of Hongkong as a British Crown Colony, Hong Kong, Daily Press Office, 1891, p. 43.\n\n12 J. S. Thomson, op. cit., p. 8.\n\n13 Ibid., p. 54.\n\n14 Allister Macmillan, ed., Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 340.\n\n15 Information about Bridget Montague is to be found in contemporary Hong Kong newspapers and the Report on the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (see note 5).\n\n16 Alfred Weatherhead, Life in Hong Kong: 1856-1859. Typescript in the Library of the University of Hong Kong.\n\n17 W. A. Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle, London, 1885, p. 185.\n\n18 Capt. Gordon Casserly, The Land of the Boxers, London, 1903, p. 193.\n\n19 John Thomson, F.R.G.S., The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China, London, 1875, pp. 192-3.\n\n20 J. A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China, London (1894), pp. 108-9.\n\n21 See China Station 1859-1864: The Reminiscences of Walter White, London, National Maritime Museum, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No. 3, 1972.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 27.\n\n23 Major Henry Knollys, English Life in China, London, 1885, pp. 56-7.\n\n24 'Report of the Commission on Alcoholic Liquors', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1898, p. 1.\n\n25 E. J. Eitel, \"Treatment of Paupers in Hong Kong', Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1880, p. 470.\n\n26 Ibid., p. 469.\n\n27 The Kowloon British School was opened in 1902; before that some girls were educated at convent schools in Macau.\n\n28 Marjorie Topley, 'The Role of Savings and Wealth among Hong Kong Chinese', in L. C. Jarvie, ed., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 193.\n\n29 J. Thomson, op. cit., pp. 203 and 208.\n\n30 L. N. Wheeler, The Foreigner in China, Chicago, 1881, p. 242.\n\n31 Rev. E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London, n.d., p. 29.\n\n32 Leon Radzinowicz, Ideology and Crime, London, 1966, p. 38.\n\n33 Allister Macmillan, op. cit., p. 339.\n\n34 Op. cit., p. 151.\n\n35 Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, 1917, p. 437.\n\n36 W. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay, New York, 1900, p. 24.\n\n37 L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes, London, 1931, p. 151.\n\n38 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, 1958, p. 186.\n\n39 Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, London, 1908, p. 341.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207391, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n151\n\nBowen Road. This report was fortunately completed long before the Japanese on 9 June, 1945, burned the original case sheets, operation books and other records from which they were compiled. Also preserved were records of rations provided by the Japanese, of gifts from the British and other Red Cross Societies, of gifts from Local Red Cross sources and local well-wishers, and menus of our meals and special diets. I still have all this material and it provides the basis for the account I now write. I did not, unfortunately, preserve any copies of the propaganda leaflets dropped by the Japanese during hostilities or of the English language Hongkong News, published under Japanese auspices in Hong Kong during their occupation.\n\nThe delay of thirty years in writing this story needs explanation. When I first came home I shared the plight of thousands who returned after years when we were completely out of touch with the changes that had taken place in the world, ignorant of the details of war, of the changes in the country and in the services and of the way people lived. The vocabulary was new, the developments were enormous and we had much ground to make up physically. It was not too difficult to acquire a veneer; it was less easy to take our places with any assurance in the new world of 1945 and 1946. Much work was needed. When I resumed duty in the army, after my release, I was given a chance to play a part in the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank, in the postgraduate medical training of R.A.M.C. officers, and in expanding the training of specialists. I seized this opportunity eagerly for I was well aware of the defects in the training of myself and my contemporaries. My time became fully engaged in this work. Four years later a chance was offered to me to play a similar part in civil life on appointment as a Regional Postgraduate Dean, in the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London. The need for improved training was quite as urgent in civil life as it was in the army, the field was bigger, and it was not until I retired from that appointment many years later that I found time to return to the task I had wanted to tackle for so long. It seemed to me that an account of events in Hong Kong, as known to me, might provide a useful contribution to the history of the Colony, and that the achievements of the staff and the fortitude of the patients deserved to be recorded. I thought also that here and there perhaps, those serving today might discern from the story something of value to themselves and their Corps.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207393, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n153\n\nWorld War dealing with the Campaigns. This was compiled from records and reports prepared for the editorial board by Colonel J. T. Simson, Lt. Col. C.O. Shackleton, Dr. P.S. Selwyn-Clarke and myself.\n\nPRELUDE\n\nUp to 8 December, 1941\n\nAfter twenty-four hours delay outside the harbour because of fog, my wife and I disembarked in Hong Kong one fateful day, 1 April 1939, where I took up duty as surgical specialist in the British Military Hospital, Bowen Road. The Colony was by far the most beautiful station in which I had ever served and the scenery recalled to me, as to many others, parts of the west coast of Scotland. Twelve years earlier I had spent a short time there on my way to Shanghai, Tientsin, Peking and Shan hai kwan so that the scenes were not altogether strange to me. We lived a pleasant life in a hotel and flat for the next fifteen months.\n\nBecause of fears that a Japanese attack was imminent my wife was evacuated in July 1940, first to the Philippines along with service and civilian wives and families and thence to Sydney with them. She took hardly to the regimentation inevitable in view of the numbers involved, and after living in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane she left the shelter of the official evacuation. In some fashion she contrived to make her onward journey to the west via Hong Kong and after a short interlude there she lived successively in Singapore, Colombo, up-country in Ceylon, in Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay before she reached England on 4 July 1942. At one time in India she was tempted by an offer to go to Chungking to work there with a financial expert friend of ours who was attached to the Chinese government at that time, but in the end she did not. Experiences of this kind were not uncommon among service wives and I include this short note of her travels to show what a war-time evacuation of families can mean.\n\nWith her departure my own life in Hong Kong continued to be filled agreeably enough with work, including valuable experiences with the University Department of Surgery and the Professor, K.H. Digby. There were plenty of opportunities for physical exercise, and I carried out an order to prepare lists of surgical equipment I judged necessary to fit army hospitals for the inevitable coming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "154\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nconflict. I came to regret my thoroughness, for there was never time to use the equipment thus accumulated and this must have been splendid booty for the Japanese. There was also a full social life; many British women had enrolled for nursing and other essential duties and had not been evacuated. The Hong Kong Hotel was a gay place indeed, particularly on a Saturday night.\n\nIn October 1938, 35,000 Japanese troops had landed in Bias Bay on the China coast 35 miles from Hong Kong, and had then occupied Canton and had cut all communications between Hong Kong and mainland China. Patrolling Japanese ships thereafter made sailing from the Colony outside a circumscribed area very hazardous. In February 1939 the Japanese occupied the island of Hainan, 300 miles to the south of Hong Kong thus controlling the sea communications with Singapore. Curiously, after my arrival I do not remember taking part in any serious discussions with my friends about the prospects of a successful defence of Hong Kong. There were however plenty of rumours to fill the air. It was generally known that the strategic plan required Hong Kong to resist an attack for 90 days before a relief could arrive, a decision taken by the British Chiefs of Staff in 1937. In February 1940 the home authorities decided that food reserves should be accumulated for 130 days, while in August 1940 the Chiefs of Staff reached a further decision that in case of war with Japan, Hong Kong should be regarded as an outpost to be held as long as possible. After the war I learned from Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War, that in February 1940 the Chiefs of Staff concluded that the troops should be withdrawn from Hong Kong. Nothing was done to give effect to this decision. I have no doubt that the decision taken in February 1940 was the correct one which could with advantage have been taken much earlier. Ever since my arrival in Hong Kong in 1939 I believed that the Colony could not be defended successfully. The frontier, beyond which lay a strong Japanese army, was some 20 miles from Hong Kong harbour, the line to be defended, the so-called Gin Drinkers line was less than 5 miles from the harbour, the Japanese navy controlled the coast, our airport was tiny and the Air Force planes were few in number and no match in performance for their potential opponents. One and a half million Chinese civilians were crowded into Kowloon and Victoria. Roads suitable for wheeled traffic were few and open to close observation at many points. The whole picture left no doubt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n155\n\nin my mind that the Colony could not hold out long against an attack. After France fell in June 1940 the outlook darkened further.\n\nAt this time I was a major of 22 years service but I held a lowly position in the Army List for my Corps, being near the bottom of a block of officers who had been commissioned during the First World War. I had prepared for a career in Surgery and I also had experience of administration. In theatres where the army was expanding, promotion for officers in my position was nearly certain but in Hong Kong there was no such possibility. For a time I hoped I might be posted elsewhere, and while I never thought it possible that I might get home the Middle East seemed just a possibility. The likeliest destination for me if I moved at all seemed to be Singapore where my friends told me of the huge increase of strength in the army there. I was never moved.\n\nI had no part in preparing the army's plans for increased hospital accommodation in Hong Kong in war. Some of the buildings it was sought to use were occupied by religious orders, some of which were Italian and I understood that Colonel John Simson, the Assistant Director of Medical Services, China Command found difficulty inspecting these and met a blank refusal to a request that we might be allowed to make a preliminary accumulation of medical stores in some of these buildings. The Hong Kong Government was, I believe, unwilling on grounds of policy to overrule the objections. The Indian Army Hospital which was in Kowloon and which accommodated some British patients as well, was on the outbreak of hostilities to close, cross the harbour and reopen on the Island of Hong Kong in the Chinese Hospital, Tung Wah East. With the frontier so close to the harbour this would obviously be a difficult operation and I was sorry for the A.D.M.S. who had to plan under these conditions.\n\nI have been able to obtain through the courtesy of Colonel R. H. Freeman and Brigadier John Lapper, a postwar aerial photograph of the Military Hospital buildings in Bowen Road, which I reproduce here (plate 17). The photograph shows that new buildings have been added since the war and does not show the hospital reservoir. The hospital was built in two wings each containing a ground floor and two storeys, and these wings were connected by a central block which held the administrative offices. To the north there was a magnificent view over the harbour to the mountains of the New Territories while in the rear of the building the ground rose", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207397, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n157\n\nIn the Colony trade went on and there was much talk of the value of Hong Kong to Great Britain as a provider of foreign currency through its commerce. The fine young men in civil life in Hong Kong, prevented from travelling to join the forces at home, like many others, found it hard to reconcile the argument in favour of acquiring foreign currency with their knowledge that a large proportion of the goods exported found its way to Japan. They were all keen members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. It may be claimed that our trading policy delayed Japan's entry into the war, but to many it seemed that economic and strategic considerations were at cross purposes.\n\nI came in contact with Indian troops in the Colony mainly in an individual professional capacity when my surgical services were needed, but I imagine they were subject to the same effects of garrison duty as were the British troops. Garrison duty has never in any army provided a satisfactory training for active service, and Hong Kong provided yet another example of the truth of this. Once the arrangements for manning the defences were mastered the Island and the New Territories gave little scope for the most ingenious commander or space in which he could exercise and retain the interest of his troops. This left sports to absorb, by no means completely, the youthful energies of strong young men. Many of these had been received as friends in families in Hong Kong, some had contracted stable relationships with women but many had little to occupy themselves when off duty. I well remember seeing men flushed from their games trying to get into the China Fleet Club on the Victoria waterfront. They were obliged to shoulder their way physically through the crowd of Chinese and Eurasian women seeking them as companions. Not all of these were attractive, but girls of these races are among the most beautifully shaped that, in a wide experience, I have ever met. Co-habitation with a high proportion of these girls led to venereal infection and some men sought satisfaction in their own sex. Alas, this did not safeguard them from infection. Another hazard was malaria. About October 1941 the army manned the defences in an exercise and following this a substantial number of soldiers contracted malaria and needed treatment in hospital. Before many had regained strength after the fever, the army was deployed during the phase which led to open war. I pay high tribute to the spirit and the readiness with which these men met the call. Everyone who was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207433, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n193\n\nviously prepared note addressed to her mother which was successfully picked up. Her mother and two of her sisters then got to work on the Kempeitai, the formidable and feared gendarmerie, sometimes called the 'thought police' and somehow secured her release. When Mrs. Selwyn-Clarke was eventually interned in 1943 the work went on and Helen Ho continued to bring supplies to our hospital until our release. We had the privilege of welcoming her in person in the Central British School in August 1945, and expressing our thanks to her for her work whose value it is almost impossible to overestimate. Miss Ho was awarded the O.B.E. and after the war qualified in England as an almoner, the medical social worker of today. My wife and I have maintained friendship with Helen and her family ever since and I have had the privilege of calling on the family in Hong Kong in 1964.\n\nSelwyn-Clarke was arrested by the gendarmerie on 2 May 1943, and his wife was interned in Stanley. A civil medical man had escaped from internment in Hong Kong in 1942 and this may have impaired Selwyn-Clarke's position with the Japanese to some extent. However this may be, conditions became very hard in 1942 for his subordinates who were still working to improve the health conditions generally. When some of these had been reduced to burning their own furniture for fuel and had been forbidden to draw funds from their banks a number sought permission to leave the Colony and seek a life in Chinese mainland villages. Selwyn-Clarke had power to sign recommendations for permission to leave in the case of those who had served directly under him before and during hostilities. He suspected that one man severely wounded during the fighting, in whose case he had very slightly stretched the facts in his certificate because of his deep sympathy with his plight, was detected and stopped by the Japanese on his way to China. He was intensively questioned and eventually broke down and gave the answers his questioners wanted, answers relating to Selwyn-Clarke's alleged spying activities which were quite untrue. Selwyn-Clarke was an upright man who would never break his word even to the Japanese occupiers and he told me subsequently that in the case of the certificate he gave to the man he suspects was immediately responsible for his arrest, this was the only occasion in his life that he had ever compromised on a matter of principle. This I accept. It shows the kind of man he was. Besides this incident which fired the train of events leading to his arrest he had of course", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207434, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "194\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nalways been under close surveillance as well by the gendarmerie. After his arrest in May, 1943, he was confined in the cells below the Supreme Court in conditions of the utmost squalor and was subjected to the intensive, unending, repetitive \"interrogation\" about his alleged spying activities which are lamentably so well known nowadays. One of the accusations was that in some way he was in touch with the British Embassy in Lisbon to which he was supposed to have reported information about Japanese activities. The charge was a capital one and the sentence of the trial court was death. To such a condition was he reduced that he told his captors to get on with the job and carry out the sentence. This they did not do, and he suspects that the deaths in prison of the Chief Manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in circumstances in which ill-treatment and starvation were suspected made even the Japanese gendarmerie reluctant to offer Selwyn-Clarke as a third victim. Sixteen months later he was tried again, also upon a capital charge but due to some dealings of oriental subtlety by some of his friends in the Colony the sentence this time was three years in prison. In December 1944 he was transferred from Stanley prison to Ma Tau Wei Internment camp near Kai Tak airport and there he says he was alright. In August 1945, when we welcomed him to our hospital in the Central British School he was still physically in poor shape and he suffered permanent disabilities. His spirit, however, if it had once been bent, had by then recovered and as soon as he could after the Japanese surrender he returned to his office in Hong Kong to reestablish medical and health control and order in the Colony.\n\nBefore closing this section which has been devoted to the problems of feeding patients and staff in the hospital I am glad to refer to the Red Cross organization in Hong Kong during the war. Mr. R. Zindel, a Swiss citizen and thus a neutral, was in charge. He made formal inspections of the hospital about every six months accompanied by the Japanese Commander of P.O.W. camps. I shall refer later to these visits, but it was quite evident to me that Mr. Zindel was confined within strict limits by the Japanese during his inspections. He must, I feel sure, have met the same difficulties in his work outside the hospital, but I record here with gratitude our indebtedness to his tenacity, skill and resource in getting to us so many of the food stores which made such a very great difference to our wellbeing. I had the pleasure of meeting him also in Hong Kong during my visit in 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207499, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n259\n\narrived accompanied by interpreters and the Japanese sent in 3000 packets of cigarettes, 12 bottles of saki, 36 tins of coffee, 40 kilos of salt, 180 kilos of sugar, 240 tins of milk, 48 kilos of butter and a sack of coffee beans. We were now doing very well because Major Crewe a R.A.S.C. officer came from Sham Shui Po to learn what supplies we needed and brought with him 26 pints of fresh milk which we gratefully received. Mr. C.E. D'Almeida brought us a gramophone and records and other gifts from 10 Ice House Street, and promised us supplies of drugs free which he was going to send over. A refrigerator and five bread tins came from the Red Cross in Hong Kong and I was told that stores were arriving the next day from Sham Shui Po for us to split between internees, Indian prisoners and ourselves. The internees numbered about 300, including sick and about 30 children. I was able to meet a request from Sham Shui Po for various regulations including Kings Regulations and Financial Instructions.\n\nOn 22 August we arranged with Colonel Field for all our Q.A. sisters to return, and Saito and Sekiguchi came to ask what they could do. The Governor of Hong Kong had been removed from the Colony by the Japanese and Mr. Gimson who had been Colonial Secretary at the time of our capitulation came with Mr. Nakimura from the Japanese Foreign Affairs Department. Major Lamb R.A.S.C. had been appointed to take charge of supplies and his policy was for us to rely upon Japanese rations supplemented by Red Cross stores and to indent on Sham Shui Po for our additional needs. A radio, with some mugs and gifts of milk were gratefully received by us from Mr. C.E. D'Almeida and gifts also came from Messrs. Ruttonjee of 11 Duddell Street. Eight of our civilians left for Stanley with Mr. Gimson and were delighted to go. The radio was working well indeed and on 23 August I asked Dr. Selwyn-Clarke to get us some vegetables, fruit, invalid jellies and flour. I telephoned Nomura about our records and on 24 August I wrote to Colonel Tokunaga formally requiring the return of our hospital records. Mr. Campbell and I presented this letter to him personally at Japanese headquarters in the presence of Nomura. I said that we held Tokunaga personally responsible and he accepted the letter.\n\nA batch of 19 visitors arrived from Stanley including two children, and we had to put them up overnight because of stormy weather in the harbour. British headquarters now required us to set out prominently a sign, \"P.W.\" each letter to be 20 feet by 20", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207502, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 270, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "262\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nA R.A.F. sergeant got married on 28 August and Miss M. da Roza, a local lady offered her services as a masseuse for our patients.\n\nAt this time I had to deal with complaints arising from long standing antagonisms in P.O.W. camps now openly displayed after long repression. I am glad to say that this phase subsided eventually without overt official action becoming necessary. We also prepared a system of recording the medical condition of Hong Kong Volunteers before they were freed to their homes in the Colony. Doctor Newton, the deputy Chief Medical Officer in the civil medical service, took charge of the Internee Camp nearby and we were allotted a motor car which we shared with the Indian camp.\n\nIt was on 28 August that Saito came in with Hasegawa after 9 p.m. and told me formally that all our medical records had been burned about 15 August along with their own records which the Japanese were burning at that time. As I have reported earlier I got his written acknowledgement that these records had been destroyed and also that none of the plain clothes removed by him from us remained. My diary records that I spoke sternly on this matter, which must have given me some pleasure at the time.\n\nBy now a party was going each day from the hospital to visit relatives and friends in Stanley. The journey was made by ferry and took about two hours. On 29 August some planes came over just after 7 a.m. and some food and cigarettes were dropped later the same day in Sham Shui Po. Included in the drop were some medical boxes and my diary records that the contents of these came as a marvellous revelation to us. We were doing well about this time because the Japanese delivered about eleven thousand packets of cigarettes and jam to us and we heard that British warships and aircraft carriers had been seen off Stanley. On 30 August planes were flying over Hong Kong all morning and a B.B.C. radio report said that the fleet had come. Nomura asked for lists of our patients and I required him to come and get these himself. This action was possibly required of him by our relieving force.\n\nTrue enough a large fleet came into harbour on 30 August, which was 14 days after the Japanese surrender. This delay seemed a long time to us but the arrival of the fleet brought to an end a confused situation in which we were increasingly managing our own affairs. We sent our car for Admiral Harcourt to go to Sham Shui Po and he later went round our hospital with Mr. Gimson who\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207505, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 273, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n265\n\nAt this time I took part in some discussions on any action to be taken to report on the conduct of individuals while prisoners and I took the view that adverse reports should only be made in cases of the grossest neglect of duty and I made no report of this kind. Our staff and patients, apart from an occasional minor misdemeanour by one or two, conducted themselves splendidly.\n\nOn 4 September the large Empress of Australia arrived. I took two R.A.F. doctors to the Central British School where they saw something of the population of bugs and very understandably wanted to occupy apartments in nearby flats. By now the R.A.F. had brought 3000 troops into the Colony and they needed hospital services for their sick. There was, as might be expected, some confusion in the various administrations. Some people were moving too fast with too little thought, while others thought too long before moving.\n\nOn 5 September I went off to the Empress of Australia early and later found that Surgeon-Captain George Abercrombie was now Fleet P.M.O. in the battleship H.M.S. Anson. Abercrombie was later to be a founder member and in due course a distinguished President of the College of General Practitioners (later a Royal College), and I had the pleasure of meeting him quite frequently in London later. He kindly invited me to lunch in the Anson one day. Long voyages in warships in wartime conditions had left him looking rather pale, while of course I was pretty thin by that time. The main dish at lunch was a mutton stew in which the mutton was extremely fat and the watery part of the stew was laden with fat globules. I well remember the look of horror on his face as he watched me dispose of what to him must have been a repulsive dish.\n\nAt this time I learned that Colonel Lindsay Ride was replacing Field as senior officer in the army in Hong Kong. Ride had commanded our Field Ambulance during the fighting in Hong Kong. He was a professor in the University and his Chinese students helped him to escape as soon as we surrendered to Mainland China, where he set up an organisation to keep in touch with events in Hong Kong and which helped people to escape from the Colony. I believe that it was through his thoughtfulness that my wife learned that I was still alive after hostilities ended but none of the messages I sent off from Hong Kong after our release ever arrived. Ride was later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and knighted for his services to the Colony.\n\nThe R.A.F. hospital moved into the Central British School", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207508, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 276, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "268\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nNone of the foregoing figures can be taken as more than approximately correct. A figure however for which I can vouch with certainty is the total number of wounded treated in Bowen Road. This figure was 646 and was carefully computed by me in the studies I made of our records during the months and years of captivity before the Japanese finally destroyed them. The Bowen Road figures include all who were seriously wounded during hostilities, because all wounded admitted to other hospitals in the Colony and who were unfit for discharge to P.O.W. camps after our surrender were eventually concentrated in Bowen Road by the end of February 1942. The last patients who suffered war injuries to be admitted came from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon when this closed on 11 August 1942. My record of the total Bowen Road casualties amounting to 646 is likely to be less than the actual total number of wounded, because when other hospitals were closing and evacuating their more seriously wounded patients to Bowen Road it is likely that a number of other patients had by then recovered sufficiently to be able to go to P.O.W. camps and it must be remembered that it was the Japanese who decided where these patients must go.\n\nThe official figures suggest that, excluding Indian casualties, some 855 soldiers were seriously wounded during hostilities. In Bowen Road we treated 646 of these. It is evident therefore that about 75% of seriously wounded other than Indians were evacuated by the medical services to hospitals. This represents a major success having regard to the conditions, and the system of evacuation and the skill and determination with which it was carried out must be judged to have worked well. The Field Ambulance commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ride, which achieved these results was responsible also for recovering Indian casualties, and I have no doubt that these were evacuated with the same degree of success as were the British casualties. Figures however are lacking since the Indian Hospital was overrun during the Japanese advance and records were lost. Readers will recall that early in the hostilities the Chinese ambulance drivers deserted, understandably enough especially to those familiar with the Japanese treatment of captured Chinese opponents. Thereafter ambulance cars were driven by Field Ambulance personnel usually drawn from the medical services. This makes their achievement all the more notable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207520, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "280\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nhostilities and in captivity was of the highest order and had an enormous effect in inspiring patients and male staff. I have recorded earlier the gloom that descended on Bowen Road when the army and navy nurses and all the women volunteers who backed them up were removed to civil internment in Stanley in August 1942; it was three years before we saw them again. Miss Dyson became deputy head of the Army Nursing Service in later years. Miss Franklin became head of the Naval Nursing Service and others reached high positions in the National Health Service. Others still assumed family responsibilities, so that the splendid qualities which showed so clearly in Hong Kong had not been extinguished by their dreadful experiences. I publish their names in an appendix but as I have no records I trust that any whose names are not included will forgive me.\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nThe future does come \"one day at a time\". I hope that the method I have chosen to present this story, involving the recording of much detail will allow readers to form for themselves a picture of the uncertainties and conflicting influences which constantly beset us. The story is not a smooth one, nor were the events it describes but the patients and staff in the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong, bore what happened to them in a manner in which their corps, services and the Colony can take pride.\n\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nI have read widely in the history of the Second World War and in the personal stories by many who had experience in the Far East. I have had discussions with Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Miss Gwendolene Colthorpe who was, till recently matron of St. Stephen's Hospital, Chelsea. The Misses Elaine and Helen Ho have been good enough to read the section dealing with the efforts of our friends in Hong Kong to help us. While none of those named has any responsibility for any of the opinions I express I am extremely grateful to them for their help. My wife typed the earlier drafts and without the spur that she applied and without her industry the story would never have been completed. I gladly acknowledge a deep debt to her. I am indebted to Miss Beryl Brown for much valuable advice and help on the production of this account, and to Miss Lorraine Robinson for the final typescript.\n\nLondon, W.8. March 1975.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207535, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 303, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n295\n\ngregation of about one hundred persons, but sufficient for the present requirements of the denomination. The funds necessary for the erection of the Chapel have been derived from two sources, about one half having been found by the Lutheran Mission in Germany, and the other half collected by friends of the Mission in the Colony.\n\nOn Mar. 14, 1881, the same paper describes the opening ceremony: The consecration of the new Bethesda Chapel, in connection with the Berlin Foundling Association, took place yesterday morning under the conduct of the Rev. Pastor Klitzke, assisted by the Rev. R. Lechler and W. Louis. The musical portion of the ceremony was performed by the Leidertafel.\n\nThe new church is a neat little edifice and has received as interior decoration a marble font and three stained glass windows, presented by a friend in Germany and the Committee of Management respectively.\n\nFor some reason the services were moved in 1902 to the Church Hall of Union Church. Here the group met until 1904 as the \"Deutsche Kirchen und Schulegemeinde\". It then moved back to Bethesda Chapel, where services were held until the congregation was broken up by the outbreak of the War in 1914.\n\nHong Kong, 1975\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nPHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF HONG KONG:\n\nNOTES TO ACCOMPANY AN EXHIBITION*\n\nMembers may have heard of or seen references to the survey which has been embarked upon by some of your Councillors, with the co-operation of photographers from other associations and societies. The purpose of this report is to give you some idea of the objects and scope of this project, and to let you know what progress has been made. We have so far deliberately limited publicity on the survey, since we have been very much finding our way by a series of trials and errors; and offers of additional assistance, which we hope may be forthcoming in future, would have\n\n* Held at the Annual General Meeting in April 1975 (see p. 6 above) and subsequently on show at the British Council Library, Gloucester Building, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207725, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "98\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\nat the main mast of every war ship. . . . It was a pretty sight, very noisy and warlike.”* \n\nThe Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 16, 1881, published the announcement with the Chinese and English placed side by side:\n\nGOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION-No. 131.\n\nHis Majesty the King of HAWAII arrived in Hongkong on Tuesday evening, the 12th instant, and was welcome to the Colony by the Governor, in the name of Her Majesty Queen VICTORIA. His Majesty, the King KALAKAUA, was accompanied by His Excellency W. N. ARMSTRONG, Minister of State, and Colonel JUDD, Chamberlain,\n\nBy His Excellency's Command,\n\nFREDERICK STEWART,\n\nActing Colonial Secretary.\n\nColonial Secretary's Office,\n\nHongkong, 16th April, 1881.\n\n號一十三百一第報憲\n\n署輔政使司史\n\n爲篩論事照得現有\n\n浩德護送前來於本月十二日卽禮拜二晚抵港 夏威儀國大君主加拉嘉華隨帶宰臣士當及司儀長參將\n\n香港總督郎敬用\n\n大英后帝城克多壢阿名迎接登岸爲此特示俾衆週知\n\n一千八百八十一年 四月 十六\n\n示\n\nA tiffin (luncheon) party was given by Mr. Chater, a rich merchant.† Men of all nationalities came to meet the King and his party at this magnificent affair. The King asked Armstrong to take his place and propose a toast to the Governor who later asked Armstrong to write out the speech for transmission to the Home Government in London. Armstrong in his letters back to Foreign Minister Green mentioned, \"I must admit having a glorious time with Sir John Pope Hennessy, as he is a man of immense information, great experience, and liberality. . . . Governor Hennessy will\n\n* The Hawaiian flag was designed by Capt. Alexander Adams, Englishman, in 1810, with eight stripes for the islands and the British Union Jack in the upper left corner.\n\n† See Plate 16.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207831, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "204\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nConnected with the union there was an organisation which operated a kind of agricultural insurance scheme, making good losses by theft of crops and beasts. Again, the Luk Yeuk was composed of both Punti and Hakka.\n\n24. There are other 'numerical' yeuk-complexes: the Four (Sz) Yeuk of Tsuen Wan, the Six (Luk) Yeuk of Sai Kung, and the Nine (Kau) Yeuk of Sha Tin. In these three cases, however, we see the influence on rural organisation of an urban and administrative centre. The walled city of Kowloon was the only official seat in that part of San On to be converted into the New Territories. It held the yamen of a deputy magistrate and certain military officials, no doubt acquiring some of its importance as a centre of government in the second half of the nineteenth century from the proximity of the British Colony.\n\nThe Kau Yeuk of Sha Tin appears to have consisted of forty-eight villages, of which the five largest were Punti and the rest Hakka. The Ch'e Kung Temple (now the property of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in his part as a corporation sole) belonged to the Kau Yeuk, according to one account, but was taken over by the S.C.A. when a dispute was precipitated by a claim put forward by one village to control it.\n\nOn the Sz Yeuk of Tsuen Wan I have discovered little more than that it existed. Sung Hok-p'ang once told a Chinese scholar, who has since committed the statement to writing, that the area now called Tsuen Wan was in late Ming or early Ch'ing times known as Tsuen Wan Yeuk and that formerly all the villages in the area from Ting Kau to Kowloon City belonged to it.\n\nThe Luk Yeuk of Sai Kung, however, has left clearer traces. I cannot define its composition exactly, but I have been told that Ho Chung, Pak Kong, Sha Kok Mei, Tseung Kwan O and two settlements in Shap Sz Heung were the six yeuk. Once again, both Hakka and Punti were involved.\n\nThe three yeuk-complexes of Tsuen Wan, Sha Tin, and Sai Kung were in some fashion tied in with a council, formal or informal, in Kowloon City; and it appears likely that the local deputy magistrate used this organisation to make contact with the villages in his neighbourhood. In 1879 (according to its own records) there came into existence in Kowloon a body known as the Lok Sin Tong; members of the three yeuk-complexes were represented on it. Its primary object seems to have been to promote charity, public works, and education, while in character it would appear to have been an association of local gentry. The Lok Sin Tong still exists; indeed, it has grown", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207832, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 205\n\ngreatly in importance in recent times, but it is now, as far as I can see, a large-scale charitable organisation of business men which, while it rests in theory on the representation of villages falling within the area once covered by the old yeuk-complexes, is in fact essentially both city-based and city-run. (At the present eighteen villages appear to be represented in the Lok Sin Tong: one in Sha Tin, one in Tsuen Wan, and eight each in Sai Kung and New Kowloon. But I am not sure that the representatives are members of the villages they represent).\n\n25. Yeuk existed also in the Sha Tau Kok area (note the Nam Yeuk mentioned in the early British records) and in the area of Ho Sheung Heung (Hau Yeuk). It will be seen, therefore, that at the time of the advent of British rule many central, southern, and eastern areas of the mainland part of the New Territories were covered by a network of yeuk which, while certainly not including every village, nevertheless generally affected the political organisation of these areas. The striking omission is the west, that is to say, roughly the modern Yuen Long District. As far as I have been able to discover (my enquiries in this area were cut short by my premature departure from the Colony), the term yeuk has no traditional meaning here. (I stress 'traditional'. The British used the word for their own purposes; demarcation districts for land and the broader administrative districts were called yeuk after the new regime was established; and, as a result, by hearing the word used today one may be misled into thinking that it has a longer local history than it in fact has). Similarly, I know of no evidence that there were yeuk in the islands. Groupings of villages there certainly were in the Yuen Long area, under the names of heung (although I am not sure how old this usage is) kung shoh, just as these groupings sometimes appear in the areas where yeuk also existed; but the absence of yeuk seems to call for comment.\n\n26. If we look again at the evidence on yeuk-complexes, we may perhaps conclude that they were formed to protect the interests of the weak against the strong. The powerful Liu of Sheung Shui were never members of a yeuk. Indeed, on their own they were the enemies of the Luk Yeuk of Ta Kwu Ling. Similarly, the Tang of Lung Yeuk Tau (in which name, incidentally, the character for Yeuk is not the one we are concerned with here) and Tai Po Tau stood aloof from yeuk. It is probably significant that the Man of Tai Hang formed a yeuk on their own when they assumed leader-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207864, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "(b) that nearly all of them hold British passports and may be assumed to have been born in the Colony, and (c) that they are practically all men of working age, then we may conclude that they represent very roughly, perhaps a third of all the men in the New Territories who were born there and who fall within the economically active years of manhood. Since, furthermore, there are certain areas of the New Territories from which emigration has been especially heavy, despite the fact that men from all areas have participated in the movement, there are grounds for assuming that the effect of migration must in places have been extremely important.\n\n73. The scale and direction of the emigration of the last few years are novel, but they rest on a tradition which reminds us that in this, as in many other respects, the New Territories are geographically and culturally part of southeastern China. For, especially since the middle of the last century, the coastal regions of the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien have served as a reservoir from which many countries, above all in South-East Asia, have drawn population. Emigration to California and Australia,—the 'gold mountains'—was noted by the first British administrators of the New Territories (for they spoke of loan associations got up to finance men wanting to go to these two countries), but there are hints in the early census reports that New Territories people were scattered more widely. The 1911 census shows a handful of Chinese in the New Territories to have been born in Annam, Hawaii, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, Siam, and Australia. In 1921 the countries which appear in this context, again with reference to very small numbers, are Annam, India, Japan, British Borneo, France, Italy, the U.S.A., and Mexico. The list for 1931 reads: Indo-China, British North Borneo, Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, Siam, Canada, the U.S.A., Cuba, Panama, Guiana, Peru, England, and Holland. There were, in fact, two kinds of emigrants; landsmen who went overseas to make a living in a particular country, and seamen who, whether legally or not, left their ships to try their luck in places to which they had been carried. The establishment of Hong Kong as a British settlement in 1842 created a demand for local seamen, many of whom were recruited from the Chinese villages lying near the new centre. Men from Lamma Island and from Lantau Island seem at an early date to have taken service in British and other ships.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207903, "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": 291, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "276\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIncidentally, the furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon, whose fortunes had fallen on bad times. The Chinese government had seized their property for debt and sold it at public auction.\n\nThe transfer of the proceedings of the Chinese community from the Kung Soh to the Hospital Hall confirmed the suspicion of portions of the foreign community that the Committee of the Hospital was arrogating to itself too much power and was functioning as an unofficial government for the Chinese community. Even before the Hospital building was ready for occupancy, one of the newspapers reporting on a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States, stated that the Board of the Hospital \"appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the Hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some future date\". (Daily Advertiser, 7 Oct. 1871). And indeed there was much more said in the Hong Kong English language press in the ensuing years about these quasi-government functions of the Hospital Committee.\n\nWith the rising tide of criticism against the alleged usurpation of government authority by the Committee of the Hospital, the views and practices of the Magistrates changed regarding the propriety of recognizing any judicial power exercised by the leaders of the Chinese community. In a case heard at Magistrate's Court in 1875, a witness said that when the prisoner beat him, he threatened the prisoner that he would go to Tung Wah Hospital and complain about being duped and beaten. To this the Magistrate asked the witness, \n\nwhy he should go to Tung Wah Hospital to complain, explaining to him that this was a British Colony, and the Tung Wah had no powers. This was a British Colony and the police station was the place to complain to. If he had been badly injured he would understand his going to the Tung Wah for cure, but to go there for the redress of a wrong was preposterous. (Daily Press, Oct. 22, 1875).\n\nIt might seem preposterous to a European Magistrate for Chinese to first turn to their own countrymen for justice but to the Chinese it apparently was a most natural procedure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208000, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n23\n\nSpaniards. She worried about the presence of France in Indochina on the opposite side of the South China Sea at mid-century; and later on she suspected imperial Germany of coveting northern Borneo and the Philippines.\n\nThe British sphere was initiated by the private efforts of an English adventurer, James Brooke, a former officer in the Bengal Army. In 1840, he helped bring an end to an insurrection in the Sarawak River, in the southern-most area under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Brunei, and was rewarded by being granted the province. In 1845 Brooke was appointed diplomatic agent to Brunei and supervised the transfer of the island of Labuan to Britain as a colony and a naval station. He also, in 1847, negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan which effectively gave to Britain control over Brunei's foreign relations. The colony of Labuan languished but the quasi-protectorate over Brunei served as the de facto and legal base for Britain's sphere of influence in Borneo. Such a sphere was proclaimed in 1868 as a warning to all European nations to keep out.\n\nThe real carving-up of the carcass of Brunei began in earnest in 1878 with the founding of another private venture, that of a syndicate of City of London businessmen which later became the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company. The syndicate was under the control of Dent Brothers Company. Alfred and Edward Dent were sons of the owner of the former Hong Kong firm of Dent and Company. Raja Brooke had annexed, by treaty with the Sultan, additional chunks of territory before 1878. In 1853 he purchased northward to and including the large district of the Rajang River. And in 1861 he purchased the five so-called “sago rivers” as far north as Kidurong Point. When that point was reached, the Governor of Labuan objected to any further northward encroachment of Sarawak and Labuan's wishes were supported by Britain.\n\nWhen, however, the British North Borneo Company purchased the large area of Sabah, the whole of the island of Borneo to the northward of Brunei Town, with strong support from the Foreign Office, both Raja Brooke and the Colonial Office protested. It is interesting to note that the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office who midwifed the company charter through officialdom in Whitehall was Julian Pauncefote, who was a former attorney-general.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208001, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "24\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nof Hong Kong (1866) and who acted on occasion as legal representative of Dent and Company in that Colony.14\n\nThe Colonial Office by 1879 was favourably disposed toward Sarawak's expansionist plan in Brunei. A compromise was eventually achieved between the Colonial and Foreign Offices whereby Brooke was allowed a further cession of Brunei territory, the Baram River district, while North Borneo was confirmed to the company and it was allowed to acquire several territories on the north and east of Brunei Bay.\n\nAs to the attitude of Brunei toward the carving-up of its territory, few of the rajas of Brunei Town objected, for they were paid handsome cession monies from both Sarawak and North Borneo. In general, the temptation of a considerable monetary payment in hand overrode any desire to retain nominal title to territories over which Brunei sultans had long since ceased to rule and from which little, if any, revenue was obtained. That the presence of the British and the monetary payments tended to bolster a declining court and infuse it with vigour, if but superficially, was not lost upon the sultan and his rajas.\n\nThe keen competition which arose between Sarawak and North Borneo over the charter issue and the cession of Baram created a strong and bitter rivalry between the two states. Their attention was soon drawn to the remaining territory of Brunei. It seems clear that both Raja Brooke and the Company fully expected the demise of the sultanate, and each was determined to obtain as large a share of the remaining territory as possible. Raja Brooke had, for example, as early as 1874, offered to take over the administration of Brunei.\n\nIn 1890, Raja Brooke did annex the Limbang River district at the invitation of its Kayan chiefs, who had carried on a long rebellion against the extractions of corrupt Brunei rajas. After some on-site investigations, Britain reluctantly agreed to the acquisition. The raja was on firm legal ground, for he had obtained the chop of the sultan to the cession. But the loss of the Limbang was bitterly objected to by the rajas, who at almost the eleventh-hour began to realize that their individual selfishness and rivalry was bringing about the gradual extinction of the sultanate. The Limbang issue remains to this day a point of controversy between Brunei and Sarawak.15 No one at the time seemed to notice that Sarawak's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208010, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "STANLEY INTERNMENT CAMP, HONG KONG 1942-1945 33\n\nTweed Bay Beach provided pleasure for many internees. During the summer months they were allowed to swim there, under guard. During the summers of 1944 and particularly 1945, however, many had to forego this pleasure as it required walking down and up a very steep flight of stairs and many simply did not have the energy due to lack of food.\n\nAlthough the Japanese had meticulously planned their capture of the Colony, apparently they had not formulated plans for dealing with the enemy civilians. Not only was it several weeks after the surrender until the internees were interned in Stanley Camp, but once they had been interned, the Japanese had little to do with them. A few necessities, namely a minimal amount of food, were provided, but the internees were left to run the Camp themselves. They soon began forming committees. The three main national groups — American, British, and Dutch — remained independent but did cooperate on such matters as welfare and medicine. At the beginning of internment, there were approximately 2400 British internees, 300 Americans, and 60 Dutch. Being such a large majority (and after repatriation in June 1942, only about twenty Americans remained), the British really ran the Camp. Five committees were elected, and each struggled with similar problems of food, housing, medical matters, etc. It is of interest to note that very few Government servants were elected to serve on these committees because there was strong anti-Government feeling in the Camp, largely due to the blame most internees put on the Government for the quick surrender of the Colony. An internee wrote:\n\nThe first impulse that ran through camp would, on a larger social stage, have been called revolutionary. On every side, by almost every mouth, the former leading men of the colony were bitterly denounced. They were held to blame for what had happened in Hong Kong. Along the camp roadways where people gathered to gossip, one heard the same angry talk of the government servants' complacency, stupidity, and shortsightedness.*\n\nThe Governor, Sir Mark Young, was not interned in Hong Kong. The next highest Government official in the Colony was the Colonial Secretary, Franklin C. Gimson, who remained in the city for the first few weeks but did go to Camp to attend meetings from time to time.\n\n* See also H. J. Lethbridge's article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208032, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH’ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN, KWANGTUNG\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm*\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was carved, in three successive steps, from the Chinese county of Hsin-An (新安). These essays represent attempts to reconstruct modes of economic activity which prevailed in this remote county during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction will eventually serve as the groundwork on which an analysis of mercantile capitalism, in terms of its impact on local Chinese social structure, will be built.\n\nIn the first year of Wan-Li (1573), Hsin-An Hsien was formed from the division of Tung-Kuan Hsien (東莞縣) into two jurisdictions. Except for a brief period during the reign of the Kang-Hsi Emperor, the county remained one of the fourteen counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture throughout Ch'ing. As with most other magistracies in rural imperial China, Hsin-An was characterized by a high degree of self-government. The magistrate seldom intervened in local affairs, and relied heavily on the indigenous social order for the day-to-day administration of the countryside.\n\nThe dominant stratum of the local hierarchical order consisted principally of landlord-gentry patrilineal descent groups, commonly referred to as great clans (大族). Of these clans, the Tangs (鄧) and especially that branch of the clan which resided in Kam Tin (錦田) -- were probably best representative. Much of the data presented was collected during field work into the social history and oral tradition of this Punti \"power brokerage.\"\n\n*\n\nMr. Kamm states, The essays were written in fulfillment of seminar requirements for an A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies-East Asia program. The work is based largely on research undertaken in the New Territories (including a brief stint as coordinator of an NTA-Yuen Long \"oral history\" project in Kam Tin) and in the archives of the Public Records Office, Hong Kong. Writing and editing was supervised by Professor Yang Lien-Sheng of Harvard during late 1974.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong Island was ratified by the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Kowloon peninsula was added in 1860. Britain obtained the New Territories (on a 99-year lease) in 1898.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208043, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "66\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nFinally, a word on economic development. Equilibrium in the tenancy system in no way implied stagnation in the economy. We have already noted the benefits which tenants derived by extending the surface value. The clans, restricted in the amount of rent-value collected, expanded economically into two areas, regulation of trade and monopolization of tax collection. It was at the level of periodic marketing that the landlord clans \"reasserted control” over the tenants' surplus; moreover, the landlords were able to extract increasingly large amounts of revenue, as taxes, while both trade and agricultural production increased. In this way, perpetual tenancy gave impetus to the rise of taxlordism, which we shall consider in the next essay.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Hugh Baker, Sheung Shui, A Chinese Lineage Village, p 8.\n\n2 See, for instance, the Kwang Tung Nung Yeh Kai-K’uang Tiao-ch'a-pao-kao Shu Hsuan-pien (*), Vol. I, p 185.\n\n3 Hung ch'i represented officially recognized ownership of land. Pai ch'i (é) denoted unregistered ownership, mortgage, and the like. Tenants might possess pai ch'i, or they might not.\n\n4 It is very difficult to give a realistic estimate of the amount of land worked by tenants in the early nineteenth century. Existing records (including Government CSO reports, sessional papers and cadastral surveys) suggest a very high degree of tenancy. A survey taken by Potter in 1960 indicates a tenancy rate of 83% in Ping Shan (); this coincides with my observations in Kam Tin.\n\n5 Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, p 52.\n\n6 In the first tally of cultivated land conducted at the beginning of the Ch'ing Dynasty, 4039.567656 mow of land were liable to the payment of taxes. By 1819, this amount had shrunk to a total of 3815.94836965 mow. (Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8). Lockhart, in the Extension papers, writes of the land registers: \"The land registers of the district, which ought to be a reliable guide, are worse than useless, as they contain not more than half of the land under cultivation.\" (p.48).\n\n7 See Tung-Kuan Hsien-chih (*), ch'uan 39, for an account of the problems raised by this situation. In the early years of British administration, officers were often informed by cultivators that plots of 3rd class land (see below) were exempt from tax in certain areas.\n\n8 Kwang-chow Fu-chih ( ), ch'uan 4:46b-47a.\n\n9 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 2.\n\n10 James Hayes, \"Old British Kowloon\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 6, 1966, gives some data on Kowloon. The Hakka Tangs of Pat Heung apparently arrived in the neighborhood of Kam Tin during the migration years.\n\n11 Wan Lo, “Communal Strife in Mid-19th Century Kwangtung” Papers on China from the Regional Studies Seminar, p 93. See also N.B. Dennys (ed), The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (1867), pp 20-22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208055, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "J \n\n78 \n\nJ. T. KAMM \n\nIt is interesting to note that each of the five great clans (§ Tang (鄧), Hau (侯), Pang (彭), Liu (廖), and Man (文) — are represented on the schedule.30 Of these, the Tangs clearly have the greatest share. Another point, which is less obvious from the scanty data presented above, is that the taxlords only chose land within the boundaries of the tung itself, even though plots existed in Un Long Tung considerably closer, and hence easier to manage, than the plots chosen. This seemingly minor point leads us into an examination of the political and economic foundations of the tung. \n\nThe standard \"primary source\" on the nature of tung is Lockhart's description of “Local Government in the Villages\" contained in his report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong.31 On the basis of this report, which heavily stresses the judicial functions performed by the chu (Cantonese: Kuk) which oversee the tung, Acting Governor Black recommended the appointment of “a commissioner or a Resident, possessing knowledge of the Chinese” who \"should govern somewhat in the present Chinese system, i.e., the village elders to rule the villages, which grouped according to topographical limits, form a tung having a council composed of representatives from the village elders.\"32 \n\nConsiderable confusion exists over the precise nature of tung and chu. Lockhart clearly overestimated the political-judicial power of the Tung Ping Kuk (東平局), a mistake which would have proven costly had not the British possessed superior firepower in the Pat Heung Valley. Having won the support of this chu, Lockhart believed that the gentry of the various “divisions” would follow suit. He was to discover later that the gentry of Un Long Tung had convened another chu, the Tai Ping Kung Kuk (太平公局) which financed, and to some extent coordinated, the local revolt; in so doing, they effectively dismantled the Tung Ping Kuk by summoning Tung-Kuan clansmen to occupy Sham Chun.33 \n\nIn most of the counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture, chu formed the basis of local self-government throughout the troubled nineteenth century. One of the best descriptions of these organizations is to be found in Kang Yu-wei (康有為)'s chapter on self-government.... \"taxlord claims,\" but, since the inhabitants could not produce title to the land, the Tangs were recognized as \"chief landlords.\" CSO8551 in 1903. One taxlord was recognized in Sha Tau Kok (Li Tung-chung) and one on Lantao (Wong Kwok-shi). Little is known concerning these cases, except that the latter status was granted out of compassion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208089, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)\": SUB-NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY IN NORTH POINT, HONG KONG\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN⭑\n\n\"Ethnic neighborhoods\" are found not only in city guidebooks but squat smugly astride the intersection of Urban Anthropology with Ethnicity Studies. Mention of such a neighborhood conjures up visions in both folk and anthropological minds of a distinctive and discrete portion of a city marked off by spatial as well as social boundaries from the rest of the urban area. Cultural peculiarities and perhaps even physical oddities predominate on the streets, in the homes, in the shops.\n\nSo much for popular and anthropological expectations. Field research in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong has disclosed to me how misleading such a priori notions of ethnic neighborhood can be. In Hong Kong, certain neighborhoods are known as districts inhabited by certain groups of ethnically distinct Han Chinese,1 yet in every district in urban Hong Kong the majority Guangdongese (Cantonese) is indeed the majority group and not the purportedly dominant minority group.\n\nSince all these districts are peopled by a majority of Guangdongese, I submit it is rather imprecise to speak of a neighborhood such as North Point as \"Little Fujian\" when only 1/5 of the population there is Fujianese (Fukienese). To avoid the clumsiness of a terminology of \"universal,\" \"substantial,\" or \"bare\" majority predominance in a neighborhood, we should instead simply sharpen our tools and terms of urban analysis. We should realize that in the case of North Point and Hong Kong (and, I suspect, in many other cases) the concepts of \"neighborhood\" and \"community\" do not overlap, that the geographical/spatial boundaries of a neighborhood may not be coterminous with the sociocultural ones of a community. A city-wide ethnic community may encompass a number of neighborhoods or sections of neighborhoods. Conversely, a neighborhood may be composed of a number of spatially distinct sub-neighborhoods and/or a number of socio-culturally distinct communities.\n\n* Professor Guldin is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208380, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "88\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nit were triggered initially by a lockout at a plastic flowers factory in Kowloon and fanned by some arbitrary police action taken against demonstrating workers and students. Anti-colonial demonstrations occurred and anti-British sentiment ran high, fueled by stepped up anti-imperialist propaganda radiating from the mainland then in the midst of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. While most carved wood furniture factory and shop proprietors were unlikely targets for anti-imperialist attack, the Woodwork Carvers' Union seems to have taken advantage of the widespread unrest to extract a wage increase from the Merchants' Association at the time.\n\nOne school of thought (with its locus in the Far Eastern Economic Review) maintains that the Peking government was dissatisfied with its compatriots' handling of the 1967 disturbances and called a halt thereafter to revolutionary activity in the Crown Colony. While these claims are difficult to substantiate with any certainty, it is widely admitted in the Hong Kong pro-communist community that Peking was desirous of a stable situation in post-1967 Hong Kong so that it could actively pursue, from its viewpoint, more pressing diplomatic questions like its entry into the United Nations and the liberation of Taiwan.\n\n\"Hong Kong is a historical problem that will be solved at the appropriate time\" goes the refrain. The Hong Kong \"problem\" does not have the status of a \"principle contradiction\" for the People's Republic. Hong Kong continues to remain valuable to the Communist government in terms of the significant amounts of foreign exchange which China earns by marketing its products in and through the port, and also as a place in which trade and diplomatic contacts are still pursued. While such functions may decline as China continues to open up diplomatically and economically, they are still a factor in Hong Kong's historical viability as a colony.\n\nIn any event, in the post-1967 period, industrial peace in Hong Kong was the common desire of the British colonial government and the communist government in Peking. This led to the assumption on the part of the communist Federation of Trade Unions of some rather odd poses in the local adaptation of Mao Tse-tung thought to the Hong Kong scene.\n\nThis was particularly so in so far as the implementation of Mao's thought has entailed a disciplined adherence to a policy of delayed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 4, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n15\n\nurgent consent of the United States Chiefs of Staff to detach a British naval force from the British Pacific Fleet to accept Japan's surrender and assume full powers of military administration in the colony.63 The Japanese accepted defeat on 14 August. However, the British Pacific Fleet assigned for service at Hong Kong, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, did not arrive until 30 August. During this interval of a fortnight, the question of Hong Kong sorely tried the British government and placed the United States government in an uncomfortable position.\n\nHong Kong again became a serious point of contention between Britain and China. This time the argument was not whose sovereignty was to be set up but who was to receive Japan's surrender there. Despite the assurances given by Chiang Kai-shek on 16 August, and repeated on 24 August, that China had \"no territorial ambitions\" in Hong Kong and regarded it \"as a matter which would require eventual settlement through diplomatic channel\", the British Foreign and Colonial Offices insisted that Sir Cecil Harcourt receive Japan's surrender on behalf of Britain by virtue of her sovereignty over Hong Kong.64\n\nThe prime minister, now C.R. Attlee, appealed to the American president for assistance. Fortunately for Britain, Truman, who had assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April, was in favour of a cautious policy. While being conscious of his predecessor's views regarding the future status of Hong Kong, he, however, decided to adhere to the \"recognition of the established rights\", although he told both Britain and China that such recognition \"did not in any way represent U.S. views regarding the future status of Hong Kong.\" General Douglas MacArthur was therefore instructed to arrange for the surrender of Hong Kong to the British commander.65 Again fortunately for Britain, MacArthur was known for \"his support for the cause of the British Empire in the Far East.\" In fact in October 1944 he had specifically expressed that he \"fully appreciated the need for British forces to recapture Hong Kong.\"66\n\nChiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, insisted on his right to accept Japan's surrender at Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of the China theatre. He was therefore most distressed by Truman's agreement with the British. To avoid embarrassing Truman, Chiang now suggested that the Japanese forces in Hong Kong should surrender to his representative in a ceremony in which both", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208571, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE UNITED STATES AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG, 1941-45\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG*\n\nWhat the question of Hong Kong boiled down to during the Pacific War was the British colony's future status when war was over. Throughout the war China, now Britain's ally, was clamouring for Hong Kong's retrocession when the Japanese were driven out. Britain was naturally concerned, as she wished to retain the territory. But her worry was greatly aggravated by the unsympathetic attitude of the United States, on whose manpower and material support she heavily relied for winning the war against Germany. Britain's, especially Prime Minister Churchill's, response was characterized by a concern disproportionate to Hong Kong's importance in the British empire. Yet the reaction was justified by the fear that concession over Hong Kong would trigger off the disintegration of the British empire, a process Britain refused to recognize as unavoidable. The question of Hong Kong during the period under discussion has been dealt with from the British point of view. This essay attempts to further review the subject by focusing on the American side of the picture.\n\nIn the main, the United States' attitude towards the question of Hong Kong was influenced by two much broader issues: the treatment of China as an ally, and the aspiration to end imperialism and colonialism in the post-war world. For some time after the United States' entry into the Pacific War, certainly during 1942 and the greater part of 1943, the American attitude towards China was characterized by admiration, a sense of guilt, anxiety, and eagerness to compensate. These feelings were connected and interwoven. Admiration is simple to explain. Pearl Harbour, which the Americans took as “an insult to the entire nation”, immediately highlighted China's bravery in having fought single-handedly for over four years against Japan, now a common enemy. For the greater part of the war, Americans seemed never to tire of praising China along this theme.\n\n* Dr. Chan is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208575, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The U.S. and the Question of Hong Kong 1941-45\n\nwith the United States, \"very little credit accrued to Britain, the assumption in Chungking being that Washington had pressed a reluctant London to agree to rendition.\"19 As opposed to the glamour of Madame Chiang's visit to the United States, Britain's “cordial invitation” to her to visit Britain, issued by the King himself, was decidedly ignored.20 Britain felt that her already difficult relations with China were aggravated by the fact that the “Americans [were] pathological about China, and keenly suspicious of any possible unfriendliness towards her on the part of others”.21 It was naturally feared that anything China demanded would have the sympathetic hearing of the United States, even at Britain's expense.\n\nBritain's future position in Hong Kong became all the more difficult to defend in view of the American wholesale denunciation of Britain's imperial and colonial policies. The American mentality towards the matter has been thus summarized: \"The idea became prevalent in America that the war the United States and the United Nations were fighting was not merely for self-preservation, but for the greater qualities of human rights and decency. There was a growing cry for a ‘Pacific Charter', to be on the lines of the Atlantic Charter, to guarantee freedom after the war to the non-self-governing countries in the Pacific. Or, at least, the Atlantic Charter should be extended to cover the Pacific region.”22 This mentality was shared by the president as well as the general public. It has been asserted that Roosevelt had been an anti-imperialist before the Pacific War, but he began a vigorous attack on colonialism everywhere early in 1943 after his trip to Casablanca, which apparently had a profound effect on his attitude towards colonialism.23\n\nTurning specifically to the American attitude towards Hong Kong, interest in the British colony was evident early in the War. There was clear indication that American public feeling \"would feel itself cheated if the outcome of the victory of the United Nations were to be simply the restoration of the status quo ante in Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma, India and the Netherlands East Indies.\" There had been widespread speculation about the future of Hong Kong, stimulated by the speeches of such high officials of the administration as Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. Critics in the United States frequently raised the question why Britain did not give up Hong Kong and relinquish her extraterritorial rights in China. It seemed almost certain that in the event of China demanding the return of Hong Kong, she could be confident of American sympathy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208577, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n7\n\ncould not refuse point blank either because, significantly, no American support could be expected in taking this stand, and the Chinese were likely to refuse to sign the treaty under the circumstances. The only alternative left was to endeavour to obtain postponement of the question by using the formula laid down by, surprisingly, the Colonial Office for the future status of Hong Kong earlier in August: \"should the post-war reconstruction of the Far East to be undertaken jointly by all the United Nations require special contributions from Hong Kong, the British government would not 'regard the maintenance of British sovereignty over the Colony [here applied only to the New Territories] as a matter beyond the scope of... discussion.\" Such, plus the argument that the New Territories were leased territories and therefore unrelated to the question of extraterritoriality, was the British reply to the Chinese at the beginning of December,28\n\nBy mid-December, all outstanding obstacles in the American-Chinese negotiations had been removed, but the problem over the New Territories persisted in the Anglo-Chinese talks. The Chinese would not accept a settlement which did not include the cancellation of the Kowloon lease. The United States indicated that she would sign her treaty with China on New Year's Day 1943. Obsessed with the desire to sign the Anglo-Chinese treaty simultaneously, Britain informed the Chinese government through her ambassador at Chungking that \"the future of the New Territories was outside the scope of the extraterritoriality treaty, but if the Chinese government desired [my italics] that 'terms of the lease of these territories should be reconsidered'\", this should be done when war was over.29 Thus the British had clearly conceded to China the initiative to raise the question in future.\n\nThe Chinese, however, remained adamant. On 28 December the Foreign Office decided to omit the words \"terms of\" before \"lease\" in her statement to China, having learned earlier of the suspicion of T.V. Soong, the Chinese foreign minister, of the words in question. But it was to be Britain's very last concession, even at the risk of sacrificing the treaty as a whole.30\n\nAt the war cabinet meeting that day Eden obtained permission to ask for the support of the United States, in deference to whose opinion Britain had conceded a number of important points in her negotiations with China, as a last attempt to save the situation.31 The State Department, however, did not comply with the Foreign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "10\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nhad, according to Hopkins, urged Britain on more than one occasion to give up Hong Kong as a gesture of “good will”. To this suggestion Eden, who had originally objected to agreeing to the return of the New Territories on terms after the war in connection with the extraterritoriality negotiations with China but eventually bowed to the majority opinion of the Foreign Office, returned a cold shoulder.41\n\nBritain's attitude regarding Hong Kong steadily stiffened in the course of 1943. She talked less and less about returning the colony on terms. It was partly because pressure from China decreased markedly since the beginning of the year, presumably because she assumed the retrocession of Hong Kong as a matter of course judging from Britain's behaviour in the extraterritoriality negotiations and at the Institute of Pacific Relations' Conference. More significantly, perhaps, Britain became increasingly confident in her relations with the United States and China with the improvement in the European war situation. By the end of the year a final Allied victory in Europe was no longer seriously in doubt.42\n\nIt was under such circumstances that Stanley Hornbeck's visit to London, as a return gesture to Ashley Clarke's visit to Washington the previous year, took place in November 1943. Hornbeck spent much of his time in London on consultation with the Foreign Office and other offices concerned with Far Eastern affairs. At the final conference at which most interested British officials were present, Hornbeck, “entirely on his own responsibility”,43 remarked as follows: \"I felt that we had covered much ground and had explored a good many subjects, [but] there was one additional matter to which we perhaps might need, not at the moment but as the situation unfolded, to give thought. That matter was ... the future of Hong Kong.\" \"The effect was electrifying\", observed Hornbeck. He immediately regretted it: \"I had had no thought of injecting a discordant note. I felt at once that discretion in that context would be the better part of valour.”44\n\nHornbeck's regret came too late. That very evening the British arranged that he would, before his departure for home, call on Churchill the following morning. At the meeting Hornbeck received a long and emphatic lecture from the Prime Minister on Hong Kong: \"What about Hong Kong? I will tell you. [The rest retold in Hornbeck's words] He then described the acquisition by Great\n\n+ + + +", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208581, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n11\n\nBritain of Hong Kong, and the development by Great Britain of a great port which he felt had benefited the whole world. He said that it was British territory and he saw no good reason why it should cease to be such. He went on to say that perhaps some arrangement could be made with the Chinese whereby the question of sovereignty could be adjusted but the political control and administrative responsibility remain with Great Britain. He referred to public utterances of his own to the effect that he was not Prime Minister for the purpose of being a party to a liquidation of the British Empire. He said that he had convictions on that subject and that he was perfectly willing to say so frankly to anybody.\"45\n\nIt might well have been his own weak performance in London, among other things, which prompted Hornbeck early in January 1944 to urge the Secretary of State not to repeat Woodrow Wilson's mistake in being too much of a \"gentleman\". The American government must obtain from Britain agreement and cooperation in any reasonable course of action upon which the United States might choose to insist, especially in relation to colonial matters, before the defeat of Germany when Britain still depended on the Americans for their preservation.46\n\nThe Secretary's reaction to the advice is not known. But it appears from his memoirs that he was not in favour of coercion in dealing with the Anglo-American differences, and specifically with the question of Hong Kong.47 In any case, the Department of State had become less and less consulted by the President with regard to general war and foreign policies. The War and Navy Departments and the Treasury were far more important in the President's mind. On the personal level, moreover, Hull was certainly not one of Roosevelt's trusted few. Hull himself was conscious and sensitive of the truth: that FDR was his own Secretary of State.\"48 In fact, many of Roosevelt's utterances at the major Allied conferences, beginning with the Cairo Conference late in 1943, were made without prior reference to and consultation with the Department of State. Hull resigned late in 1944, frustrated and in poor health.\n\nDespite Roosevelt's well-known anti-imperialist and anti-colonial stand and his interest in Hong Kong, his behaviour regarding the future of the British colony was generally characterized by weakness and the lack of persistent and direct pressure on Britain. At the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208582, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "12\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nCairo Conference at the end of 1943, Roosevelt offered Chiang Kai-shek, behind Churchill's back, American support in preventing Britain from getting back Hong Kong if Chiang would cooperate with the communists in fighting against Japan and establish a representative government in China. Roosevelt's idea was that on regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, Chiang should \"make a grand gesture and make it a free port.\"49 At Teheran in November 1943, during a break in the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt raised with Churchill the question of the possible return of Hong Kong to China, and the latter refused even to discuss the question.50\n\nAt his secret meeting with Stalin during the Yalta Conference, on 8 February 1945, Roosevelt again mentioned his hope \"that the British would give back the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China and that it would then become an internationalized free port.\" He added, however, that he knew Churchill \"would have strong objections to this suggestion.” At the conference proper, however, Roosevelt did not raise the question of Britain's return of Hong Kong, although references were made to the colony on several occasions.52 Later, in the spring of 1945, Roosevelt used Bernard Baruch, a financier and a friend of both Roosevelt and Churchill, as a messenger to press the British prime minister on the matter of Hong Kong. Roosevelt was now additionally concerned that the Soviet Union might make use of Britain's presence in Hong Kong as an argument for opening a port of her own in China.53 In April 1945 when General Patrick J. Hurley was sent by Roosevelt to talk with Churchill over the retrocession of Hong Kong to China, among other subjects, the latter replied that the colony would not be yielded \"over [his] dead body.\"54 The truth is that already by 1944 Roosevelt had become increasingly reluctant to offend the sensitivity of Churchill who by then was no longer \"subservient to the friendly strength of the United States\" as he clearly had been in 1941-42.55\n\nBritain was not slow to perceive the American weakness. Moreover, by 1944 American enthusiasm about China and Chiang Kai-shek had somewhat cooled down. Roosevelt, as it has been mentioned, had for some time been troubled by the disunity between the nationalists and the communists, and by growing criticism of the autocracy of the Chiang regime. Discussion and criticism of the Chungking government and its conduct of the war increased remarkably in the United States following the American recall of General Joseph Stilwell under pressure from Chiang Kai-shek,56", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n13\n\nTaking advantage of the changed American sentiments regarding China and the allied victory in Europe, Britain began an active propaganda programme to influence American public opinion concerning Britain's imperial and colonial attitudes and policies and the British Empire's contribution to the allied war effort. The British Information Services, an agency of the British government in New York, published numerous booklets for the purpose.$7\n\nHong Kong naturally figured prominently in these publications. In the booklet entitled \"Britain and Japan\", for instance, it is thus stated: \"When the Island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain one hundred years ago, it was almost uninhabited. Since then Britain has built on that island the beautiful city of Victoria. By 1941 Hong Kong had a population of 1,650,000, mostly Chinese; it was a trading center and a port for commercial shipping which had enriched the communities all around it. Students from China came to the University of Hong Kong to get degrees in Medicine, Engineering, Science and Arts, which were recognized in Britain as fully reaching British standards. During the long troubles of China, the island of Hong Kong, and the city of Victoria, became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of distressed Chinese.\" The message was clear: if the British colony of Hong Kong had been beneficial to Britain, it also had been as much so, if not more, to China.\n\nMeanwhile, events were leading to the last stages of the Pacific War. In September 1944 the Americans and the British reached a clear understanding which laid down the general principle that in the British Far Eastern territories which were in the American command, the policies to be followed on the liberation of those territories should be laid down by the British government and accepted by the American force commander.58 Late in February 1945 the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, instituted in December the previous year for the purpose of coordinating the Department of State and the War and Navy Departments, directed that its Subcommittee for the Far East maintain, as a general guide for its activities, a master list of Pacific-Far Eastern problems, arranged in appropriate order of priority. Also, before initiating action on any one of such problems the subcommittee should submit in each case to the main committee a detailed recommendation showing “(1) a statement of the problem (2) the agency or agencies to be charged with initiation of the basic documents involved, and (3) the method of processing and coordination thereof, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208603, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\nNOVEMBER\n\n33\n\nPat Wong, an old Maryknoll friend from our first days in Hong Kong, and now visiting the Colony from his new home in Honolulu, took the new men to their first Chinese banquet with no casualties reported.\n\nThe Kongmoon contingent among the new men, with Father O'Melia as guide and teacher, take off for the Tan Chuk Seminary in the Wuchow Mission as the new site for the Language School; a safety precaution in view of the worsening conditions between the Japanese and the British-American bloc. Father Siebert, assigned to Kaying, will leave for there later on.\n\nThe Stanley staff went to the dock to greet the S.S. Van Buren and the other new missioners but they were not on board - a mystery!\n\nBrother William arrived from Shanghai where he has been staying with Father Whitlow for some time. He is unable to return to Korea at present.\n\nFather Don Hessler arrived from Kweilin by plane for a rest after his recent bout with typhoid. Father Barney Meyer goes to the Paris Foreign Mission compound, \"Nazareth,\" for a retreat preparatory to his coming jubilee. Father Feeney and Father Bauer arrive, the latter for treatment at St. Paul's for a bad case of dysentery. The end of the month brought Passionist Bishop Cuthbert O'Gara by plane from Kweilin.\n\nPART II: WAR AND OCCUPATION, DECEMBER 1941 -- AUGUST 1945\n\nWith the proximity of the Japanese across the border, the atmosphere in the Colony was rather tense. When Canton fell to the Japanese, there was a mass flight of refugees to Hong Kong. It was then estimated that some one hundred thousand came in 1939, bringing the population of the Colony at the outbreak of hostilities to approximately one million six hundred thousand, and it was thought that at the height of the influx, some half a million were sleeping on the streets.\n\nThen, on the fateful date of December 8th, the quiet of the Maryknoll House was rudely broken by the events of what was, no...\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208604, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "34 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\ndoubt, the most momentous year of its short history. After months and months of suspense occasioned by the occupation of the mainland, the war struck Hong Kong. Everyone, of course, was hoping against hope that the catastrophe would not affect the British Crown Colony, but such was not to be, and its peace and quiet was rudely shattered by the Japanese guns and ships which began shelling the city. As a precautionary measure our Econome, Father John Troesch, wisely put in a goodly supply of food stuffs in expectation of a long siege, but as a matter of fact, we did not benefit from it, as future events proved.\n\nFrom this point we shall quote from detailed diaries written by Maryknollers stationed at Stanley, eye witnesses of much of the attack and occupation, Fathers Troesch, Feeney and Downs.\n\nThe month of December in Hong Kong was ushered in much the same manner as its companions of 1941, but its exit from the world was in striking contrast. We Maryknollers at Stanley rose to greet it, and at our breakfast table read the news of the day, news of the war in various sectors and rumors of war nearer at hand, but hope was uppermost in our hearts that the fair city of Hong Kong would not be embroiled in the world catastrophe. Due to the unsettled conditions in the Far East our 1941 group of new missioners had been delayed, and now that we had some news of their departure from the Coast, we were anxiously awaiting their arrival. One small group had already reached our shores, three of whom had left for their missions in Kongmoon; the fourth, a Hakkaite, Father Siebert, was waiting for an escort to his adopted land. This year the Hong Kong Language School was to move inland, and our plans, already formulated in our minds, were that as soon as we had definite word of the arrival of the new men, we would book passage on a plane leaving nightly from Hong Kong for Kukong. Because of the \"China Incident\" plane travel was the only means of transportation left with the interior of China, and we were all looking forward to our coming trip. The atmosphere, of course, was tense, and no one could hazard what was to happen, but hope was strong in our hearts that we could get to our inland missions before any storm broke.\n\nAmong our house guests at this time were Bishop O'Gara, C.P., and two of his priests, Fathers Benson, the Passionists' Procurator at Shanghai and Norris, C.P., who had come to meet their Bishop; and they joined us in felicitating Father Meyer on the celebration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208610, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "40 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nenough, but their range was inadequate and the planes flew just above their fire and dropped bombs upon targets with impunity. It was reported, however, that one plane was shot down with an anti-aircraft gun. Of course, there was not a single British fighter in the air to oppose the Japanese. The two or three antiquated crates that were seen occasionally flying around before the war were perhaps only trainers or observation planes. On the first and second nights of hostilities the drone of planes was heard around midnight, and a few planes were evidently taking off and landing at Kai Tak. Our first reaction to this was that they might be British planes arriving from Singapore, to aid in the defense of Hong Kong, but these sporadic flights soon stopped, and we learnt later that there were the ordinary CNAC or commercial planes which were being flown away to safer havens, and at the same time taking a few important people out of the Colony. The Japanese had the air entirely to themselves, and to my observation there were never more than ten to twelve planes in action at the same time. \n\nIn comparison with former days, there was comparatively little shipping in the harbor at the outbreak of hostilities. The few ocean freighters were either scuttled or set on fire in Kowloon Bay or in Lyemoon channel, by their captains. It may be that a couple were bombed, I do not know. There was a number of small river craft anchored near Kowloon, and of course the usual ferries, harbor tugs and a considerable fleet of Chinese junks huddled together in the typhoon shelters. At about the second or the third day of the war, every small ship and tug, including river passenger boats and ferries, got into motion and began moving slowly up and down the harbor fairway. Apparently this was to avoid being hit by bombs or shells. \n\nDuring this time I watched a small tug, perhaps a navy tug, calmly set out from Kowloon to cross to Hong Kong. As it pulled away from its anchorage a train of shells began falling in its wake. However, it kept on majestically and quite unconcernedly on its way, and though the shells fell closer and closer to its stern, it reached the navy yard in safety, and then as calmly turned out into the harbor again. At the same time, a small British destroyer, the Thracian backed slowly out of its berth in the Navy Yard, turned around and headed westward out of the harbor. No shells hit it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208615, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n45\n\nthe road, and had showered down this debris. We halted not, but sped on, and finally turned into the lower road at Repulse Bay. Here Mr. Brown had some business to transact with his Chinese foreman and workmen who were engaged in demolishing the bathing beach matsheds, lest they be an obstruction to defending troops, or a hiding place for invading forces. Another dash up the hills and around curves brought us breathless but happy to Stanley, and Father Downs was indeed glad to get back among his confreres.\n\nArrived at Stanley Father Downs found the situation rather tense, though not quite so \"hot\" as at Hong Kong. During his absence he was told that Stanley was fairly quiet, except for occasional planes passing overhead, when they dropped a few bombs on and near the Prison, one also hitting Dr. Hackett's, the Prison Doctor's house, demolishing one wing of it. Of course, \"Big Bertha\"—a 9.2 inch gun at the fort on the promontory to the south of us—kept up an intermittent booming day and night, shelling enemy positions on the mainland. When \"Big Bertha\" spoke, she shook our building and made our windows rattle twice, but we did not mind that.\n\nLong before the outbreak of hostilities British Government and Army officials had visited Maryknoll at Stanley with a view to taking it over in whole or in part if any emergency arose. At one time it was intended to be a hospital, but the Army seemed to have prior rights and they decided to take over a part of our building. Accordingly when Japanese planes began flying overhead and Japanese troops began attacking His Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong, His Majesty's Royal Engineers came out to Stanley and occupied the western end of our building: that is, the servants' quarters downstairs, with the classroom and room adjoining, the recreation room upstairs together with two small private rooms close by. Our Ford V-8 was immobilized, our garage taken over by a number of coolies, and the Engineers prepared for eventualities. They brought out with them quite a supply of food, in the way of huge sacks of rice, soya beans and large tins of army biscuits or hard-tack. The five or six Engineers and Mr. Brown ate at our table with us, and we shared their food, so that we were quite a family.\n\nAs in Hong Kong the delivery to Stanley of daily food, such as meats, vegetables, bread and so forth by the Dairy Farm and Lane", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208616, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "46\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nCrawford's, began to cease and we turned over to a diet of rice, soya beans, green vegetables and hard-tack from the Army stores. We managed also to buy a little pork and vegetables in the village below us for a while, but the supply quickly ran out. We likewise had a limited supply of canned goods in our pantry.\n\nWhen the Engineers took over our recreation room we fixed up the lower chapel to serve that purpose and placed a number of portable altars in our Main Chapel upstairs. Here Mass was said daily as usual, but well after daylight as it was very difficult to black out the whole chapel. And finally there was no electricity and some old vigil lights and candles were required as illuminants. It made us think of mediaeval times, and we retired early and rose late.\n\nFather Maurice Feeney wrote a very detailed account of his experiences, and we shall now give some of his impressions of the conflict.\n\nOn the fatal day, the 8th, Father Maurice Feeney went to visit Father George Bauer who was ill at St. Paul's Hospital, suffering from a severe attack of dysentery. In the course of his visit Japanese planes began flying overhead, and he, together with some of the nurses, witnessed the attack. Hearing that the Hospital was to be emptied of its patients to prepare for casualties, he and Father Bauer returned to Stanley.\n\nThough Father Feeney had volunteered to serve at the Hospital, upon his return to Stanley he was sent to Kowloon in response to a request from the Maryknoll Sisters there for a priest chaplain, and protector. His trip the next morning was a rather hectic one with planes flying overhead and consternation in the streets below. On his arrival at the Convent he learned that the British were already using the Sisters' school as a first aid station. Immediately behind the school was a six-inch gun which kept up a steady fire at the invading forces. It was not long before a shell did hit the Convent, making a two-foot hole in the wall and causing much damage to the classrooms.\n\nThough hostilities had begun only on the 8th it did not take the Japanese very long to infiltrate into the Colony, and on the 11th they were seen outside the Sisters Convent, patrolling the streets. It was not long either before a Japanese officer appeared and politely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208638, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "68\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nonly the masonry shell of a building stood, mute witness to the horrors of war. Whenever a building was left untenanted, it suffered this same fate. The area around St. Paul's Hospital was pretty badly scarred, and the Hospital itself received many direct shell hits. A few Jesuits and some Salesians were kept prisoners for a while close to the Hospital, but were released after a few days. While engaged in driving an ambulance in the city, one of the Christian Brothers, Brother Peter, was killed; otherwise, the clergy and religious of Hong Kong were uninjured, though I believe Father Tournier, Assistant French Procurator, was slightly wounded. One shell hit the Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon, and though the Sisters had a trying time, they were unmolested.\n\nAfter the armistice, the Japanese began immediately collecting all vehicles, cars and trucks. Along the road at Stanley, on our return from the garage, we saw a number of trucks and cars on the road, either having been damaged by machine-gun fire, or abandoned by their drivers. These were all towed into town, in many cases by British army trucks which had been captured, and hundreds and perhaps thousands of cars, trucks and buses were corraled on the Happy Valley and Deep Water Bay recreation grounds. It is also thought that the Japanese took many of these vehicles to Japan, as it is reported that they took food supplies out of the Colony to Japan.\n\nGradually, a few bus lines were started up, as was a ferry or two to Kowloon, but the only cars on the road were Japanese trucks and official cars. All business was at a standstill; shops and department stores were closed and boarded up; what business there was, was done by hawkers on the streets. All foreign enemy property was promptly taken over by the Japanese and strips of wood with Chinese characters painted or stenciled on them bore the motto: \"Imperial Japanese Government Property.\" Our house at Stanley was likewise placarded and Father Troesch was appointed guardian for the Japanese Government.\n\nThe French Fathers at Pokfulam were treated rather roughly, and were kept in a small room for several days, while their buildings were ransacked and looted. The Christian Brothers' College suffered the same fate, even though they were of mixed nationality and their head an Irishman. The Jesuits lost Ricci Hall but managed to keep Wah Yan College and the Seminary at Aberdeen. The beautiful French Procure was finally confiscated and the Fathers had to move", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208643, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n73\n\nand soon the Holy Sacrifice is being celebrated on four makeshift altars, each of us taking his turn. After Mass, Father Troesch manages to get a little fire going in our kitchen and soon we have a cup of coffee and a dish of oatmeal. We have already been informed that the Japanese authorities will give us rice, meat, vegetables, tea, salt, and sugar—all of which will be strictly rationed and that we may be allowed to purchase other foods, such as fish and vegetables from hawkers who will come into the Camp. We are to have two meals a day, from the Camp kitchen, now merely a large rice caldron set up on some cement blocks in an area-way on the ground floor of our Block. Our cooks in this general kitchen seem to be some stranded American sailors, whose captain scuttled his ship when the war began.\n\nAs we take stock of our surroundings, we find that there are already some two hundred Americans here, and more expected. Some of these who arrived early began, with typical American aggressiveness, to clean up the place, and when we arrived, our rooms were in a very presentable state. In the other Blocks, there are over a thousand British, and more arriving, in trucks and buses, with more or less baggage. We likewise find five Maryknoll Sisters in Block \"G\". These are the Holy Spirit School staff, who in the beginning of hostilities had been evacuated to the Queen Mary Hospital, where they also served as nurses. The Japanese have taken over the Queen Mary Hospital, also all the other British Hospitals in the Colony and the staffs are rapidly being brought to Stanley. Our sick, Father Bauer and the two Brothers, have also arrived in Camp, Father Bauer being not much improved. In the course of this afternoon, nine Canadian Immaculate Conception Sisters arrived, and were given quarters in one of the British Blocks. We suppose the Kowloon contingent of Maryknoll Sisters will soon appear as well, along with Father Feeney. We are saving a cot for him.\n\nImmediately upon our vacating the House, the Japanese Gendarmerie moved in, and at night, we can see a few lights in the building.\n\nJanuary 22nd—A call for able-bodied seamen on deck for manual labor; some to help in the kitchen, cutting wood and preparing food, others for carrying baggage of new arrivals, and others are set to work carrying cement blocks for the construction of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208651, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n81\n\nThompson, member of the Hong Kong police, joins our Hakka class.\n\n16—Since the cessation of hostilities, the Japanese Army has been in control of all departments of Hong Kong civil and political life, but today it was announced that they would hand over this control to the Civil Authorities. Doctor Talbot, British doctor, gives cholera and typhoid injections to the Americans.\n\n17—Shrove Tuesday. Mardi Gras at St. Stephen's Hall, with popular songs and specialties. The local Civil Authorities, in inaugurating their regime, give us a movie showing industrial Japan. Canteen opens again with a limited amount of ham, jam, oatmeal, milk, and syrup.\n\n18—Ash Wednesday. Blessing of Ashes at chapel in Maryknoll Sisters' apartments and at the Club Chapel. Bishop O'Gara gave the sermon. Father Grogan, S.J., from Hong Kong, appeared in camp for a few minutes today, having come out on the Red Cross truck which brought some milk for the babies. As the Dairy Farm is still functioning on a limited scale, the Camp officials have been endeavoring to secure milk for the babies, but with little success, and only a small amount is forthcoming. Up to the present, the Japanese authorities, acting through a Chinese comprador, have been supplying us with our daily rations and are trying to find means whereby we can pay for our food. Today at a meeting on \"The Hill,\" they asked that we pay $50.00 per month for our food. They have already frozen all accounts in the banks, and though some people in Camp do have some money, the majority are without funds. If we do not pay this amount, all we get will be eight ounces of rice, one ounce of sugar, and one-twelfth of an ounce of salt!\n\n19—American police duty changed to a four-hour stretch. Only those who are not otherwise engaged in manual labor do the patrol work. Rice and soup for tiffin today.\n\n20—Canteen opens from ten to twelve in the morning and two to four in the afternoon. Those who have funds queue up, starting at eight-thirty and stand in line for hours, and when their turn comes often there is nothing worthwhile buying.\n\n21—The police stage a songfest at St. Stephen's Hall. Rainy and misty. The new Hong Kong Governor arrives in the Colony to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "88\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nsoya bean supply in the Colony is exhausted or it is being diverted to other uses. It can hardly be exhausted, as the British Government must have put in an immense supply. American communal meeting, at which people either stand or sit on the floor, as we have no chairs. Roll call at twelve noon in each Block, to be repeated every 48 hours.\n\n19 Feast of St. Joseph. Benediction at Maryknoll Sisters' Chapel. Good supper tonight—hamburg steak, soya beans, vegetable, rice and one slice of bread. From now on we are allowed only one electric light in each room, and no fans allowed.\n\n20—No soup at noon today, because we have no salt in the Camp kitchen. EXTRA! SENSATIONAL ESCAPE! The whole Camp was electrified this morning by the whispered report that at least five, possibly eleven, internees, have escaped. As reprisals, we are to have a roll call twice a day, at 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., with all lights out at 11, and there are to be Japanese gendarmes on duty throughout the Camp. Our own American patrol is automatically dismissed. No public gatherings allowed. There is to be no diminution of our food rations, however. We understand that when some of the interned soldiers escaped recently from the Shumshuipo Camp, the rest of the internees were put on a diet of rice and water for a week. Brother Anthony ill again. No cigarettes as yet, and the brethren are resorting to all sorts of concoctions, made of pine needles, ginger and other leaves, for tobacco. Internees are seen walking around with their eyes glued to the ground, looking for cast-off cigarettes. How low have the mighty fallen!\n\n21—Latest official instructions: all typewriters and flashlights to be turned in to the authorities; also, we are not allowed to stand on our verandahs or on any eminence overlooking the Prison and look down on the superior beings quartered there, nor may we look on groups drilling. With the ban on public meetings, our proposed American spelling bee has been cancelled. Father Vincent Walsh improved and no operation seems necessary. The new regime on \"The Hill\" brings no relief or betterment in our food situation, though today we each got one duck egg and a slice of bread.\n\n22—Sunday. As usual, with the Bishop and Father Norris preaching. Father Benson has not been well for some time and today goes to the Tweed Bay Hospital, with diabetes and rather...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208663, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 \n\n93 \n\narticles is opened. The display was most interesting, and American skill and ingenuity were much in evidence. Articles included various forms of clothing, shoes, slippers, clogs, chairs, stools, baby cribs, thermos bottles, a fireless cooker, clothes pins, knitting needles, scales, a vise, etc., etc. A small wood turning lathe was also shown, and hats woven of grass. The repatriates' departure has been postponed until the end of the month. \n\n11—It is reported that the recent escapees have been captured, they not having succeeded in getting out of the Colony. A large scale having been found somewhere, the Americans weigh in, with Dr. Hackett and the Maryknoll Sisters, nurses, Sisters Camillus and Dominic, assisting, the latter, by the way, having long since returned to Camp from the Civil Hospital. The following statistics will give a graphic idea of our present status: Father Toomey lost 18 lbs; Troesch, 28; Meyer, 38; Downs, 13; Keelan,?; Bauer, 50; Allie, 18; Reardon, 27; Callan, 11; O'Connor, 16; Hessler, 0; Walter, 12; Knotek, 12; Quinn, 23; Walsh, 22; Madison 36; Moore, 9; Tackney, 23; Norris, 15; Brother Anthony, 50; Brother Cornelius, 6; Father O'Connell, 0; Siebert, ?; Gaiero, 19; McKeirnan, 14; Brother William, 23. A Mr. Hill, in the Camp, lost 65 lbs. \n\n12—Masses now at 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. Today, Confirmation at the Mass, when Bishop O'Gara confirmed four children and two adults. Today, the Britishers follow suit and are weighed in. Perhaps this presages better food. Report has it that two Britishers were caught stealing sweet potatoes in Stanley village, which is out of bounds. When warned that they were in danger of being shot, they said they were so hungry that they took the chance. Then they were assured of better rations, so says the rumor. Let's hope it is more than a rumor. Speaking of rumors, they still flood the Camp, and they range from the abdication of Mussolini, to the landing of the Allies in Europe, and to the proximity of the Chinese troops ready to retake Hong Kong. According to the Japanese paper, the American Navy has been sunk several times, and they are going to crush the United States. \n\n13—Bungalow No. 7 vacated by its British occupants to give way to the segregated American repatriates, who move in after the British got out, only to find that the British had pretty well despoiled the whole building, thinking that the Japanese were moving in. It is also reported today that the American Consular officials' bag—\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208689, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n119\n\nwith a tie game between the Americans and the Police, with a score of 5 to 5. Darkness and the eight o'clock curfew prevented the game from being played out. Some of the British teams are beginning to get quite good and the Americans will have to look to their laurels! Before the Americans left on the Asama Maru, since they were not allowed to take much U.S. currency with them on the boat, Father Troesch very wisely arranged to take their cash and gave them a note to Maryknoll, New York. This gives us some ready cash for our living in Hong Kong, and for our travel expense to the interior if we shall be allowed to leave the Colony.\n\n22----Minstrel show on the Green—quite good. The evenings are beginning to get cool and blankets are brought out,\n\nSunday - uneventful.\n\n24 — Americans, 5; Police, 3. More packages from town, via \"The Hill\". This extra food, which Sister Paul is sending in for us and for the Sisters, is very much appreciated.\n\n25-Usually after signing one's papers for release, one is allowed to leave within four days, but to date we have received no further word, so we sit and wait until the Foreign Office gets good and ready to allow us to walk the streets of Hong Kong as free men again.\n\n26-29 Police, 34; College, 10; a very good crowd and lots of fun. Entertainment in the evening on the Green.\n\nSunday Weather cool. Swimming still popular, though the crowds are thinning out on the beach. From two to five hundred at one time.\n\n31-High wind and quite cool. Against the uncertainty of our departure, language school classes begin again. Our rations continue as hitherto, though our cooks are striving valiantly to dish it up in as appetizing a style as possible with the material to work with. Water spinach is still our standby, and has been dubbed by someone \"rubber plant.\"\n\nSEPTEMBER\n\n1-The wind and the rain continue, playing havoc with the soft-ball schedule. More speculation about British repatriation. The days continue to come and go, and yet we have no word about our departure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208697, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n127\n\nhave been uniformly courteous to us, except under the eyes of their masters and I think they realize that their position is a precarious one. They are, however, pretty cruel at times to the Chinese.\n\nExcept army trucks, there is no transport in the city. On the Pokfulam Road, however, the Chinese have resurrected a few very small wooden carts with tiny iron wheels which they laboriously pull along up the grades of the winding Island Road. Only a few bus routes are in operation. The Aberdeen route is running; the University route via Caine Road is in operation, and the Stanley run, with a bus every two hours, completes the service. The trams, of course, are running and quite crowded. Ferry service has been resumed, but on a very limited scale. I speak only for Hong Kong, as I know little about conditions over in Kowloon. As for purely private cars, practically none are seen in the streets, all having been confiscated and shipped to Japan. A taxi service was attempted but the fares were prohibitive.\n\nThe Dairy Farm is functioning under, of course, Japanese management and control. However, over half the dairy herd has been shipped out of the Colony to Formosa and Japan. A few British overseers have been retained. The milk is being sold for thirty yen a small bottle, but it is of very watery consistency. No butter is available.\n\nAs for the once flourishing harbor, it is now bare of shipping, save for an occasional Japanese freighter. Occasionally, a destroyer or two or a small cruiser are seen in the harbor, but they come and go. As will be remembered, the regular east channel leading to the harbor has been blocked with scuttled and burned ships, so all vessels now enter Hong Kong by the west channel, which passes just beneath Bethany, so we have a splendid view of all incoming and outgoing ships. Now and then we will see a steamer limping into port, disabled and apparently sinking. Once a convoy of some seven or eight ships entered and left the harbor, and on two occasions we saw a very large trans-Pacific liner like the Asama or Chichibu Maru enter and leave. On another occasion, a small destroyer engaged in maneuvers ran aground just to the south of Bethany on a point near the Dairy Farm, but was later pulled off by tugs. Before the war, the British were assembling ten thousand ton fabricated ships in Kowloon, and apparently the Japanese found one of these under construction, as later on we saw it under-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "230\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe years following the change-over were not peaceful. The western relations with China were not, on the whole, harmonious. This was largely because a tradition-bound and conservative bureaucracy, loosely ruled from Peking, was reluctant to allow contact with outsiders except within the long established tributary relationship by which the \"middle kingdom\" dealt with foreigners.\n\nProfessor Graham uses mainly western (and almost completely British) sources in his research. His extensive use of Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Admiralty and Indian Office Records in London and New Delhi has given him the expertise with which to assess British policymaking and the multifarious problems arising in its implementation in the imperial period of the nineteenth century. He uses private papers to complement official sources, delving into such well known collections as those left by the \"actors\" of the story, among them Palmerston, Wellington, Russell, Pottinger, Aberdeen, James Matheson, William Jardine. And he does not neglect the less well known diaries and journals left by common seamen and admirals who were participants in the action of the book.\n\nThe purpose, then, as the author admits, is to see the conflict between China and the west \"through European eyes” (p. viii). But here the author is rather modest for he does make excellent use of the best available translated sources to attempt to understand the conflicts from Chinese views.\n\nThe chapters are roughly chronological, beginning with a discussion of the Canton \"system\" of trade in tea, silk, opium and silver, and tracing the \"campaigns\" of the naval skirmishes in 1839-41 and 1856-60. Inserted, at appropriate places, are chapters on the founding of Hong Kong as a colony, the problems of administration and command in the Royal Navy (the China Station was not actually established until a division of the East Indies Station occurred in 1844), and the impact of the Crimean War, Russia and the Indian Mutiny upon events in China.\n\nIt is curious that rather limited naval skirmishes leading to consular treaties should be denominated by historians as “wars”. Professor Graham defines three separate Anglo-Chinese Wars, viz. 1839-41 (\"the Opium War\"), 1856-58, and 1860. These limited campaigns were found necessary, according to the preponderant British view, because Chinese officialdom was largely ignorant of western armed strength and must be shown by a demonstration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208926, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "56\n\nLEWIS M. CHERE\n\nevents of 1884. In this category would be Chinese language newspapers, the records of the court proceedings against the native newspapers and rioters, and whatever private records, diaries or papers which might have survived from that time. Because these materials are not available outside Hong Kong it is the purpose of this article to raise the question of what did happen in the Colony in 1884 in the hopes that those scholars who do have access to the winds of materials necessary to answer the question will be made aware of the importance of having those answers. Because a study of the question cannot help but advance understanding of Chinese history in the 1880's—not to mention the illumination it could provide for the history of Hong Kong itself—I have attempted to provide an outline here of what the question entails, and what little is known about it.\n\nHong Kong occupied a position in the events of the Sino-French War which was unique even for the ports of the China Coast. Unlike Treaty Ports such as Canton or Shanghai, Hong Kong was not even technically Chinese territory. Though Shanghai may have been effectively controlled by the representatives of the foreign community sitting on the city council, the city was still Chinese territory and the problems it experienced during the Sino-French War were largely due to that fact. Hong Kong was formally a possession of a neutral power. As such, most of its problems arising from the war were those which resulted from differing French, Chinese and British positions on the obligations of a neutral in an undeclared war. However, Hong Kong's overwhelming majority of Chinese residents, most of them adult male workers whose families were still living in their home villages in the Southern Provinces of China, presented a problem even more complex than those arising from the city's neutrality.\n\nThe reactions of those Chinese residents to the Sino-French conflict could be vital to an understanding of the development of nationalism in China. In Hong Kong the legendary influence of anti-foreign mandarins, which was so frequently blamed for anti-foreign feeling among the Chinese populations in the Treaty Ports, could only be indirectly applied—if at all. Even then many of the European accounts of what happened in the Colony in 1884 attempted to find outside influences, meaning the mandarins, to hold responsible for Hong Kong's troubles.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208927, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "HONG KONG RIOTS OF OCTOBER 1884\n\n57\n\nWhat happened in Hong Kong in the fall of 1884 to make this study necessary? According to the local newspaper and official reports of the colonial administration, the boatmen engaged in the servicing of ships in Hong Kong harbor refused to provide their services to ships flying the French flag. When the boatmen were taken to court and fined for refusing to work, they claimed that they were being coerced by the Chinese authorities at Canton who threatened their relatives with harm if the boatmen did not boycott the French. France and China were engaged in an undeclared war, and the Cantonese authorities were using the Hong Kong Chinese to put pressure on the French—or so the boatmen were reported to have claimed in court.\n\nWhen at last the boatmen were prepared to return to work, they could hardly have been able to afford to remain out forever—they were prevented from doing so by local Chinese mobs. Attempts by the police to break up those mobs led to serious street violence in which at least one Chinese rioter was killed and a number of Sikh police injured. Troops had to be called out, and for several days, the situation was serious enough for the authorities in London to wonder if an Indian regiment might be needed to keep order in the Colony. Fortunately, the disturbances ended before this extra measure became necessary.\n\nAs matters turned out, though no troops were needed, the colonial administration felt that a new peace preservation ordinance was necessary. It was hurriedly passed and required the collection of all arms from the Chinese population. Large quantities were collected, and a number of people believed to be agitators were ordered banished from the Colony. The belief that one of those banished, seventy-year-old Yau Poot-in, had been sent to Hong Kong with three thousand dollars to stir up trouble against the French eventually led to official protests to the Imperial Government by the British Legation in Peking.3\n\nYet, in spite of its many implications, the incident is comparatively unknown. Its underlying causes, as well as the truth about its origins, remain obscure. Was it, as the colonial administrators and the press believed, merely the result of intimidation and agitation from Canton with the support of anti-foreign and criminal elements within the Colony? Or was it an example of the growing sense of nationalism among the Chinese, which is more clearly seen...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209204, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1930'S 93\n\nposition and their work often depended on the social and economic status of the person who had bought them.\n\nIn the nature of the case, some were sexually exploited by the male members of the family. Some were treated very cruelly by their mistresses. If they were attractive, they were often taken by the head of the family as a concubine.\n\nEveryone acknowledged that, like all social institutions, there were abuses in the system, but the traditional view was that its advantages outweighed its negative side. There were several arguments to support this view.\n\nOnly the poor sold their children. If they could not sell them, many would be killed off as infants. Their lot in a foster home was much better than it would have been in their natural home. They were fed, clothed, and when of proper age, a marriage was arranged for them with a suitable partner. Everyone benefited by the system: the child who escaped death or starvation, the natural parent who was lifted out of poverty, at least for the moment, and the purchaser who acquired a servant.\n\nIn Chinese society, it had long been an unquestioned aspect of the social order. The buying and selling of human beings did not sit well with the English conscience of the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, most colonists felt it was best to leave undisturbed the modus vivendi which had been established in Hong Kong between British law and moral standards and Chinese social practice.\n\nAfter some eighteen years on the bench in Hong Kong, Chief Justice John Smale, not long before his retirement in 1881, openly stated that, in his opinion, the practice of buying and selling children for domestic servitude was a form of slavery, and hence its continued toleration in a British colony was a blot on the honour of England. He received support from anti-slavery groups in England, but his views were not generally welcomed in Hong Kong, either by the Chinese or expatriates. There was some stir over the question for a short time, and then interest in it died away, not to be re-aroused until the question again came to public attention in 1917.\n\n1917 - The Question Raised\n\nMr. C. G. Alabaster, in defending a client charged with kidnapping, raised a legal point regarding the status of children purchased as servants. The report of the case focused the attention of the English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209206, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920'S 95\n\ndiscussion as to whether the mui tsai system was a form of slavery.\n\nThe case awakened the conscience of several expatriates. Among these were Colonel John Ward and Lieutenant Commander Haselwood and his wife. Col. Ward on his return to England was elected a Member of Parliament. He used his position to bring the question before the House of Commons. The matter roused the interest of liberal groups in England. Not satisfied with the answer given by the Government spokesman that there was no slavery in Hong Kong, the question continued to be raised in 1920 and 1921.\n\nParliamentary Questions and Answers\n\nIn November 1920, Sir Alfred Yeo and Mr. Myers raised the question in the House of Commons. In reply, Col. Amery, the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies stated,\n\nSlavery does not exist in Hong Kong. The Colony's law does not recognise the custom whereby girls are transferred on payment from parents and guardians to another household, usually for purposes of domestic service, as conferring any right or title on the employer against the girl. There was evidence that girls were frequently ill-treated, in which event, they would be protected by the law in the same way as children living with their parents.\n\nHe said he thought it best to aim at gradual reform in cooperation with enlightened Chinese. It was suggested that the Hong Kong Governor \"should persuade prominent Chinese to form a Society for the protection and improvement of the condition of these girl domestics\". This was considered a much better way to deal with the problem than introducing a system of compulsory registration. The Hong Kong Government had advised the Colonial Office that it regarded registration as impracticable.2\n\nIn January 1921 a question was again raised regarding \"this nefarious traffic in human beings\". The questioner was referred to the answer given in the previous discussion in November that \"there is no slavery in Hong Kong\". Another Member then asked, \"Is the honourable Government aware that answer given on November 4th was very unsatisfactory to those people who have information on this matter, and would he make inquiry into the allegation that slavery is carried on under British rule?”\n\nThe Under Secretary was adamant, \"I have made full inquiry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209222, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920'S\n\n111\n\nSociety was asked to address the meeting. He presented a review of the efforts of the Society to induce the Government to abolish the system. In concluding, he congratulated the men for having called the meeting as it showed that labour unions in Hong Kong were interested in questions other than those of strikes and increases of pay.\n\nOne of the labour speakers was Miss Wong Wai-chu, a teacher. She, like Mrs. Ma, was interested in the part women had in maintaining the system:\n\nOwing to weakness of the weaker sex, the system had become a permanency. The owner of a mui tsai was usually a pampered woman, one who beat the girl on the slightest provocation. Confucius said, \"Do unto others as you would be done by\". It was an inadvisable state of affairs to be dependent on others for the performance of any duty which one was capable of performing oneself and this appeared to be a failing of the weaker sex, who used mui tsai for tasks which they could do themselves. If Chinese women wish to raise their status to the same plane as men, they should not allow their children to be employed as mui tsai.\n\nIn the end of the meeting a resolution was passed supporting the passage of the Ordinance. A committee was appointed to consider and suggest any amendments to the Bill that might be desirable.14\n\nPassage of the Bill\n\nAt the second reading of the Bill on February 8, 1923, The Hon. Mr. Chow Shou-son referred to those in favour of the Bill as having been undoubtedly \"actuated by generous motives and lofty ideals, but I am afraid that their burning zeal has not permitted them to study the problem with calmness and impartiality which the importance of the subject demands.\" He saw no wisdom in haste, \"I do not keep, and have never kept, any mui tsai, but this does not blind me to the unwisdom of trying to sweep away in a day the custom with its good points.\"15\n\nHis Excellency the Governor wished to disassociate himself from \"the venomous attacks which have been made on the whole Chinese population of the Colony by ignorant persons at home who seem to assume that because a system is liable to abuse it is therefore essentially bad.\" He informed the Council, however, there was no turning back, \"I have definite instructions from the British Government that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209320, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n209\n\nbe churlish to be pedantic and ask how this rating is measured. Surely Eric does not think so poorly of Hong Kong girls? We know the author's enthusiasm for their natural beauty, their dress (especially the Cheong Sam) continually pops out in this selection of comments, definitions and descriptions.\n\nBest of Every Thing\n\nOh, that this marvellous idea of collecting and presenting this sparkling miscellany about life, love, labour and lore in Hong Kong could have presented the best of everything. But we have the author's assurance that this is the first of a series, garnered from his vast collection of bits and pieces about Shanghai and Hong Kong. So, if some of the items are not up to standard, perhaps this is the cook's device not to give us indigestion.\n\nAccuracy\n\nAlthough there are a lot of facts, considered and unconsidered in this encyclopaedia of Hong Kong, historical accuracy is not particularly the author's strong line. A few years, here or there, will not matter to many readers who will sample the wide varieties of these verbal cocktails listed here. Historians, of course, will not be so happy with several statements \"Chinnery started off (his career as an artist) in Macao.” What of his Indian period which preceded his fruitful stay in Macao? Hong Kong did not officially become a colony until 1843. But it would be tedious to go through this book like a school essay.\n\ne.g.\n\nGallimaufry\n\nThis is not a Hong Kong word, but one, I think, of Ivor Brown, the lexicographer. Anyway I offer it in a sense of gratitude to Eric Cumine for this idiosyncratic but absorbing gallimaufry (what a marvellous bedside book it makes.) Ironically I find myself asking my Chinese wife about these 'things Chinese'. It takes a lot to excite her curiosity; but Eric does it.\n\n-\n\nJohn Warner, Hong Kong Illustrated Views and News 1840-1980 (Hong Kong, 1981)\n\nBy comparison with the other publications under review this is a distinguished book. Put together by John Warner, former Curator of Hong Kong's Art Museum, it is, as one would expect, a sensitive and effective collection of line engravings, and lithographs, taken mainly from two British periodicals, The Illustrated London News and The Graphic. The selection of pictures beautifully reproduced and well set-out with accompanying extracts from the letter-press of the period", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209435, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "70\n\nELIZABETH SINN\n\neconomy of the Colony could be crippled by the whims of coolies and boatmen,24\n\nIn an effort to break the strike James Stewart Lockhart, the Acting Registrar-General, had several interviews with the boat people and their sureties. He believed he had succeeded in persuading them to resume work on the 3rd.25\n\nOn the morning of the 3rd, the police were on the alert, anticipating that the resumption of work would not be trouble free. Extra police were placed on the Praya. Boats did return to the British side of the harbour. As they approached Praya West, they were, as expected, attacked by a group of cargo coolies with stones and bricks, and they promptly moved off again. One of the stone throwers was arrested.\n\nThe stone-throwing stopped when the boats were gone, and the cargo coolies then appeared to turn their wrath upon the rickshaw and chair coolies, wanting them to stop work as well. They started to turn over chairs and rickshaws, pelting coolies as well as passengers with stones. Interestingly enough, the chair coolies resisted being forced into the strike, fighting back at the cargo coolies as did several of the European passengers.\n\nIn the midst of the scuffle, Sikh policemen arrived, and the mob stoned them too. The Sikhs, who were heavily armed with carbines and a good supply of ammunition, got into action at once. They fired into the crowd and cut their way into the crowd with their swords.20\n\nThe Acting Captain Superintendent, having called out all the available men at the Central Police station, sent a request to the Military Barracks for support. One hundred men of the East Kent Regiment, the \"Buffs\", were marched to the scene of the disturbance with fixed bayonets. Their presence seems to have restored order and it was not necessary for them to interfere actively.27\n\nOn hearing of the disturbances, Marsh immediately called the Executive Council, and it met at 11 o'clock on the 3rd. After hearing the account given by Colonel Barton, the Assistant Military Secretary who had just returned from the scene of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209446, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "81\n\nment's bias toward France than to try and understand that it would be an infringement of British sovereignty to blow up French ships in Hong Kong waters.\n\nEven the Colonial Office staff objected to the Hong Kong Government's apparently pro-French stance. Their impression was that the French would not be able to get any Chinese labour there if the Government did not put pressure on the Chinese. The conclusion was that \"It seems to me dangerous to British residents in China and to the peace of the Colony to help the French in this way.' 1905 How much more things would appear that way\n\nto the Chinese.\n\nThus the fines became a symbol of moral and legal injustice, of pro-French sympathies and disregard for the feelings of the predominant majority of the population. The fines were the last straw! It is significant that the Foreign Office strongly recommended that the fines be refunded.66\n\nThe strike apparently split the ranks of the labouring classes. If we assume that some had struck out of a sense of righteous indignation and nationalism, or out of fear of retaliation, there were perhaps just as many who did not share these feelings and would much rather have got on with their business. This split would aggravate the already excited atmosphere created by the war and by the strike itself.\n\nOn the 30th when the strike became general, there were already signs of trouble when those boats which continued working were stoned from the Praya, but things did not get out of hand. On the 3rd however, they did. The outbreak of the riot appears to me one of those historical events which \"just happened\". I believe it was not premeditated because the “rioters\" carried no real weapons, only stones and bricks they could pick up from the road. If there had been a conspiracy the men would have come better armed. The accounts in the newspapers and by Marsh in his despatches to the Colonial Office indicate the police over-reacted. The police rushed to the scene fully armed with carbines, which compared to the stones of the rioters, clearly suggests over-reaction. The police fired a large number of rounds of ammunition into the crowds. In fact there was so much firing that a newspaper expressed surprise that only one dead man", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209452, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "87\n\nGovernment and people in Hong Kong culminated in the E-Sing bread poisoning case which found the whole Colony in a state of siege. During the strike-boycott of 1925-26 which resulted from Anglo-Chinese hostilities, a large portion of the local Chinese identified themselves with China and left, leaving many aspects of life in Hong Kong paralysed.\n\nEven when China was not at war with Britain, Chinese hostilities with other countries could also lead to complications. The 1884 events are a fine example of this. The anti-American boycott in 1905 and anti-Japanese boycott in 1907 and anti-Japanese activities after 1937 are others. From the local Chinese point of view, the Hong Kong Government reaction to these events showed that it was insensitive to the feelings of the majority of the population, and showed favouritism to the enemy. From the British point of view, such activities were causing undue embarrassment with friendly nations, infringing upon British territorial rights and breaking International Law. As often as not, the blame was laid at the doorstep of the Chinese Government.\n\nIn 1884, we find Marsh rushing letters and telegrams off to Parkes in Peking, claiming the Chinese Government was responsible for all the troubles and demanding redress.84 Needless to say, it led to much correspondence, charges and counter-charges. One instance is particularly revealing. The Tsungli Yamen, faced with charges by Parkes, defended the rioters in Hong Kong, attributing, ironically and tongue-in-cheek, no doubt their reluctance to work on French ships to their desire to observe the British neutrality laws! It further attributed the riot to precipitate action on the part of the Hong Kong Government. It disclaimed any control over Chinese in Hong Kong as they had long been under the control of the British, and it was not possible for the Chinese Government to prohibit or prevent any action these people might take. The argument may not have been very convincing, but it did get the ball back into the British court. This reply, and the 1884 events in general, demonstrates some of the difficulties Hong Kong created in Sino-British relations.\n\nOn the other hand, the presence of a \"native\" population led to the emergence of Chinese leadership groups. The Hong Kong Government had from the beginning relied on native leaders", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209453, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "88 \n\nELIZABETH SINN \n\nto keep their own people in order. Local headmen such as the Paou-chong E, and then the Tepo were used in the first two decades of British rule. In 1846 the Registrar-General became also the Protector of Chinese Inhabitants in the Colony, 88 \n\nBut the Registrar-General's office was small, and its function was very much one of liaison. It depended heavily on Chinese leadership groups to manage the native population, The Man-Mo Temple Committee was one of the first such groups to emerge, followed by the Nam Pak Hong and the Tung Wah Hospital, which since its inception in 1870, became the predominant institution of its kind, until the Chinese Chamber of Commerce began to share its status in the 20th Century.87 \n\nThe Tung Wah Hospital, like the rest, had functions beyond what its name might suggest. It was modelled upon traditional Chinese urban gentry organizations which provided relief of various types, arbitrated conflicts, sat in judgement over minor offences, ran schools, and occupied a privileged position between the officials and the common people. In short it provided in Hong Kong what the Chinese population expected from gentry organizations in China, and created in its merchant-members images of the gentry. \n\nIt may appear anomalous to describe the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong as shen (gentry). If defined as degree holders then certainly not many of the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong would qualify for the description of \"gentry\". Yet these men were consistently referred to by Chinese officials as shen-shang (gentry, merchant). Mariane Bastid raises the very interesting point about the transition over time of the expression shen-shang from denoting merchant and gentry to denoting merchant-gentry in China. This change, of course, reflects nothing less than the change in social composition in late Ch'ing China, and perhaps nowhere did this change take place more dramatically than in Hong Kong. The one important difference was that being in Hong Kong, the shen-shang had to act as a bridge, not only between the people and government of Hong Kong, but also between the Chinese of Hong Kong and the Chinese Government, and, in particular, the authorities in Canton. They stood in the midst of a complex net of interests, often clashing interests, and to accommodate all parties was a game of intricate manoeuvring,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209484, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "119\n\nit should be remembered, travellers to England needed no passport or travel document, so that Lock had no problems about residence or work. Liverpool, as a great port, had a long-established Chinese colony — a small 'China-town' as it would now be termed — so one infers the young Lock did not feel too cut off from his homeland.\n\nBecause of his maritime experience, he became the European representative of the Chinese Seamen's Mutual Benefit Society, formed in 1914 among Chinese seamen on ocean-going vessels.* This society was registered in Hong Kong under the name of the 'Seamen's Philanthropic Society'. It was more than a mutual-aid society; it had political aims. Lock was also a member of the T'ung-meng-hui (Sworn League), the secret revolutionary party organised by Sun Yat-sen and others in 1905, which later became the Kuo-min-tang. Sun used seamen as couriers in his revolutionary activities and, it is claimed, Lock worked for Sun as a secret service agent in England. Lock also founded the Chinese Republic Progress Club (a significant designation) in Liverpool in 1918 and became the leading figure in the Liverpool Chinese community. At his trial it became known he had convened a secret court to punish a Chinese for beating his English wife (but we do not know what punishment, if any, was meted out to the callous husband). Lock was thus highly respected in both the English and Chinese communities and was a spokesman for his compatriots. He became that well-known figure: a Chinese community leader. He was also a British subject: a naturalised Englishman.\n\nEdward Marjoribanks affirms that ‘... he was not the sinister \"King of Chinatown\" of detective romance; a kindly, gentle person, he distributed much in charity and hospitality, giving Christmas treats to the poor children of Birkenhead and Liverpool, and renting a shoot where he entertained his English friends'.5 All his affairs prospered until 1923 when he launched out on a large commercial undertaking and lost most of his investment. As a consequence, he was forced to file his own petition in bankruptcy, although he continued to live with his wife and children in some style. Friends said that after these events he became moody and his behaviour erratic, flying into sudden rages and weeping uncontrollably. He also began to drink heavily,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209502, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "What these crude figures estimates 137 suggest is that They are less Chinese are a familiar sight in most British cities. exotic, less strange; as a group, more acculturated, more Westernised. They also symbolise the regeneration of a great nation, reinvigorated China, one of the world's great powers. Chinese behaviour is no longer obscurely difficult to interpret; its motivation understandable.\n\nConclusions 51 The two cases discussed above have, one would think, intrinsic interest for criminologists and criminal lawyers: each is curious, fascinating. When capital punishment was a legal penalty, a verdict of guilt resulted in a mandatory death sentence in most cases (although only some of those convicted finally met the hangman). The last executions in Britain took place on August 13, 1964, when Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen were hanged, the one at Manchester's Strangeways Gaol, the other at Liverpool's Walton Prison (both were convicted of the same crime).52 In Hong Kong, the last to hang suffered at Stanley Prison on November 16, 1966. Since that date it has become customary in Hong Kong to commute a death sentence into imprisonment for life, despite the fact that the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, 1965, has not become law in the Colony. Because murder trials have become less final, less gladiatorial, largely as a result of the amelioration of punishment, public interest in such events appears to have waned (noticeably in Britain),53\n\nThe great era of domestic murder, as public dramaturgy, is over, overwhelmed by other forms of violence, horror, brutality, of which the media provides daily a surfeit for the public.\n\nThis article focuses mostly on problems of cultural understanding and misunderstanding. A younger generation of Englishmen is less likely to be as puzzled by Chinese murder as were Marshall Hall and Travers Humphreys. The change has come about from a number of factors demographic (more Chinese in Britain, many of superior education), cultural (a better understanding of Chinese culture and society, at least among the educated or sophisticated), and political (the vastly improved", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209583, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "218\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nSim-ple Assemblies for young he's and shees, Races, Regattas, Croquet, Sunday Teas. But, hark, the Prompters warning whistle blows, And bids me bring my prologue to a close.\n\nSome of the local references are lost to us today, but then they brought smiles, if not laughter. A history of the Amateurs picks up some of the lighter side of life in Hong Kong in the past.\n\nTHE CURTAIN RISES\n\nSoon after Hong Kong was established as a British military base in China officialdom encouraged amateur theatricals as a wholesome diversion from the tedium of military life.\n\nThe first attempt to bring drama to Hong Kong was to have been a combination of professionals and amateurs, but the project came to an abrupt end before it was well under way. A flamboyant Frenchman from Singapore named Gaston Dutronquoy announced in November 1842 that he had obtained the permission of the authorities to erect a theatre \"on a grand and imposing scale\" behind his tavern, the London Hotel, which was located on Queen's Road.\n\nHe informed an interested public that though the Theatre was not yet built, the actresses had already arrived. Backed by a claim of official sanction and available talent, Mr. Dutronquoy with his own flair for the theatrical announced \"to the nobility, gentry and clergy of this flourishing and opulent Colony that their Theatre is advancing rapidly towards completion. It is on a most splendid scale, and what with the pieces that will be performed, the scenery that will be produced, and the splendid assemblage of rank, beauty and fashion which they hope to be honoured with, there is no doubt but that the blaze of splendour will dazzle the eyes of all beholders\". He assured his public that the actresses' \"beauties and talents are only to be surpassed\n\n† As I wrote this paper more for entertainment than scholarship, I have not included documentation. The notices and reviews of the plays have been found in the local press: The Friend of China, The China Mail, The Hong Kong Register, The Daily Press, The Hong Kong Telegraph and The South China Morning Post. The appended list of performances and dates has been compiled from the same sources.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209645, "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": 302, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "280\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npotential dangers to the colony argued the need for a governor with an intimate knowledge of the territory and the reputation of being a strong disciplinarian.\n\nThe situation to which May returned was very different from that which he had left seventeen months previously. The early part of the year 1911 was fairly peaceful2 in spite of the abortive uprising in Canton in April and the assassination of the Manchu general there in August. But the outbreak of the revolution in central China in October soon spread to Canton and the Manchu governor was forced to flee to Hong Kong in early November. These successes were wildly celebrated by the Hong Kong population with demonstrations and firecrackers. But rejoicing soon gave way to hooliganism and violence as the feeling grew that the overthrow of the foreign Manchu government in China ought soon to be followed by the ousting of the British from Hong Kong. Shops were looted in broad daylight, the police were stoned, Europeans were threatened and attacked on the streets, bomb-making factories were discovered, and laws were openly defied. When police made arrests they were liable to be attacked by mobs attempting to release the prisoner. There was a rush by Europeans to buy firearms for self-defence.3\n\nLugard took strong measures to deal with this situation. There were daily route marches through the streets of the city by soldiers with fixed bayonets. On 30th November emergency powers under the Peace Preservation Ordinance were invoked by proclamation, giving the police wide powers to disperse crowds, enter houses and make arrests, and the same day an amending bill was rushed through the Legislative Council in one meeting to give magistrates the power to impose the penalty of up to 24 lashes with a cat o' nine tails for a wide range of offences, in addition to any other penalty prescribed by law. In the three months from December 1911 to February 1912 fifty-one prisoners were flogged with the cat o' nine tails for such offences as theft, assaults on the police and resisting arrest. At the same time the garrison was reinforced with two battalions of infantry and a battery of artillery sent from India,\n\nThese strong measures had their effect and before Lugard departed in March 1912 he felt sufficiently confident that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209646, "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": 303, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n281\n\ndisturbances were under control to rescind the proclamation invoking emergency powers as soon as the Chinese New Year celebrations were over. But conditions in the colony had not yet fully returned to normal and various wild rumours continued to be put into circulation, including the story that when May arrived the enlarged garrison would make an attack on China and annex further areas of Guangdong north of the New Territories. However, no-one was expecting any serious trouble on the morning of 4th July when the elite of the colony turned out to welcome the new governor.\n\nThe ship bringing Sir Henry May from Fiji arrived off Kowloon point early in the morning and at 10 a.m. Sir Henry crossed the harbour in the government launch to Blake Pier where he was greeted with a salute of 17 guns. He inspected the guard of honour and met the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, all of whom were well-known to him. Among them was Sir Kai Ho Kai, the senior member of the Legislative Council, who had just received his knighthood, the first ever given to a Chinese in Hong Kong. Sir Kai had strong connections with the reform movement in China, but he had loyally supported the British administration in the measures taken to deal with violence in the colony, and the knighthood was his reward for this as well as for his long career of public service.\n\nThe next part of the ceremonial was the procession to the City Hall. Sir Henry and Lady May took their seats side by side in two sedan chairs, each carried by eight coolies. The chairs were escorted by eight Indian constables, four on the right of Sir Henry's chair marching two paces apart, and four on the left of Lady May's chair. Behind them was a European police sergeant, and he was followed by four more chairs carrying the four daughters of the new governor. The route to the City Hall was lined by soldiers stationed at intervals of three paces on either side of the road.\n\nAs the procession left Blake Pier and passed along Pedder Street towards Des Voeux Road a Chinese dressed in European clothes was seen to push his way through the crowd around the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209675, "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": 332, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "310\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n\"Behind Barbed Wire\" is a very self-centred account. With Leiper, one senses a greater compassion and a more generous nature. He is unstinting in his praise of the junior bank staff for their courage and determination, right down to the Number One Coolie's ability at organising refugee accommodation. There is the extraordinary loyalty of his domestic servants, one of whom died of starvation, and there is the unhappiness of the Japanese bankers with the brutal treatment meted out by the military. Not all is black or white. Also, where Jean Gittens merely notes the internees' ability to laugh at themselves, Leiper leavens the whole of his account with delightfully humorous anecdotes, which bring the story vividly alive.\n\nAbove all, it is in Leiper's account that the plight of the local population is given due recognition. Perhaps it is because of the greater variety of his experiences and the period spent outside the camp, but the broader impression of conditions in the rest of the colony and the sufferings of the ordinary people of Hong Kong lend to the book a greater balance and perspective: \"Even more distressing than these scenes of brutality was the unforgettable sight which we witnessed daily, of Chinese men, women and children lying on the pavement or huddled in doorways dying gradually of starvation, and looking at passers-by, who were powerless to assist, out of eyes from which all expression had already gone.\" Of the 2,300 interned at Stanley, 130 did not survive, but of Leiper's one hundred Chinese bank staff, fully one fifth could not be accounted for after the war. In the absence of a first-hand account from Chinese sources, Leiper has done much to improve our perspective.\n\nJ. A. MILLER\n\nPan Ling, In Search of Old Shanghai, Joint Publishing Company, Hong Kong, 1982, n.p.\n\nI wish I had known about this admirable historical guide to Shanghai when I made a research trip there last year. (In fact, I am led to believe that the present issue is an English translation of an earlier Chinese edition, although clearly, the author, whilst having the familiarity with the city which can only come through having lived there, is now a British resident.)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209879, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "116\n\nIn selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7\n\nAp Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival\n\nAp Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than \"two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters\" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11\n\nBy 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209933, "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "170\n\nGlassburner, Bruce, and James Riedel. 1972. “Government in The Economy of Hong Kong\", Economic Record 48, No. 1: 58-75.\n\nHeilbroner, Robert Louis. 1964. \"The View From The Top: Reflections on a Changing Business Ideology\". In The Business Establishment, ed. by E.F. Cheit, New York, John Wiley and Sons, pp. 1-36.\n\nHirschmeier, Johannes. 1964. The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.\n\nHo, Ping-ti. 1962. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911. New York and London, Columbia University Press.\n\nHong Kong Cotton Spinners Association. 1973. \"Annual Reports of The General Committee\". Hong Kong, The Association, mimeographed.\n\nKing, Ambrose Y.C., and Davy H.K. Leung, 1975. \"The Chinese Touch in Small Industrial Organization\". Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Social Research Centre, occasional paper.\n\nLevy, Marion J., Jr. 1955. “Contrasting Factors in The Modernization of China and Japan\". In Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan, ed. by S. Kuznets, W.E. Moore, and J.J. Spengler, Durham, Duke University Press, pp. 496-536.\n\nMcClelland, David C. 1963. \"Motivational Patterns in Southeast Asia with Special Reference to the Chinese Case\". The Journal of Social Issues 19, No. 1: 6-19.\n\nMannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.\n\nMarx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. (1888) 1967. The Communist Manifesto. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books.\n\nMayer, K. 1953. \"Business Enterprise: Traditional Symbol of Opportunity\". British Journal of Sociology 4, No. 2: 160-180.\n\nMiners, Norman, 1981. The Government and Politics of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press.\n\nNichols, Theo. 1969. Ownership, Control, and Ideology: An Inquiry Into Certain Aspects of Modern Business Ideology. London, George Allen and Unwin.\n\nOksenberg, Michel. 1972. \"Management Practices in The Hong Kong Cotton Spinning and Weaving Industry.\" Paper read at seminar on Modern East Asia, Columbia University.\n\nOlson, Stephen M. 1972. \"The Inculcation of Economic Values in Taipei Business Families\". In Economic Organization in Chinese Society, ed. by William F. Willmott, Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp. 261-296.\n\nOwen, Nicholas C. 1971. \"Economic Policy in Hong Kong\". In Hong Kong: The Industrial Colony, ed. by Keith Hopkins, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press.\n\nPan, F.K. 1974. \"The Simple Truth of Management and Maintenance”, a lecture delivered on 21st June, Hong Kong.\n\nRyan, Edward, 1961. \"The Value System of a Chinese Community in Java\". Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.\n\nSeider, Maynard S. 1974. \"American Big Business Ideology: A Content Analysis of Executive Speeches\". American Sociological Review 39, No. 6: 802-815.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210155, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "105\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND BEFORE 1841\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHail, little isle! and Hong's fair haven, hail!\n\nFirst-fruits of China to the ocean-queen! New orient realms, new navies' embryo sail Glass'd in thy shifting horoscope are seen. May British virtue shine, in thee confest; And in her colony be Britain blest!'*\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong evoked different feelings in both China and Britain. In China, needless to say, there was scarcely rejoicing. The sixty-year-old Tao Kuang emperor, monarch of China since 1820, when asked to sanction the proposed Treaty of Peace that granted Hong Kong to Britain, spent the rest of the day and most of the night pacing up and down the corridor of his Palace, deep in anxious thought. Several times he was heard to mutter \"impossible\" and to sigh deeply. At last, at 3 a.m., he stamped his foot and proceeded to the audience chamber where he affixed the \"vermilion pencil\" to the draft. One of his subjects, the great Chinese statesman Tso Tsung-tang (1812-1885), then an unknown and rather unsuccessful scholar, wrote four poems in which he expressed grief and indignation when he heard that the British had taken over Hong Kong; and when he learned the final terms of the peace he was so overcome that he thought seriously of retiring to some lonely mountain retreat for the rest of his days.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nIn England the young Queen Victoria, twenty-two years old and married with a baby daughter wrote to her uncle, the king of the Belgians, \"Albert is so much amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong and we think Victoria ought to be called Princess of Hong Kong in addition to Princess Royal\".2\n\nHer Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was not amused. He received the news of the Chuenpi agreement (January 1841) between Captain Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary, and the Imperial Commissioner Kishen, with disappointment and disapproval.\n\n* See Plates 1-3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210166, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "116\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis did not mean, however, that local villagers were not averse to minor piracy and smuggling, and generally to taking advantage of opportunities for gain. There are too many accounts of villainy from the surrounding waters for us to rule out the occasional initiative. In this connection, the remarks of a Chinese brigade general ordered by his superiors to cooperate with two young British naval officers against pirates thought to belong to villages in the present day Yuen Long area of the New Territories, has to my ears the ring of truth to it:\n\n\"Having seen these eighteen villages we have, becomingly and properly, together admonished the people thereof, and I think that they will be compliant and obey our orders. But this is merely an affair of vagabonds who rob with violence and make forays, who are not in the same category with confirmed rebels and pirates.”37\n\nThe English officer in charge commented:\n\n\"It must clearly be borne in mind that piracy in China differs from piracy elsewhere in this respect that there the pirates live on the land and only put to sea occasionally to carry on their depredations... Nor is this state of things confined in this vicinity to the neighbourhood of Deep Bay. Piratical villages exist along the whole coast wherever the native traffic is sufficient to render such an occupation remunerative.\"38\n\n+39\n\nWriting specifically of Hong Kong itself on 11th April 1846 to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in his annual despatch on the state of the Colony, Sir John Davis observed that “A principal obstacle to the Chinese commerce of the place is the system of piracy which infests the approaches from the east and west. In another despatch dated 26 February 1848, Davis commented on the subject as follows: \"The former prevalence of piracy has been checked (as appears best proved by the increase of native trade) through the active exertions of Captain Loring of HM's ship 'Scout', by whom nearly 300 pirates were captured in the last year, and delivered over to the Chinese government.\n\n1540\n\nWhether the Hong Kong villagers joined in such behaviour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210169, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "119\n\nIn the years before 1841 many fishing vessels from other places made use of the local harbours, especially Stanley and Aberdeen. An official report from the 1840s refers to the situation:\n\n\"I have not inserted under the head of \"Fisheries\" anything with respect to the large quantities of fish caught off the south side of the Island as the fishing ground being off the Lama Island cannot strictly be claimed on behalf of the Colony. Some of the boats employed in the traffic belong to Stanley and Aberdeen, but the greater number and all those of the largest class (called To-Ku) carrying from 30 to 50 tons belong to various places in the districts of Heangshan and Sinan and merely use these Harbours during the fishing season to take in provisions and water. The fish caught is generally sold to smaller vessels who carry it to different places for sale. About 500 tons are annually dried at Stanley.\"45\n\nThe main fishing in the waters off the South China coast was seasonal, with the main fishing fleets moving up and down the coast with the migrating shoals of fish. The larger vessels would travel up and down the coast, landing their catch at the ports next to the areas being fished and then moving on to the next fishing ground and the next port. The smaller vessels fished the water off their home port all year around, but were particularly busy during the migration season. Thus Stanley and Aberdeen would have been extremely busy and crowded with boats during the two short northward and southward migration periods, when huge quantities of fish would have been landed, to be dried, batched, and exported at leisure during the less hectic normal periods, when only the smaller local boats would be in port.\n\nThough the descriptions of the granite and fish trade here quoted all come from a period shortly after the establishment of British Hong Kong, by which time the salt fish trade had become, as Gutzlaff said, \"the most flourishing of all the branches\", I believe they are equally applicable to the period before 1841.\n\nIt is in connection with this seasonal migration of the fishing fleet up and down the coast that the presence of Chiu Chow, or Hoklo, groups in the little ports makes sense: they were essentially", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210201, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "151\n\nHong Kong authorities saw no need to take active steps to improve the situation.\n\nParliamentary pressure over social hygiene in Hong Kong largely lapsed after 1894 once the legal framework for the licensing of prostitutes and the registration of brothels had been repealed by the Legislative Council and thereafter Hong Kong was left free to set up its new extra-legal system of control without further interference from London. But after the end of the First World War agitation on the subject revived. The League of Nations appointed an Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children which published reports highlighting the connections between state regulation of prostitution and the procurement of women. The first warning to Hong Kong of the revival of concern in Britain was the arrival in the colony in 1921 of a Commission from the National Council for Combating Venereal Disease which had been sent out to report on conditions in the Far Eastern Colonies. The Governor, Sir Edward Stubbs, had objected to any such visit and forbade government officials to give the commissioners any assistance; he also informed them when they arrived that they were not to hold any public meetings or advertise their presence in the press. In spite of this studied discourtesy the commissioners, Mrs. Neville-Rolfe and Dr. Hallam, set out upon a thorough exploration of the seedier areas of the city and various medical institutions, and were able to make contact with some business and religious groups and with some of the leading Chinese. On their return to London they submitted a scathing report to the Colonial Office on medical and social conditions. According to the commissioners, no serious attempt had been made by the government to improve the standard of health of the native population in 85 years of British rule; the infant mortality figures were disgraceful; the Tung Wah hospital was very dirty and badly equipped; the Po Leung Kuk, a place of refuge for Chinese girls, was largely used as a recruiting ground for cheap supplementary wives by members of the committee. The Colonial Office was given its first description of the working of the system of tolerated brothels, which Mrs. Neville-Rolfe dismissed as ineffective in preventing the kidnapping of girls into brothel slavery; on the contrary it was alleged that the artificial value put on the Chinese girl by the system of recognised brothels is the main inducement to the kidnappers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210208, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "158\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ntutes in Hong Kong suffered from disease. The committee considered that an ‘admirable arrangement' would be the restoration of the old system of tolerated brothels confined to servicemen and subject to medical inspection, but they recognised that this was out of the question. So a variety of palliative measures were proposed such as a wide definition of the offence of soliciting in the street, more police, greater use by government of the power of deportation to rid the colony of known prostitutes, increased provision of treatment facilities and free hostel accommodation to encourage infected women to persevere to the end of their treatment. There is no information on how far these measures were implemented in wartime Hong Kong, or how successful they were.\n\nAfter the occupation in 1941 the Japanese authorities reinstated a system of controlled and medically inspected houses in Wanchai for the use of their own troops. These were once more closed down as soon as British rule was restored.\n\nThe system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong originally had two purposes: the control of the spread of venereal disease, particularly among the soldiers and sailors of the garrison, and the prevention of the exploitation of Chinese prostitutes in conditions which often amounted to virtual servitude. In practice the first aim always had priority, and while the system of licensed prostitution was in operation, legally from 1857 to 1894, extra-legally from 1900 to 1932, it seems to have been largely achieved. But control over Chinese prostitutes catering for Chinese clients was always less comprehensive and less strictly enforced. It served to curb the environmental pollution of brothels operating in respectable residential neighbourhoods, (apparently the main concern of the Chinese elite), and it may have reduced somewhat the incidence of venereal disease, but it probably failed in its ostensible purpose of preventing brothel slavery. Practically all prostitutes appearing before the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in order to be registered were brought by their brothel mistresses and had been coached in the replies they should make to the stereotyped questions asked: 99 per cent claimed to be between 21 and 24 years old and to have entered the colony only a few days previously. Few if any attempted to avail themselves of the help of the secretariat to escape from their profession.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210336, "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": 307, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "286\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nThe Cheung lineage was not prosperous until the Tao Kuang (*) period. Ancestor Yao-chih (2) of the 2nd sub-lineage became a successful merchant, and through his generous donation, an Ancestral Hall for the whole lineage was built. The Ancestral Hall of the Ya-kang segment was built in the middle of the Chia Ching period by the effort of ancestor I-pi ( ), brother of Ah-lum's grandfather (see clan record, Tz'u yu pu (3) section, Tz'u T'ang Chi (2) sub-section pp. 1-4). Though the lineage had several National School students (B), no one succeeded in the official examinations until the end of the Ch'ing dynasty when they had three chüren (A). Two of them were Ah-lum's sons. Ah-lum's father was also a National School Student who earned his living by teaching in the villages nearby (see the biography of Ah-lum's father in the Clan record, Chi-ching pu (it) section, Hang Chuang ((HA) sub-section p. 5).\n\nThis man is not otherwise mentioned in the Clan record.\n\nAccording to Ah-lum's statement as given in court, \"he first came to the colony at only 18 years of age. He was first employed by Mr. Bigham, who went to California; after that by Mr. Franklyn; then by Murrow, Stephenson & Co.; then by Mr. De Silver, for whom he made biscuits, as well as did other business see: British Parliamentary Papers, China, no. 24: Hong Kong, P. 183. (= BPP 24:183).\n\nThe Russell was owned by Russell & Co., and the Shamrock by Mr. Xavier, c.f. BPP 24:170 and 173.\n\nSee BPP 24:164–184. The bakery had three machines making bread to supply most of the foreigners in Hong Kong.\n\nSee BPP 24:155-184, and Eitel op.cit. p. 311-313.\n\n10 The Arrow War. The anti-foreigner movement was supported by Yeh Ming-shen (), the Imperial Commissioner for Kwangtung, in Canton. See Wakeman, F. Jr. Strangers at the Gate. 1966, pp. 109ff. Also Eitel op.cit. p. 305.\n\n11 Eitel: op.cit. p. 312-313.\n\n12 According to Chen Kuan-ying (###), Ah-lum was chief of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. (TERA) in Vietnam. He owned a shop Hung Tai Ch'ang() in Saigon, and his son Ti-fu (#) was chief manager (*) of the Cambodia Opium Co. (12). Chen Kuan-ying (E), Nan-yu Jih-chi (12), (Diary of a Journey to the South), reprinted 1967, Taiwan, p. 19ff, 81-89. According to the Clan Record Tsa Chi-pu() section, Pa-yu (if) sub-section, p. 1, Ah-lum had businesses in Saigon, Haiphong, Comuponton, and in Nha Trang in Kwangnam (ÂM NHIỀU).\n\n13 According to the clan record, we know that one of Ah-lum's sons was buried in the free cemetery of Haiphong (), and another was buried in the free cemetery of the Canton City Association in Vung Tau, Vietnam (#).\n\n14 In 1884, when Chen passed through Vietnam, Ah-lum was chief manager (*) of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. in Vietnam. See Chen: p. 19.\n\n15 Chen: ibid.\n\n16 Clan record, Chi-ching pu (###) section, Ch'i-shou (##) sub-section, pp. 1-4; has two essays presented on this occasion by the gentry of Heung Shan, and by the merchants of the Canton City Association in Vung Tau, Saigon (F#城會館).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210434, "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-1985", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "22 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\nChinese Cemeteries\". The senior Chinese representative on the Board, Mr. Lau Chu-pak, was quick to detect any signs of racial discrimination. He asked if bodies from cemeteries other than Chinese could be re-buried in the cemetery. \n\nThe Board sent a letter to the Colonial Secretary in April requesting that Government should allot a piece of ground for burial of Buddhists. This could be done immediately, so it was proposed by the Governor in Council that a new ordinance be drafted to set aside the major part of the Colonial Cemetery for the burial of Christians only. In transmitting this decision to the Sanitary Board, the Colonial Secretary reminded the Board that the proclamation to the Chinese in 1841 by Captain Elliott had guaranteed the free practice of religion to all nations and creeds, and as the Buddhists — meaning the Japanese — had no place other than the Colonial Cemetery to bury their dead, he suggested that the Board suspend, for the time being, the enforcement of the bye-law regarding joss sticks and crackers. \n\nThe two Chinese representatives of the Board expressed their dissatisfaction with recent proposals by some members of the Board which they considered would make the cemetery exclusively European and Christian. Mr. Lau Chu-pak reminded the meeting that the cemetery was open to every resident of the Colony, irrespective of nationality and religion, though, he admitted it was probably originally intended for persons of the Protestant faith as there had been special cemeteries provided for Chinese, Muslims and Roman Catholics — he did not mention the Jews and Parsees, which had their own cemeteries also. He looked back in history, saying that, “In the early days, when there was a Colonial Chaplain, what was more natural than that he should describe the cemetery at which he officiated as the Colonial Cemetery, meaning thereby the cemetery of the Colonial Church”, and he also acknowledged that the official Government Gazette had been referring to it as the Protestant Cemetery. In spite of the use of those names, Mr. Lau contended that the cemetery was a public one, as it was public property and maintained at public cost. He acknowledged that the general Chinese community did not use the cemetery. The Chinese who did, he said, were largely British born, British naturalized,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210439, "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-1985", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "KAU SAI, AN UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT\n\nBARBARA E. WARD*\n\n27\n\n1. INTRODUCTION\n\nEvery traveller to Hong Kong remembers the junks. They swarm in the harbour: fishermen, cargo boats, pilot craft, countless small passenger sampans, wooden lighters clustering around the ocean-going ships like suckling pigs around their dams, Chinese boats of every shape and size. The men and women aboard them are the Boat People. Traditionally they were born, married, died on their boats. They went ashore permanently only after death, for it is unchancy to be buried at sea. In the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong today they number about 250,000. Their counterparts (perhaps two or three million) are spread all along the Pearl River and its branches, throughout the intricate network of navigable inland waterways in Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and all along the Chinese coast southeast from Fukien.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nWater dwelling is not unusual in China (or Japan, or, indeed, most of South East Asia) but the Boat People of Kwangtung and Kwangsi seem to have acquired a special notoriety from at least the Sung dynasty onwards. Known as Tanka, a name rightly resented by them as a term of derision and disrepute, they have been despised, placed at the bottom of local systems of social stratification, and often referred to as exemplars of loose sexual morality and other un-Chinese characteristics. They are still frequently explained away as being not really Chinese, or even not really human. I have heard well-educated landsmen expatiating upon their non-Han descent, their non-Chinese language, their utterly alien customs (which are often alleged to include matriliny), and the special biological distinction which gives them all six toes on each foot.\n\n* Barbara E. Ward passed away in 1982 before completing this manuscript, obviously an early draft for a full-length book. It is published here by kind permission of her husband, Dr. Stephen Morris, who has also supplied the plates. Miss Ward was, for many years, a member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210442, "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-1985", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "30\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nimportant centres by 1970.\n\nThe inshore fishermen were, and are, at once more numerous and more scattered. Certainly many of those who normally venture no more than about four miles from the coast at the furthest, do have their home bases alongside the deep-sea craft in the large, well-known fishing towns, but large numbers of them return to small traditional anchorages in the more than thirty fishing villages which are to be found on the coasts of the mainland and islands. The populations of these smaller fishing centres vary from a few dozens to a few thousands; the majority can be reckoned in hundreds.\n\nI first went to Hong Kong in the summer of 1950, less than a year after the victory of the Chinese People's Government in China. For obvious reasons it was not an appropriate time for a foreigner to undertake participant observation on boats that had constantly to traverse Chinese national waters and visit Chinese ports. Moreover, I am a bad sailor. These two considerations ruled out the deep-sea fishermen and the long distance carriers from the start. There remained two major categories of Boat People who usually stayed within British waters: the inshore fishermen and the people of the harbour.\n\nThe latter were, as I have indicated, an essentially urban population and exceedingly numerous; the former lived characteristically in the small floating settlements that fringed the rural areas. Because the basic field method to be used was participant observation, I chose for intensive study one such community of inshore fishermen. It lay, as it still lies, on one bank of a narrow strait between two small islands in the Port Shelter section of the eastern waters of the Colony. Its name was Kau Sai.\n\n2. KAU SAI: TOPOGRAPHY, LAND USE AND CHANGE\n\nThe inshore waters of Hong Kong are remarkably beautiful. In many ways reminiscent of the Western Isles, though without quite such a mountainous backdrop, the scenery combines the blue of the sea with the green of the hills in a particularly satisfying way. Drowned valleys give the mainland coasts their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210676, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "The political issue of 1997\n\nHELEN F. SIU\n\nJust as Liang was eroding prejudices against his immigrant status, he encountered anxiety from a rather unexpected angle. His gradual absorption into the working-class environment of Hong Kong was truncated by a series of political events in the 1980s. Mrs. Thatcher's visit to Beijing in the fall of 1982 thrust the issue of 1997 in front of the five and a half million Hong Kong residents. Living in a borrowed place with borrowed time, every wave of emigrants who had settled in Hong Kong since the war had pretended that the issue did not exist. The issue now rang loudly and urgently, and various social categories were faced with dilemmas of their own. Leaks of details in subsequent negotiations between the British and Beijing governments, plus speculations over the political uncertainty, created one panic after another in Hong Kong's economy. While liberal intellectuals debated the issue of political mobilization, and while professionals desperately sought means to emigrate, working youths like Liang suffered the economic consequences of a panic the political causes of which they had little anticipation or control.\n\nAs both governments started the long-overdue process of building up a political infrastructure for future transition, major efforts were made to shape public opinion through the media. While vocal elite groups emphasized the need to develop a commitment toward Hong Kong's future, pro-Beijing organizations in Hong Kong hastened the planting of their representatives in the colony. Every Hong Kong resident was quite aware that Chinese personnel had been sent to Hong Kong with increasing frequency. Numbering about 50,000 (in 1985),* and easily recognized on the streets of Hong Kong with their grey suits and shopping bags, the \"maternal uncles\" (jiujiu) heightened the anxiety of the local elite toward China's political advances.\n\nAfter four years of hard work, Liang was just coming to terms with settling down. In three more years, he would receive his status of permanent residence. His position in Hong Kong would also make him useful for joint ventures with his friends in rural Guangdong. However, the political problem of 1997 upset his plans. His keen political sense taught him not to trust China's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210686, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "20\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nthe British Colony of Hong Kong. He matriculated at London University in 1875, and in 1876 he passed the Intermediate Examination in Laws obtaining first place of those candidates who achieved second class at honours. Also in 1876 he won the Lee Essay Prize at Gray's Inn, the subject being \"The Judicature Act 1873, stating its object and provisions generally and its probable effect on the administration of the law in England”. He was called to the Bar in November 1876. I have no information as to how he otherwise spent his time during 1874-6. The last glimpse of him in England I know of is an entry in Foster's Men at the Bar 2nd ed. 1885 in which his addresses are given as Hong Kong and the Junior Conservative Club.\n\nFrancis was admitted to practise at the Hong Kong Bar in March 1877, being the 27th on the Roll and the first barrister of Gray's Inn to be so admitted. His admission was moved by the Attorney General George Phillippo before Smale who was still Chief Justice. Phillippo said that his call certificate had been filed and an affidavit of identity sworn before Mr. Justice Huddleston was before the Court. However Huddleston had not given any indication of his office and the question was raised whether it was in order to receive the affidavit. Phillippo said that Francis was well known in Hong Kong and Smale said that he was prepared to act on his personal knowledge of him. Just to resolve any remaining doubts there might be it was noted that the affidavit was dated from “Judge's Chambers\" and that was deemed sufficient. Perhaps Francis heaved a sigh of relief. It would have been somewhat tedious for him to have to return to England to obtain a further and better affidavit of identity. E.J. Eitel in his book Europe in China wrote \"the admission to the Bar of Mr. Francis added new zest to the local displays of forensic eloquence”. Shortly after his own admission Francis signed an affidavit in support of the application of Ng Choy the first Chinese to be admitted to practise in Hong Kong. I like to think that it was an indication of his sympathy towards the Chinese.\n\nIn 1877 the leading practitioner at the Bar in Hong Kong was T.C. Hayllar who was admitted to practise in 1868 and at first Francis practised in his shadow. Another obstacle to getting work was that at that time the Attorney General was allowed to engage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210699, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "33\n\nnominated E.R. Belilios. The only way in for Francis was by election by the Justices or the General Chamber of Commerce of which he was a member. He suffered a number of handicaps one of which was that he was not a businessman. He was present at a meeting of the Justices in 1884 to elect a member and expressed regret that Justices who were officials had, at the request of the Governor, declined to vote. He said they should either use their vote or, better, have no vote. In 1886 he was a candidate for the Justices seat. He published his interest in the newspapers saying \"I honestly believe I can do the colony good and faithful service and better than any other man. I am nearly one of the oldest residents. I came here in 1859. Since 1862 I have taken a lively and I hope intelligent interest in the affairs of the colony. I have some knowledge of business and its requirements and am deeply interested in the prosperity and progress of Hong Kong as a whole. It is my home, my life's work is here and I rise or fall with its fortunes\". He referred to his practice as a speaker and training as a lawyer and said he was thoroughly independent in all things. He said he was in favour of maintaining absolute freedom of the port and improving the harbour, changing the method of dealing in land and reforming the Legislative Council including increasing the number and powers of unofficials.\n\nAn editorial in the Daily Press said “false modesty is not a failing of our eminent counsellor any more than want of courage. However the Justices may require other guarantees from their candidate. They may also object that Mr. Francis whilst perhaps independent now has not always been equally so and the tone he now takes smacks rather too much of constant and indiscriminating opposition to the Government. There is some reason to doubt whether the best interest of the colony would be best served by a lawyer. Mr. Chater would be a better member\". Francis replied “unofficial members are permanently in opposition but obstruction for the sake of obstruction is a thing I hate and detest. I pride myself on having been in all things and at all times absolutely independent in thought and word. I have spoken and acted in support of what I thought right when it was in my interest in every sense to do otherwise\". The paper responded “Nine years ago Mr. Francis and two other barristers (Ng Choy and Hayllor) arrayed with the Governor against almost every member of the British and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210708, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "42 \n\nWALTER GREENWOOD \n\nsaying he expected a C.M.G. and this I believe dished his chances. In any case I submit that it is highly improper for a Government pensioner, who has been knighted, to publish such a statement and I think Sir Edward Ackroyd should be called upon for an explanation through the Colonial Office\". It may be that if Francis had not made his protest the Government would have had second thoughts. But as the China Mail observed it was not in his nature to allow the neglect to pass unnoticed. The handsome, paltry, historical silver inkstand was ordered to be returned to the Crown Agents to be sold for the benefit of the Colony.\n\nFrancis was prominent in public affairs in a number of respects in addition to those already mentioned. To take a few examples. He was on the committees formed to organise the celebration of the Queen's Golden and Diamond Jubilees. As to the former he favoured it being marked by a contribution to the British Indian and Colonial Institute, which had the support of the Royal Family, but in the end the committee decided on a statue which is now in Victoria Park. On the latter occasion he was awarded the Governor's Jubilee medal for his services. He was also on the Hong Kong Golden Jubilee committee. He attended a number of the protest meetings which were a feature of life in Hong Kong, and usually had something to say. His last public appointment was as Chairman of the Food Supply Commission in 1900. He had a number of business interests which, presumably, were not regarded as inconsistent with his status as a practising member of the Bar. The most interesting relate to Borneo and newspapers. In 1889 he paid an extended visit to Borneo and whilst there purchased the island of Balambangan. His main interest was in the prospects for growing tobacco. Whilst in Borneo he \"took the trouble to learn all about it” and of course lectured about it on his return. On the death of Fraser Smith in 1895 he acquired an interest in the Daily Telegraph which he retained until 1900. He was said to have directed the policy of the newspaper during that period. It was also said in an obituary that he was proprietor of the China Mail for a time.\n\nHe was a member of many clubs and societies. He was a founder member of the Jockey Club and secretary of its first rule committee. He took a prominent part in disputes between the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210726, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "60\n\n—\n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU\n\nand it is to be got through the Press early in the issuing year. It will form one of the series of Floras of the British Colonies published under the sanction of H.M. Government and the general superintendence of Sir W.J. Hooker.\n\nFurther, and perhaps of more relevance in getting the gardens established, it is boldly stated in answer to Query no. 4 of June 28th 1860 \"No Botanical Garden exists in the colony\".\n\nThus although the scheme to establish a public Botanical Garden had been sanctioned by the Secretary of State in 1856, the proposal was held in limbo until Nov 30th 1861 when a sum of £269..10..6 was approved \"for the formation of Public Gardens”. A further sum of £4,371..2..6 was approved by the Governor, Hercules Robinson who explained the justification for such a large sum on the difficult topography of the chosen site.\n\n\"The amount proposed to be expended in this service is large, but the only ground available for a Public Garden in a suitable locality is situated on such a steep incline as to call for very special arrangements for carrying off the water from the hills. Drainage and a boundary wall constitute the chief items of the Estimate\".\n\nIt is obvious that Governor Robinson considered the formation of a public garden both an added attraction to the rapidly expanding city and, in addition, well within the financial resources of the Colony. He continues:\n\n\"I am of opinion that a portion of the large surplus revenue at present in hand, cannot be better expended than in carrying out this undertaking, which will contribute to the embellishment of the City of Victoria and the health and enjoyment of its inhabitants.”\n\nThe Duke of Newcastle's scribbled note appended to Robinson's submission on its arrival in London states:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210787, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "121\n\nBritish Navy stationed at Hong Kong which eradicated free-booting from the China coast. Equipped with the newest steam gun-boats designed for navigation in shallow water, the British commenced a blitz on piracy in 1863, and in a short period rousted the privateers from their haunts in Hainan's shallow river estuaries. To prevent a revival of piracy, the Guangdong provincial government was provided with similar gunboats officered by Englishmen, to patrol the waters surrounding Hainan,\n\nRestoration of trade\n\nThe quashing of piracy led to a rapid restoration of trade between Hainan and the mainland, which in turn, aroused for the first time the interest of foreign merchants in this unknown island which had previously been dismissed as merely a sanctuary for pirates and banditti. This interest resulted in the opening of K'iungchow as a treaty port in 1876 and the development of a thriving trade with Hong Kong. A steamer link with the British colony was established and Hainan produce was ferried on the regular service. Raw sugar, vegetable oils and livestock (cattle, pigs, ducks, chickens and frogs) were the chief exports, while betel nut, copra, rattan, sisal hemp, hides, tallow, medical herbs and incense timber were shipped in small quantities (Henry, 1886; Moninger, 1919). Unfortunately, Hainan did not escape the baneful effects of opium which became the island's principal import (Henry, 1886), its use being justified in warding off the deadly malaria endemic throughout the island (Swinhoe, 1872a).\n\nWith the flurry of business activity, companies formed with foreign and Cantonese capital mushroomed everywhere in Hainan, each striving to secure as large a share as possible of the agricultural and mineral resources of the island. Unfortunately, Hainan did not surrender its untapped wealth easily, and the harshness of the tropical climate sent most enterprises quickly into bankruptcy. Those that did succeed were large, well-financed operations such as the K'iu Hing Kunz Sz, a large plantation near Nada involved in the production of rubber, coffee and tobacco (McClure, 1922). Even this company with over 20,000 rubber trees and 300,000 mature coffee bushes experienced hardship mainly caused by labour shortages, although these may have been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210814, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "148\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nUpon reading it Hung believed he had found the key to explain the strange things that had happened to him in his dreams and visions.\n\nSoon he was formulating the initial ideology upon which the Taiping movement was based. It was a strange mixture of that which was traditionally Chinese and new elements derived from the Christian teachings of the foreigners.\n\nLiang A-fa lived for a short time in Hongkong, long enough for him to acquire a property in the Lower Bazaar. This and the one next to it, purchased by his son, were used by the Rev Mr Elijah Bridgman for a school and dispensary.\n\nIn 1845 Liang A-fa left Hongkong disillusioned with life in a British colony. Both he and his son had experienced rough treatment on the streets of Hongkong from Europeans.\n\nHe was in the unhappy situation of not being accepted by his countrymen because of his foreign faith and his connections with foreigners. At the same time he was not able to adapt to life in a place governed by foreigners.\n\nA STUDENT AND TEACHER WHO BECAME A TEAM\n\nHo Fuk-tong, or as he was also known, Ho Tsun-shin, met the Rev. Mr. James Legge at the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca.\n\nFuk-tong, 22 at the time, was only two years younger than his future teacher and colleague, when they met. Mr. Legge had recently arrived from England to assist the ailing principal of the college, the Rev. Mr. John Evans.\n\nAfter some months, Mr. Evans died and Mr. Legge took charge. Ho Fuk-tong was his star pupil.\n\nFuk-tong was the son of a woodblock-cutter and printer brought from China to work in the Malacca press of the Ultra-Ganges Mission of the London Missionary Society. After the father had been away from home for some years, his son left China.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210896, "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "230\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nplague, the Hongkong Government cleared most of the district of Taipingshan. This had been the city's most congested area, and its removal displaced a large number of people.\n\nTo provide needed housing, Ho A-mei explained that the Fuk Tin Co was building houses across the harbour, where it was still rural. There would be fresh air, wide streets and better sanitary conditions.\n\nSome several scores of houses were almost completed and site formation for others was in progress. The houses were of brick with tile roof, two storeys high and with ample room between the blocks. The intention was to build several hundred. Built in bulk, the properties could be sold at a bargain price, at the same time the promoters could realise a substantial profit.\n\nThe hope was that \"many respectable Chinese will buy land and houses over the way as family residences and that thus many well-to-do Chinese who have houses in the interior will find it convenient and pleasant to 'pitch their tent' in the neighbourhood of this thriving colony.\" Nor need there be any anxiety about security as there were military personnel at the Chinese custom's station at Laichikok.\n\nBut looking ahead only a little farther, there was the prospect of the area becoming British, for as the interviewer stated, “such an extension of Hongkong has long been needed, and, I am glad to say, the day when it will be un fait accompli is now within measurable distance.\" The distance was three more years.\n\nOPIUM MONOPOLY AND HO CONNECTION\n\nSomehow Ho A-mei became involved in a Chinese scheme to solve the opium question. Some background will aid in understanding his role in the scheme.\n\nIn 1875 the British took the opportunity presented by the murder of a member of a British exploratory expedition in the province of Yunnan to press China for a treaty revision. As a consequence, the Chefoo Agreement was negotiated the following year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210903, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "237\n\nChinaman living in his Colony who has become quite an Anglo-Chinese, it should be said to him, 'No', because you are a Chinaman, no matter how well you know English, you must take service under the Chinese Government... It was your misfortune to be born a Chinese.”\n\nThese sentiments were not welcomed by the majority of the foreign community. \"Truth,\" in replying to the letter written by “Chinese,” reminded the community that the Government was being paid by British taxpayers \"to represent British Imperial interest, not as your correspondent truly remarks, as a Chinese representative or to look at affairs from a Chinese point of view.”\n\nFrom the distance of years and changed attitudes, the Governor's remarks seem eminently fair and appropriate. But before they could be regarded as such the Chinese had to play a careful game, and the European community generally resisted any accommodation.\n\nThe European, though at the top of the heap, felt insecure and frightened. He was always suspecting some nefarious conspiracy was at work to topple him.\n\n“Truth” reflects this when he remarks on “the lengths to which a Chinaman will go, the stratagems to which he will resort, to cause injury to his opponents and the sleuth-hound like pertinacity with which he watches his every business and concern in order that he may cause him loss of name or money.”\n\nThere was always the fear the Chinese resident in Hongkong would be “got at\" by someone who would prod or intimidate him to challenge the position the foreigner had carved out for himself in China.\n\nWith this brief review of some of the tensions between the Chinese and foreign population in Hongkong, we can better understand the events of the public meeting of October 1878, and the activity of Ho A-mei as a public figure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210910, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "244\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nHe then upheld the honour of the foreign merchant: “I think we may with truth say that our merchants in China are not hard and unreasonable men. I believe in no part of this world can a body of gentlemen be found showing so large an amount of consideration and kindness towards each other, and towards the weak, the poor, the sick, and the bereaved, as has been manifested for half a century past by the wealthy, and often times by the unfortunate, merchants in China.”\n\nThen he exposed the sensitive point in the foreign residents' attitude towards the Chinese. \"We are surrounded by a native population of 100 to one, and it is only by a preservation of that superstitious veneration for the prestige of the British character by which we are enabled to keep the masses of China in check. The progress of education among them is greatly calculated to break down that prejudice and reverential fear with which they regard all things foreign. They are becoming more and more familiar with us, and as a consequence in some degree there is a growth of that contempt which is proverbial. But our danger is not from the natives by whom we are surrounded, but from the masses of the Kwangtung province, which has been truly described by Keswick to be the most violent and the most demoralised of the whole Chinese empire.\"\n\nSharp finally concluded with the assurance that, “This is not a mutinous meeting, it is an orderly, quiet, constitutional meeting.”\n\nT. I. Bowler, one of Hongkong's characters, saw a plot behind the conduct of the Chinese at the meeting, saying: “As it is evident that attempts have been made to cause dissension, I move, that this meeting views with annoyance and displeasure the efforts which have been made to bring about dissension between the Chinese and Europeans.\" The chairman declared the motion out of order.\n\nThe Chinese reaction to the entire proceedings, as voiced by Ng Choy, was one of regret. He wrote to the newspaper: \"Many public meetings have been held since the Colony was established, but I think this was the first public meeting that my fellow countrymen ever attempted to take part in. I am sorry that a little more consideration...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210933, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "266\n\ning in the New Territories. Unfortunately, the British misunderstood that the soldiers were sent there to assist the uprising.\n\nWith this as an excuse, the British invaded the Walled City on the 8th day of the Fourth Moon (i.e. 19th May) and drove away the Imperial officials and the three hundred soldiers.\n\nThis ended the Ch'ing rule over the Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, June 1987\n\nAnthony K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n2\n\nSee JHKBRAS 20(1980): 139-141.\n\nThey were said to be Hakka stone workers and Triad members.\n\nCheung Yu-tang E, a native of Wai Chau H, was a Fu-cheung #or Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion in 1854. He was stationed in the Walled City for thirteen years. Then he retired in the 5th year of Tung Chih (1866) and died four years later in the 9th year of Tung Chih (1870) at the age of 76.\n\nSee Chapter 82 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsu edition 廣州府志卷八十二,\n\n5 See the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong, 1898 (signed at Peking, 9th June, 1898): Treaties between China and Foreign States Vol. 1, P. 539-540. Shang-hai, 1917.\n\n6 See Despatches and other Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the Lease of Kowloon Customs and her territory on the 9th day of the 4th moon in the 25th year of the Kuang Hsu Reign (1899).\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the British Occupation of the Kowloon City and the French Occupation of Ng Chuen and Shui Kai Prefectures 奧督撫譚鈺麟鹿傳霖泰英人佔據九龍城法人圖佔吳川遂溪兩縣請飭籌 on the 15th day of the 5th moon in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210998, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "35 \n\npirates carried out a vicious attack on the s.s. Namoa. Some suspects were arrested in Hong Kong and two of them were committed for trial, but they were released for lack of evidence. Those arrested in Kowloon were less fortunate, for they were convicted and beheaded on the beach in front of the City, with British officials invited to witness the execution.\" The Chinese were of course also interested in keeping Chinese waters free of pirates and joint efforts were made to this end.\n\n18 \n\nOfficials at Kowloon performed more than their strictly official duties. Numerous temple inscriptions testify to their active involvement with the community activities of the territory, on both sides of the border.\" The stone tablet over the entrance of the Pei-ti Temple at Wanchai, with the temple's name inscribed in Chang Yu-t'ang's calligraphy is particularly significant.\n\n29 \n\n30 \n\nThe Chinese community in British Hong Kong were obviously very aware of the Chinese official presence across the harbour. Sometimes they looked to it for protection. For instance in 1886 when it was rumoured that 500 children would be required to consecrate the Tytam Water Works, children were sent to Kowloon City for protection, to the extent that hardly any child was to be seen anywhere for two days.\"\n\n31 \n\nThe Chinese in Hong Kong also looked to Kowloon as a source of authority and patronage, and this was most clearly seen in 1896 when the first Chinese Chamber of Commerce opened in Hong Kong. As was customary, rites were performed before the Kuan-ti M, or martial god. The Kowloon Commodore, Ch’en Kun-shan 120!!, officiated, as the dragon flag of Ch’ing China fluttered above,32 as if to establish the Chineseness of the occasion. Not surprisingly this display of loyalty to Chinese officialdom incurred the resentment of the local English press. The Daily Press leader lamented that the Hong Kong Governor had not been invited to officiate instead, and saw this as a move \"to insult the established order of the colony\".\" This, in fact, suggests that to some of the foreign community at least, Kowloon, as a Chinese base, was too close for comfort.\n\nThere were other problems. Gambling, prohibited in Hong\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211000, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "37\n\nment, when attempting in April to occupy the New Territory (as the New Territories were then called), encountered much more ferocious resistance than anticipated. At this juncture, 600 men were sent into the Kowloon Walled City by the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and the British authorities, convinced that they were there to support the resistance, demanded their withdrawal. The Colonial Office went so far as to threaten starving out the garrison at the City until troops were removed.41 The Chinese, however, claimed that the troops had been sent by special request of the Hong Kong government to preserve order, and though some of the men were withdrawn, by 4th May, 200 were still stationed in the City.42\n\nThis prompted the British to take action to attack Shumchun and Kowloon City as punishment for the Governor-General's duplicity in abetting the local resistance. On 16th May, at 3:00 p.m., a force of 300 men consisting of Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 100 Hong Kong Volunteers proceeded to Kowloon and occupied it, apparently meeting little resistance.43 All Chinese civil and military officials were ordered to depart as the British claimed that their continued presence and the retention of Kowloon Walled City in Chinese hands had proven inconsistent to British military requirement. To “legalize” the situation, an Order-in-Council was issued in December, announcing British jurisdiction over the Walled City which was to be administered in the same manner as the rest of the Colony.44 Yet this remained a unilateral revision of the Convention which the Chinese government never recognized.\n\n44\n\n45\n\n46\n\nThe Chinese naturally responded bitterly to the development. T'an Chung-lin, the Governor-General, protested vehemently to the court of the undignified manner in which the military officers and soldiers were cast out.45 At Peking, the Tsungli Yamen complained to the British Minister.46 Chinese eagerness to recover jurisdiction at Kowloon is best revealed in the letters from Lo Feng-lu****, Chinese Minister at St. James, to the Foreign Office.Yet, paradoxically, this eagerness was not accompanied by action; no attempt was made by the Chinese to reinstate an administration in the Walled City.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211003, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "40\n\nare the ones to be found remounted in the City today. Inscriptions on them indicate that they had been cast in 1802 and apparently transferred to Kowloon from the Tung-lung Forts in 1811. We do not know the origins of the other cannon, and since the War, there has been no trace of them.\n\nAnd so the City languished. Although squatters had filtered in after 1899, in the 1930s, the population was still less than 500. Conditions there were insanitary but at least it escaped the horrific over-crowding of some other parts of the Colony. In 1933, however, the government announced plans to demolish the houses, ostensibly for sanitary reasons, sparing only those used for public purposes, and to make the area into “a place of popular resort and antiquarian interest\". There was some resistance from the residents; the Chinese authorities protested on their behalf while objecting to British disregard for the Convention. After several years' hesitation, the Hong Kong government finally took steps, despite Chinese objections, to evict all residents. By 1940, all buildings, except the old people's home, the former Lung-chin Communal School and the private home of a native resident, had been demolished. The dismantling continued under the Japanese: the wall was completely torn down to provide material to extend Kai Tak Airport.\n\nThe \"Walled City\" was no more.\n\nAfter the War, as refugees fled to Hong Kong, a number of them settled in the \"Walled City”; by 1947, its population had risen to about 2,000. Once more, the Hong Kong government's attempt to expel them provoked diplomatic conflict. But this time, no eviction took place. Instead, the City was left to its own devices, and to develop, as Governor Sir Alexander Grantham described it, into “a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavoury. From the early '60s, squatter huts gave way to high-rise buildings, which seem designed to break every conceivable construction regulation. Built with no open space between them, but with passages connecting each other like rabbit warrens, they are fire and health hazards and perfect criminal hide-outs. The old people's centre, formerly the Kuang-yin yuan, provides the only open area, and the mass of concrete around this\n\n+65", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211007, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "44\n\n37 Krone, p. 132.\n\n18 Bruce Shepherd, The Hong Kong Guide (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982; 1st published, Shanghai, 1893) pp. 117-118; R.C. Hurley, Tourists' Map of 8 Short Trips on the Mainland of China (Neighbourhood of Hong Kong) including Principal Places frequented by Sportsmen (Hong Kong: R.C. Hurley, 1896) enclosed in Blake to Chamberlain, April 28, 1899, #107: CO129/290, p. 7.\n\n39 Shepherd, p. 117.\n\n40 The Convention is appended in Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, pp. 191-192. The negotiation of the Convention is dealt with in detail in the book.\n\n* Colonial Office draft telegram to Sir H.A. Blake, enclosed in Colonial Office to Foreign Office, April 27, 1899, despatch #130: CO882/5/66, p. 136.\n\n42 Blake to Chamberlain, May 4, 1899, telegram: CO882/5/66, p. 140; Consul Mansfield to Bax-Ironside, April 20, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., July 13, 1899: ibid., p. 304.\n\n43 Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty, p. 73.\n\n44\n\nThe Order-in-Council, dated 27th December, 1899, is appended in ibid., pp. 196-7.\n\n45\n\nT'an Wen-chin kung tsou-kao, XUSA (Memorials of Tan Chung-lin) 2 volumes, (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen Co., based on 1911 edition) vol. 2, 248-26a.\n\n46\n\nTranslation of a telegram from the Tsungli Yamen, dated Peking May 20, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., May 22, 1899: CO882/5/66, p. 160.\n\n47 Lo Feng-luh [sic] to the Marquess of Salisbury, October 17, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., October 28, 1899: CO882/5/66, p. 364; Lo Feng-luh to the Marquess of Salisbury, November 14, 1899, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., November 25, 1899: ibid., p. 369.\n\nPeel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential: CO129/546.\n\n49 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275: CO129/488.\n\n50\n\nSheng San-i l'ang tsuan-hsi t’e-k'an 1890-1965 ——A (Special bulletin to commemorate the diamond jubilee of the Holy Trinity Church, 1890-1965) (Hong Kong: the Church [1965]) p. 34.\n\n51 Ibid., p. 33.\n\n52 Ibid., p. 34.\n\n$3\n\n$4\n\nHong Kong Government Gazette, 1901, p. 1401,\n\nPeel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential; Chiang-shan ku-jen, \"feng-t'u\", parts 106-107.\n\n55 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275; Chiang-shan ku-jen, “Pen-ti feng-kuang\" (Local sights) part 163. These are articles appearing in the Hua-ch'iao jih-pao in 1931 and an album of them is in the University of Hong Kong Library, Jarrett, vol. 3, p. 609.\n\n56 Stubbs to Amery, June 26, 1925, despatch #275.\n\n57\n\nPeel to Cunliffe-Lister, January 9, 1934, confidential: C. Van Leo, “A Little bit of China in the Heart of Hong Kong\", Hong Kong Telegraph, January 18, 1937. R.C. Hurley, Handbook to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong and Depen-\n\n58\n\n¦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211031, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n67\n\n1\n\nThe South China Morning Post, 20th August, 1904, p. 3.\n\nSee, for example, Mark Bray, Peter B. Clarke, and David Stephens, Education and Society (London: Edward Arnold, 1986); Mark Bray, with Kevin Lillis (eds.), Community Financing of Education: Issues and Policy Implications in Less Developed Countries (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988); Ingemar Fagerlind and Lawrence J. Saba, Education and National Development: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983); Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); George Psacharopoulos and Maureen Woodhall, Education for Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); R. Murray Thomas (ed.), Politics and Education: Cases from Eleven Nations (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983).\n\nMartin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York: McKay, 1974), Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly (eds.), Education and the Colonial Experience, (2nd Revised Edition New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984).\n\nStephen J. Ball, 'Imperialism, Social Control and the Colonial Curriculum in Africa', in Ivor F. Goodson and Stephen J. Ball (eds.), Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (London: The Falmer Press, 1984).\n\nProsser Gifford and Timothy Weiskel, “African Education in a Colonial Context: French and British Styles,” in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).\n\nClive Whitehead, “British Colonial Education Policy: A Synonym for Cultural Imperialism?\", in J. A. Mangan (ed.), Imperialism, Socialization and Education (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).\n\nIt is not implied that all the works cited above suffer from this defect.\n\n10\n\nThe term \"compradore\" is an Anglicized version of the Portuguese comprador, which literally meant \"provider\" or \"provisioner\". The historical significance of the compradore class has been summarized by Carl Smith in the following terms: \"The compradores were influential in proposing, capitalizing, and managing the modernization and industrialization of China in the latter half of the century. They had received their business training and acquired their capital by functioning as 'middlemen' between the European merchant and the Chinese employees and business contacts of the foreign firm. It was a strategic position which called for a foot in two worlds. A background of ability in the language and an understanding of European thought and manners usually ensured a rapid rise as a compradore.' Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 63. It may be worth noting that several, but by no means all, of the early compradores in Hong Kong were \"middlemen\" also in the sense that they were of Eurasian birth.\n\n15\n\nSee, for example, Particulars of the Offices of three Assistant Mistresses, Education Department, now vacant in the Colony of Hong Kong, August 1913, in Colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211065, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "THE BRITISH (PROTESTANT) CEMETERY AT SAN PEDRO, MAKATI, MANILA, PHILIPPINES\n\nDAVID W MAHONEY\n\n101\n\nIn the Eternal Lawn section of the Manila Memorial Park at Paranaque, a Southern suburb of the Philippine capital, Manila, in the shade of a Candelnut tree, wafted by the fragrance of a nearby Frangipani, lie all that is left of the British (Protestant) Cemetery of Manila. (See Plates 17 and 18 at rear of this Volume).\n\nAs the simple granite memorial stone announces \"Here lie the remains of those who were buried in the Protestant Cemetery at San Pedro, Makati between the years 1863-1968”. Well, that's the end of the story, what about the rest?\n\nThe first British contact with the Philippines is said to have been the visit of the “SEAHORSE” to Manila in 1644, but trade could not proceed due to a blockade by the Dutch. The first British people started to come to the islands in the early eighteenth century and established trading links selling textiles (chiefly cotton) and buying silver, pearls, skins, leather, tobacco, sugar and even horses. Trade prospered between the Philippines and Mexico and particularly with China — mostly through English merchants so that the Islands were described as an “Anglo-Chinese Colony flying the Spanish flag\". As many of those involved in trade also had connections with India, it was inevitable that the country which had been ruled by the Spanish since 1565 would come to the attention of the British military. Sure enough in 1762 an expedition under Col. Draper was launched from Madras and captured Manila after a two-week campaign. (Incidentally, Col. Monson, the Second-in-Command is buried in the South Park St. Cemetery in Calcutta.)\n\nAlthough this campaign has been written about extensively, it is still worthy of further investigation. — What happened to the graves of the eight hundred or so who were killed, drowned in the landing during a typhoon or died of disease? No physical evidence\n\nDavid W. Mahoney is a Chartered Surveyor working for Swire Properties Ltd., and has lived in Hong Kong since 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211066, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "102\n\nof this has yet been found although contemporary maps indicated at La Loma a \"Burial place of infidels.” Infidels comprised non-Catholics and included European Protestants, Chinese, and Indians. Incidentally, still living in Cainta, only a few miles away are the descendants of the Indian troops of the expedition who decided to stay after deserting or being left behind after their boat capsized, but their distinctive looks are, however, slowly disappearing. Sadly, after being governed by the East India Company for eighteen months, Manila had to be returned to the Spanish by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Speculation still exists amongst Filipino scholars about what the Philippines might have been if the British had remained in control — a British colony in the Far East, rich in natural resources, fifty years before the acquisition of Singapore and Malaya and eighty years before Hong Kong.\n\nTrade continued to prosper after the resumption of Spanish Authority, and, until 1821 the Philippines continued to be run from Mexico. Treaty ports and trading posts were established in several places including Sual in Pangasinan, on Luzon Island, in Iloilo on Panay and on Cebu and Protestant cemeteries were established in each town, where beforehand the burial of Protestants in consecrated ground was prohibited, (as was the importation of Protestant Bibles).\n\nWith the expansion of trade, a burial place for the four hundred to five hundred aliens from Europe and North America living in Manila, was becoming an urgent necessity.\n\nIn 1827 the first British Consul General was appointed and it was his successor, John William Perry Farren (sometimes referred to as Fearon) who in 1860 attempted to establish a Protestant Cemetery for the mostly but not exclusively British residents. Sadly, Farren became one of the cemetery's first residents within weeks of its establishment.\n\nOn May 27th, 1862, the Spanish Government by a \"Superior Decreto\" granted permission to construct the Cemetery, and on March 11th, 1864 a lease was signed between Farren and Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, the Owner of Hacienda de San Pedro, of a parcel of land of 31,656 \"varas cuadradas\" (22,467.85 sq metres or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211090, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "126\n\nnese and to provide for the better Security of the Residents of the Colony.” Ordinance 18 of 1888 brought together measures for \"The Regulation of the Chinese.\" It contained the light and pass requirements.\n\nHo A-mei, who was a student of the Anglo-Chinese College, must have experienced the troubled time of 1856 and 1857. Forty years later, as a prominent leader of the Chinese, he chaired a meeting held to request the Government to repeal the measures enacted when he was yet a youth.\n\nSTORM OVER PLAN TO ABOLISH\n\nTHE LIGHT AND PASS LAW\n\nHo A-mei, educated in the 1850s at Dr. Legge's school in Hong-kong, became in later life a leader in the Chinese community. As such, he participated in many public affairs.\n\nIn December 1895, he chaired a protest meeting against the strict enforcement of the light and pass regulations. They required Chinese out at night after a certain hour to carry lanterns and passes. These regulations became Hongkong law in 1857 during a time of crisis. It was the opening period of the second Sino-British conflict which extended from 1856 to 1860.\n\nAt the time the rules were enacted they were regarded as emergency measures to guard against arson and other subversive activities by agents sent to Hongkong by the Chinese authorities at Canton. After the emergency was over, the requirement for Chinese to carry lights and passes was not suspended. It remained as law but was enforced spasmodically.\n\nSince the rules applied to only one section of Hongkong's population, the Chinese, it was labelled by some as “class legislation.” As such, a growing number of Chinese began to resent them, not only for the inconvenience they caused, but on the principle they were discriminatory and humiliating. It was felt that they implied that the Chinese as a group were lawless and treacherous.\n\nThis resentment surfaced when Sir John Pope Hennessy be-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211103, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "139\n\nHe advised \"that it would be well if he cut loose from those whose sentiments towards the British Government are well known and who would like to make fools of all those who are weak enough to be guided by them.”\n\nThe tone of the China Mail editorial was echoed in the remarks the Governor made a few days later on the occasion of the annual visit of the old and new directors of Tung Wah Hospital. He was displeased with the directors because they were resisting the efforts of the Government to introduce Western medical practice into the hospital as a supplement to Chinese methods. In addition, he was still upset by the uprising of the Chinese against the measures introduced to control the bubonic plague in 1894.\n\nThen to top it, in March 1895, the coolies had gone on strike to protest against efforts to apply certain sanitary laws to common lodging houses. The strike was considered to be seditious because it was in opposition to a law of the Colony.\n\nThe Governor was in no mood at the time of the visit of the Tung Wah directors for more agitation by the Chinese. Now not the coolies but respectable, English language educated gentlemen were advocating resistance to law. It was all too much. With leaders to the Chinese community before him, he could not miss the opportunity to voice his displeasure over the statements made at the recent protest meeting. Any allegations that the Chinese were victims of class legislation were, in his opinion, preposterous.\n\nAccompanying his displeasure was a veiled threat. He said he was convinced \"some people were evidently trying to stir up strife, and if they continued he should have to take measures to suppress it.\"\n\nSome felt that the Governor was over-reacting. It was not well for the future of the Colony if the leadership of the Chinese community and the Government were drawn up into two opposing camps, hurling insults and threats at each other, but never meeting to consider differences.\n\nThe incident raised the issue of the best way for Government to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211104, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "140\n\ncommunicate with the Chinese.\n\nThe editor of the Daily Press suggested that, “it would be well, indeed, in this colony if the Chinese could be encouraged to give a fuller expression to their opinion than they have been accustomed to do, for at present the Government has to work largely in the dark and has no reliable means of feeling the pulse of the native community.\"\n\n\"Brownie\" of the China Mail also felt that the Government should be ready to listen to the real grievances of the Chinese, but only through the proper channels. \"We desire to hear the real views of the respectable Chinese, but we must fight shy of any agitation which is not recognised by the Chinese representative,” meaning Dr. Ho Kai. Here, of course, was some of the difficulty. Dr. Ho Kai was in some measure out of tune with elements in the Chinese community.\n\nThe Governor did not improve the position of Dr. Ho vis-a-vis the Chinese, or at least that is what I conclude from the remarks of \"Brownie.\" He comments on \"the clever way in which the Governor called upon Dr. Ho Kai to clinch the arguments,\" even though \"the worthy doctor may not have appreciated being used as a sledgehammer upon his own compatriots, though he doubtless recognised the necessity of the operation.\"\n\nThat he would submit to being a sledgehammer and appreciate the Governor's hard line was a high recommendation for him in the eyes of the foreigner, for \"we badly need a few more Chinese who possess the enlightenment of the doctor.\" So thought \"Brownie.\" An opposite view was taken by the Hongkong Telegraph.\n\nIt felt that, \"the Chinese are entitled to better representation in the Legislative Council than at present.\" The editor suggested that in Hongkong where the British principle of “no taxation without representation\" is ignored, “it must be especially galling to a large section of the community like the Chinese, whose one representative in the Council is nominated by the Governor. He is, we are assured, not the chosen representative of his countrymen,”\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211107, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "143\n\nThe editor pointed out that his newspaper had taken a stand against the Light and Pass Ordinance from the beginning and that it would continue to condemn it. But there would be no action against it, “because we are different from the Chinese; we are not to be bullied or hectored or ordered about to do this and that at the good pleasure of any 'Passed Cadet' or 'Jack-in-Office' without rhyme or reason. We are not to be brought into the majestic presence of an Official Ogre and frightened out of our wits.\" Treatment could be meted out to Chinese which would not be tolerated by British residents.\n\nThe editor maintained that he had the backing of the majority in the Colony. If he meant by this the majority of Europeans, his statement was probably incorrect.\n\nAt any rate he claimed; “What we say is backed by the opinion of the whole Colony, except some few whining toadies who are practically beneath contempt. The Government may take steps against us, but they will at once have the whole Colony to deal with and we hardly think His Excellency the Governor would care to undertake to suppress the whole Colony's opinion.”\n\nThe editor gave fulsome praise to Ho Tung and Ho A-mei for their effort at political experimentation on behalf of their countrymen.\n\n\"All honour, then, to the enlightened and outspoken orators who have made such a bold stand, and have taught their less advanced Chinese brethren a valued lesson in the hitherto unknown art (among the Chinese) of holding public meetings to consider public opinion.”\n\nThe speakers, according to the writer of the editorial, were to be honoured as \"pioneers of the glorious Anglo-Saxon principle of freedom of speech in this much governed and grossly mismanaged Colony, and (they) can do no harm by impressing on their fellow-countrymen the fact that every Briton has the right to convene public meetings of his fellow citizens and express his views in a fair and straightforward manner.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211108, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "144\n\nHo A-mei, of course, was no novice at the game of political pressure. He had been acting in public affairs for nearly thirty years. Ho Tung, a younger man, had not yet so much experience in the public arena. But as the years passed, he would outshine Ho A-mei as a public figure. Neither, however, was given the honour to represent his community on the Legislative Council.\n\nIn spite of all the Governor's threats, a compromise was reached. The regulations were not repealed, but the Governor issued a statement in answer to the Chinese petition.\n\nHe stated that in view of the advice given by the Registrar General and by other leading European residents, thus implying that Chinese opinion was of little value in the matter, \"I have out of consideration for the comfort and convenience of the orderly Chinese community issued the following instructions to the Police.\" His instructions said the regulations were not to be enforced except in case of persons abroad after midnight whom the police might have reason to suspect criminal intent.\n\nThe China Mail, true to form, deplored this compromise and was sure that the Chinese would view it as vacillation and weakness.\n\nThe Telegraph was for strength but also for freedom of speech. It stated that if anyone stirred up or incited \"the ignorant masses\" to resistance or disobedience, it would be the first to call for the deportation or punishment of the guilty party.\n\n\"We advocate strong and decisive measures whenever the need arises, but there must also be in all British colonies the right of freedom of speech.\"\n\nIt called for an immediate repeal of the objectionable regulations: \"We repeat that the Light and Pass Ordinance is an insult to the intelligence and honesty of any community and is a slur on the Chinese that ought to be wiped out of the Colony's records.\"\n\nThe suggestion, however, was not acted on and the law remained.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211115, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "151\n\nplace, its very peculiar inhabitants, and most peculiar geographical position.\"\n\nEven today the “special situation\" of Hongkong is still advanced as a reason for making it an exception.\n\nBut these considerations, as important as Hongkong's spokesman felt them to be, were not the major ones. What was greatly feared was the influence a representative of the Chinese Government might have on the residents of Hongkong.\n\nSir Richard informed the Secretary for the Colonies that most of the influential Chinese merchants owned property on the mainland and members of their family were living there, and that, therefore, they would easily become the victims of “squeezing.”\n\nThe Hongkong Government held that any influence Chinese officials might exert on their countrymen would seriously undermine the Colony's ability to control its Chinese population.\n\nThe foreigners in Hongkong regarded the presence of Chinese among them as a necessary evil. They were needed as labourers and household servants. Without their services life would have been most difficult.\n\nFurthermore, the regular supply of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and poultry depended on them, and a substantial part of the business of Hongkong was conducted by and through the Chinese.\n\nHongkong could not exist without the Chinese, but their presence was a source of uneasiness. They did not readily acknowledge British sovereignty.\n\nThe Governor pointed out that due to the power exercised by the officials and guilds of Canton over nine-tenths of the residents, they \"regarded the Viceroy of the Two-Kwangs as their ultimate chief who they can be forced, sooner or later, to obey.”\n\nTherefore, he advised the authorities in London that it would be \"most unwise to permit an accredited official as spy and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211116, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "152\n\nsqueezer-general of the Chinese Government to take up residence in our midst.\" His presence would only further undermine British control.\n\nUnderlying the relations of foreigners with the resident population was this basic unease. The masses might at any time become restless, create trouble, break out into riots.\n\nThe opinion prevailed that such troubles were more likely to come from external than internal influences. Hence, the presence of a representative of China was most undesirable and dangerous to the peace and security of the Colony.\n\nTo clinch his arguments regarding the dangers of external influence on the residents, Sir Richard recalled the desperate plight that the European population found itself in when \"in the last war with China, nearly all residents and servants left in 24 hours, so that European residents had to clean their boots and cook their dinners themselves.\"\n\nWho would have the audacity to suggest a policy that might expose foreigners to such menial labour? The thought of the re-occurrence of such a situation was intolerable.\n\nNo wonder the Governor was most unhappy with the British Minister in China for suggesting that Britain approve a measure which might open the way for Chinese pressure on the Hongkong population.\n\nThe suggestion was also a blow at British honour and prestige. Was it Sir Rutherford's intention, the Governor asked, to limit the Hongkong Government to make representation to the Chinese Government through a resident Chinese consul rather than, as had been the practice, through a British consul at Canton?\n\nIf so, he saw the move as “a humiliation in the eyes of the Chinese, which seems more injurious than beneficial to British interests.\"\n\nOnly harm would result. On behalf of Hongkong, the Governor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211118, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "154\n\nin Britain and China to submit their views on the document. The Hongkong Chamber of Commerce responded with a memorial in 1870.\n\nOne of the items the chamber found objectionable was Article II. It stipulated that China might appoint consuls in all ports in British dominions.\n\nThe chamber admitted that for ports distant from China the provision was fair, but it should not apply to Hongkong. The port was peculiar and existed in a special relation to China. Nothing should be done that might endanger the dreams of its founders and the hopes of the memorialists.\n\nThey submitted that, \"this Colony was originally established as an experiment, and the views of its founders have been fully realised by its progress and growth. . . Its geographical situation, and its magnificent harbour mark it as admirably adapted to become the emporium of foreign commerce in this part of the world, and the headquarters from which the large financial and commercial transactions of British and Foreign Merchants in China could best be carried out.\" Its location ensured its prosperity.\n\nSuccess, however, may produce envy. The chamber believed that Hongkong's prosperity and its status as a free port “have long been regarded with jealous displeasure by the Chinese Government which has done all in its power to interfere with its trade, especially that carried on by native merchants settled in Hongkong.\"\n\nThe memorialists contended that China could not claim the diplomatic privileges of other nations because it did not qualify as a civilised country. China's capricious legal system disqualified it from acceptance within the community of nations.\n\nIn the opinion of the Hongkong merchants, all governments worthy of being recognised \"find a common unity in their provisions for securing the life, the liberty and the property of all foreigners as well as natives.” This security is rooted in a dependable", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211141, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "177\n\nony had every reason to be satisfied with the arrangements of 1886.\n\nBasking in the success of the arrangement, the editor does not mention the dire forecasts his paper had made in former years concerning the evil effects which would result if Hongkong allowed itself to be used in any way as a collecting point for Chinese revenue.\n\nNow with the customs question on a satisfactory basis, the editor asked what reason remained for a consul:\n\n\"Is it to give protection and render assistance to the Chinese subjects in this Colony? If so, alas for the Chinese subjects! The assistance the consul will give them will simply be in ascertaining the extent to which they can be squeezed, and if they do not pay up pleasantly, the screw will be turned on through their families on the mainland. No more serious blow could well be struck at the well-being of the Chinese population than the establishment of a Chinese Consulate in the Colony, and the damage to British prestige would be disastrous.\"\n\nThere had been little change in attitudes over the years - the same arguments, the same fears, the same distrust.\n\nIt was claimed that the British possession of Hongkong did not impress the average Chinese. According to the editor, the “ignorant masses\" still believed Europeans were allowed to be in Hongkong only through the sufferance of the Emperor. This misconception would only be reinforced “with the establishment of a Chinese Yamen in the Colony, flaunting the dragon flag.\"\n\nIt was believed that the view of the “ignorant masses” was encouraged by Chinese officials.\n\nThe Colonial Office, in commenting on the question of a consul for Hongkong, said: \"The one idea prevalent among the Chinese governing class is to represent to their fellow countrymen that we hold Hongkong as vassals of the Emperor of China and the advent of a consul would be used in this sense and so understood by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211142, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "178\n\nlocal population.”\n\nTo support this statement two examples provided by the Hong-kong Governor, Sir William Des Voeux, were related.\n\nWhen plans were being made for the Viceroy of Kwangtung to visit Hongkong, he stipulated that three hundred coolies should meet him at the wharf when he arrived and kneel down before him in the traditional kowtow.\n\nThe Governor explained that this could not be done because it was not according to the usage of a British colony. Hong Kong, however, would provide a guard of honour and treat the Viceroy with every ceremony and courtesy in keeping with his position. This assurance was not satisfactory and the plans for the visit fell through.\n\nOn another occasion, the vice-admiral of the Chinese fleet was in the harbour. He was invited to observe the celebrations in honour of the Queen's Birthday.\n\nAt such festivities, of course, there was a great crowd of curious Chinese spectators. Governor Des Voeux reported that when the time came for the salute, the admiral advanced four paces ahead of the rest of the party.\n\nThe Governor hurried to catch up with him, but only to have the admiral edge forward again, until both the Governor and the admiral were well in advance of the rest of the party.\n\nGovernor Des Voeux felt that the admiral was intentionally trying to upstage him, so that the Chinese present would think the salute was being paid to him as the representative of the sovereign power. The Governor was forced to tell him to take a place in the rear.\n\nThe question of the degree China could be regarded as a civilised country still entered into the arguments for and against the appointment of a consul.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211149, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "185\n\nrally round the local representative of the Celestial Empire, both he and they are subject to the laws of the Colony, which we can safely rely upon as being sufficient to meet any possible attempt at unlawful combination amongst the native section of the community.\"\n\nA Chinese consul resident in Hongkong could be very useful to the Hongkong Government. He could be a means to preserve law and order, for through his office the Hongkong authorities could avoid delay in communication with their Chinese counterparts in Canton about problems affecting the two parties.\n\nThe process of extradition should become easier. Direct relations would bypass complicated procedures. Such evils as the gambling dens at Kowloon City and Shamshuipo on Chinese soil just beyond the Kowloon boundary could at once be brought to the attention of the Viceroy “in a more effectual manner than by the circumlocutory methods to which red-tape official elements are so firmly attached.\"\n\nThe consul would be able to check on the criminal element who fled from Chinese jurisdiction to Hongkong and then used it as a base for their operations. Thus the resident criminal class would be decreased.\n\nA frequent object of scorn for the editor of the Telegraph was Hongkong officialdom. The consul question provided him an opportunity to express it.\n\nThe editor believed that the presence of a Chinese official in Hongkong would have a salutary effect, for \"it cannot fail to subject the shortcomings of our official element to the scrutiny of a class specially practised in the arts of discrimination, and, for that matter, dissimulation.”\n\nIn the editor's opinion the manner in which the Hongkong Government was being administered created a bad impression upon the Chinese residents: “It is lamentable to ponder over what any intelligent Chinese must think of the vaunted administrative capabilities of British colonies, when he comes to study the intelli-\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211167, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "203\n\nThe Daily Press publicly launched the discussion of this prickly topic by suggesting that Hongkong make a contribution to the Imperial and Colonial Institute to be set up in London.\n\nHis Highness the Prince of Wales had intimated that Her Majesty, his mother, looked with favour on this project as an expression of her subjects' gratitude and loyalty.\n\nIt was felt that there ought to be a local memorial. Especially, as the paper reminded its readers, \"Hongkong was the first colony acquired by the British Crown after Her Majesty's ascension though Natal runs it rather close and the whole of its history is included in that of Her Majesty's reign, and it seems only reasonable that the present generation of colonists should transmit to their successors some permanent memorial of the jubilee of a sovereign who has endeared herself to her subjects in all parts of the world and in whose reign the Colony was settled and has grown to the state of prosperity it at present enjoys.”\n\nThe paper then anticipated the suggestion Mr. Chater was to make to the Government, that of a public park.\n\nSeveral years earlier Governor Bowen had turned the sod for a park in Wongneichong Valley. It was intended to bear his name.\n\nBut as far as the paper was concerned there was little likelihood of the Government carrying out the scheme for a quarter of a century.\n\nHence, the paper suggested that \"the community might take the matter in hand and change the name to Queen's Park.\" The public was assured that “there would be no discourtesy to Sir George Bowen in changing the name under the circumstances, seeing he was unable to carry out his intention of having the park made during his government and that the work is practically uncommenced.\"\n\nAnother suggestion put forth was that inasmuch as Hongkong had done little to provide education for girls it \"establish and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211168, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "204\n\nendow a high class school and call it the Victoria Female College.\" And lastly, the possibility of a statue was advanced.\n\nAlready seeds were sown for divided opinions and each little group pushing its own project. Out of the resulting confusion, the Chinese emerged with their own scheme, a hall for a Chinese Chamber of Commerce.\n\nJUBILEE PLANS COMPETE WITH RACING\n\nThe manner in which Hongkong should observe the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was publicly launched when Mr. C. P. Chater raised the question at a Legislative Council meeting on February 11, 1887.\n\nHis preliminary remarks reflected the sentiments prevalent among colonials in a period when the British Empire was in its unchallenged glory. They were proud of the widespread dominion of their native country.\n\nMr. Chater began thus: \"Sir, the question I am about to ask, though neither of state importance, nor materially affecting the interests of the Colony, touches upon a subject which at the moment is appealing to the loyal feelings of millions of Her Majesty's subjects all over the world.\n\n\"This year Her Most Gracious Majesty celebrates the 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne of that great empire, the Government of which she has so ably administered; and throughout her vast dominions rejoicings are to be the order of the day.\n\n\"And her subjects, of whatever race they may be, are anxious to celebrate the occasion in a manner befitting its exceptional and gratifying nature.”\n\nHongkong, said Mr. Chater, was eager to participate in the general rejoicings.\n\n\"This Colony does not wish to be behind in anything, more especially in a matter of this sort.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211181, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "217\n\nA letter appeared in the Daily Press endorsing the idea of a contribution to the Imperial Institute. The correspondent claimed that a contribution from Hongkong could benefit both the donor and the project: \"If Hongkong can help to prevent (the institute) being a failure, it would be rendering an invaluable service to the Empire, and a double service to the Colony.\"\n\nThe double benefit, for Hongkong would be that of promoting the Colony's trade and of “getting us out of our mess.\" The mess, of course, was the inability of the community to express common agreement on a memorial. It was making the people of Hongkong look foolish.\n\nHe suggested to the proposer and the seconder of the park project that they withdraw their motions, for surely “they will not miss the chance that withdrawing their proposal would give them of making a friend of the Queen as well as remaining (signed) 'Friends of the Governor'.”\n\nAgain, the proposal met little response, but Hongkong's lack of interest did not materially impede the project. Other sections of the Empire were more liberal and enthusiastic.\n\nIn May, 1888, the Queen granted a charter of incorporation to the Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies and India and the Isles of the British Seas. A building was erected in South Kensington.\n\nIt served as a centre for scientific research and a bureau of economic resources for the Empire. In 1962 a new building was erected and the name changed to the Commonwealth Institute.\n\nHOW SPORT CAME TO THE VALLEY\n\nIt was usual for a planning committee to predetermine the agenda for public meetings in the Hongkong of the nineteenth century.\n\nIt was decided that at the public meeting on March 2, 1887, to plan Hongkong's observance of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211196, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "232\n\nnature and not well suited to act as an aggressive leader. He seldom expressed an opinion at Legislative Council meetings.\n\nHe had spent most of his life in Hongkong. For a few years in the 1840s he had studied as a youth in the United States and had returned there in the middle 1870s as a supervisor of the Chinese Educational Mission. He had been a student of the Morrison Education Society when it moved from Macau to Hongkong in 1842. Through the years he had identified himself with the future of Hongkong.\n\nHe reminded his audience: \"The Chinese were for the present subjects, and he trusted loyal subjects, of Her Majesty, and he thought they also (as well as the Europeans) should take part in the celebration of the jubilee.\"\n\nMr. Ho A-mei then arose and endorsed the chairman's remarks concerning the appropriateness of a Chinese expression of loyalty. He reminded the meeting that in 1869 on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Chinese had taken a prominent part in the celebrations. It was no more fitting now that, “as traders and merchants in the Colony, they ought to take some steps to show their gratitude for the protection afforded them.\"\n\nThe Chinese, he said, while residing in the Colony, were treated as British subjects, and “it behoved them to give some evidence of their loyalty and gratitude.” Especially, as \"in no other country in the world were aliens so well treated as they were on British soil.”\n\nIn the flow of good feeling, he seems to have forgotten the criticisms he had brought against British rule in his struggle to have the Light and Pass Ordinance rescinded.\n\nThe long-standing problem of dual identity was expressed in Ho A-mei's statement that \"they were treated as British subjects here in Hongkong, and although in reality they were not, they might consider themselves as such.\" Pride in the Chinese heritage pulled in one direction, identification with the community in which they lived pulled in another.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211257, "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": 318, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "293\n\nPamela Atwell had taken it for granted that her readers had not needed any such historical background information. The story of Weihaiwei under British administration during this highly turbulent era as well as its return to Chinese rule was the focus of her research, embracing hundreds of documents in the Public Records Office in London, a number of unpublished private papers in England and Scotland, as well as sources in Japanese and Chinese but not Chinese archival documents.\n\nA meticulous researcher and skilful writer who also provided the readers with clear and interesting photographs, Dr. Atwell has produced a book that is a joy to behold indeed, both for the specialist reader and the non-specialist. She has shown admirable understanding of Chinese institutions and British thinking, and thus has recreated an area that had needed a thorough examination by historians looking at imperialism in China. Dr. Atwell has found, for instance, that the leasing of Weihaiwei was not a simple and straightforward matter. The Chinese had first proposed the leasing through Robert Hart of the Imperial Customs Service and Ambassador MacDonald at Peking to a reluctant British cabinet. Then, even as the British cabinet were being convinced of the value of leasing Weihaiwei, the Chinese had second thoughts. Together with other diplomatic and political complications, it was not until 24 May 1898, after the Japanese forces withdrew, that the British ensign was finally hoisted over the port.\n\nResearching as a political scientist, Dr. Atwell's major interests resided in the juxtaposition of government authorities. She had observed that the British administration at Weihaiwei was noteworthy in several ways. The British never claimed sovereignty over the port. They had maintained that Weihaiwei \"remained part of a foreign country within which Britain exercised legal jurisdiction, but it was not a colony and the Chinese living there were not British citizens.\" (p. 12). British administrators were simply superimposed over traditional Chinese rural community elders and magistrates who represented the central government in these localities.\n\nEarly conflicts over such issues as taxes and militia were resolved when Britain began to send civilian commissioners experienced...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211353, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "45\n\nThe mui-tsai question provoked more reaction and heat in the Chinese community than child labour, since the mui-tsai system affected the domestic life of the owners of the child servants. Most of the households affected were of the wealthier class. Child labour also affected families but these were the poorest in the community. The Chinese Christians organised to abolish the mui-tsai system. Those opposed to any drastic changes were the wealthy merchants and compradores.\n\nThere was no easy solution to either problem, as both were part of a complex social and economic pattern.\n\nAnother stimulant for action on child labour was the regulations laid down by the International Labour Organisation following the end of World War I. Britain was committed to these proposals as it was a signatory to the Peace Treaty which embodied them. Both in Hong Kong and in the British Parliament calls were made for the commitment to be honoured in Hong Kong as a colony of the British Empire.\n\nThe 1896/97 Chamber of Commerce Report on labour conditions in the East\n\nUnder the auspices of a British Chamber of Commerce a mission was sent to China in 1896-97 to investigate conditions in trade and industry.\n\nThe mission rejoiced that in China there had been no legislation controlling workers; this included Hong Kong. The report said,\n\nThere is... no hampering legislation for which there has been such a reckless desire in recent years in the West; curtailing the liberty of the labourer within the narrowest possible limits and unduly harassing the employer.\n\nBy contrast,\n\nIn the East every man, woman and child is allowed, without restriction, to sell his or her labour at the best price obtainable, and to work under any conditions as to hours, systems or place. Employers are at liberty to conduct their own business as seems best to their discretion and judgment.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211354, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "46\n\nwithout being confronted at every turn by Acts of Parliament, and systems of espionage, that seem especially designed to restrict individual enterprise and frustrate industrial endeavour.\n\nLetter of 1900 - Hong Kong Telegraph\n\n▬▬\n\nThe effects of this \"freedom\" of the individual to sell his labour but occasionally pricked the conscience of the Hong Kong resident only occasionally. A letter writer using the pen-name \"Balthasar\" observed in the Hong Kong Telegraph, 18 May 1900, that,\n\nAmong the labourers carrying bricks and lime up the Glenealy may be noticed several children whose physique is quite unequal to the toil. These poor young children gasp under their burden. One of them, on being spoken to, answered that his father had died of plague, and if he worked not had no rice. He was thirteen years of age, and yet carried two baskets of lime, usually borne by adults, and which he had to lay down several times along the way.\n\nAfter describing these conditions, the writer asked, \"Is there no law in Hong Kong to regulate the employment of minors?\" The answer, as he well knew, was \"No\".\n\nIt was not that there was no money in Hong Kong for charitable purposes. He reminded the community that a Colony \"that can exceed all expectations in its contribution to the War Fund [the Boer War] may well look to the relief of its own stricken poor\".\n\nBowley's Articles on \"The Children's Charter\"\n\nMr. Francis Bulmer Lyon Bowley, a solicitor practising in Hong Kong since 1893, published a series of articles in a Hong Kong newspaper in 1911 on \"The Children's Charter\", that is, the British Children's Act of 1908. He contrasted its provisions with the situation in Hong Kong. The Attorney General took the matter up and two provisions were subsequently introduced into the laws of the Colony.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211360, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "Introducing a motion for the adoption of the recommendations of the sub-committee, Mr. Bowley stated that in the Peace Treaty then under discussion provisions were made for an International Labour Convention and for a League of Nations. In the proposals for both organizations the welfare of women and children were dealt with. Appended to the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with the Labour Convention was the affirmation of the principle of an eight hour working day and a forty-eight hour week.\n\nMr. Bowley reminded the Board that the matters being proposed were on the agenda of the Labour Convention which was to be held in Washington, D. C. in the United States in October 1919. These developments had a particular meaning for Hong Kong as a British outpost in the East, for if Hong Kong took action as a part of the British Empire it might influence “our neighbouring allies' China and Japan, both of whom were parties to the Treaty and who had accepted both the League of Nations and the Labour Convention.” He continued. “If Hong Kong, China and Japan are to be included in the comity of nations on equal terms, it behoves us and our neighbours to consider these questions very carefully”.\n\nHe contrasted the absence of factory legislation in Hong Kong with Britain where such legislation had been gradually developed and enforced over the past eighty years. One reason for the difference between the two places was that Hong Kong until only recently had not been much of a manufacturing centre, but now there were many new factories. \"The time has come\", he said, \"when some, at least, of most of the elementary principles of the Factory Acts should be introduced into the Colony”. The experience of England had been that factory legislation had to be related to provisions for education and it would be difficult to apply the same laws to Hong Kong if there was no movement at the same time toward compulsory education, but since the Sanitary Board had no jurisdiction over education, the committee had concluded that it was impossible to prohibit employment of children even of the tenderest age, for it was better for children to be occupied with light tasks with their parents than playing in the gutter. Moreover, the criminal law contained provisions for the punishment of parents or masters and mistresses who ill-treated or neglected their children or child servants. So until something was done about universal education, the present measures were as much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211363, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "55\n\nDr. Hickling suggested that the space required for each worker should be put at twenty square feet floor area. This suggestion was accepted. Another minor change was made by eliminating the word \"overtime\" in reference to work after 6 p.m.\n\n6\n\nThe editor of the Daily Press, in commenting on the proposals of the Sanitary Board, reviewed some of the steps which had led up to them: Miss Pitts' talk, followed by Mr. Bowley's statements at the meeting of the Church of England Men's Society. Their efforts were seen as examples of the good results \"that may flow from the discussion of matters of public concern by private individuals, and should encourage interest in local affairs\". The editor was confident the proposal would appeal to British pride, \"For every Briton in Hong Kong whose pride of race is based upon his country's efforts on behalf of humanity must hope that the resolutions passed by the Sanitary Board will be endorsed by the Legislative Council\". He believed that the enlightened members of the Chinese community would have no objections to them, as, in his opinion, they were extremely modest and were submitted in the interests of public health.\n\nThe editor recognised that the root of the problem lay in the Colony's educational efforts, but he contended that no matter how many schools were provided, there would not be enough “unless we are willing to educate the whole of South China\". A policy of unrestricted immigration made it impossible to make school attendance either compulsory or free.\n\nThe editor restated the views of Mr. Alabaster that it was better for the children to accompany their parents to work, so long as their little bodies are not strained beyond their endurance, as they would thus be both physically and morally better off than left to their own devices, and their earnings provided them with more food than they otherwise would have. He did advocate that some restriction be placed on the load they carried, as this responsibility could not be left to the parents' discretion.\n\nCase of Child Labour before the Magistrate\n\nApril 1920\n\nThe principles in the agitation for child labour laws had been a missionary and a solicitor, but in April 1920 a doctor publicly took up", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211365, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "57\n\nto the building sites, often staggering up the hillsides of the island under the weight of burdens which are far too heavy for their physical strength\". The editor tried to prick the consciences of his fellow countrymen. \"We are all apt, when pointing out the development and growth of Hong Kong to strangers, to indulge in petty platitudes concerning the evidence of British perseverance and skill to be found in the magnificent roads and the imposing houses on the higher levels. But do we ever stop to think that our Peak residences and the roads leading to them have been largely built by the sweated labour of women and children? It is a fact, none the less.\n\nWhat was needed, the editor wrote, was legislation that would deal with the whole problem. He was convinced that even worse conditions existed in some of the factories where children were employed, and he warned that eventually the colony was going to have to face the problem of compulsory, free education for all.\n\nThe editorial put the problem within the context of the \"white man's burden” and Imperial ideas. It reminded readers that only when the problem of child labour and universal education were seriously faced would expatriate residents \"be able to talk with more pride and justification both of Hong Kong's place in the Empire and of the object lesson which it provides China in the civilising influence of British ideals\".\n\nQuestion by Dr. Ozorio in Sanitary Board\n\n——\n\nMay 1920\n\nAt a meeting of the Sanitary Board in May 1920, Dr. F. Ozorio asked if the Government contemplated the creation of the post of Factory Inspector, and, if so, would the post be open to women.\n\nIn reply the Chairman stated that if by Factory Inspector he meant an inspector whose duties were to ensure the sanitary maintenance of factories, all inspectors of the Sanitary Department were already doing so. There was no plan to change them for women, but if vacancies occurred the matter would be kept in mind. If, however, Dr. Ozorio had meant Factory Inspector with duties as set forth in the British Factory Acts, the Chairman had been authorised to state that the question of the industrial employment of children was under the consideration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211366, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "58\n\nGovernment, but the Government had not at present a plan to create a post of Factory Inspector.\n\nThe Problem publicised in Britain\n\nMiss Pitts and Mr. Bowley both left Hong Kong for leaves in England in June 1919. During their stay they might have pushed the matter of child labour in Hong Kong, for in May 1920 there was published an article in the Child Guardian setting forth the situation of children in Hong Kong. This magazine was the organ of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The recommendations proposed by Mr. Bowley at the meeting of the Church of England Men's Society already referred to were published on the first page of an issue of the magazine. These were accompanied by the comment, “Judging from the necessity of bringing such proposals forward, it may be imagined this British Colony is a long way behind in its treatment of children”. It was noted, however, that a great many influential people in Britain were worrying the Colonial Office on the subject. The editor surmised, \"the Governor must be having quite a busy time answering the inquiries of the Colonial Office in regard to these questions“.\n\nIn November 1920 a Director of the British National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children asked the Secretary for the Colonies for an interview with Mr. Claude Severn, the Hong Kong Colonial Secretary who was on leave in England, to discuss with him the matter of the welfare of children in Hong Kong.\n\nParliamentary question\n\nDecember 1920\n\nMr. A. Davies in December 1920 asked in a Parliamentary Question if there was any legislation in Hong Kong controlling the type of work done by children, the hours they worked, or their employment in work injurious to their health. The Government spokesman replied that there was none, but the Governor was being asked for a report on the subject of child labour.\n\nAnother question was raised at a session soon after. Mr. Cope asked if the Secretary of State for the Colonies was aware that the resolution of the Sanitary Board passed in May 1919 regarding child labour had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211368, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "60 \n\nto a broader ideal, the Dominical Commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself\". It implied that the great active principle of Christianity was its social concern, and the essential of any civilization was unselfishness, or the triumph of Right over Might. \n\nHe made an appeal for the plight of women and children who were exposed to the full operation of the law of supply and demand **in all its ferocity\". \"But\", he asserted, \"the law of supply and demand is not a fetish which we must worship\". Nonetheless, he did not advocate excessive interference with economic forces. After all, he said, \"Freedom of trade and freedom of contract are the foundations of the success of the British Empire, and should not be interfered with when applied to competition\", but ‘a civilized community cannot regard human beings and human life and health as commodities\". \n\nHe then presented a list of proposals to correct the situation. They were for the most part the same as he had set forth in his speech in 1919. He suggested that, as a census was to be held soon, it should include a question on labour which would provide the number, ages and sex of workers in factories and workshops. Such data would assist in drawing up appropriate legislation. \n\nHis proposals were put before the meeting in the form of a resolution. There was some opposition to them. Mr. W. Jackson charged that their endorsement would only stir up trouble. He contended that the Church of England Men's Society was being used to breed industrial dissatisfaction. Mr. Crook contended that the whole matter had been greatly exaggerated. He asked, \"If it was true that so much 'sweating' existed, why was it so difficult to get caddies?” Mr. Jackson supported him stating that there was no 'sweated labour' in Hong Kong. To this Mr. Bowley replied, “I would rather rely on the opinion of ladies and gentlemen who have spent their lives working among the poorer classes in the Colony\" he was referring to Miss Pitts and the Rev. R. H. Wells, both missionaries of long standing who had supported the resolutions. “I think”, he continued, \"they would tell Mr. Jackson that the conditions of labour of the poorest classes in Colony are not satisfactory, I have been accused of cultivating the germs of unrest; they exist already; I am trying to find the best antidote to improve the conditions of the poor\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211605, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "medical care not available in many mission countries, the Superiors of the Paris Foreign Mission Society decided to put up a house in the Far East for sick and old missionaries. Hong Kong was chosen for this purpose on account of its climate and medical facilities available. It must be added that at that time few places in the Far East offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony\". \n\nThose words have long rung in my ears. I doubt if there could be a finer unsolicited tribute to British Hong Kong. \n\nI must confess, too, against that stirring background of service, and recalling the over 100 priests and high dignitaries of the Mission who were buried in the private cemetery then within the grounds, that I was moved by the inscription that can still be found over the entrance. \n\nFather Caminondo had continued, \"The name of Bethanie was chosen after \"Bethany village\" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance \"Lord he whom thou lovest lies sick\" is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick”. \n\nTruly memorable, at least for me. \n\nBut enough of the past: though it enriches the present. We are a strong Society in both numbers and spirit. We aim to continue in the service of scholarship and mutual understanding in this great City for as long as may be possible. Judging by the record of the last 30 years, there will never be a shortage of willing workers and contributors, whether British, Chinese or others. With Sir David's consent, I shall now ask him to propose a toast to the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. \n\nxix \n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "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": 211620, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "10\n\n16\n\nnot the temper to speak. He had the Chinese at his feet, and might have had what he wished; and what has he got? A few paltry dollars and a barren island... The Chinese are already chuckling, and say they have got the best of it. It makes me quite sick to think of it, and there are not half a dozen people on shore or afloat who are not quite furious'. The alleged sentiments of the Chinese in this letter are in direct contrast to those reported by James Matheson in a letter to William Jardine of 11 February: 'The cession of Hong Kong to the British is what most mortifies the Canton folks with Ki Shen's proceedings. They cannot bear to speak of it with composure'.\" It seems that a portion of the British community in the Pearl Delta area (the author of the letter wishes to appear to have as large a constituency as possible, not only within the merchant community) may have presupposed that their feelings of failure with regard to the acquisition of Hong Kong meant a corresponding sense of triumph for the Chinese.\n\nThe second letter to The Times was equally scathing as it claimed that the British negotiators had been tricked because 'Hong Kong was virtually ours, for it is the place which the opium ships have used as a rendezvous for years'. It was only to be expected therefore that the Chinese would choose to cede that island rather than any other.\n\n19\n\n18\n\nOf the acts of soldiers in the expeditionary force, it might have been expected that the formal taking of possession of Hong Kong would have been worthy of mention even if the author had not been present in person, but it seems that this is not the case. Neither Duncan McPherson nor W. W. Mundy refers to it. Nor did soldiers such as A. Cunynghame20 or Alexander Murray21 who became involved just after the cession of Hong Kong refer back to the ceremony. There is only one reference to the taking of Hong Kong in the official mouthpiece for the forces, The United Service Journal of 1841, and that was in a general article entitled 'The British colonies considered as military posts' written by Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkie. He complained in July 1841 that the rationale for his inclusion of Hong Kong in the article was threatened because arrangements between the British and the Chinese had collapsed, ‘and consequently it is more than doubtful whether I shall have any more authority for treating of this island as a British colony, beyond the simple fact that it has been formally taken possession of as such',22\n\nContemporary press notices of the event, again in direct contrast to news of the opium war and the expedition to the Bogue, are terse and rudimentary. The Chinese Repository of February 1841, edited by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211621, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "1} \n\nAmerican missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'.\n\n› 28\n\nThe two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211623, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\nThe first was a Muslim who had been with the British army, and who may have been one of those who deserted in large numbers after the founding of the colony and who later formed the basis of an Indian community in Kowloon,\" The China Mail of 28 March 1878 printed: 'The man, known by the name of Mohammed Arab, died here yesterday. We understand that his residence in the Colony dates with the cession of the Island to Her Majesty, and it was he who planted the British standard on the Island, being with the expeditionary Force. He was a very charitably disposed person, and always stretched a helping hand to the needy and poor irrespective of nationality. He was well-known to many of the foreign community, and held in no little estimation for his uprightness and charities. His funeral, which took place yesterday, was largely attended by persons of various nationalities'.\n\n43\n\n44\n\nIf indeed Mohammed Arab had been in the British army, he must have been in either the Bengal Volunteers or the Madras 37th Native Infantry which were two of the regiments serving in the Chinese expedition.\" Both of these regiments contained Muslims and so Mohammed Arab could have been in either of them. The first Bengal Volunteers were raised in 1799 and in time the Volunteers became the 36th, 37th, 38th and 39th regiments of the Bengal Native Infantry.42 The usual sepoys of the Bengal army were mainly high-caste Hindus who because of dietary restrictions could not travel overseas, and so the Bengal Volunteers raised in the spring of 1840 were low-caste Hindus and Muslims lured from regular regiments by the promise of extra money. As for the Madras Native Infantry, it is known that some Muslim Lascars from Madras deserted during or after the Chinese expedition.\" This war was the first in which Indian troops were deployed in a non-Indian operation.\" Unfortunately the only members of the Bengal Volunteers named in official records of the Chinese expedition are firstly those who died, and secondly the officers,\" and no more information is yet forthcoming about the members of the Madras Native Infantry. The question whether Mohammed Arab may or may not have hoisted the flag on Hong Kong on 26 January 1841 hinges on whether a contingent of the Bengal Volunteers or of the Madras Native Infantry was landed for the ceremony - the only regiment which was definitely ashore at the time was that of the Marines and on which rank would have been called upon to perform the task. The senior native officer in the regiment was the Subadar-Major upon whom the duty could have devolved (in January 1841 this position in the Bengal Volunteers was held by Shaick Hedait Alie) but it would have been more likely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211624, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "14\n\n48\n\nto have been a more junior soldier such as a drill or colour havildar who would have been ordered to hoist the flag. At the moment it is not possible therefore to say whether Mohammed Arab hoisted the Union Jack on Hong Kong or not, but what is undeniable is that by his death in 1878 Hong Kong had prospered and grown in importance to such an extent that he and the wider community in the colony considered that whoever had hoisted the flag that day had done something of interest to posterity. If it had been Mohammed Arab, it would have been a foretaste of the multiracial legacies that colonialism would leave to the island.\n\n49\n\n50\n\nThe other candidate for the honour of hoisting the flag is a far more conventional one. In his guide to Hong Kong of 1893, William Legge wrote: 'In January [1841] . . . the British Ensign was hoisted on Possession Point . . . by midshipman Dowell (now Admiral Sir William Dowell KCB)'. William Montagu Dowell was born on 2 August 1825 and was made a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1847, rising to be vice-admiral in 1880 and admiral in 1885. In January 1841 he would have been fifteen, so it is possible that he could have been a midshipman at that date and could have been among the group landing on Hong Kong to hoist the flag. More important than whether Dowell raised the flag or not is the fact that the author wished to associate a famous person with the act. William Dowell had been involved in the Second China War of 1857, he was at Shimoneseki in Japan in 1864 and he returned to the Far East as commander-in-chief of the navy in China between January 1884 and September 1885; his naval career had also included spells at the Cape of Good Hope, on the West coast of Africa and on the Egyptian expedition of 1882. By claiming an admiral and a knight as the perpetrator of the deed, the author may have been expressing a desire that Hong Kong's rise in importance should be seen to be mirroring that of Dowell.\n\n51\n\n52\n\nIt is extraordinary that historians have paid so little attention to the acquisition of Hong Kong and that so little effort has been expended in trying to establish the manner in which Hong Kong came to be possessed by the British, and contemporary reactions to that possession. Such omissions might perhaps have been more understandable had Hong Kong at this stage only been thought of as a temporary possession. But by the 1870s it was clear that Hong Kong had become a permanent and financially successful part of the Empire, and certainly by the twentieth century it could have been expected that there would have been considerable interest in constructing a colonial history. That such a history", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211692, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "82\n\nand left copies with the Swiss Consul-General in Shanghai for his own information and for that of the Red Cross representative. In their original form I showed them to three responsible British subjects who left the Camp at the same time as I did, and they agreed that the notes gave a fairly accurate picture of the situation, though perhaps the colours were not dark enough. A copy of these notes, somewhat amended, is attached. A point which perhaps ought to have been made is that prior to internment at Stanley most of the \"enemy nationals\" in Hongkong and Kowloon had already been interned in Chinese hotels for periods varying from two weeks to six weeks in conditions of great discomfort and hardship and that they were seriously debilitated when they reached the Camp. They, and all the other \"enemy nationals\" who had so far escaped internment, were then thrown into the camp without adequate preparations having been made for their reception. In the Science Block of St. Stephen's College men, women and children found themselves herded together in large class rooms without beds, mattresses or furniture; there was only one lavatory for the block and no arrangements had been made for cooking food. Though the Japanese never actively ill-treated the civilian internees their whole attitude was unhelpful and unsympathetic. Consequently conditions were very bad during the first 2½ or 3 months. Then the Japanese began to realise the seriousness of the situation and conditions improved considerably, as I have indicated in my notes. Conditions were about at their worst in the middle of April, and when I was taken to the French Hospital on April 21st to have my leg X-rayed Dr. Selwyn Clark and Dr. Court both impressed on me that the food situation, not only in the camp but in the Colony generally was extremely serious since the Japanese were shipping all foodstuffs to Japan and were bringing nothing in. They said they expected the crisis to come at the end of July and they urged me to represent to the Foreign Office that if no relief was forthcoming the whole of the foreign community ought to be removed before the end of the Summer. I accordingly wrote a short message on these lines to H.M. Consul at Macao, which Dr. Selwyn Clark said he would be able to send through.\n\nI did all I could to get the Japanese to admit my diplomatic status and to include the whole of the Embassy and Consulate group in any exchange arrangements but, except for Mr. Yano's original assurance, they took the attitude that, as we had not been at our posts we had no special status, and beyond that there was a blank wall; we were not allowed to know even what had become of the Embassy and Consular establishments in occupied China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211695, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "85\n\nuse in soldiers' brothels. Stories regarding these events are in the highest degree contradictory.\n\nAs regards the post-occupation period, the main Japanese objective seemed to be to impress the Chinese population with the advantages which the Japanese regime was going to bring them but they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem presented by the teeming Chinese population who, with the disappearance of the British food services, were on the edge of starvation. Though congee centres were opened, these were on a quite inadequate scale and it soon became obvious that the Japanese were going drastically to reduce the numbers of Chinese in the Colony, by the threat of starvation if necessary. Dr. Selwyn Clark told me, during my one excursion from the camp on April 22nd that his office was besieged from morning to night by the Chinese employees of the Hong Kong Government and by the relatives and dependents of Chinese volunteers all completely destitute. The Japanese would do nothing for them and he could do very little. The French hospital was full of malnutrition cases who were doomed to death as they could get neither appropriate food nor drugs. The Japanese had also forbidden the admission of any more civilian patients. Many Chinese actually died of starvation, and tens of thousands voluntarily returned to China. One large party of alleged destitutes and vagabonds (about 600) were brought to Stanley by motorbus and put in the prison. After a few days they were put aboard junks at Stanley and the junks went off somewhere. Within a very short time a number of bodies of men and women were washed up on shore where they were left to putrefy for several days. There were rumours of a “noyade”, but I think a more reasonable explanation is that the Japanese were deporting these people and that the more desperate committed suicide.\n\nI have already referred in these notes to the looting of the Peak area by Chinese. This looting was general all over Hong Kong and Kowloon except, I believe, in the Central District. In the space of a few hours Government rice stocks, hospitals and private houses would be picked clean. To a great extent the looting was done in the short interval between the withdrawal of the British forces from any point and the arrival of the Japanese but in many cases, as on the Peak where we were, the looting went on after the occupation and almost under the noses of the Japanese gendarmerie. There is hardly a house on the Peak, I am told, that has not been reduced to a mere shell, all woodwork including floors and staircases being removed and plumbing and electrical fittings,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211702, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "92\n\nrecent concession) to the limited extent of replying to a message which must originate with a neutral. No communication with the various prisoners-of-war camps or hospitals in other parts of Hongkong was permitted, so that wives in the camp could neither send messages to, nor receive them from, their prisoner-of-war husbands. Some were unable to find out whether their husbands were prisoners or not. This seems a quite unnecessary cruelty.\n\nDr. Selwyn-Clarke. I have made a passing reference to Dr. Selwyn-Clarke (Director of Medical Services in the Hongkong Government), but he deserves more than that. The Japanese found it worth their while to allow him and his wife and a small group of British relief workers under him to remain outside the camp and they were primarily engaged on relief work in the Colony. But he had secured the confidence of the Japanese Military Authorities and was allowed to visit the camp frequently on the strict understanding that he gave no news and discussed nothing but medical and relief matters. He visited the camp once or twice a week, talked to the doctors and the Welfare Committee's representative, found out what wanted doing and then in Hongkong tried to get it done. Everyone in the camp knew that almost all the improvements in diet and other matters were the result of untiring efforts on his part, but not so many knew that he had been equally untiring in his efforts to relieve distress among the Chinese population of Hongkong whose plight was immeasurably worse than anything the Stanley internees had to endure.\n\nL\n\nCamp management, discipline, etc. When the camp was first opened, the Japanese put in a number of English-speaking Chinese as block supervisors. Their duties were never clearly defined, but they formed the only channel of communication between the Japanese and the internees. Then the internees elected Communal Councils (one for each of the three communities British, American and Dutch) and these Councils, working in cooperation, ran the camp and were recognised by the Japanese as the spokesmen of their national groups. Later a Japanese Superintendent was appointed (Mr. Nakazawa). He lived in a separate house in the camp and had two or three Japanese satellites. About the same time Mr. Gimson (Colonial Secretary) and Mr. Alabaster (Attorney General), who had hitherto been allowed to remain outside and to act as liaison officers with the Japanese, came into the camp. This brought to a head a conflict which had been going on subterraneously between the Hongkong Government officials and the rest of the community. For reasons which I need not go into here, the community", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211729, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "119\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ch'ü, Ta-chün, Kuang-tang hsin-yü [New Tales from Kuang-tung], Hong Kong: Chung-hua ch'u-pan-shê, 1974, reprinted from 1700 edition, p. 677.\n\n2 ibid, pp. 674-676.\n\n3 Yung-yen, “Hong Kong ti ming k'ao” [The Origin of Place Names in Hong Kong], in: Li Chun-wei (ed.) Hong Kong pai nien [Centenary History of Hong Kong], (Hong Kong: Nan chung pien yi ch'u-pan-shê, 1948), p. 68.\n\n4 Hong Kong Daily Press, February 5, 1873.\n\n5 Siu, A.K.K., “The Hong Kong Region Before and After the Coastal Evacuation in the Early Ch'ing Dynasty”, in: Faure, David, James Hayes and Birch (eds.), From Village to City, (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984), p. 2; Fêng K'ê-pin (ed.), Hsiang chien [Notes on Incense], in: Kuang pai ch'uan hsüeh hai (1), 1998. (Taipei: Hsin-hsing shu-chü, reprinted in 1970).\n\n6 Balfour, S.F., “Hong Kong Before the British”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 10, 1979, p. 176.\n\n7 Ch'ü, p. 677.\n\n8 Chang, Y.N., \"Hong Kong Ts'un (Hong Kong Village) and the Cultivation and Exportation of Incense from Kowloon and the New Territories”, in: Lo, Hsiang Lin (ed.), Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842, (Hong Kong: Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963), p. 114.\n\n9 Tung-kuan Hsien-chih [Tung-kuan Gazetteer], compiled by Ch'ên Pai-tao, (Tung-kuan yang-hêng yin-wu-chü, 1910), Section 14, p. 13; Dunn, Stephen Troyte and William James Tutcher, Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1912), p. 9.\n\n10 Iu, K.C., \"The Cultivation of the Incense Tree (Aquilaria sinensis)”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, 1983, pp. 247-249.\n\n11 “Imports for the Year 1846”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1846, p. 200, 204, 207.\n\n12 “Imports for the Year 1847”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1847, pp. 200-212.\n\n13 “Imports for the Year 1848”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1848, pp. 251-254.\n\n14 Hsü, Kuang-ch'i (ed.), Nung chêng ch'üan shu [Encyclopedia on Agricultural Techniques], (1847), Section 18, pp. 13-15.\n\n15 Yung-yen, p. 68.\n\n16 Lockhart, S. \"Extracts from A Report by Mr Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong on October 8, 1898”, Sessional Papers concerning the Acquisition of the New Territories 1899, p. 190.\n\n17 Nathan, cited by J.W. Hayes. \"Notes and Queries: Sandalwood Mills at Tsun Wan\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 16, 1976, pp. 282-283.\n\n18 'Report on the New Territories for the year 1925; B. Southern District\", Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1925, p. J13.\n\n19 'Report on the New Territories for the Year 1931; B. Southern District\" Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1931, p. J18.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212003, "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": 418, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "393\n\nforces were defeated. In 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. According to the Census taken on 15th May, 1841, there were sixteen villages, with 7,450 people, on the island,\n\nAt that time, pirates still caused great disturbance along the coast. Those of outstanding importance were Shap Ngai Tsai+ and Tsui Ah-po. In the 30th year of Tao Kuang (1850), piracy along the coast was suppressed by the combined force of the British and the Ch'ing navies.7 With this, the island gained its name 'Tai Ping Shan'\n\nwhich means 'the Mountain of Peace'.\n\nDuring the early years of British rule on the island, Chek Chu was considered as a suitable place for the capital city of the Colony.5 However, because it was subject to severe tropical disease, the British built the capital city between the Central and Upper Bays (Chung Wan and Sheung Wan :). It was named Victoria after the name of the British Queen at the time of the early colonization.\n\nFrom then on, development on the island continued. With political changes in mainland China,8 more people flocked to Hong Kong, and they helped to make the city famous in the world.\n\nConclusion\n\nHong Kong, an isolated island at the mouth of the Pearl River, was only sparsely populated with fishermen. During the Ming Dynasty, because of the cultivation of incense trees, which gave great profit, population increased rapidly. However, the Coastal Evacuation at the 1st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign obliged the people to retreat to the mainland. Fields were left barren, and houses were pulled down.\n\nWhen the Edict of the Coastal Evacuation was abandoned, people were encouraged to return to their old dwellings. Villages were rebuilt, people from the neighbouring counties came and settled in the Hong Kong region, too.\n\nWith political changes in mainland China, more people came to Hong Kong. They helped to develop Hong Kong into a densely populated commercial city.\n\nANTHONY SIU Kwok-Kin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212024, "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": 439, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "414\n\nThe British stayed at Weihaiwei until 1930, when it was returned to Chinese administration. During the interim, the Kaiser and the Tsar had collapsed and China had gone through the Boxer uprising, a series of reforms, a revolution that toppled the Ch'ing dynasty, a period of disunity and warlord rule, and, finally, the establishment of the National Government at Nanking led by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927. The rise of Chinese nationalism increased demand for return of all foreign concessions in China, including Weihaiwei.\n\nPamela Atwell has taken it for granted that her readers do not need any historical background information. The story of Weihaiwei under British administration during this highly turbulent era as well as its return to Chinese rule was the focus of her research, embracing hundreds of documents in the Public Records Office in London, a number of unpublished private papers in England and Scotland, as well as sources in Japanese and Chinese but not Chinese archival documents.\n\nA meticulous researcher and skilful writer who also provided the readers with clear and interesting photographs, Dr. Atwell has produced a book that is a joy to behold, both for specialist readers and non-specialists. She has shown admirable understanding of Chinese institutions and British thinking, and thus has recreated an area that had needed a thorough examination by historians looking at imperialism in China. Dr. Atwell has found, for instance, that the leasing of Weihaiwei was not a simple and straightforward matter. The Chinese had first proposed the leasing through Robert Hart of the Imperial Customs Service and Ambassador MacDonald at Peking to a reluctant British cabinet. Then, after the British cabinet were convinced of the value of leasing Weihaiwei, the Chinese had second thoughts. Together with other diplomatic and political complications, it was not until 24 May 1898, after the Japanese forces withdrew, that the British ensign was finally hoisted over the port.\n\nResearching as a political scientist, Dr. Atwell's major interests were in the juxtaposition of government authorities. She had observed that the British administration at Weihaiwei was noteworthy in several ways. The British never claimed sovereignty over the port. They maintained that Weihaiwei \"remained part of a foreign country within which Britain exercised legal jurisdiction, but it was not a colony and the Chinese living there were not British citizens\", (p. 12), British administrators were simply superimposed over traditional Chinese rural", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212195, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "14\n\nThe business section of Hongkong is compressed into so small an area that the hotels are just round the corner from any office. It would often be convenient to meet for cocktails before a meal, and in this way the habit had grown of doing business outside the office, either seated at a small table, or with one foot on a brass rail.\n\nWhen the Chinese Government evacuated Nanking in November 1937, the various Purchasing Departments moved to Hongkong, which, with the closing of the Yangtze, had become the main port of entry for supplies into China. The ships docked alongside at Kowloon, or discharged their cargoes into lighters in mid-harbour.\n\nThe railway between Hongkong and Canton had been completed nearly forty years previously, but the railway from Hankow on the Yangtze to Canton was only opened to through traffic in March 1937. That was before the war with Japan broke out, and in line with its anti-foreign policy, the National Government refused to connect the Hankow railway at Canton with the line from Hongkong. The intention was to inconvenience transhipment of cargo at Hongkong on to the railway and to favour use of the small steamers which sailed up the shallow waters of the Pearl River to Canton. This shortsighted policy was now quickly reversed and a connecting loop put in so that cargo loaded onto rail at Hongkong could go straight through without further handling to Hankow.\n\nMy business was mainly with the Chinese Government Purchasing Departments, and very efficient they were. They drove such hard bargains that the staff might have been Scots, though most claimed to have been trained in the States. The Hongkong government gave every facility for the traffic and there can be no question but that the existence of Hongkong as a British colony at this time was a great help to the hard-pressed Chinese.\n\n―\n\nAs regards the administration of Hongkong by the Colonial Office, by almost any western standard it was good. It was essentially better than anything that could be found in China or in Chicago but it was by no means perfect. The administration suffered from the defects of bureaucracy.\n\nThe civil servant who enters the colonial administration must pass a stiff examination; but once he has passed it, he can expect regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212196, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "115\n\npromotion and increases of pay. Brilliance and initiative are not requisite. In fact, unless well controlled they are a definite handicap. It is fatal to the career of the young official if events prove he was right where his senior was wrong. He will soon be stowed away on some remote shelf. All that is required of him is that he shall answer \"Yes\" at proper intervals; and not advance new ideas, or disturb the even tenor of the way of his superiors.\n\nAnother unhappy manifestation of colonial administration was seen in 1940, when the Japanese menace caused the authorities to issue an order to British women to leave the colony. You would have thought that the wives of colonial officials would have been proud to set an example. But not at all. The majority of the female relatives of Hongkong administrators used their influence to have themselves declared indispensable in order that they might stay in the colony. They wangled jobs as nurses, secretaries, and so on, while the less fortunate — as it then appeared — wives of the commercial community, who were not in a position to pull strings, were shipped out to Australia and other places. It naturally produced a lot of ill-feeling, but not, so far as I am aware, any Colonial Office enquiry.\n\nThe police force in Hongkong consisted of 14 British officers, 255 British other ranks, and 803 Sikh and 1022 Chinese constables. Despite its heterogeneous composition the force was quite efficient. The wealth of Hongkong attracts evil-doers from China, which has its full share of the criminal element. After decades of civil war they are usually well enough armed; but in Hongkong the statistics of serious crime, and particularly of malefactors brought to book, compare quite favourably with, for instance, those for Kentucky.\n\nChinese of the lower classes generally wear a short jacket, while Chinese of the gentle class wear a long gown buttoning up the side and reaching down to the ankles. Chinese gun-men also invariably wear long gowns, I suppose, the easier to hide their weapons. They are often of sleek appearance, but there seems to be a look about them which makes them easy to recognise. When I was staying at the Gloucester Hotel I noticed there were usually one or two long-gowned Chinese in the hallway outside my room. I asked my Chinese boy who these men were and he told me that in the bedroom on one side of me I had Mr. Tu Yuen Seng, and on the other side Mr. Wang Shao Lai. They were the chiefs of the Green and Red \"Tongs\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212198, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "117\n\nHotel, was Japanese. So were the majority of the photographers' shops. It was known that a proportion of the workers in the Royal Naval Dockyard were Japanese, passing themselves off as Chinese. Even the Chinese could not distinguish between one of their own countrymen and a Japanese after he had lived amongst them sufficiently long to speak the language fluently. There was a police regulation under which all persons entering the Colony of nationality other than British or Chinese must register. But Koreans were classed as Chinese, and so Japanese, who wished to avoid observation, described themselves as Koreans. To overcome the difficulty it would have been necessary to make registration of Chinese compulsory, and that was a task beyond the capacity of the existing police personnel; moreover, the Chinese might have resented such a regulation as a slight on their dignity.\n\nThe Hongkong weekend continued much as usual. You could run your car onto the vehicular ferry, take it over to Kowloon, and drive the 17 miles to the border of the New Territory, either by the road which wound in and out amongst the bays along the coast, or by the road which followed the railway gap through the Kowloon hills; and play golf at the Royal Fanling Golf Club where there were two eighteen hole, and one nine hole, courses. Or you could bathe from one of the numerous beaches, or go on a launch picnic. These last were popular. On Sunday morning the time would be spent taking turns on a surfboard towed behind the launch, or sunbathing on top of the awning; in the afternoon a heavy lunch would offer the lazy an excuse to sleep.\n\nThe Japanese were bombing the railway line between Hongkong and Hankow. In those days the confidence of air enthusiasts in regard to the results which could be achieved by desultory bombing had not yet been discounted by the hard test of experience. Moreover, we were yet to learn of the devotion and sacrifice, the skill and efficiency, of the Chinese railway repair gangs. With a minimum of equipment they performed wonders, and through traffic was seldom interrupted for more than a few hours. I was instructed to reconnoitre an alternative route for the despatch of supplies from Hongkong to Central China against the time when the railway might be finally disrupted. It was a thankless task because opinion in Shanghai continued to assume that the Chinese government would soon collapse under Japanese pressure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212295, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "214\n\nlast in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages.\n\nThe breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world.\n\n1\n\nJames Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China\", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript.\n\n++\n\nGeorge Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864).\n\nThis monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856,\n\nHì\n\nWhile remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of \"stimulating the economy\". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105.\n\nTheodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854).\n\nJ7\n\n44\n\nAt the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled \"Reminiscences\", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, \"Reminiscences\", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14.\n\n典\n\nIn his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212296, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "215\n\nrole in this “secularization” process, comparing Legge's leadership in the new Board of Education with the manner of a “born bishop” I believe his motivations must be read in the light of his postmillennial leanings. See n. 55 on postmillennialism. Also see James Legge, \"The Colony Of Hong Kong\", The Journal Of The Hong Kong Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 188; also E. T. Eitel, Europe In China: The History Of Hong Kong From The Beginning To The Year 1882 (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh Ltd, 1895; reprinted in Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 347, 390-394, 466.\n\nSee Gwenneth and John Stokes, Queen's College: Its History 1862-1987 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1987). A number of the details of the origins of the school in relation to Legge are not correct, and should be compared with my article in Ching Feng (1988), op. cit.\n\n51 Prof. Legge's participation in the initial stages of the drafting of the Somerville College rules is not mentioned in some of the more recent texts on Somerville College, but his role as a member of the council (1881-1883) is found in Somerville College Register, 1879-1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 272. In the minutes of the Provisional committee which later incorporated the College, Prof. Legge apparently helped to draft and support a college rule which, in its final form, read as follows: \"Prayers will be read daily in the house, and on Sundays the students will be expected as a rule to attend a place of worship chosen by themselves or their parents\"; an earlier proposal to eliminate family prayers, and a later proposal requiring instruction in the Bible provided by each House, were both voted down. It is also significant that the provisional committee set a rule that the members of the Council should include equal numbers of women and men. See the Notes of the Provisional Committee meetings for the year 1879, dated February 7, 15, and 28, held at Somerville College.\n\n* This picture is kept at the Library of the Oriental Institute at Oxford, and was recently used for the cover of T. H. Barrett's Singular Listlessness: A Short History Of Chinese Books And British Scholars, op. cit.\n\nHis reaction was primarily against the legalistic trends of Scottish Reform theology, particularly as it related to the harsher restrictions enforced on the Sabbath. At one point Legge, writing about his youthful days in Huntly, complained: \"The voice of Moses was allowed in our household too often to overpower the voice of Christ\". See Notes Of My Life, op. cit., p. 15, and James Legge, John Legge, ed., Lectures On Theology, Science, And Revelation (Papers by the late Rev. George Legge), XXII-XXIV. Still one must point out that the memorization of the Shorter Catechism left its mark in many of the themes discussed in Legge's The Religions of China. He may have rejected its ethics, but he was nursed and matured in its theological worldview.\n\n34 Legge gave his views on the sixty-fifth anniversary of the London Missionary Society, celebrated at Moorfields Tabernacle. See his \"The Land of Sinim,\" (London: John Snow, 1859).\n\n+4\n\n—\n\nThis perspective was technically supported by nineteenth-century \"postmillennialism,\" a view which generally interprets Biblical prophecies regarding the end of human history as one in which there will be no personal return of Christ. Postmillennialism claimed that God will reign on earth indirectly in a kingdom of peace established by his own people, the Church. This view normally involves the corollary that human achievements, particularly the advance of Christian civilization, would bring about the final state in which the Kingdom of God would be achieved. James Legge had been exposed to this position through the theology of his older brother, George Legge, and apparently accepted its arguments. See George Legge, Lectures on Theology, Science, and Revelation, ed. James Legge, et al., op. cit. Belief in a postmillennial view of history explains two important aspects of James Legge's academic work. First, it explains why he was concerned to locate a trace of revelation in the foundations of Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212298, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "217\n\nhe testified that there was hardly a house in Victoria except the brothels - where he had not repeatedly been and where he was not known as a friend. See James Legge. \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", The China Review, op. cit., pp. 168-169. Unfortunately, these remarks were edited out of the reprint of this talk found in The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), op. cit.\n\nSee n. 26\n\nM5 The impact and importance of Legge's life as a Non-Conformist academic has been summarized in my article in Ching Feng, “The 'Failures' of James Legge's Fruitful Life for China', op. cit. Another more general point about dissenting churches should be made: in late nineteenth century Great Britain, the academic circles of academics who were dissenters appear to have functioned as a contrapuntal voice in the mainstream of English society. The publication of The British Quarterly became an organ for dissenting viewpoints which illustrates this point. Another factor involved in the influence of dissenting believers was the fact that many of the children of these people married into major families within English society. A perfect example is one of Legge's daughters from his first marriage, Eliza, who married a gentleman who later became the first Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Horatio Nelson Lay. See Lindsay Ride, op. cit., p. 9.\n\nC\n\nSee the case of Dr. Wong Foon, London Missionary Society Archives. Letters from South China, dated April 12, 1856. Further discussion occurs in letters of October 12, 1859, April 14, 1860, and November 28, 1860.\n\n47 Legge's opposition to opium and coolie trades, among other problems, was stated publicly in his address at the Hong Kong City Hall in 1872. See \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., pp. 190-191. In 1870, Legge had joined his Chinese pastoral colleague Ho Jinshan in promoting a petition which opposed the newly legalized gambling opened by the Hong Kong government primarily for the sake of revenue. Over one thousand two hundred names, most of whom were Chinese, signed the petitions presented to the government on February 21st and March 6th, 1871. See Hong Kong Government Office, Colonial Office Records, CO129/149, 5, pp. 188-197 and 8, pp. 208-234.\n\n100\n\nSee the letter addressed to James Legge by Sir W. G. Liddell, the appointed representative of Oxford University, dated February 27, 1875 (Bodleian Library archives). Liddell makes it clear to Legge in the letter that his Non-Conformist background should not be a source of turmoil if he were admitted to the University. Although the letter also includes the qualification that Legge's credentials indicate a person of high standing, the doubt in Liddell's mind about the character of anyone from a dissenting tradition is explicit. It may be the case, as Mary Dominica Legge claimed, that James Legge was the first non-Anglican professor admitted to Oxford after 1871, but I have not yet found a way to verify this.\n\n69\n\nR. F. Horton commented, however, that Prof. Legge's involvement with the Non-Conformist Union was minimal. See his comments in his text, An Autobiography (London: 1918).\n\n*0\n\nAmong those with whom Prof. Legge had some direct spiritual interaction was the famous Hegelian philosopher, T. H. Green. In a letter dated April 29 (no year, but probably 1879, when both men were on the provisional committee of Somerville College), Green responds to a lengthy rejoinder Prof. Legge had given to a book Green had written. Green had sent the letter because, apparently, the professor had treated him like an orthodox believer,\" and Green felt there was a sort of hypocrisy in allowing you to continue under that impression\". The letter ends with Green politely defending his philosophical position, but also mirroring some sense of challenge to alter his views which must have been expressed by Prof. Legge. This letter is found\n\n4\n\nIL\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212301, "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "220\n\nand business in Hong Kong has been neglected. Nonetheless, over the past decade some hongs have commissioned researchers and authors to compile company histories. A number of these are listed in the bibliography.\n\nEarlier Days\n\nHistorically, overseas businessmen have been permitted only limited contact with locals in China. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Westerners were only authorised to reside in Canton during the trading season, from October to May. Emperors confined all foreign trade there, as far from Peking as possible, keeping 'unpleasant things at a distance.' Foreigners were forced to maintain their base in the Portuguese city of Macau (established 1557).\n\nThese restrictions caused great inconvenience to merchants. Captain Charles Elliot wrote, on April 6th 1839:\n\n\"There can be neither safety nor honour for either government until Her Majesty's flag flies on these coasts in a secure position.\"\n\nIt was considered necessary to have a colony with a fine harbour, where Europeans could live, work and trade in peace and security. The Union Jack was raised at Possession Point, on Hong Kong Island, on January 26, 1841.\n\nHong Kong was established specifically to facilitate trade. Not surprisingly, therefore, the authorities depended a great deal upon the support of business houses in the early days of the colony. Some of these early trading houses are still trading here today.\n\nBy the end of 1843 there were 12 large British firms in Hong Kong, ten British merchants trading on a smaller scale, and about six Indian companies. The following year there were said to be about 100 foreign firms doing business, half of which were British and about one-quarter Indian or Parsee. Russells, an American firm, had six partners and eight griffins (assistants). Dent and Company (British) five partners and eight assistants, and D. and M. Rustomjee (Parsee) fifteen partners. Jardine Matheson employed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212314, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "233\n\nHong Kong for several years, Bill Wyllie, was seconded to Hutchison in 1975 by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, as 'company doctor' to put the business house's finances in order. After he had achieved this he left Hutchison's in 1981.\n\nThen in the early 1980s Li Ka-shing, believed to be the richest man in Hong Kong, became the largest shareholder in Hutchison's. His company, Cheung Kong (meaning long river and signifying 'everlasting'), held a 37 per cent stake. With a Chinese Taipan the company was no longer the bastion of British management that it had been in earlier days. However, under Chairman Li Ka-shing there is an English Group Managing Director, Simon Murray.\n\nToday Hutchison-Whampoa is thriving, and its activities range from general trading, including importing and exporting, to property, engineering and building materials. The group also has major interests in such subsidiaries as Hong Kong United Dockyards (in the past Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks), Hong Kong Electric Holdings, and A.S. Watson and Company of which more later. These firms, which in the past were basically British, are thus now largely Chinese controlled.\n\nDockyards\n\nThe first Hong Kong built vessel, the 80-ton Celestial, was launched from a slip at East Point on 7th February 1843, and a Royal Naval Dockyard started in 1854 (this was phased out in the late 1950s). Docks were also built by Douglas Lapraik and J. Lamont at Aberdeen in 1857.\n\nNevertheless, it has been claimed the first 'great firm' to be established in the Colony was really the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company, although the industry had its origins, regionally, in Canton. That is why the word Whampoa (a place in Canton) is included in the above name. The firm is No.1 on the Register of Companies. Austin Coates maintains in his book, Whampoa, Ships on the Shore, that the formation of Union Docks (which was absorbed into the Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks in 1870), in 1863, was\n\nthe most significant commercial and industrial moment in Hong Kong's history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212315, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "234\n\nWhen it opened, in 1868, it gave the Colony a new orientation. The first vessel the Docks built was the 46-foot launch, Duncan, for their own use, which affectionately became known as Old No.1.\n\nCertainly a considerable outlay of capital and expertise was involved, and the Docks were well supported by the P&O line, which ran a service from Hong Kong to Shanghai from 1849, and by Jardine's.\n\n**From Rangoon to Shanghai there is nothing equal to that great concern (the Docks); nor along the entire Pacific Coast of North and South America is there any undertaking equipped with better facilities...** (MacMillan, 1925).\n\nThe Cosmopolitan Docks (later purchased by Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks) began at Tai Kok Tsui in 1880, and by the 1890s the main docks at Hung Hom had built up rapidly. The local community (even by 1881 the population of old British Kowloon numbered only 9,021) was among the largest industrial settlements. It worked day and night for years with queues of ships waiting to be repaired. The Hong Kong Guide 1893 records:\n\n**The Docks**\n\nare the most extensive of any in Asia. Vessels of 550 feet in length and 30 feet draft of water can be docked at Kowloon.\n\nExtra dividends were awarded to shareholders twice a year, and sons of skilled craftsmen from Hung Hom followed their fathers into the Docks. The village was never asleep as journeymen worked on shifts around the clock. It was one of the most prosperous places in the Colony.\n\nWith a population of only 260,000, at the turn of the century Hong Kong was the second largest port in the world. By then her own ships sailed the Pacific Ocean and the seas of Asia. Easterners (the Chinese) and Westerners (the expatriates were mostly Scottish) had joined forces in the Dockyard, and the Board was representative of many nations of maritime importance. A strong sense of pride and community spirit existed. During World War I, ships of more than 5,000 tons were built.\n\nButterfield and Swire started to construct their dockyard at Quarry Bay, on Hong Kong Island, in August 1902, and work was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212320, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "239\n\nBoswell (1815 to 1860), a graduate of Edinburgh University, who set up in private practice (previously owned by Doctor Anderson) in Macau in 1845. He was a physician and his wife, Elizabeth (née Stedman), joined him the following year. Watson was also an amateur artist and a friendship with the famous George Chinnery lasted from 1845 to Chinnery's death in 1852.\n\nWatson wrote to his sister in Scotland, in 1848, about Macau:\n\n“Counting ourselves, there are just four families and one or two Americans and French. There are Portuguese of course, but I do not class them as foreigners as it is a Portuguese settlement.”\n\nLife out East for Watson meant 14 years of hard work, ill health, and a constant struggle to make enough money for him and his family to go home. Nevertheless, in Macau he was surrounded by a happy family; he lived (as he phrased it) in a “sweet abode the prettiest spot on earth with a spacious open terrace and a wonderful view.”\n\nWatson sold his practice to a Doctor B. Kane (it took time to dispose of it as Macau was on the decline), and he moved to Hong Kong in 1856 where he became part owner of the Hong Kong Dispensary. His rent for a house on Queen's Road then was $1,200 a year. Watson was also involved with the Victoria Dispensary but this closed in 1857 because of lack of business. It appears there were too many British doctors competing for custom. Watson was said to operate the most successful practice in the Colony.\n\nIn 1857, he was closely involved when patriots of China attempted to poison Europeans by putting arsenic in the bread at the Ah Lum Bakery. He managed to rush home to warn his family before they had eaten breakfast. Fortunately, because the amount of arsenic was excessive, it induced vomiting and nobody died. To the intense annoyance of the European community Ah Lum was acquitted for lack of evidence.\n\nWatson sent his family back to Britain in 1857, and he himself returned to Scotland by the overland route (by ship to Port Suez,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212324, "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": 266, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "243\n\nand persons of Portuguese descent.\n\nTo a degree banks symbolise power, and the People's Republic gained in prestige when its 17-storey Bank of China slightly overtopped the Hong Kong Bank in 1950. The latter then erected a flagpole, so it is said, which gave it a few extra feet. In 1959, however, the then new Chartered Bank rose about three metres above the old Bank of China. With the new 42-storey standard Chartered Bank, completed in 1990, looking down on the Hong Kong Bank claimed to be the most cost-efficient bank building in the world it seems that, to some degree, history is repeating itself. Nevertheless, this is well short of the 70-floor new Bank of China (also completed in 1990) which, for a few years, was the tallest building in Asia.\n\nHong Kong Bank\n\n▬\n\nUnlike the Chartered Bank which is essentially British, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which is today the largest bank headquartered in Asia outside Japan, has always prided itself on being international. Nevertheless, the original prospectus of the 'Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Company Limited' stated the aim was: \"for an institution to be operated on sound Scottish banking principles.\"\n\nMost of its senior staff have, from the outset, thus been British.\n\nThe Hong Kong Bank was founded in 1864, on co-operative lines. Business commenced in 1865 (by which time six banks were already established in Hong Kong), and nearly all the principal firms in the Colony were represented. The purpose of Wayfoong (?) (meaning 'Abundance of Remittances' which first appeared, in Chinese, on bank notes in 1881) was to serve the needs of merchants of the China coast and to finance the growing trade between China, Europe and North America. The traders of old felt their needs would be served better if they had a bank (in Hong Kong it is often spoken of as The Bank) which was owned, managed and operated locally.\n\nAlthough the provisional committee was chaired by the British firm Dent and Company its members were far from being exclusively British. They included Americans, Germans, Scandinavians and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212327, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "246\n\nlater, made up part of the Lombard Insurance Company.\n\nHong Kong Hotel Company\n\nThe Company started in 1866, and the Hong Kong Hotel opened in 1867 on the site of the defunct Dent and Company's offices on the then waterfront at Queen's Road Central. In 1893, in addition to the 'Hong Kong', other leading hotels included 'Windsor' and 'Victoria', in Central, and 'Mount Austin' and 'Peak' hotels, both on the Peak.\n\nThe Professions\n\nAs well as traders, a few British professionals set up practices in Hong Kong in the last century. Victor Hobart Deacon, for example, arrived in the Colony in 1880 to join a firm of lawyers that was already 30 years old. In the 1840s, the nearest lawyer was said to be in Calcutta.\n\nAt about the same time there were a number of people who described themselves as architects, but they were probably only draughtsmen. One such man was named Langer, who arrived in 1842 to supervise the erection of buildings for Jardine's. He was stricken with fever after only working for two months. The civilian architects produced nothing of the calibre of the military architects who designed such structures as Murray House and Headquarters House.\n\nWilson and Salway, architects and engineers, were established in 1872; and Leigh and Orange, although not the first, was among the early practices to be set up. This latter firm dates back to 1874, under the name of Sharp and Danby who were engineers, and in 1894 it became Leigh and Orange. The founding fathers were ex-Public Works Department employees. The Ohel Leah synagogue in Robinson Road, completed in 1902, is one of their buildings, as were the old Queen's Building and the old Prince's Building, both completed in Central in 1904.\n\nOther structures, since demolished, were the entire premises of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company, at Hung Hom, and the wharves and premises of the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212332, "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": 274, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "251\n\nbeing until this century. In the last decade of the 20th century, however, it provides three-quarters of the electricity consumed in Hong Kong. Not long after the Company placed what was reported to be the largest ever single order with British industry, in 1980, six members of the board were made Commanders of the British Empire. There have also been two Knighthoods in the Kadoorie family.\n\nTransport\n\nMotor transport was mainly introduced into Hong Kong in the present century, and, by 1909, the Colony boasted five private cars. Steam power was, however, used at sea before it was employed on land, and by 1876 there were nine steam launches operating in the harbour, and the first regular cross-harbour ferry, employing steam launches, commenced in 1880. In 1898, the Star Ferry was incorporated and took over from Dorabjee Nowrojee the previous ferry owner.\n\nBritish firms were, nonetheless, involved with transport, and a proposal was made by Jardine's, in 1881, for a system of trams on Hong Kong Island. The same year another proposal was made for a tramway to Victoria Gap, and in 1885 the original promoters sold their rights to Phineas Ryrie and Alexander Findlay Smith (Findlay Path on the Peak is named after him) for $2,000. The latter, a merchant who arrived in Hong Kong in the 1860s and who had been an employee of Scotland's Highland Railway, was the driving force. In 1881, it was he who requested approval from Sir John Pope-Hennessy, for this innovative scheme.\n\nAccording to Mrs Maud Grant-Smith, the Governor told her late husband's uncle, Findlay Smith:\n\n\"My dear chap, you are simply throwing your money down the drain. Do you imagine anyone wants to go to the top of the Peak?\"\n\nBecause His Excellency would not help, Smith brought his own engineers from Scotland. As early as the 1840s Doctor William Morrison, the Colonial Surgeon (1847 to 1859), recommended spending the summer on the Peak. He also suggested a sanatorium be built there to alleviate the effects of heat and humidity. This was constructed but by 1868 it had fallen into disrepair, and had been rebuilt as", "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": 212402, "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": 344, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "321\n\nDudden's work is essentially narrative history based upon Western-language secondary sources. Beginning with a summary of early American involvement in the China trade, he proceeds to describe the United States' acquisition of and subsequent relations with Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines. After surveying the contrasting course of American dealings with Japan and China up to World War I, he covers the Pacific War, the beginning of the Cold War, and American intervention in Korea and Vietnam. A final chapter deals with the somewhat ambiguous developments of the past two decades.\n\nThe early portion of the book tells the fascinating story of how the American Republic gained its two last states and its largest colony. An irredeemably commercial nation, the United States purchased two large tracts of its own territory, Louisiana from the Emperor Napoleon I of France in 1803 and Alaska from the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1867. Until 1910 the near exclusive domain of fur trading companies and gold miners, Alaska's sparse population and remoteness meant that, despite its mineral wealth, only in 1958 did it win statehood. Not until 1778, when Captain James Cook's final expedition landed there, did Westerners discover the Hawaiian islands, \"the most isolated archipelago in the world\". Once found, they became a magnet attracting American whalers, merchants, and missionaries. In the 1820s the last group assisted Queen Kaahumanu, one of the widows of King Kamehameha the Great, 'a six-foot, three-hundred-pound, strong-willed beauty', to overthrow the dominant religious kapu system which among other things banned women from exercising political power. From then onwards successive rulers were under the tutelage of Americans, who eliminated the native religion, advised the monarchs, and introduced private property rights in land. Soon afterwards, American sugar and pineapple interests acquired large holdings, which would dominate Hawaiian economic and political life until after World War II. In the 1890s the efforts of the anti-American Queen Liliuokalani to restore the powers of the monarchy led to a coup, backed by American sugar interests, and suggestions that the United States annex the islands, also long coveted by French, German, and British imperialists. Congress initially rejected the suggestion, but in 1898, in the war-generated expansionism of the Spanish-American War, reversed itself. Hawaii would become a major American naval base, a centre of tourism, and a focus of Japanese immigration: the attack on Pearl Harbour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212470, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages.\n\nFollowing the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia.\n\nThe Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212476, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "in a period when Chinese were only allowed to invest in European insurance companies. But at the same time, he still had large interests in traditional business.\n\nCantonese compradors in Hong Kong, of course, should not be considered as only a few persons; they could probably be identified from archives of the firms they worked for. However, we are limited by sources, which make it quite difficult, but not impossible, to assess compradors' wealth which they had accumulated when they were in office. Furthermore, most of the wealthy Chinese in Hong Kong, including compradors at that time, had investments or property in China. From their business activities, a Canton-Macau-Hong Kong linkage is shown in their wills deposited in the Hong Kong Public Records Office.\n\nNames of the Cantonese compradors in Hong Kong were probably Cheang Hoong of Philips Moore & Co., Wong Kong and Kwong A Hang of Smith, Archer & Co.; Ng A Cheong of Douglas Lapraik & Co., Law Pak Sheung of Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, Wai A Kwong of Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China, Law Sai Nam of McBain & Co., Lau Cheong of Gilman & Co. (Fuzhou), Au Yeung Shing of Russell & Co., Sung Chin Tseung of Messrs. Turner & Co., Tong Mow Chee (Tang Maozhi) of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (Tianjin), and Choa Chee Bee of China Sugar Refining Co., Ltd. They all left wills in which some indicated business connections with Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong. For example, the will of Wai A Kwong written in 1866 reads:\n\nI am a native of Tsin Shan in the District of Heung Shan, Empire of China, at present residing in Victoria, Hong Kong, and holding the office of compradore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London, and China. At the age of eleven years, I left my native place and proceeded to Macau, where I obtained employment as a domestic servant to a Portuguese; at the age of thirteen, I was sent down to Singapore by the Reverend E. C. Bridgman, missionary to the Chinese, and became the first pupil of the Morrison Education Society. I returned to Hong Kong in the year 1843, and I have ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government. I married in Hong Kong and have several children, all born in this colony. By industry and thriftiness, I have acquired and am possessed of sundry houses, lands, shares in business, and other property and effects. Knowing\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "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": 212601, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Maymyo 1941 \n\nGUERILLA TRAINING* \n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE \n\n135 \n\nThe shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four.\n\nHongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”.\n\n*This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212603, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "137\n\nAnd yet, of an evening, through all those Eastern shores, you could find few pleasanter places than the inner courtyard at Raffles. Towering above at third-floor level, beneath a canopy of stars, the palm-tops shivered in the breeze; while below in the dim rose light of the table lamps, turbaned bearers moved noiselessly, and the murmur of conversation mingled with the low strains of soft music to conjure fantasy.\n\nIt was only with the arrival of the British that the Chinese, attracted by the rule of law, the security of life, and the open door, moved in numbers to Malaya, so that they are now two million, amongst a population totalling five million. They have been of great service in developing the country. They own many of the tin mines, much of the rubber, nearly all the retail shops, and they are the wealthiest community. But, as is characteristic of the Chinese everywhere, they are not assimilated. They remain a community apart, and even, surprisingly, send members to the People's Political Council at Chungking, the representative organ which advises the Chinese Government, and which is supposed to be democratic but cannot be, as the electoral machinery is controlled by the Kuo Min Tang party, and the secret ballot is as yet unknown in China.\n\nThe British colony, the actual Straits Settlements, covers only a very small part of the area of Malaya. Such control as the British may have over the remainder derives from treaty relations with the Rulers of the several States. How to frame a satisfactory sort of Malayan union out of the ten components of a country as small as England is a problem as yet unsolved. I expect it is the knowledge that the allegiance of the Chinese in Malaya is claimed by the Kuo Min Tang that makes it difficult for the British to recruit them for the armed forces, as though their allegiance were to Malaya. The Americans in the Philippines, where there is not a similar number of territorial divisions, would be faced with the same problem in an easier form were 41% of the population Chinese, instead of 1%.\n\nIn fact the Chinese in Malaya were quite happy. Through the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs they were able to make their views known to the Government. Unless external political pressure is brought to bear they are unlikely to make trouble. Here again they have found conditions of security, comparing only too favourably with those in the homeland, and they know when they are well off.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212809, "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-1992", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "316\n\nMESNY'S CHINESE MISCELLANY\n\n1420. HSIANG SHAN HSIEH ш:-\n\nThe Hsiang Shan Brigade, composed of two regiments. Each regiment is commanded by a Tu-stu, Major, who has a Shou-pei, or Second Major, for his Adjutant. At the same time the Major commanding the Left Wing Regiment performs the duties of Brigade-Major and Adjutant to the Brigadier-General. Each regiment is divided into two Shao or companies, called in both cases the Tso Yu Shao, or Left and Right (Wing) companies. Each company is commanded by a Ch'ien-tsung, Captain, who is assisted by a Tou Ssu Pa-tsung, First-Lieutenant, and a Er-ssu Pa-tsung, Second-Lieutenant, thus giving a total of seventeen officers for the whole brigade, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men.\n\n1421. TA PENG HSIEH :-The Ta Peng Hsich Brigade stationed at Chinese Kowloong, opposite the British Colony of Hong-kong.\n\nThe brigade as usual is commanded by a Brigadier-General, Fu Chiang, or Isich Tai, called Hip Toi in Cantonese.\n\nThe brigade has a Tu-ssu, Major, as Adjutant to the General, but it is composed of two battalions, only each commanded by a Shou-pei or Second-Major. Each battalion is divided into the usual Left and Right (Wing) Companies or Shao, having a Ch'ien-tsung for Captain to each Company, with Tou and a Er-ssu Pa-tsung, First and Second-Lieutenant, besides the usual number of non-commissioned officers and men, thus giving a total of sixteen officers.\n\n1422. CHIEH SHIH CHEN # #- The Chieh Shih Chen division, composed of a staff corps or Chên Piao of three regiments and a territorial regiment called the Ping Hai Ying.\n\nJan. 9th, 1896.\n\nmanded by a Ts'an Chiang, or Colonel. Each regiment has a Shou-pei, or Second-Major as adjutant.\n\nThe Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the central regiment acts as the General's Adjutant. Each regiment is divided into the usual left and right wing companies, and is commanded by a Chien tsung, Captain, assisted by a Tou-ssá Pa-tsung, First-Lieutenant, and a Er-ssu Pa-tsung, Second-Lieutenant, in each case, thus giving a total of twenty-four officers for the staff corps, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men to each regiment, besides the General.\n\n1423. PING HAI YING\n\nThe division is commanded by a Tsung Ping, or Chen Tai, Lieutenant-General. The central and left wing regiments of the staff corps are each commanded by a Yu-chi, Lieutenant-Colonel; the Right Wing Regiment is commanded by a Tu-ssu, or Major, the Territorial Regiment is commanded by a Ts'an Chiang, Colonel.\n\n-The Ping Hai Regiment. This territorial regiment, as I have said, forms part of the Chieh Shih division, and is commanded by a Ts'an Chiang, Colonel, who has a Shou-pei, or Second-Major, for his Adjutant. The regiment is also divided into two companies, each having a Chien-tsung, Captain, a Tou-ssŭ Pa-tsung, First-Lieutenant, and a Er-ssŭ Pa-tsung, Second-Lieutenant, that gives eight officers, besides non-commissioned officers and men.\n\n1424. NAN AO CHÊN YU YING ★ UЯ6\n\n-The Nan Ao (or Namao as it is pronounced locally) division has but two staff regiments, Tso Yu Liang Ying, and one of them, the left wing regiment, is paid and equipped by the government of Fu-kien province, as the station is partly in Fu-kien territory and partly only in Kuang-tung territory. The Right Wing Regiment, belonging to this province, is commanded by a Yu-chi, Lieutenant-Colonel, who has a Shou-pei, Second-Major, for his Adjutant.\n\nThe regiment is divided into two Shao or companies, each commanded by a Chien-tsung, Captain, assisted by a First and Second-Lieutenant, thus giving nine officers, including the General, besides the usual complement of non-commissioned officers and men. Beside its staff regiments the Nan Ao division has two territorial regiments and one territorial battalion in the Kuang-tung province.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212931, "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-1992", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "225\n\nparallels Hong Kong's, petitioned the British government to acquire 'an insular possession near the coast of China... beyond the reach of future despotism and oppression,' Matheson, who did not have Hong Kong specifically in mind, thought of British merchants as 'princes of the earth,' and despised the Chinese, ‘a people characterized by marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy... [in] possession of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.'\n\nChinese officials were no less culture-bound: Commissioner Lin Zexu, the Emperor's man in Canton, confronted the British just before the 1839-1840 Opium War by burning 2,613,879 pounds of British opium, 'surely the largest drug haul ever collected,' says Welsh. The British had been smuggling opium into China, hoping to balance off the large amounts of money they were spending for tea and other products exported home to Britain. Lin Zexu advised punishing the British traders by withholding exports to them of rhubarb and tea, without which they could not exist. Because 'their legs were too tightly bound to permit them to box or wrestle,' British soldiers, he said, were not suited to fighting on shore. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their confiscation of opium was followed by attacks by British gunboats on their port cities. They were forced to open Shanghai and other coastal cities to the British and cede Hong Kong to them.\n\nNot until Chris Patten was appointed governor in 1992 did Hong Kong become a high British priority. While publicly demanding that the garrison lay down their lives for it, says Welsh, Churchill privately considered the colony not worth defending against the Japanese. During World War II, the Foreign Office regarded Hong Kong as 'something of a thorn in the side' - a view some of its diplomats still hold — and wanted to return it to China; the Americans wanted this too. In 1946, the first postwar governor, Sir Mark Young, drafted a plan for a 'Municipal Council' constituted on a fully representative basis, but this was consistently turned down. Later, the colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, commented, \"The electorate of Britain didn't care a brass farthing about Hong Kong.' Welsh says this remains true, but he also reminds us that, in 1992, Chris Patten was proposing a more democratically elected Legislative Council not for the British voters but for the people of Hong Kong. As Welsh suggests, in 1946 China would have been in no position to object. But Hong Kong has since become more valuable than anyone could have dreamed in 1946.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213146, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "196\n\nfor fishermen in the north-east New Territories for the Year 1936, p. J11, where the District Officer notes that \"dealers were further encouraged by a reduction in the duty on dried fish\" It seems likely that the trade in both fresh and dried fish was affected\n\n31 This is a reference to a scheme introduced by the Customs in 1937 (see Jiulonghaiguan Bainian Dashiji, op cit., sub anno), by which every cow in the border area was to be registered and branded, and a record kept of every time it crossed the frontier All this was part of an attempt to control \"smuggling\" of cattle—i.e. the buying of new plough animals in the market, and bringing them back to the New Territories villages without paying export duty on them The animals had been taken across the frontier on the pretext that they were crossing the frontier to work fields on the New Territories side\n\n32 Shatoujiao de Lishe, op cit ch 2 I have heard very similar comments from elders in Wo Hang in the New Territories Fees of $20 for a seed-pig, and $20 for a new wok were quoted to me\n\n33 Petition translated in Enclosure 22 to Item 204 (pp. 272-273) in File No. 66 Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, op cit\n\n34 Shatoujiao de Lishe, loc cit\n\n35 Elder at Wo Hang village\n\n36 Administrative Reports for the Year 1924, Appendix J. “Report on the New Territories for the Year 1924\", p. J2\n\n37 The Jiudonghaiguan Bainian Dashiji, op cit has no records of events in the Sha Tau Kok area from 1925-28, suggesting that the Customs records for this period have been lost\n\n38 The District Officer had this to say \"Conditions on the frontier, however, gave rise to considerable trouble and anxiety, the undisciplined and licentious conduct of the armed strikers' pickets extending to acts of violence and robbery committed even within our Territories British Sha Tau Kok suffered especially in this respect, so much so that on two occasions at least armed forces had to be summoned to assist, in the first case in August when H.M.S. 'Foxglove' was despatched to recover two junks, laden with merchandise, which had been seized by the \"strikers\", and later, in November, when troops of the Punjabi regiment were stationed at Sha Tau Kok in order to discourage the armed pickets who were terrorizing the inhabitants of British territory The close of the year brought more peaceful\n\nFor the history of the Kowloon Customs, see SF Wright, Hongkong and the Chinese Customs, Inspectorate Series, No 7 (Confidential), Statistics Dept, of the Inspectorate-General of Customs, Shanghai, 1930, SF Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, Belfast, 1950, and Jiulonghaiguan Bainian Dashiji, op cit. The arrangements of the Patrol Districts and duty Stations were constantly re-ordered; the arrangements mentioned in the text are the standard arrangement for most of the 1920s and 1930s As for staff, establishment and strength figures varied widely, depending on funds—levels of manning were particularly low in the early 1920s, when the Customs were starved of funds, but greatly improved in the 1930s", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213150, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "200\n\nnot have been written at all\n\n58 See the plan and cross-section of a typical 1853 Sha Tau Kok shop unit, taken from the drawings and descriptions of the Basel missionaries, in P.H. Hase, \"The Alliance of Ten\", in D. Faure and H. Siu, eds, Down to Earth, op. cit., and see also P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n59 D. Faure, A. Ng, B. Luk, eds, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280\n\n60 The Hong Kong Museum of History has a set of Po Tau equipment\n\n61 Julonghaiguan Barman Dashiji, op. cit., sub anno.\n\n62 P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n63 The Tai Po to Sha Yue Chung Ferry was also deeply involved in this trade. In 1939, the Customs came to an agreement with Tsang Sang, the leader of the guerrillas controlling the eastern side of Mirs Bay, that the Customs would treat as duty-free goods anything imported through Sha Yue Chung for the guerrilla fight against the Japanese, but, while this trade was, therefore, not smuggling, it still faced major problems from Japanese attack.\n\n64 Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong, 1899, printed by Noronha & Co, Government Printers, (Sessional Papers), \"Extracts from Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong. Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor: Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong\" (No. 9 of 1899), p. 190, notes this boatyard as a significant business in 1898.\n\n65 \"Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart\" (Sessional Papers, 1899), op. cit., p. 189\n\n66 For the Sha Tau Kok Branch Railway, see R.J. Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990, pp. 84-93\n\n67 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1925. I am indebted to Mr. J. Lanham for drawing my attention to this description.\n\n68 For the first two of these tablets see Faure, Ng, and Luk, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280, and Vol. 2, pp. 376-379. The third is unpublished, and is now at the Hong Kong Museum of History.\n\n69 A further, small, boatyard was at Kat Om in 1912: see Oime Report, op. cit., para. 76, p. 55\n\n70 See, for instance, details on shops in Sai Kung in D. Faure, \"Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 22, 1982, pp. 161-216, on Tsuen Wan in D. Faure, \"Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 24, 1984, pp. 46-104, and on Cheung Chau in J.W. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213161, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "My friend, Mr. Lee Yuen Tsaan, was born in Heung Shan, China, opposite to Macau, in December 1903. This, coincidentally, was also the birth place of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (alias Suen Chung Shan), who graduated in 1892 from the Hong Kong College of Medicine. After his death the name, Heung Shan, was changed to Chung Shan in memory of Dr Sun.\n\nMr Lee told me, as a boy, he enjoyed life in the village of Haang Mei (meaning ‘constantly beautiful”), which had a population of about 2,000. It was a single-lineage village. Every person had the surname ‘Lee’. He recalled living close to a stream with running water which contained shrimps. He is proud that his father was the first Christian in the village where he was known as ‘Christian Kwoon-hor’ (his given name on marriage). He had been baptised in Australia where he lived when he was young.\n\nXenophobic disturbances, such as the anti-foreigner Boxer Uprising in 1900, sometimes created waves of people who had been associated with western firms on the Mainland. These Chinese often felt it prudent to move to Hong Kong. Others went there just because it was a better place to do business.\n\nIn a speech to students at Hong Kong University, in 1923, Sun the Revolutionary contrasted the peace, law and order and good government of the British Colony with the backwardness and corruption of China.\n\nUntil after World War II, there were no immigration restrictions when travelling from the Mainland to the British Territory. Many Chinese looked upon it as little more than moving from one part of China to another.\n\nThe Lee family moved to Hong Kong, from Heung Shan, in 1987, when the population of the Colony was just over half a million. Although electric fans started to replace punkas as early as the late 1890s, when young Lee arrived in Hong Kong some punkas could still be seen. For instance in offices, schools and barbers shops. Electric fans were expensive and coolie labour (to pull the punkas) was cheap,’ Mr. Lee explained.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213163, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "213\n\nme. 'She sacrificed to have me well educated,'\n\nLater the young Lee returned to China, to attend the Canton Christian College, later renamed 'Lingnan'. He came back to Hong Kong every year by tram or ship, on holiday, at Christmas and for the summer. In Canton, he mixed with his American missionary teachers. He did not meet Europeans much in Hong Kong. A photograph in Mr Lee's home shows him, as a teenager, in a Chinese tunic buttoned up at the neck. There is also a group photograph of him as an American Army Cadet, taken in 1921. 'We used to drill,' he explained.\n\nHe recalls that he saw Sun Yat Sen, dubbed the 'George Washington of China', once when he visited Lingnan.\n\n'While attending the college we played basketball, soccer, volleyball and tennis,' Mr. Lee told me. He did not care much for the Chinese game of tek in (kicking the shuttlecock).\n\nOn completion of his Lingnan course, in 1922, he sailed on the *President Grant* for the United States to further his studies. There he befriended several 'Boxer Scholars'.\n\nResulting from the Boxer Uprising, China had to pay reparations for the damage done to Western buildings and for the Europeans murdered. These amounted to nearly a thousand million taels, repaid over 39 years. Later, however, to repay partly this large sum, the Americans, and later the British government, established a 'Boxer Indemnity' fund. The money was used for Chinese to study overseas. Most Boxer Scholars were sons of Nationalist Government officials. Boxer Scholars received tuition fees, board and lodgings and other benefits free of charge. They even received free spectacles,' Mr Lee exclaimed.\n\nThe young Lee studied chemistry at the University of Washington. He enjoyed it there, where he was boarded out with the Jacobs family. He completed the four-year course in 1926. Once his mother went to the States, by ship, for a visit. 'She did not speak English. It was too difficult for her to come and see me,' Mr Lee told me.\n\nHe came back to Hong Kong in 1927, when things had returned to normal in the Colony after the General Strike of 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213203, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "4\n\nincluded (CO129/414, p. 177).\n\nThe three German females in the 1921 census are mentioned in a report Canon Bannister sent to the Church Missionary Society in 1914. The Berlin Foundling House had 150 children and the two Blind Homes had 120 children. \"The Government has allowed three German ladies to remain in each home and the writer was asked to take general oversight”, (Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham, England, CH1/P/4 No. 149, Bannister, 5 Nov. 1914).\n\nThe German community gradually reestablished itself in Hong Kong, but in 1931 it was less than half of what it had been in 1911.\n\nHong Kong being a British colony, the British were the largest non-Chinese community. Next was the Macanese-Portuguese. The third were the Germans. They were followed by the Americans,\n\nGermans in the Canton trade\n\nGerman-speaking merchants participated in the China trade in the eighteenth century. The trade was confined to Canton. In 1729, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Austria, chartered the Imperial East India Company to trade in the East using the port of Ostend in the Netherlands as its home base. At that time Netherlands was a part of the Austrian Empire. This company did not use German ships, but chartered British vessels which were principally manned by British crews. This was a stratagem to get around the efforts of the British chartered East India Company to control the European trade with China. Over the years there were usually two or three ships each season from Bremen or Hamburg arriving at Canton.\n\nBritish free traders used the protection of the office of Consul for foreign states to acquire the privilege of permanent residence in China. These free traders were large importers of opium of India, a trade the British East India Company ships did not engage in as it was prescribed by Chinese Imperial Edict and the company wished to maintain a good relation with the Dragon Throne. It feared that if it was too closely identified with the opium trade the Chinese authorities would curtail the company's lucrative and traditional trade in tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213217, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "18\n\nbegan her long association as the wife of Mr. Petersen, the proprietor of the German Tavern.\n\nAfter his death she was left with several small children and by the year 1904 was married to R.A. Matthaey. He became bankrupt in February 1907, having operated the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon since 1904. His wife in October 1907 opened the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road in the building formerly occupied by Thomas' Hotel. By November 1909 she had become Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann must have lost his case against Mrs. Uschmann as from 1911 to 1914 R.A. Uschmann was the licensee of the Station Hotel at Nos. 11 and 13 Nathan Road. The hotel was closed during the war but in November 1919 Mrs. Louisa Jane Stewart Brown applied for a spirit licence. In 1921 her name is replaced by Mrs. A.B. Sanderson Smith. A summary of the history of the Station Hotel was published in the South China Morning Post at the time of its closure in 1931. The proprietors Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson Smith closed it at the end of March after it had been in existence some twenty years.\n\nTwo houses on Nathan Road were occupied as residences when purchased by the Procurator of the Dominican Mission in 1908. In the following year Mrs. Uschmann established a boarding house. Then an annex in the rear facing Hankow Road was purchased by the Dominicans. Mr. J. Sanderson Smith arrived in Hong Kong in 1921 and married Mrs. Uschmann. In my opinion, the account is incorrect in stating he married Mrs. Uschmann. I conclude from the evidence presented above that he married Miss Petersen, the daughter of Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann, though he lost in his attempt to stop competition in the German hotel trade, continued offering hospitality to them until the outbreak of the First World War. Before that, he had applied for British nationality but he had not yet received it. In considering the treatment to be given to enemy aliens, the Provost Marshall recommended that special consideration be given to Mr. Reichmann. He had been a valuable source of information to the British military authorities and was considered to be of value in keeping tabs on what was happening in the German community. However, events overtook the recommendation as soon after, almost all the Germans in the colony were either interned or deported. (CO129/413 - information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on List, 8 Oct. 1914) The list of spirit licensees for November 1914 states that Mr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213220, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "21\n\neconomic growth of the colony \"While naturally trading for their own benefit, they think that they may justly claim to have contributed in no small way to the development, growth of prosperity of the Colony, and in their capacity as peaceful traders they consider themselves and their businesses a valuable asset to the community It has taken decades of hard work to create such an asset which they consider particularly valuable to the Colony since they have as impartial traders been instrumental to a great extent in attracting to this part business from all quarters of the globe thereby promoting British trade more than that of any other nation.\" As reasonable as this argument might seem to those who could differentiate between trade and politics, it found no sympathetic response among those who were responsible for the defence of the island and the patriotic call of God and King (CO129/144, p.573 No.520005)\n\nThe letter was signed by the following firms with the date of their founding:\n\nSiemssen and Co. 1848\n\nArnhold, Karberg and Co. 1865\n\nMelcher and Co. 1866\n\nSander, Wiele and Co.\n\nF. Blackhead and Co. 1854\n\nReuter, Brockelmann and Co. 1846\n\nGarrels, Borner and Co. 1860\n\nWilliam Meyerink and Co. 1889\n\nCarlowitz and Co. 1866\n\nDeutsche-Asiatische Bank 1900\n\nCarl Bodiker and Co. 1860\n\nRaderkers and Co. 1868\n\nThe Medical Hall 1853\n\nJebsen and Co. 1894\n\nBerblinger and Co. 1908\n\nBume and Reif 1905.\n\nFerd. Bornemann and Co, 1888\n\nKruse and Co 1868\n\nC.M. Schellhass\n\nHans Schubart\n\nG. Prien 1880\n\nUlerup and Schluter 1905\n\nChina Export Import and Bank Compagnie 1856\n\nCharles J. Gaupp 1859", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213252, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "53\n\nGerman Firms and Insurance Agents\n\nNine German firms subscribed to the Ross Testimonial Fund in 1880. Mr. William Ross was the head of the Volunteer Fire Brigade and had suffered severe injuries in December 1879 in fighting a fire. Upon his release from hospital some ten months later the insurance companies of Hong Kong raised a fund for him to show their appreciation. Among the subscribers were Arnhold, Karberg and Co., agents for Lancashire Insurance Co.; Garlowitz and Co. agents for Hamburg Bremen Fire Co.; Melchers and Co. agents for North German Fire Insurance Co. and Royal Insurance Co.; Meyer and Co. agents for Prussian National Insurance Co. in Stettin; Pustau and Co. agents for Fire Insurance Co. of 1887 of Hamburg and the General Life and Fire Assurance Co.; Sander and Co., agents for Hamburg-Magdeburg Fire Insurance Co.; Scheele and Co. agent for Lubeck Fire Insurance Co.; Eduard Schellhass and Co. agents for Hanseatic Fire Insurance Co.; and Siemssen and Co. agent for Transatlantic Fire Insurance Co. (HKT 3 Oct. 1880)\n\nSteamship Lines\n\nWilliam Pustau and Co. was appointed in 1848 an agent of the Austrian Lloyd Steam Navigation Co. The route was from Trieste to Alexandria, then by land to Aden on the Red Sea where the traveller could connect with the P. and O. Line to Galle in Ceylon (FC 5 Dec. 1848). In 1886 the German Lloyd Steamship Co. opened an office in Hong Kong. In 1914 it and the Hamburg Amerika Line had Hong Kong offices.\n\nInternment of Germans in 1914\n\nWar declared between Britain and Germany on 5 August 1914. A few days later the Hong Kong Government placed enemy aliens under parole. They were restricted to certain areas and had to report to the police at stated times. This arrangement was not sufficiently tight to satisfy Major George F.H. Kelly, the Officer Commanding British Forces in Hong Kong. He saw the German residents of Hong Kong as a distinct threat to the speedy end to the war. He conveyed this opinion to the Governor of Hong Kong.\n\n\"I look upon every German, man or woman, at large in the Colony, as a potential factor for evil, and possibly for prolonging the war", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213253, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "54 \n\nThere is little doubt they spread rumours and not unnaturally do what they can to incite the Chinese and Indians against us. The proximity of Macao, Canton and Coast ports make it easy for them to get information out of the Colony and home to Germany. Money remittances can be made with very little arrangement from Shanghai and Manila. They go on taking the trade which the present war gives an opportunity of British firms to take hold of. Their presence renders it necessary to take more elaborate precautions in guarding all important places.\n\nPersonally, I should not be sorry to see all fit for service made prisoners of war” (CO129/413, Kelly to May 5 Oct 1914)\n\nHe had not long to wait for an order for internment was issued the last week of October. This action was taken when Germany issued a call-up of their military and naval reserves.\n\nAll Germans in Hong Kong on the reserve list were sent to Stonecutters Island. Soon after they were moved to Hung Hom Bay.\n\nThis move was made before the Hung Hom site was fully ready to receive the internees. The mat huts had dirt floors and were open to the elements. The presence of mosquitoes posed the threat of malaria. The internees were put to work sweeping streets and performing other manual tasks. Word seeped back to Germany that the internees were being treated badly. Through official channels the Germans contacted the Americans, the American Consul in turn contacted the British to ask if the representations made by the Germans were accurate. The Consul was taken to the Camp for an escorted inspection and found conditions satisfactory. One can appreciate the situation of the internees, mostly well-fed, well-cared-for, comfortably-situated merchants before they were caught up in the tides of global politics and swept into the crude conditions of a hastily-built camp for enemy aliens. The contrast between their large well-staffed homes and abundant meals prepared for their individual tastes and the primitive shelters and an institutional British-style mess must have been difficult to adapt to overnight. After two years the internees were moved to Australia.\n\nThose above military service age, wives and children were deported to Shanghai or Manila, the former under international control, the latter under American administration.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213254, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "55\n\nThere were two attempts to escape from the Hung Hom Bay Camp. The first try was made by five prisoners. They were assigned to build a platform for concerts. The platform was near the barbed wire fence. It provided a shelter for them to tunnel to freedom and a storage place for the earth removed during their digging. Under cover of darkness, five crept through the tunnel; however, the last of the group was spotted by a sentry, who shouted the usual \"Halt or I shoot\". The escapee kept on going, and the sentry shot. The bullet hit the bag the prisoner was carrying, containing some of his gear, so he escaped injury, but he was overtaken and captured. Shortly after, another of the escaped internees was found in the hills of the New Territories. Several days later, the remaining three were rounded up near Sai Kung.\n\nSome time after this incident, another man arranged to accompany two other prisoners on a visit to a dentist in the Hong Kong Hotel. The dentist was only expecting two patients. He took these two into his surgery; one was to serve as an interpreter for the other. The third man, who had somehow arranged to come along, was left in the waiting room with a guard. He informed the guard he must go to the toilet. The guard accompanied him there; however, he did not go into the toilet as he wished to keep his eye on both the door of the dentist and the door of the toilet to ensure that none of his three prisoners escaped. The man in the toilet was able to escape through a window, but he was caught the same night and returned to the camp.\n\nThe patriotism aroused by war stirred up in a British colony much doubt, distrust of old friends, ill will, and harsh words. The clubs passed resolutions excluding enemy aliens; the ties of former friendship were severely strained and, in many cases, broken. Many in the Colony who frequently passed the former premises of the Deutsche Asiatische Bank on Queens Road, not far from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, were irritated by the continuing presence of the Prussian double-eagled ensign, an architectural feature of the building. Many indignant letters appeared in the correspondence column of the newspapers before the emblem was finally removed.\n\nSince my delivery of the talk upon which this paper is based, Anne Selby has published a well-researched article in the South China Morning Post on 25 June, 1988, entitled \"When Germans were unwelcome in HK\". She used many of the same sources as I have used in the Public Records Office. I would refer interested readers to her article for information I have not included in my account.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213331, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "135\n\nreminded us that \"at that time few places in the Far East had offered the political stability and religious tolerance of the Colony\". He also told us that the name of Bethanie was chosen after \"Bethany village\" of the Holy Scripture, and the inscription above the main entrance, Domine ecce quem amas infirmatio (Lord, he whom Thou lovest lies sick - John III) is part of the message sent to Jesus by Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus became sick\n\nAnd from the start there were sick missionaries in abundance In 1884, for instance, 43 missionaries had stayed at the sanitarium for some time.1 Our visit that day was memorable. It showed us another, broader side of British Hong Kong, and I have never forgotten it.\n\nChatwan and Shaukeiwan, May 1983\n\nThis visit was of a different kind, and focussed on Hong Kong people and on important new public works. As a serving government officer, I used my opportunities to combine old and new on RAS tours, showing our members what was being done in the way of new civil engineering projects of public housing development, for instance, and providing facts and answering questions about them. The Chatwan visit was one which combined these aims admirably\n\nOn a warm May day, we left Queen's Pier in Central District by a licensed passenger boat which took us along the Hong Kong Island waterfront as far as Chatwan On the way - the reason for our going by sea we were able to view the engineering and construction work proceeding along the length of the new \"Hong Kong Island Eastern Corridor\". This modern highway, with its several reclamations, elevated sections of carriage way, slip roads, and grade-separated junctions and interchanges, would link Chaiwan and Eastern Hong Kong Island with the Central Business District. It was intended to ameliorate, if not solve, the long-standing congestion and delays on the existing roadways which had reached saturation point.\n\nAt Chatwan we went by coach to Tai Ping Village, one of the last remaining of the extensive squatter settlements that used to cover practically the whole of the area in the mid-1950s Next to it was a new Urban Council swimming pool complex with its main and six other pools, completed in 1978 We then went to the site earmarked for the new Eastern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213439, "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-1995", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The New Territories were leased from China for 99 years from 1st July 1898. Then followed the New Territories Order in Council of 20th October 1898, by clause 1 of which those territories were declared to be\n\n\"part and parcel of the Colony of Hong Kong in like manner and for all intents and purposes as if they had originally formed part of the said Colony.\n\nBy Clause 3 of the same Order-in-Council it was ordered that, from a date to be fixed by the Proclamation of the Governor, all laws and Ordinances which should on that date be in force in the Colony should take effect also in the New Territories. The laws in force in the Colony of Hong Kong at that date were such of the laws of England as existed on the 5th April 1843,\n\n\"except so far as the said laws are inapplicable to the local circumstances of the Colony or of its inhabitants.\n\n718\n\nand local Ordinances modifying the laws of England in force on 5th April 1843.\" The Secretary of State instructed the Governor in a despatch dated 6th January 1899-\n\n\"On the principle that the new territory shall be taken to be and so far as possible be treated as an integral part of the Colony, it is desirable that as many of the existing laws of Hongkong as are applicable to its circumstances should be at once applied, the administration of the laws being carried out with tact, discretion, and sympathy with native custom and prejudice\n\n+++\n\nA week before the British flag was hoisted at Taipo and the territories were taken over from the Chinese authorities the Governor, Sir Henry A. Blake, issued a Proclamation which included this passage:-\n\n\"I would also impress upon you that this territory having been leased by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China to Her Britannic Majesty the Queen, as subjects of Her Majesty's Empire, your commercial and landed interests will be safeguarded, and that your usages and good customs will not in any way be interfered with.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213496, "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-1995", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "60\n\nThe second hypothesis, on the other hand, is held by a few western historians. Writing in the 1930s, H.G. Jarrett claimed that:\n\n\"The Army was hard put to it finding suitable quarters for some time after the occupation of Hong Kong and the move from West Point was not made until some three or four years after the founding of the Colony in 1841. As the arrival of large numbers of soldiers and their quartering in matshed barracks (which the chronicles tell us were erected in the western part of the town) would naturally impress the Chinese and we easily see the connection between this encampment and the vernacular name, which, if any indication were needed, definitely established the area where the first barracks went up.\" (Jarrett, 1933-5, P.23)\n\nG. R. Sayer also said that:\n\n\"The latter (barrack) is known for obvious reasons as West Point and is destined to provide the name Sai Ying Pun, the Western Encampment to a large district of the town.\" (Sayer, 1937, P.99)\n\nOne way or the other, one thing is sure that the place name Sai Ying Pun was not provided by the British when they first arrived at Hong Kong in 1841. The reasons are not difficult to furnish.\n\nFirst, when the British first came to Hong Kong, they were not accustomed to naming the places in Chinese terms. For example, the British gave out names like Queenstown, East Point, Belcher's Bay. The British even cared to rename places like Shek Pai Wan as Aberdeen and Chek Chu as Stanley. There was no reason why the British had to name an area with only a few establishments as Sai Ying Pun. As a matter of fact, the British named the place West Point Barrack since the place was situated at the western extreme point of the British occupation at that time.\n\nSecondly, there are too many variations in the name Sai Ying Pun used by the British themselves to make us believe that the place was named by the British. If Sai Ying Pun is an original English place name, variation in the spelling of the words would not have existed. In early Government Gazettes, the place was called Sy-ing-poon. In an early city plan of Victoria, the district was named Sei Ying Poon. In G. R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213646, "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-1995", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "218\n\nThe book is a remarkably accurate and sensitive account of life as a public servant in the Colony of Hong Kong (this term with its perceived pejorative overtones was de-emphasised in the eighties in favour of Territory; Now, of course, we have become a Region) in the decades after the Second World War. Hong Kong in the fifties, when James arrived, was far from what we know it to be today: still recovering from the ravages and privations of the Japanese occupation; swamped with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war and subsequent revolution in China; tuberculosis and other diseases rampant; people living from hand to mouth; the squatter areas - the list of maladies could go on. Amongst other things which come out vividly in this book is how well Hong Kong has done. There has always been a tendency amongst Westerners to compare the worst in Hong Kong with the best elsewhere, which is unfair. Hong Kong has had more than its share of problems but now has the money to minimise them. In the fifties and sixties, the wealth was simply not there.\n\nThe author came to Hong Kong as a “Cadet”, the rather noisome name given to members of the Administrative Service. As such, in James' words, he “…belonged to a grade of the civil service that was generalist in nature, whose members were moved around, filling middle and upper level posts in key departments and in the Government Secretariat.’ The Administrative Service is a proud, elite force which produces most of Hong Kong's public sector leaders but it is often criticised for this 'Jack of all trades, master of none' mentality; its members being likened by its more vocal critics to 'lighthouses in the desert' (brilliant but useless). This is going altogether too far. Like all organs of Government, the Service has had its share of incompetents, but James was demonstrably not one of them.\n\nJames also accurately describes the ethos in post-war Hong Kong and how it has evolved. Many, if not most, expatriates existed in small, enclosed, expatriate ‘rings’, almost completely cut off from the real Hong Kong. It was rather like living in a cocoon. To the modern-day observer, this lack of contact, other than professional, between the main ethnic groups seems amazing. But when you get down to it, have things changed that much? There was also, at any rate below the surface, a fair amount of racism, parochialism and delusions of grandeur around. It has been said more than once that many allegedly competent and successful, and certainly senior, British Hong Kong civil servants", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213762, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "85\n\nX\n\n\"J\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1913, pages N13-17, 1914, pages N12-N13, 1915, pages O18-O19, 1916, pages 15-06-1917 page 07-1918, page 09, 1919, page O10, 1920, pages O15, O21, O29-O30, 1927, pages O17-4, O16, O22-O23, O33-O34. Scholarships were offered from these aided village schools to the Government schools in the New Territories, and from the Government schools in the New Territories to those in the City, although very few were taken up in the first few years.\n\nSee RJ Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, (Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990), and Administrative Reports for the Year 1910, page R6, 1911, page R1. In 1911, the Sha Tau Kok light railway was opened only as far as Shek Chung Au. The extension of the light railway to Sha Tau Kok came in 1912.\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1910, pages P34-35, 1911, pages P40-41, 1912, page P51, 1913, pages 186-88, 1914, page P85-86, 1915, pages Q94-96, 1916, pages Q77-78, 1917, pages Q88-90, 1918, pages Q81-85, 1919, pages Q53-55, 1920, pages Q64-65, and 1927, pages Q77-78. A programme to build 6 to 8 feet wide footpaths/bridle paths had been begun in the New Territories in 1899. The footpath from Kowloon to Tai Po was completed in 1902, and that from Castle Peak Bay to Au Tau in 1911. The section from Au Tau to Fanling was completed (except for the bridge at Au Tau) by the end of 1914. No path was built between Castle Peak Bay and Sham Shui Po, or between Tai Po and Fanling in this period.\n\nThis footpath construction programme does not seem to have affected traditional village life significantly, although the District Officer felt the new footpaths had made the work of patrolling and administering the New Territories easier. However, the only specific use the District Office noted for the new footpaths, other than by Government officials, was by cattle drivers sending animals to the City for slaughter. The footpaths were \"justified by administrative and military needs” (the Orme Report, pages 30, 32-33, 36). The New Territories circular road was an upgrading of these earlier footpaths, where they existed, but included new construction where the earlier footpaths were lacking.\n\nPapers Land Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers), printed by Noronha and Co., Government Printers, Hong Kong, No. 9, \"Extracts From Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong, Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor. Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong,\" p. 187, remarks that, in 1899, the steamers from Hong Kong to Macao called intermittently at Cheung Chau. The Orme Report, op. cit., mentions that steam ferries from Cheung Chau used to carry the fish catch to Hong Kong early in the morning (para 65). See also Administrative Reports for the Year 1913, page J12, 1915, page J9, 1916, page J12, 1919, page J12, 1922, page J12.\n\n1 Including the choice of Cheung Chau as a place to spend weekends and the summer by numbers of European families, mostly missionaries from Canton. This began in a very small way in 1912, but only became a major feature from 1918. In 1919, a “European reservation” was formed, and a small year-round resident European community with an Assembly Hall and a 10-hole golf-course had become established by 1921. Administrative Reports for the Year 1912, page J13, 1914, page J11, 1915, page J10, 1917, page J11, 1918, page J11, 1920, page J12, 1921, page J13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213793, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "116\n\nIn the case of the New Territories, he observes that it was to a large extent introduced from outside and was in this process filtered downwards from the richer to the poorer villages over four centuries.\" According to Faure, such a pattern can be found in other parts of China, for example, a study of Anhui province shows that contemporary opinions before the Ming merely saw lineages as 'living together generation after generation', while Ming opinions show that from the sixteenth century onwards, ancestral halls became much more common, that written genealogies of the format advocated by Song dynasty proponents became more popular, and that the ancestral rites that the neo-Confucians considered fitting for the common people came to be accepted practice.\"\n\nOne is tempted to postulate that the worship conducted by lay descendants, of ancestors as ideally imperial degree holders / officials, was a practice adopted in the period when new ordination names ceased to be included in Hakka genealogies, and the new practice replaced the worship of ancestors as ideally immortals/ magicians, sometimes conducted by religious experts.\n\nThe same period may have seen other changes in village culture as the result of the adoption of what for convenience's sake can be called \"Confucian\" attitudes which probably come together with the new style of ancestral worship associated with claims of descent from official/scholars. Although a thorough test would take a separate article, this hypothesis helps to explain the mystery of the Mountain Songs often associated with the Hakka. It is a well-received idea deriving mainly from study of the texts of such songs and folklore studies under the influence of anti-Confucianism that, violating the \"Confucian ethic\", pre- and extra-marital love affairs are common among the Hakka. But as I have pointed out, among the indigenous Hakka people of the New Territories Mountain Songs were far less commonly sung than one would expect. My general impression is that Mountain Songs were more popular among the Hakka worker immigrant to the British colony than among indigenous Hakka villagers. Information about Mountain Songs in the village Luk Keng indicates that the lineage leaders who upheld a version of Confucian morality did manage to stop their womenfolk...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213826, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "151\n\nTHE HOUWANG CULT AND\n\nTUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE\n\nHON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO'\n\nWhile the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded.\n\nTung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages\n\nSituated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on\n\nPl", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213870, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "196\n\nEuropeans believed that Africa belonged to tribes and power should be distributed among \"tribal chiefs\", so Africans constructed tribes to which to belong. Europeans believed that India belonged to religious groups and that chairs for direct election should be distributed to separate religious groups, so India became polarized along Muslim and Hindu lines, and eventually divided into Pakistan and India.\n\nIn colonies which were overwhelmingly Chinese, Malaya and Hong Kong, for instance, British administrators were struck by the fact that the Chinese had no nationalism toward the respective colony: the British feared that Malaya would be colonized by Chinese settlers and would one day be part of China. Because of a similar fear, Singapore was excluded from Malaysia.\n\nUnlike the cases of India and Africa, the concept of nationhood is readily available in China. Chinese settlers carried the concept along with them to the colonies. As a consequence, British rule in the overseas Chinese communities always faced enormous challenges which were exported from China. One of these challenges occurred at the turn of this century, when the concept of “China” and the method to present one's \"chineseness\" underwent very dramatic changes. The narrative of these changes went something like this: a Manchu China was overthrown by revolutionaries and then a Republican China was stolen by warlords. Before the Guomindang successfully promoted their ideology based upon the cult of Sun Yat-sen and unified China in 1927, China had already disintegrated into competitive regional powers. The overseas Chinese, linked to different competing groups, were drawn into this political arena in China. Their involvement was manifold. This short article deals with one aspect of this involvement - political investment in regional politics. It attempts to illustrate three points.\n\nI) The Guomindang ideology of a Chinese Republic based upon the legend of Sun was absent in this period of time. With or without this ideology, China was a political landscape with layers of national and regional networks\n\n2) British colonists commanded some, but not the final, authority over the colonial Chinese. To the overseas Chinese, the political arena that commanded their attention and participation was not in the colony, but in China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213879, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "205\n\ndifferent parts of China As the Manchu government was drumming up a \"commercial war\" between Chinese and foreign enterprises, overseas Chinese merchants were targeted by Beijing as a source of wealth for new industries.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the first groups of Hong Kong Chinese to respond to this reform were a group of newly returned migrants of Siyi and Xiangshan origins. They returned from America and Australia, where exclusion policies against Chinese immigrants had been implemented during the 1890s. Once settled in Hong Kong, they found themselves left outside the established leadership hierarchy in the colony (the Legislative Council-Tung Wah circle). They had to vest their interests in other institutions They looked northward and, immediately, they saw hope in China, where the late Qing reforms offered them ample chances for political and economic advancement. The Governor recalled with contempt the composition of the Siyi Chamber.\n\n[It is] composed of Californian and Australian coolies, artisans who though [they] could often talk fair English, could not write their names in any language\n\nThanks to this rhetoric of \"commercial war\", these overseas returned migrants penetrated into south China. They formed themselves into regional chambers of commerce and through which they raised capital for such large-scale investments as railways, public utilities and land reclamation in Guangdong. Among others, these enterprises included a Siyi Steamship Company, a Sunning (of Siyi) Railway Company and two companies, with respectively 500,000 and 580,000 silver taels in capital, for “port-building” against Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong. With the approval of the Qing government, these two port-building companies initiated two large-scale port and market development schemes in Siyi and Xiangshan which were intended to recover benefits lost to Hong Kong and Macau. The channel that these merchants went through was the following, the chambers of commerce submitted petitions to the Commissioner of Industrial Promotion and thence to the Bureau of Commerce in Beijing\n\nConservative in design, this late Qing reform led to revolutionary consequences. Among these policies of centralization was Beijing's attempt to nationalize economic resources in the provinces. It was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213883, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "209\n\nmembers of the Alumni Association. All of them had at one time or another worked as compradores for foreign firms; the two Eurasian families, Ho Tung and Lo Changzhao (E) had almost monopolized the compradoral posts of Jardines and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank up to the 1940s. Liu Zhubo, He and Lo's sons were at one time or another appointed Legislative Councillors of the Colony. When the First World War broke out in Europe, these three partners contributed a huge sum of money to the British Government for the purchase of an aeroplane. The plane, as requested by the donors, was named \"Da You Bank of Hong Kong\".\n\nThe wealth of this western-educated group did not derive from the joint-stock company. They owned their own native bank despite the fact that they were compradores in western firms. It seems likely that this was an attempt to avoid the disclosure of financial accounts as required by the company ordinance. As these Eurasian families monopolized the compradoral posts of many of the foreign firms, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, it is highly likely that capital was transferred between their accounts in the compradore offices and those in their private businesses.\n\nAs they had exclusive access to capital, they did not rely on a capital market in the same way as the overseas returning migrants did, though we cannot tell whether this capital market was governed by the invisible hand of the economy or the invisible hand of political intimidation, as the governor suggested.\n\nFollowing the example of the Siyi men, Hong Kong-born, western-educated groups participated in the political arena in China. In 1913, the Governor reported to the Colonial Office that \"several leading Chinese\" in Hong Kong had informed him that they would welcome the reorganization of the administration of the Canton Province under \"tactful and conscientious British supervision.\"\n\nAccording to Liu Zhubo's proposal, a loan of 25,000,000 taels was to be raised in Hong Kong to redeem unsecured currency in Canton. In return, Liu requested of the Beijing Government the privilege of establishing a central bank in Guangdong \"with a monopoly of the Provincial Government business\". To guarantee the smooth functioning of this arrangement, Liu suggested \"inviting the Government of Hong Kong\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213973, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "7\n\n(f) their relationship with the departments of Government and with each other; and,\n\n(g) the degree of control which ought to be exercised by the central Government, having regard to the Letters Patent and Royal Instructions\n\nThe wording reflects close secretariat scrutiny of what some thought to be, if not dangerous, then courageous thinking; there should be care not to conflict with established institutions, there should be no derogation from the existing constitution, and the word 'selection' reassured those who feared politically partisan votes. Public criticism of this was immediately heard, upon reading the related press release, from some of the members of the Urban Council who were jealous for their own prerogatives. The Urban Council, little changed from the Sanitary Board created in Queen Victoria's reign, was mainly responsible for environmental public health, recreation & amenities, and provision of cultural services in Hong Kong Island, Kowloon & New Kowloon; it had 12 members appointed by the Governor, and 12 elected on a single limited but anomalously colony-wide franchise (embracing ratepayers and members of 23 qualifying categories of sane, non-bankrupt adults of 21 or over with three years' residence), with a small number of senior official members. It provided excellent services through the Urban Services Department (USD), but its freedom of speech on matters outside its purview gave it a mixed reputation in some powerful circles.\n\nThe membership of the working party consisted of administrative officers from the middle ranks, considered \"promising\" but not yet authoritative. They were a contract officer with much local government experience in eastern Nigeria and Uganda, an officer with happy experience in the USD and of the Urban Council; the most senior Chinese officer, who had served with the British Army Aid Group against the Japanese and now worked in the SCA; and two other expatriates with various past postings including the NTA. Like Dickinson, all continued to perform their current duties, and remained surprised that with his determination they covered so much ground of consultation and discussion and (under pressure from leave entitlements) reported as relatively promptly as they did; that was on 23 November 1966, by which time the Cultural Revolution was spilling", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213976, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "In the developed areas the working party had its own preferences, but diplomatically decided to let higher authority decide on detail. The general intention was to set up what would be known in the conurbations as Municipal Councils or (minor) Urban District Councils (UDC), and elsewhere as District (or Local) Councils. This might, as the Governor-in-Council chose to decide, produce a Municipal Council for Hong Kong Island and a District Council for the non-urban area, with Aberdeen joining either or becoming a separate UDC; one or two Municipal Councils for Kowloon and New Kowloon; a UDC for Tsuen Wan; and no other change for the NT (but possibly three District Councils one day, where currently the DOS Tai Po, Yuen Long and South held sway.) All would be elected from geographical wards, and not from area-wide rating or electoral rolls; and by preference from single-member wards, with one-third retiring by annual rotation. All these Councils could form Joint Committees with each other, and perhaps have a Joint Consultative Council to co-ordinate their relations with Central Government. It was all deliberately tentative: junior officers must not seem to be handing up tablets of stone.\n\nThe possibility of public apathy (already much noticed in relation to the existing Urban Council), and the dangers of encouraging the involvement of external party politics, led to cautious suggestions that in the first instance whatever overseeing body the Government would assign to this field (doubtless a new branch of the secretariat, if not an amalgamation of the SCA and the NTA) might nominate members to leaven the elected majority; a proportion of 1:3, or in the last resort 2:3, was proposed. For the franchise, while considering adult suffrage as a distinct possibility, the prudent recommendation was for all men and women and their spouses over 21 to enjoy the vote who owned, occupied or tenanted property on which rates were paid or of which the rent might be deemed to include a rating element; provided that they had three years' residence, and therefore a stake in the colony, British citizenship would not be required. Councillors should not be paid, to avoid the growth of a profession of politicians, but should be entitled to attendance allowances within a statutory limit to compensate for any loss of earnings; and they should appoint their own chairmen from any quarter.\n\nThe new Councils' potential powers and functions received close examination. From the start it was accepted that Hong Kong's central\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213981, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "The effective block was however contained in the Dickinson Report itself which, although signed unanimously, contained two Notes of Reservation by four of the six signatories. An undogmatic report in which only the chairman and one other seemed wholeheartedly to believe was easily left on one side.\n\nThe officer who admired the Urban Council subscribed to the spirit of the report but was unhappy with the possible division of the colony into as many as nine council areas within a single command span, without an intervening tier, in that tier he saw a future for a widened Urban Council, in the oversight of the fledglings. He preferred a gentle step by step evolution, taking into account Hong Kong's present lack of talent and expertise in administration, the need not to offend traditional institutions and loyalties, Chinese unfamiliarity with elections, and public suspicion of all uncharted changes. He did not co-ordinate his note with the other semi-dissenters.\n\nThe Chinese officer and the two with a general Hong Kong administrative background thought that the report provided a sound basis for citizen participation; but because of its reliance on the ballot box they doubted widespread public acceptance and goodwill, and whether it would attract the best candidates instead of unscrupulous or corrupt power-seekers. If the Urban Council could not attract heavy registration or electoral turn-outs, nor substantial numerical following among ordinary citizens (a picture which most of those who had never served with the USD recognised), how much less would the new authorities? They pointed to a recent UK National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO, in modern times absorbed into the public services trades union UNISON) submission recommending abolition of small local authorities and restriction of British local government to regional councils with policy powers only, thus giving wider executive powers to their officials, the union's members. This was bolstered by the Note of Reservation's confidence in a Chinese pattern of strong bureaucratic control disciplined by strict moral principles. They too therefore sought a step by step approach, through a preliminary more determined tapping and usage of the known valuable reserves of respected, able and public-spirited true community leaders who were, they said, at present rarely found among the government's nominated or appointed councils. They wished to see greater decentralisation of government departments (already implemented in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213985, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "20 years ago during the pre-historical period when the universe was created out of the 'great chaos'. Yau, a mythological character, is believed to have taught his people how to build crude bridges and construct huts.4 The latter were sometimes erected as 'nest-like' shelters in trees to afford better protection against wild animals. He built such a structure for his own mother. This, so some claim, marked the beginning of framed timber structures which led, naturally, to the erection of scaffolding. Yau Chao Shi's birthday is celebrated on the 19th day of the first Moon,\n\nDuring the Era of the Spring and Autumn Annals, about 500 years before Christ, a master builder, all-round craftsman and inventor, Lu Pan, who today remains the patron god of all workers in the building industry, is said to have brought into use more 'scientific methods' of scaffolding.7 Lu Pan was one of the first mortals to be raised to the level of a deity.\n\nOsmond Tiffany Junior, traveller and author, wrote during Hong Kong's first decade (the 1840s) as a British Colony:\n\n... before a house is commenced a staging of bamboo is erected and covered with matting. As the building rises the bamboo poles are run up story by story, the matting elevated, and the whole house completely protected from the glare of day until the last nail is driven.*\n\nAlthough one sometimes comes across a similar practice in Hong Kong today, when the substructure or a site is protected from the weather, with high-rise buildings such a shelter as Tiffany describes above is not generally practicable. Such a practice is, however, sometimes employed in Britain using steel scaffolding covered with tilts.\n\nToday, seemingly flimsy, 'low-technology' bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong, together with the agility and traditional skills of scaffolders, contrast markedly with the modern technology of multi-storey buildings. This invariably earns admiration in Hong Kong from both tourists and locals alike. Bamboo scaffolders have been aptly likened to spiders weaving their webs. Bamboo scaffolding may be considered as primitive without being old-fashioned, time-saving without being insecure, and economical without being impracticable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214115, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "152\n\nOn the publishing side a bimonthly newsletter as well as a reputable annual journal, which is highly thought of in academic circles, are produced. Other publications like occasional papers consisting of such topics as write-ups of symposia, and books like Hong Kong Going and Gone (1980) and Beyond the Metropolis (1995), have been, and are being published. A number of Branch members have also published on their own account and others have been decorated by Her Majesty the Queen for heritage related work and community service. In Her 1997 Official Birthday Honours' List, four RASHKB members were awarded the MBE and another the Queen's Police Medal.\n\nIn addition to several members serving in their own capacities on Government committees, such as the Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB), a number of RASHKB volunteers have assisted the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) with the grading of buildings. Also, the AMO and the RASHKB banded together to mount a four-month long exhibition, entitled Hong Kong Going and Gone, in 1995-96. The Branch has also helped the AMO by providing speakers as well as leaders of tour groups.\n\nPersonalities\n\nObviously the RAS, like most organisations, depends on people. When the Branch was first formed the then Governor, Sir John Davis (1844-48), frequently took the chair as a scholar of both literary and scientific achievement. He retired from Hong Kong a year after the Branch was established. On leaving the Colony Sir John resumed his China studies, founded a chair at Oxford University and died academically revered at 92 showing, yet again, that those interested in heritage are often a long-lived breed (Spurr 1995: 35).\n\nHe was followed by Governor Sir Samuel Bonham (1848-54) who believed the study of Chinese addled the brain, although he did allocate a room in the Supreme Court solely for the use of the RASHKB. But his successor, Governor Sir John Bowring (1854-59), when he chaired RAS meetings, always insisted on being addressed as Dr Bowring and not as \"Your Excellency\". Bowring was fluent in, or had a working knowledge or a book knowledge of upwards of 14 languages (Chambers 1969: 162). He had also spent five years as British Consul in Canton where he learned Chinese. One of his accomplishments was translating", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214119, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "156\n\nwhich came out at the end of the last century (about Europeans living in the Colony), that (Spurr 1995: 48):\n\nThere was no real pleasure, nothing but a heavy and pompous extravagance, with no return on the large sums fooled away, an outstanding ignorance of all the surroundings, the Chinese, their language and their ways, or even of the very place itself.\n\nYet, having said that, today, as in the past, many Europeans do come to Hong Kong and, during their stay, they do learn something about local history, and Chinese customs and culture. This need will no doubt continue. In such cases the RAS can help.\n\nIn addition, a number of scholars visit Hong Kong or write to the RASHKB from overseas. Information has been requested on the pre-World War II Fox Hunt, held at Fanling in the New Territories, details regarding past Hong Kong personalities and wildlife sightings, to give but a few examples.\n\nHong Kong can be proud of its religious tolerance, with regard to temples, ancestral halls and the like, and, when the British took over the New Territories in 1898, on a 99-year lease, they promised that Ching dynasty laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott 1958: 38). Consequently, unlike many territories occupied by more oppressive colonial powers, in spite of the British and the Chinese keeping largely apart, an affinity of sorts developed between the two races. Governor Sir John Bowring, too, who chaired RASHKB meetings in the 1850s, disliked weaning the Chinese away from their own religious beliefs and practices (Spurr 1995: 51). A fair amount of local culture has been retained in spite of westernisation and the passage of time.\n\nThis retention of local culture in the Territory means that, if scholars want to study \"things Chinese\" which are closer to customs of the old China, and to visit locations where fewer changes have taken place, they are more likely to come to Hong Kong (or go to Taiwan). Here old customs and the modern can be seen side by side. This is less likely to be the case in the People's Republic where much has been disrupted by the influences of Communism over the past half century, including such events as the devastating Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214330, "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-1998", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "152\n\nIn the next issue, there is again coverage of Chinese events and background. On 19 January 1861, two half-page illustrations show, \"The Peace with China - Reading the Treaty at Pekin\"27 and \"Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin.\"2\n\nA brief account of a lunch meeting between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung (the two signatories of the Convention of Peking) highlights what British readers would have perceived as the need for the geography lessons which Frederick Stewart was to introduce into the Hong Kong Government Central School by 1870,29 and which - by 1889 - his successor reported as increasingly being adopted into the Hong Kong Village Schools.30 (Prior to this, according to Stewart, there was no geography taught in Hong Kong's traditional Chinese schools.)31 Apparently, Prince Kung commented that until very recently he had not known, \"that India was merely a province of the British empire; they formerly believed Great Britain to be a very small island, the population of which was so large that more than half were obliged to live in ships.\"32 Even as late as 1902, some students in Hong Kong's \"Vernacular Schools\", influenced by a different set of political circumstances, were reported as being, “at the last examination ignorant that Hong Kong was a British Colony: a number hazarded the opinion that it belonged to Russia.”33\n\nIt seems that the withholding of geographical teaching and its content when given were both decisions coloured by politics, whether on the Chinese or the British side.\n\nIn spite of Prince Kung's tenuous respect for the British land mass, the Editor of The Illustrated London News, as published on 19 January 1861, felt that there was sufficient reason for the expression of cautious optimism for the solidity of the peace that had been won: \"There seems to be good grounds for believing that we have at length fairly impressed the Chinese Government with the necessity of good faith in their dealings with us, and a reasonable hope that the treaty will be rigorously observed, leading to an interesting feeling of good will and confidence between our people and the Chinese.\"\n\n34\n\nOn 26 January 1861, the view that the Chinese were now respecting their promises was supported by a full double page spread showing \"The Chinese Bringing to the British Headquarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling]35 as Compen-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214335, "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-1998", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "157\n\nhaving been graciously pleased to accept Looty, it forms one of the Royal collection of dogs. Looty is considered by everyone who has seen it the smallest and by far the most beautiful little animal that has appeared in this country.\"63\n\nWhile compassionating the plight of the prisoners and stirred by the brave example of Private Phipps of the King's Dragoon Guards, many British readers must have felt shock and dismay at the burning and looting of the Summer Palace. While many must have responded with particular interest to the information about China and the Chinese people which was being carried in British publications (including The Illustrated London News, discussed in this article), some must have ruefully contrasted and compared what was happening in China with English activities in Ireland and Scotland a century or more earlier.\n\nFollowing the sustained, detailed and circumstantial coverage of Chinese affairs and British interventions in China at this time, of which The Illustrated London News gives us a taste, it is not surprising that when advertisements for “A Gentleman of suitable Literary and Moral qualifications” to fill the new post of Headmaster and Inspector of Schools in the British crown colony of Hong Kong appeared in four British newspapers in August 1861, hundreds of respondents applied.\n\nHong Kong, China\n\n64\n\nIn spite of its full coverage of China and events in China, there had been little mention of Hong Kong in The Illustrated London News at this time. One rare mention was of a comparatively frivolous nature. An illustration of \"The Barrister's Cup\", which the \"chief legal gentlemen of the colony\" had decided to present, had appeared on 23 February 1861 with the accompanying narrative: “In spite of war and war's rumours, our countrymen at Hong-Kong are still as fond of home sports as ever. One of the principal English institutions imported into that distant island is that of racing, and English colonist or Chinese resident seem equally to enjoy the sport.\n\n\"65\n\nIn early to mid-September 1861, interviews were held in Britain66 for the educational position in Hong Kong which had recently been established at least partly to address the task of creating mutual understanding and goodwill between British and Chinese in the colony. Some", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214381, "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-1998", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "205\n\nfind the funds which would be required for the installation of a modern sanitation system.\n\nFinance was not the only problem. Chinese opinion was rarely more resolute than in matters concerning personal hygiene. Chinese people and Europeans simply did not see sanitary matters in the same light and both groups thought that their views were correct. In her examination of colonial Singapore, Brenda Yeoh showed how the Chinese regarded matters of sanitation and disease very differently from Europeans and that these alternative views were not restricted to the uneducated and 'plebeian classes.' Thus, 'Whilst Western sanitary science advocated the removal of filth, the disinfection and ventilation of houses, and the isolation of the sick as essential preventive measures in stemming the tide of a disease, Chinese medical theory did not necessarily imbue these measures with similar significance.' According to traditional Chinese thinking, good health was the product of balance within the body whereas ill health occurred where disharmony existed. If, as Yeoh contends, these Chinese attitudes had survived for centuries, there is little reason to doubt that the average Chinese person living in Hong Kong in the 1880s thought any differently from his or her counterpart in Singapore.\n\nFrena Bloomfield deals with the background to this very basic Hong Kong plumbing problem in her book The Urban Council 1883-1983, which describes the development of the Urban Services Department which grew out of the Sanitary Department. The birth of the Sanitary Department arose from the recommendations of Osbert Chadwick, a renowned British engineer with experience in sanitary matters, who was brought to Hong Kong at considerable expense to assess the sanitary conditions of the colony and propose improvements. Chadwick was not the first professional to comment on the adverse state of the colony's drains. In 1870 the Colonial Surgeon, Dr J. Murray, had noted 'It is not creditable to this colony that after their unhealthy condition has been pointed out, both by myself and by the Sanitary Commission, they [the drains] should remain as they are, a source of disease and death.'\n\nChadwick visited Chinese dwellings and talked to members of the Chinese community during his examinations. The result of his study was a comprehensive document completed in November 1882 which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214423, "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-1998", "page_number": 281, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "247\n\nTHE STORY OF STANLEY FORT\n\nBrief History\n\nR.G. HORSNELL\n\nThere seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village), Tytam Bay. The English name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3 field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of fever within the Hong Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate 20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable, nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures which formerly had been used in the very early days.\n\nThe present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings:\n\n1 Barrack Block\n\n1 Sergeant's Mess\n\n1 Dining Room and Cookhouse\n\n1 Bath House\n\n1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214431, "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-1998", "page_number": 289, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "255\n\nLaya and to assist in the Korean War. In 1957 the Royal Artillery lost one of its major stations in the colony described as \"the last of the great Gunner bastions on the island,\" when 27 Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA, which was stationed at Stanley Fort, was sent back to the United Kingdom for reorganisation. From then up to the handover to the Hong Kong Government in 1994, Stanley Fort was occupied by British infantry battalions on 2-year tours of duty. In 1997 it was handed over to the People's Liberation Army who are the present occupants.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Lord Stanley, Edward Henry, 15th Earl of Derby, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1845.\n\nREFERENCES\n\n\"Stanley, Hong Kong - The First Three Years\" by Lieut. G.P. Shearer, R.E., Royal Engineers' Journal, June 1938.\n\n\"British & Indian Armies on the China Coast 1795 - 1985\", by Alan Harfield, A&J Partnership, 1990.\n\n\"The Guns & Gunners of Hong Kong\", by Denis Rollo, The Gunners Roll of Hong Kong 1992.\n\n\"Eighteen Days\", by Col. D.R. Bennett, R.A.P.C., The Royal Army Pay Office, Hong Kong, 1976.\n\n\"Lyemun Barracks: 140 Years of Military History\", by Phillip Bruce, 1987.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214444, "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-1998", "page_number": 302, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "269\n\nare formed in stepped voussoirs. The first floor verandah is divided into bays by rusticated granite pillars which support the entablature and parapet wall to the roof. Ground and first floor verandah balustrades consist of heavy moulded copings on pierced and mortised infill panels with heavy plinths supported on moulded horizontal cornices emphasizing the storey heights. Flights of entrance steps lead up to the ground floor verandahs on both sides. The 1935 addition comprising the front entrance, dining room, and anteroom is built in similar style but is three storeys in height due to the sloping ground. There is a five-centred elliptical arch and a panel with the Royal coat of arms over the main entrance. On the parapet wall above there is a plaque engraved '1935.' Internally there are several interesting fireplace surrounds and period joinery but little else of architectural interest. Evidence in the P.R.O. indicates that the present infill panels to the verandahs may not be original and that the roof originally was pitched with gable ends and had several large chimney stacks projecting above the ridge. Part of the original roof still remains. The Officers' Mess is a Grade 2 historical building.\n\nThe last British Army Units at the barracks were 28 Squadron, the Gurkha Transport Regiment, also 247 Gurkha Signal Squadron. The United Services Recreation Club occupied part of the site, and 10 Intelligence and Security Company occupied the old Colony Club building, having moved in on the handover of their former site, Number 3 Camp, Argyle Street, to the Hong Kong Government in 1977. Prior to occupation by the Gurkhas, the barracks were usually occupied by British infantry battalions. In recent years occupying British units have included the First Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers (1967), First Battalion The Royal Welch Fusiliers (1969/71), First Battalion The Black Watch (1971/73), and the First Battalion The Royal Hampshire Regiment (1974/76). The 25th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, is also recorded at Gun Club in 1948. Some of the earliest troops to be stationed in Kowloon were the 99th Regiment (now the Second Wiltshires) and the Second Royal Welch Fusiliers, some of whom were quartered at Gun Club upon their arrival on January 13, 1899. Other Kowloon based units included the 91st Argylls (1888), First Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry (1892) and the First Battalion the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214454, "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-1998", "page_number": 312, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "279\n\n1970\n\n1971\n\n1973\n\n1974\n\n1977\n\n1978\n\n1986\n\n1989\n\n1994\n\n1995\n\n1997\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Welch Fusiliers at Gun Club.\n\nDeath of \"Billy\" Regimental Goat on 8 June. Buried behind Church. (The \"gravestone\" was salvaged, prior to excavation work for the new PLA Hospital, & removed to ASD Property Services Branch Antiquities Store at APB Centre in Cheung Sha Wan. No remains of \"Billy\" were found.)\n\n1st Bttn. The Black Watch at Gun Club.\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Hampshire Regt. at Gun Club,\n\nAlanbrooke Block (British MQs) & Infants' School (Block 27) demolished. New Gurkha MQs, Temple, Clinic & School build started. 10 Int & Sec Coy moved into Colony Club (Block 36) from Argyle Street Camp.\n\nGurkha Transport Regt. & Gurkha Signals moved into Gun Club from Shamshuipo Camp. Victoria Junior School moved over from Victoria Barracks.\n\nNew Classroom built at Gun Club Primary School. Skeleton said to date from Japanese occupation unearthed during excavations.\n\nSevere flooding on May 2 to MT compound causing considerable damage to vehicles, buildings and equipment. Compound again flooded on May 20 during Typhoon Brenda.\n\nColony Club (Block 36), St. Eligius' Church, and the old gun shed (Block 29) demolished to make way for the new military hospital. Banyan trees transplanted to elsewhere in the barracks also to the new Kowloon Walled City Park.\n\nBarracks vacated by the British Army and handed over to Hong Kong Government.\n\nBarracks occupied by People's Liberation Army following handover of Hong Kong to China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214565, "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-1998", "page_number": 423, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "392\n\nfor that area. Our local guide quite unabashed, led us straight into the main courtyard, where we took photographs before a polite message from the Admiral, relayed to us by a staff officer, advised us that he was shortly expecting visitors.\n\ni\n\nNOTES\n\nZhoushan Island, as with many other cities and areas in China, is now rapidly undergoing industrialisation with plans for an airport, factories and container terminals. There has even been talk of building a bridge across to the mainland. Zhoushan is romanised using the current Chinese pinyin system. Formerly it was known as Chusan using the western system devised by British scholars during the late 19th century.\n\ni China was published in 1844, illustrated by Allom and referred to in general as Allom's China; however, a former missionary, the Reverend Wright, wrote the text.\n\niii\n\nFolk memory can be short, especially when it suits the authorities, and in 1998 people in Wei-hai under the age of seventy either looked blank and disbelieving when we told them of the British lease, or corrected us saying that we were mistaken. They explained that it was the colony of Hong Kong which had been handed back in 1997 and that the British had never been near Weihai.\n\niv Other pedants may wish to note that the word Tatar tends to be 'misspelled' as Tartar. The original word in Chinese is Dada'er in pinyin and Ta-ta-erh in Wade-Giles. My history professor used to bark that tartar is on teeth!\n\nA Chinese historian writing during the late 1950s described the progression of the British forces up the South-east coast of China in a very abbreviated history and mentioned in a few words that \"the local people in Amoy [Xiamen] had dislodged the British occupationists and forced them to evacuate the port city. The Chinese defenders made a gallant stand at Tinghai [Dinghai]. Fierce fighting continued for six days and nights. The British suffered heavy casualties. Although General Ko Yun-fei [Ke Yunfei] was covered with more than forty wounds, he fought till he breathed his last. Hei Shui Tang [Black Waters], a people's armed unit, also inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy\". [Tung Chi-ming: An Outline History of China: Foreign Languages Press: Peking: 1959; P 215].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214581, "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-1998", "page_number": 439, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "408\n\nwas said to have been a British Member of Parliament. Alice was a gracious lady. Choa gives her maiden name as Walkden. It is sometimes elsewhere, puzzlingly, quoted as Whitcome. Did she have a step father one wonders? Or was this an unfortunate mistake by some writer and a case of give a slip-up five minutes start and the truth never catches up with it?' This could be the case. Certainly the name on the huge family memorial, in the Hong Kong Cemetery at Happy Valley, is carved as Alice Walkden.\n\nBefore the couple arrived back in Hong Kong in 1882 the then Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, announced to the Legislative Council that this young Chinese had taken the highest honours at Lincoln's Inn. 'It was something that a gentleman belonging to the Colony should have gained such honours.'\n\nAnyway, back in the British colony in those days the 'superstitious' Chinese generally did not take readily to 'newfangled,' western medicine and Ho Kai switched to law. But a brilliant Chinese with fluent English was rare in those days. He was enticed into business. He also entered public service and, in addition to sitting on a number of other government committees, sat on the Sanitary Board (the forerunner of the Urban Council) and, in 1890, became a Legislative Councillor. He was the third Chinese to sit on this august body. He was also a Justice of the Peace.\n\nHaving lived in the West for a number of years it is not surprising he developed strong views about social reform and the modernisation of China. He became an associate of statesman Dr Sun Yat-sen. This was at a time when China was striving to rid itself of the Qing dynasty and there was danger the country would be assimilated by colonial powers.\n\nIn his latter life Ho Kai spent most of his time serving the community. He helped, together with his colleagues, to mould the Territory in which we now live. Ho Kai was capable and, understandably, there was no need for him to take to heart the Chinese axiom: 'If you do not become a good minister be a good physician.'\n\nHe was 'lionised and eulogised' after his death by all sectors of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214582, "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-1998", "page_number": 440, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "409\n\nthe community as a shining example of a native son. He certainly helped bridge the vast gap between Victorian, colonial society and the Chinese community and he frequently presented - and clarified the often-misunderstood Chinese viewpoint. One gets the impression that, in spite of his western background he was still at heart very Chinese. In spite of having an eminent pastor father, the Reverend Ho Fuk Tong (Ho Tsun Shin), he was not opposed, for example, to concubinage.\n\nIn the same way that Sir Kai Ho Kai was a son of whom Hong Kong could be truly proud, so too the author's family has roots going back in the Territory for a number of generations. As a true Hongkongese, Choa has had a lifetime of experience as a physician, scholar and senior government administrator. He is a long-time, life member of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. Such a background fits him admirably to write such a book. It has been well researched, contains a wealth of detail and is a good read. Understandably, with limited information in some areas, this account is often more about the times in which he lived than Ho Kai himself. But that does not detract from the value of the book.\n\nAs one of Hong Kong's true sons Sir Kai Ho Kai deserves to go down in history, during an important period, as one of the few Chinese who was able to leave his indelible mark. The book, together with its epilogue, bibliography and 11 appendices, should be on the shelves of every serious researcher of Hong Kong history.\n\nAt the same time the book is a good product, on good quality paper with clear print and a stout, attractive cover, unlike so many books published today. Although some of the 25 illustrations, which are mainly photographs, are more common, there are some the reviewer had not seen before.\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Susanna Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong: Western Women in the British Colony 1841 - 1941, Oxford University Press (1991), pp. 293; and Univer-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214713, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "92\n\nDo villagers really believe in tun fu?\n\nHow many of the New Territories' villagers really believe in tun fu? Earlier, it was mentioned that the Pat Heung villagers were paid $600,000 to stage their collective tun fu ceremonies. Brian Jenny, Government Director of Audit, in November 1994 wrote in his report that, during the 1980s, amounts paid annually by the Government (on account of feng shui disturbances) varied between $500,000 and $950,000. In 1990, the Government paid $1.1 million, in feng shui compensation, to the villagers at Ha Tsuen so that ceremonies could be held (Hong Kong Standard; 1990). The fall in the purchasing power of the dollar over the years must be taken into account when interpreting these figures.\n\nWhen the British took over Hong Kong they promised the Chinese that Qing laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott; 1958, 38, 40, 41). Certainly a large number of festivals, customs and much culture have been retained. To some degree, because of lack of restrictions during the colonial period, there was limited hostility towards the British (Cheung; 1999, 573). Other ex-colonial powers could perhaps argue that this easygoing affinity, which developed between the Hong Kong Chinese and their rulers, was not always in the interests of the Colony. For example, the compensation paid to villagers to hold tun fu ceremonies, could have been put to better use.\n\nBut returning to how many villagers really believe? A small group of elderly women that the Author spoke to, sitting in the sun near a tun fu pot at Shui Tau Village, in the Kam Tin District, said that when work first started on improvements to the Kam Tin River the villagers did not intend doing anything. But people started falling sick and several died. It was decided then to hold a tun fu ceremony.12 'Did the elderly ladies believe in tun fu?'\n\n'Well, people stopped falling ill and dying,' they replied, 'so of course we had to believe.'\n\nThat is as good an argument for believing in tun fu as any.\n\nNevertheless several retired civil servants, both British and Chinese who have worked in the New Territories, some as District Officers,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214719, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "98\n\n'dragon' resides is to be the site of civil engineering work. As a perceived result a number of people in a village die.\n\nThe main tun fu ceremony, which this paper examines, was performed in a basically Hakka district. It was claimed to have been (including a number of related, smaller ceremonies), the largest tun fu ceremony ever held in Hong Kong. Comparisons in this paper are made with another Hakka ceremony and also with Cantonese ceremonies. The latter tend to be more rigorous. For instance, in some cases villagers are not allowed to leave their village or to eat meat for a fixed number of days. Although not for the squeamish, blood is sometimes obtained from a cockerel to anoint tun fu pots and talismans. It can be seen that, while there are similarities in basic principles, there can be not inconsiderable differences in the way they are performed, some of which depend on the personal practices of the person or persons conducting the ceremony.\n\nLike most rituals, such as living generations of a clan kowtowing to the soul tablets of their ancestors in an ancestral hall, tun fu is performed by men. For example by Taoist priests accompanied by village elders. Again, those who line up to pay their respects at tun fu ceremonies are males (see Plate 4 and 5). Women who were interviewed in this study seemed to accept this. Priests and feng shui masters were deemed to perform the ceremony on the collective behalf of villagers of all ages, including men as well as women.\n\nMost villagers, male or female, nevertheless, seem to take tun fu seriously. The British pledged, when Hong Kong became a crown colony, that local customs, including popular religion, would be allowed to continue, unlike on the Chinese Mainland where several attempts, at different times, have been made to stamp them out.\n\nIn Hong Kong, sizeable sums of money have been paid by the Government to finance the holding of tun fu ceremonies. These can be both expensive and time consuming. Such compensation has often 'bought' co-operation from villagers. In spite of what some past District Officers say, about it being 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui, the latter's disturbance can be viewed with considerable alarm. Affected villagers often go to great lengths to make amends and to ‘adjust' their lives accordingly. While a great deal appears to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214736, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "THE BATTLE OF HONG KONG:\n\nA NOTE ON THE LITERATURE\n\nAND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DEFENCE\n\nLAWRENCE LAI WAI-CHUNG\n\n115\n\nAbstract\n\nFrom the stance of a person growing up in Hong Kong, this short note re-assesses the Battle of Hong Kong of December 1941 as recorded in the English and Chinese literature largely found in the University of Hong Kong Library. It examines the views of political leaders, war historians, veterans, and civilians of different persuasions and makes some informed speculation about their focus. It argues that a common omission is the relative fighting power of the defender of Hong Kong. The essay argues that the performance of the Hong Kong garrison was much better than the defenders of Crete or Singapore. It makes a few speculative suggestions as to the effectiveness of the defence and concludes by making a case for further research into the Battle from historical and military science points of view.\n\nIntroduction\n\n\"Memories of the war in Hong Kong, of the sharp and bitter struggle which ended with the capture of the Colony on Christmas Day, are kept on a more realistic plane than most other places....It was by tacit agreement decided that the war in Hong Kong had best be forgotten.” This statement in a publication of Ricci Hall of the University of Hong Kong (Ricci Hall 1954) reflected the peculiar political context of Hong Kong as a Crown Colony in China. The Union Jack as a symbol of British reign in Hong Kong has gone, and the ruins of the Second World War, associated with Hong Kong's immediate colonial past, lie wasting. The military cemeteries in Stanley and Sai Wan, however, have been as well maintained as before. The respect for those who sacrificed their lives for a just cause has not been altered by a change in governance.\n\nAuthors from the belligerent countries have intensively studied military operations in Europe and North Africa in the Second World War since the end of hostilities. The intensity of the studies is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214737, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "116\n\nmirrored by the meticulous interest of model enthusiasts. There has been less interest in events in Asian theatres of war, particularly those before the change of the tide of war after the Battle of Midway. Save for a few battles, little has been written in English about the major battles in the Pacific War. One exception is the Battle of Hong Kong fought against the Japanese forces in December 1941. In this Battle, two brigades of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps without air support fought three full-strength Japanese divisions supported by an air fleet.\n\nThe Battle broke out at 08:00 hour on 8 December, when the air raid on Kai Tak Airfield began, and lasted to 15:25 hour on Christmas Day, when the Governor Sir Mark Young made the decision to surrender. This led to the official ending of the almost 18-day fighting, which was intended to cease at 18:00 hours, when for the first time in history, a British Crown Colony was surrendered to enemy forces with her governor taken as a prisoner. This surrender occurred one hundred years after the creation of the colony. A miserable three years and eight months period followed for the captive defenders and civilians until the British administration returned on 30 August 1945.\n\nBriefly, the Battle was conducted in two distinct phases2. From 8 to 13 December, it was fought in the New Territories and Kowloon. This phase ended with the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt of the Gin Drinkers Line on 11 December and the final evacuation of defence forces to the Island of Hong Kong two days later. The second phase commenced in the early morning of 18 December when the Japanese made their first attempted landings on the Island near Lei Yue Mun Strait, the eastern approach to Victoria Harbour, and ended with the surrender one week later. Before the final capitulation, the Governor had rejected the Japanese request for surrender twice, on 13 and 17 December.\n\nWe shall consider a brief textual review of the English and Chinese publications and materials on the Battle of Hong Kong available in the University of Hong Kong Library, which provides points of reference for our re-assessment of the performance of the defenders of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214738, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "117 \n\nA Review of the Literature? \n\nStrategy \n\nIn terms of the strategic and historical aspects of the Battle, the best known works from the British points of view are those of Winston Churchill (Churchill 1950), the Minister who led Britain to final victory, and Liddell Hart (Liddell Hart 1970), the strategist renowned for his theory on the use of tanks in modern warfare and \"indirect approach” (Liddell Hart 1991) as a general war strategy. There are few recent works in English that make reference to Hong Kong at this level of analysis. The common tenor of Churchill and Liddell Hart was that Hong Kong could not be defended. The former, however, held that Hong Kong should be nominally defended to deter the Japanese. In early 1941, Churchill told General Sir Hastings, his Chief of Staff: \n\n\"There is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of augmenting the garrison it ought to be reduced to a symbolic scale.... Japan will think long before declaring war on the British Empire, and whether there are two or six battalions at Hong Kong will make no difference to her choice.” \n\nIt was true that Churchill's Chiefs of Staff favoured reinforcing the Hong Kong garrison so that it could maintain a \"more worthy” defence or even a degree of deterrence, and Major-General A.E. Grasett, the former General Officer Commanding in Hong Kong, made a contribution to the strength of the defence by arranging for two Canadian battalions to arrive in the Colony in October 1941. Yet, under the dominant influence of Churchill's strategic concept, the Hong Kong garrison was outnumbered three to one by the Japanese when the invasion occurred. \n\nChurchill's position and decision apparently attracted universal criticism after the war. Liddell Hart thought that this was a patent mistake, which was exacerbated by Grasett's contribution, which cost many lives of the garrison. In other words, Liddell Hart considered that as Hong Kong could not be defended, it should not have been defended. In his History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart recalled what he said to General Dill in March 1935 about Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214739, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "118\n\n(Liddell Hart 1999);\n\n\"I suggested, and he appeared to agree, that it would be better to risk its loss by holding it too lightly than to strengthen it so much as to make it, morally, a \"Verdun\" or \"Port Arthur\" with great danger to our prestige if lost.\"\n\n9\n\nSome veterans complained about the lack of sympathy of London with colonial subjects, as evidenced in Colonel Anthony Hewitt's comments in his foreword to the work of Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996). Hewitt's passing comment is mild compared with the criticism of military historians of the allied countries. Vincent (1981) and Ferguson (1980), Cameron (1991) and most Chinese authors such as Yip (1982); Yuen (1988) and Tse (1995) criticised the British Government for being totally unprepared for the invasion of the Colony. The critical views expressed in English works in this period were pertinent to post-war claims for compensation by ex-servicemen in Commonwealth countries. The prevailing Chinese position is that Hong Kong should and could have been defended. An odd view is Tse (1995) who argued that Japan made a strategic mistake by taking the Colony, as it would serve no useful military purpose.\n\nBell's archive research (Bell, 1996) established that Hong Kong was not treated as an outpost but \"an integral component of an offensive strategy” based on faith in the superiority of the Royal Navy and the certainty of Hong Kong's relief. However, Bell's offensive strategy view is hardly consistent with the absence of fighters or bombers in the Colony before the outbreak of the Battle.\n\n\"Britain did not have enough men, or enough guns, tanks, ships and aeroplanes for the war against Germany. So it was impossible to send sufficient men and supplies for the defence of Hong Kong. These included the men of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. These men - English, Chinese, Eurasians, Portuguese and others - whose homes were in Hong Kong, prepared to defend the Colony from attack.” (Stokes, 1965, p.89)\n\nThough it is highly questionable whether the Scottish, Canadian and Indian soldiers in the \"others category\" mentioned by Stokes would regard Hong Kong as their permanent homes, Stokes' description is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214741, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "120\n\nexception was the Chinese translation of Walter Easey's Hong Kong Today published in 1977 (Easey, 1977).\n\nThe last seven years of the so-called \"transition period,\" i.e. the 13 years from the 1984 Sino-British Agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 witnessed another boom in literary output related to the fall of the Colony to the Japanese and its aftermath. The first work was Bruce's Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers of 1991 (Bruce, 1991). The second work was Rollo's The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong (Rollo, 1992). Next came a Chinese work on the communist guerrillas that operated in occupied Hong Kong, Tsui's Partisan Activities in Hong Kong (Tsui, 1993), published in 1993. The following year saw the work of Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: the Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese (Wright-Nooth, 1994). In 1995, two more Chinese works appeared, Ko and Tong's Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period (Ko and Tong, 1995) and Tse's The Fall of Hong Kong (Tse, 1995). Ruins of War; a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, written by Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996), was the major last work of this period. The publications in this period are generally less restrictive than earlier works in that they (a) give due credit to the Chinese defenders in the Battle and communist partisans, with their base in Sai Kung, New Territories, during the occupation; (b) spell out the potential and actual contribution of Chinese soldiers in the Colony; and (c) give sympathetic consideration to the Chinese civilians. The same is true of general history books on Hong Kong such as Cameron (Cameron 1991), Welsh (1997), Morris (1997) and Chan (1990).\n\nChurchill's Wisdom of Defending Hong Kong in Retrospect\n\nThe recurrent theme of unofficial publications is that the fall of Hong Kong was inevitable and its belated reinforcement by the two Canadian battalions was pointless. I would suggest that in this regard a more comprehensive view of the battle requires an appreciation of the post-war history of British Hong Kong. The books referred to above have not discussed the political consequence of not fighting an impossible battle.\n\nOne may speculate that had the British Administration given up the Colony without a fight, it would have lost the Colony forever. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214742, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "121\n\nThe reality is that the British had been able to retain Hong Kong as a Colony for another 52 years after August 1945, notwithstanding the promise of Britain to the Chinese Government in 1943 that she would return all her possessions in China after the end of the war. In this light, Churchill's decision was not irrational, and the garrison's sacrifice was a contribution to the way of life and system of government in Hong Kong today.\n\nIn terms of duty and moral responsibility, Churchill's decision was also reasonable, given the constraints confronting his administration. For the sake of argument, what other options were available to Churchill in December 1941, assuming that \"the British Far Eastern Strategy\" (Bell, 1996), for which he was not responsible, with respect to Hong Kong had been wrong? Should he have handed over the Colony to the invading Japanese forces without a fight? Should he have \"returned\" the Colony to the Chinese Government, which had lost control of Canton and a meagre military presence in or near Hong Kong? Or should he have made efforts to evacuate the Governor and the Hong Kong garrison by sea or air and left the rest of the population of Hong Kong in a state of anarchy?11 Bell suggests that demilitarisation and evacuation were feasible options and that the ruling out of these options by the British Government was not justified (Bell, 1996). I do not think that these options were politically sensible or morally responsible. Therefore, I dispute the view that the efforts of the Hong Kong garrison, though militarily probably doomed to fail, were unnecessary or pointless. The complaint by some authors, such as (Blackburn, 1989) about looting by the \"Chinese\" during and after the fighting testified the need for British military presence in Hong Kong to avoid a state of anarchy amongst the population. I further dispute the view of some recent authors that the British administration was humiliated in the eyes of the local population when the small Hong Kong garrison surrendered. That would have been the case had they fled or surrendered Hong Kong without a shot being fired. The majority of the law-abiding Chinese population, irrespective of their views towards colonialism in Chinese territories, had always been supportive of measures to defend their liberty, lives and property against Japanese invaders. At the time the Japanese troops marched on Hong Kong, they had already plundered Chinese soil for more than a decade. There is no doubt that the Chinese population of Hong Kong were not, as represented by some authors, apathetic about the invasion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214743, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "122\n\nThose who are resting in peace in the military cemeteries in Sai Wan and Stanley and those not buried there have not just earned for themselves a reputation for obedience and courage, but also won a way of life for the future generations of Hong Kong. Above all, they served their home countries and mankind by making a contribution to a war that was a crime against humanity.\n\nThe Performance of the Hong Kong Garrison\n\nWhile politics and good will may be controversial, an objective assessment of the actual performance of the defenders vis-à-vis the invaders is not impossible.\n\nAll authors referred to in the literature above pointed out that the Hong Kong garrison was, militarily, facing a hopeless situation on 8 December 1941. The Colony was isolated, with virtually no air cover or naval support, outnumbered three to one by the Japanese, and largely without combat experience, adequate training, sufficient ammunition or even winter uniform. Furthermore, it was an assortment of nationals who spoke different native languages; English, Cantonese and several Indian dialects. It was thrown into a battle against well-prepared and veterans of the Japanese Imperial Army, which had at least five years of combat history in China and was well supplied with detailed intelligence and mapping information about the Colony. During the Battle, Japanese agents and Chinese collaborators living in the Colony also assisted the invaders. The British forces also laboured under the impression that the offer of assistance by the Chinese forces and other Chinese groups was reliable. The final collapse of the resistance happened not only earlier than the London authorities had expected - 17 days instead of 9012 - but also far ahead of schedule for the Japanese, who contemplated that half a year13 would be required to conquer the Colony. Thus, many commentators argue that the defence of Hong Kong was a shambles. However, no author has actually attempted to measure the \"fighting power\" or effectiveness of the Hong Kong garrison or made a comparative study of the tactics of the defender vis-à-vis the invaders.\n\nI argue that it is unfair to pass judgement on the performance of the garrison by solely comparing the actual and planned duration of the battle or any other military dimension of the fall of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214756, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "135\n\nSupplement, 29 January 1948; A Record of the Actions of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps in the Battle of Hong Kong December, 1941 (1953). For the official Hong Kong account of the surrender, see Hong Kong Government (1948).\n\n3 The literature referred to in this section is not exhaustive and focuses on books and reports only. English and Chinese newspapers and periodicals from time to time carry articles on the Battle. Post-war annals of universities, university halls and secondary schools in Hong Kong are also a good source of materials about the Battle. There are also a number of novels on war events,\n\n+ The emphasis is placed on attacking the enemies' \"line of least resistance\" or \"line of least expectation\".\n\n5 As quoted in Ko and Wordie (1996), p.18.\n\n\"They were influenced by the views of Air Chief Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British Commander-in-Chief in the Far East.\n\n7 During the initial stage of the Battle, BBC broadcasts (Orwell, 1987) placed high hopes on the availability of Chinese forces in the vicinity of Hong Kong. Such forces were never to come.\n\nLiddell Hart (1999): footnote at 219.\n\n\"Colonel Hewitt is the author of a number of books on the Battle and Japanese occupation of the Colony.\n\n10 The title of the book is a misnomer as the police force obtained the royal title only in the late 1960s.\n\nBlackburn gave an account of the anarchic situation of Hong Kong shortly before the surrender (Blackburn 1989).\n\n12 On 23 October 1937, the Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee considered re-fortification or demilitarisation of Hong Kong, assuming that it took 90 days for the British fleet to relieve Hong Kong. Rollo (1992): 113. According to Aldrich, the British Chiefs of Staff considered the abandonment of Shanghai and demilitarisation of Hong Kong to avoid confrontation with Japan. Aldrich (1993): 261.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215278, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "3\n\nBefore 1932 a number of small factories had been established in the colonies. Cotton ginning factories, sugar cane crushing mills, fibre decorticating plants, tobacco grading and packing factories, saw mills and tin smelters had been constructed to reduce the bulk of primary products and make them more convenient for export. Other industries were started for the purpose of import substitution. In almost all the sugar producing colonies sugar refineries had been set up. Edible oil, lard and soap factories were established using local produce in Nigeria, Ceylon, Nyasaland, Trinidad, Jamaica, British Guiana, British Honduras and Fiji. Breweries had been established in the Gold Coast, Kenya, Cyprus, Malta, Jamaica and the Straits Settlements; match factories in British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad; a canned pineapple factory in Malaya. This is by no means an exhaustive list of industrial enterprises in the colonial empire in 1932. All these factories had been set up to serve the local market and had taken advantage of tariffs which had originally been imposed by colonial governments for revenue purposes. In some cases this level of protection was sufficient to make the factory viable. In other cases the company contemplating investment asked the governor for the tariff to be increased so as to exclude competitive imports or asked for a guarantee that no excise duty would be imposed or that any excise duty would be levied at a reduced rate.\n\nColonial governors showed no reluctance to grant these concessions in order to encourage the establishment of local industries in spite of the loss of customs revenue and the increased prices paid by the consumer for goods previously imported. Often governors neglected to seek specific permission from the Colonial Office to make such changes to the schedules of their customs ordinances. In a number of cases the Colonial Office heard of the new protective duties only when British manufacturers complained that they were being excluded from the colonial market. When an industrial project was referred to London governors used various arguments to support the protection of infant industries in their colonies: that the proposal was a legitimate development of local resources; that it would relieve unemployment; that a pledge of protection had already been given by government to the promoters; or that the proposals had the support of the unofficial members of the executive and legislative councils.\n\nNormally the Colonial Office did not refuse to sanction the grant of assistance to the new local enterprise. For example, in 1927 the legislative council of Jamaica passed an ordinance to increase the tariff on biscuits, soap, edible oils, cordage and matches and to remove the excise duty on soap, edible oils and matches in order to protect local industries. The Colonial Office sanctioned this ordinance without any adverse comment. Once an ordinance had been passed by a colony's legislature and had received the governor's assent it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215279, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "could be nullified only by the use of the crown prerogative of disallowance. The Colonial Office was most reluctant to exercise this power except in extreme circumstances since it might cause the governor public embarrassment. There are only three cases to be found in the files before 1933 where the Colonial Office was consulted about a project and imposed its veto.\n\nThe progress of industrialisation in Hong Kong was completely different from all other British colonies where factories could be established only with the aid of protective tariffs and other government assistance and manufactured goods were sold only in the local market. Hong Kong island was originally occupied because it had the best deep-sea harbour between Shanghai and Indo-China. It served as a base for the British navy and a place where merchants could store their goods and transfer them from ocean-going vessels to smaller ships to trade at ports along the China coast and inland waterways. About 80 per cent of the goods passing through the harbour consisted of re-exports destined for South China from overseas or from North China, or exports from China being transhipped in Hong Kong. Since the principal reason for Hong Kong's existence was to be an entrepôt for trade with China, it has always been a free port with no customs duties on imports or exports. Industries were established early in the colony's history to provide for the needs of the port and to process primary products for local consumption and export to China. Shipbuilding and ship-repairing yards were established soon after Hong Kong island was occupied in 1841, followed by a rope-making factory in 1851, a flour mill in 1859, a sugar refinery in 1870, a distillery in 1871, tobacco and cigarettes in 1880, a cement factory in 1897, and a cotton spinning and weaving company in 1899.\n\nIn 1911 the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce carried out a survey of all European, American, and British Indian firms in the colony engaged in import, export, and manufacturing. The survey listed 38 trading companies which had also set up factories. The 1931 census found that about a quarter of the working population (112,133 out of 470,794) were employed in manufacturing industries. The 1930 Blue Book listed 3,164 factories and workshops under 102 categories ranging from 124 boat builders to 116 tin beaters and 14 weaving factories. Most of these establishments were very small, situated in the back streets and tenements of the urban area. In 1932 only 586 were registered under the new Factories and Workshops Ordinance, which regulated firms that employed at least 20 persons. It is difficult to quantify the size of the manufacturing sector in the absence of detailed statistics of local consumption, but it appears that domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1932 totalled at least HK$36 million (about £2,500,000).1 The main items exported were cement, refined sugar, preserved ginger, lard, knitted singlets and hosiery, and electric torches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215284, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "faced serious opposition from the unofficial members. Except in the case of Ceylon, where the elected unofficials had a majority in the legislature, governors were able to ensure the enactment of the new customs schedules by the votes of the officials and the nominated unofficial members, but they were reluctant to do so against popular opposition. The Colonial Office warned the recalcitrant colonies that if legislation were to be delayed or amended the dominions might refuse to implement the new preferences agreed at Ottawa or withdraw existing preferences; the British parliament might also withdraw the preferences granted to the colony under the 1932 Import Duties Act.\" So the legislation was eventually passed in all the colonies in spite of great popular opposition. In the Leeward Islands there were shouts of 'What happened to Judas?\" at the end of the meeting, and the residence of a nominated unofficial member who voted for the bill was destroyed by fire.\" \n\n... \n\nIn the West Indian colonies opposition focused on the clause in the United Kingdom-Canada agreement which obliged the colonies to impose a duty of one shilling per pair on rubber boots and shoes and rubber-soled canvas boots and shoes in addition to the general preferential ad valorem rate. Hosiery of cotton or artificial silk (rayon) was to be charged an additional duty of sixpence a pair and silk hosiery an additional duty of ninepence a pair. These massive tariff increases were designed to exclude Japanese competition from a market which had been a Canadian monopoly until 1929. The governor of Barbados protested that Japanese shoes were sold at one shilling and eightpence a pair with the result that many were now shod who had previously gone barefooted, reducing the incidence of ankylostomiasis (hookworm infestation); if a specific duty of one shilling were imposed the resultant price would be beyond the reach of the poor, while being still much below the price at which Canada could supply footwear.\" The governor of the Windward Islands protested that stockings from Japan cost only fourpence a pair and would rise threefold to 13 pence a pair if the new tariffs were imposed.\" Other governors of the West Indian colonies made similar complaints, but the Colonial Office was obdurate that the preferences granted to the colonies by the dominions on their exports of primary products were conditional on the full implementation of the Ottawa agreements by the colonies. \n\n13% \n\nIII \n\nThe swingeing increases in duty on Japanese canvas and rubber footwear did not achieve their intended effect of restricting the market to Canadian manufacturers. Within months of the implementation of the Ottawa agreements, canvas shoes with rubber soles produced by a factory in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215285, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Singapore were being exported to the West Indian colonies. In November 1932 a Canadian manufacturer of rubber shoes complained to the Canadian minister of trade and commerce that in the last two months 15,000 pairs of rubber shoes had been imported into Barbados from Singapore at prices far below that of shoes produced in Canada. The Canadian minister wrote directly to Cunliffe-Lister asking for his help. He expressed the fear that unless something was done additional factories would be erected in Singapore and Hong Kong to take advantage of the new tariff and cheap Asiatic labour. The colonial secretary replied that it would be impossible to introduce in any colony legislation discriminating against goods produced in another colony; this would cut across the principle of solidarity between various parts of the empire which had been accepted at Ottawa and would inevitably cause a serious revulsion of feeling in these colonies.35\n\nExports of rubber boots and shoes to the West Indian colonies continued to increase at an alarming rate throughout 1933. They even penetrated the Canadian home market. Factories in Hong Kong which had previously exported their boots and shoes to China and the Philippines found themselves priced out of these markets by new protective tariffs and turned to export their products to the West Indies and Britain. Canadian and British footwear manufacturers faced with the loss of markets which they had formerly monopolised claimed that the Singapore factory was owned by Japanese interests who were seeking to evade heavy duties by setting up factories within the empire. In fact all the factories in Singapore and Hong Kong were owned and managed by Chinese businessmen. The empire content of the shoes was over 90 per cent since they were made from Malayan rubber and British canvas by British subjects working in a British colony and carried to Britain in British ships. There were no grounds for denying imperial preference to Hong Kong products in accordance with the Ottawa agreements. The Canadian prime minister, R.B. Bennett, complained to Cunliffe-Lister that the importation of rubber shoes was utterly demoralising the Canadian industry; thousands of workers would lose their jobs unless action was taken to prevent the continuation of this destructive and unfair competition.\" The colonial secretary replied that it would obviously not be politically possible to invite the legislative council of the Straits Settlements to pass legislation prohibiting the manufacture of rubber shoes in Singapore or their export to markets overseas.\" \n\nMeanwhile another industry long established in Hong Kong was causing embarrassment to the Colonial Office. The governor sent a telegram to London complaining that the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company had tendered to build a 500 ton coaster for Australia but had discovered that it was liable to a 15 per cent duty and could not claim exemption since imperial preference was granted only to ships built in Britain. The governor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215287, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "creation of protected local industries could be justified only where the colony had natural advantages for the development of an industry and where it was likely eventually to be profitable without protection. However, regard should also be paid to the principle of trusteeship and where the commercial interests of Britain and the general economic well-being of the colony were in conflict, colonial interests should prevail. These ambiguous recommendations gave the Colonial Office a considerable area of discretion to determine whether or not a colony should be allowed to institute a protective tariff or provide other assistance to a proposed new industry.\n\nThese recommendations did not affect the situation in Hong Kong and Singapore, where Chinese entrepreneurs were successfully exporting shoes and other goods manufactured from imported raw materials without the assistance of any protective tariff. Their home market was small compared to their export markets and they could easily undercut any foreign competitors. The committee regarded the invasion of the British and dominion markets by cheap rubber shoes produced by oriental labour as an evil, but it opposed the imposition of import duties on colonial manufactures since the Ottawa agreements had granted entry free of tariffs to all imports from the dominions and India; discrimination against colonial products would undermine the principle of free trade within the empire and call into question the preferences and privileges which the colonies had extended to imports from Britain. Instead of tariffs on colonial manufactures the committee recommended that efforts should be pursued to assimilate conditions of employment and factory and workshop regulations to those in force in Britain by the adoption of the International Labour Conventions by the colonies. The committee also suggested the encouragement of negotiations between manufacturers in Britain and in the colonies to divide the market by the assignment of quotas between them.\n\nCunliffe-Lister welcomed the report in spite of the rejection of his idea of protection for British manufactures against colonial competition. The report was circulated to the cabinet for the information of ministers but objections were unexpectedly raised by the secretary of state for India and the chancellor of the exchequer. The main doubt was whether the report went far enough in recommending the discouragement of new industries in the colonies. So the report was remitted for further consideration by another committee, but nothing was done for three years. In the meantime the Colonial Office proceeded to act on the principles recommended in the report. Instructions were sent to all colonies that any proposal to protect a local industry must be referred to London at the earliest possible stage and no bill to impose or increase a protective tariff should be introduced into the legislative council without prior authorisation by the colonial secretary. Telegrams were sent to the governors of Singapore and Hong Kong asking\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215288, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "them to call a meeting of the manufacturers and seek a voluntary agreement to limit their exports to Britain as the committee had recommended.\" This was not an easy matter. If the industry in Hong Kong had been established by Jardine Matheson, Swire or one of the other leading British trading firms, the governor could have spoken personally to the directors and appealed for restraint; but the rubber shoe manufacturers were small Chinese firms which were most reluctant to co-operate.\" Before they would agree to limit their exports they demanded guarantees that the quota would be large enough to keep their factories operating at a profit; that no new footwear firms should be allowed to open in Hong Kong; and that there should be a comprehensive agreement between Canadian, British, Singapore and Hong Kong manufacturers to divide up the British market and exclude any new entrants from India or elsewhere. The British manufacturers suggested a quota for Hong Kong of 1,500,000 pairs. Hong Kong said this was far below the current rate of exports to Britain, and asked for at least 2,500,000 pairs. Negotiations between the British and Canadian manufacturers to divide up the British and Canadian markets between them broke down when one of the largest firms, Bata, refused to join the cartel.\n\nThis failure left Hong Kong manufacturers free to expand their exports to Britain without a limit. The largest manufacturer in Singapore went bankrupt in 1935, enabling Hong Kong firms to penetrate further the British market. They exported 2,403,900 pairs of canvas and rubber shoes to Britain in 1935, 3,309,088 pairs in 1936, 4,849,324 pairs in 1937 and 7,007,604 pairs in 1938. These figures do not include exports to British colonies, which were also substantial. In 1939 a representative of the British manufacturers went out to Hong Kong to negotiate directly with the Chinese firms before going on to Canada. Agreement was reached for Hong Kong to have a quota of 6,600,000 pairs in the British market provided that the colony agreed to raise its prices to British levels. The Hong Kong government foresaw considerable administrative difficulties in implementing such an agreement. Legislation would need to be enacted to licence factories and to regulate exports, which would be extremely unpopular. The outbreak of war in September 1939 caused the agreement to be suspended indefinitely.\n\nPage 50\n\nIV\n\nThe imperial preferences agreed at Ottawa and the additional specific duties on footwear, hosiery and textiles failed to achieve their intended objective of excluding Japanese competition and leaving the colonial markets free for British and Canadian textile manufacturers. The Japanese had little difficulty in absorbing these additional costs and undercutting British and", "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": 215294, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "19\n\nvery useful in the depression, and the factory would provide employment for 100 Africans.\" Hong Kong was also seen as a special case where the decline of the entrepôt trade with China justified the policy of fostering industrial development. After much discussion the only specific recommendation made by the committee was that when a protective tariff was granted an excise duty equivalent to the import duty should always be imposed. The final report of the committee was never published and apparently was never considered by the cabinet.\n\nSo the Colonial Office continued to vet proposals for new industries according to the guidelines laid down in the 1934 Report, that manufacturing should not be 'artificially encouraged'. Officials were concerned to safeguard colonial revenues at a time when most colonies were in financial difficulties as a result of the world depression. The Colonial Office insisted that budgets must be balanced, to avoid the need for a grant from the British government and the consequent Treasury control of the colony's finances. The Colonial Office had no money available in its own account to subsidise ingenious schemes, such as a project put forward by an entrepreneur from Trinidad to produce newsprint paper from bagasse and to power the factory with anhydrous alcohol distilled from sugar cane juice.70 Governors could apply for funds from the Colonial Development Advisory Committee which provided £36,500,000 for development assistance from 1929 to 1939. But this fund was originally set up to alleviate unemployment in Britain and no application for industrial development would be entertained which would be likely to compete with British industry.? Officials believed that by discouraging uneconomic industrial development they were acting in the best interests of the native inhabitants. An assistant secretary minuted, 'Manufacturing industry, which can be established in a colony only at the price of a monopoly protected by a high tariff, ends in producing a locally manufactured article which is too expensive for the primary agricultural producers to buy.' Governors were more suspicious of the motives of Colonial Office officials. The governor of Sierra Leone complained that any industrial project was approached from the standpoint that British trade interests must rank first, dominions' interests second and those of the colonies last. Perhaps the fairest summary of Colonial Office policy was made by a junior official: 'Generally speaking we do not want to encourage industrial development in the colonial empire, but we are reluctant to go so far as actually to prohibit it.'\"\n\nWhy then was it that Hong Kong was able to develop a flourishing export-oriented industry without any subsidy or assistance from the colonial government whatsoever when in all the other dependent territories the development of manufacturing industry was derisory, and the few factories that were established were heavily dependent on protective tariffs, special", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215295, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "20\n\ntax incentives and other government assistance? Apart from its superb harbour Hong Kong had no natural advantages. Almost all the raw materials for industry had to be imported. The population (840,000 at the 1931 census) was wretchedly poor and could not provide the purchasing power to support large-scale industry. But Hong Kong was well-placed to export cheap manufactured goods to the vast market of China and the neighbouring countries of Asia where until the 1930s tariffs on imports were low. The world depression led China and other Asian countries to erect high tariff barriers which threatened to cripple Hong Kong's burgeoning industry. The colony was saved by the decisions taken at the Ottawa conference to adopt the policy of imperial preference. This handicapped its main competitor, Japan, by imposing high tariffs and later quotas designed to exclude Japanese manufactures from markets in the British empire. This created a vast imperial free trade area embracing Britain, its colonial territories and New Zealand. Traders and businessmen in the African or Caribbean colonies could have seized the opportunity to exploit it, but it was only the energetic and adaptable Chinese entrepreneurs of Hong Kong who did so. The decisions taken at Ottawa which were designed to help industry in the dominions gave an unintended boost to Chinese factory owners in the back streets of Kowloon.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong\n\nNOTES\n\n1. M. Havinden and D. Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1850-1960 (London, 1993), 1. D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism 1870-1945: An Introduction (London, 1981), 51–108. David Meredith, \"The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy 1919-1939', Economic History Review, 28 (1975), 484-99. Louis Nthenda, 'From Trade to Manufacture: Britain's Dilemma in the Face of Colonial Industrialization 1931-1938', Journal of Social Sciences, 1 (1972, University of Malawi), 95-112.\n\n2. Leo Amery in 1926, quoted by Meredith, 495.\n\n3. Meredith, 494. The only supporting evidence for this theory in the Colonial Office files is a letter from the governor of Uganda, 22 Dec. 1934, who warned that any large-scale industrial development which caused rural depopulation would result in a serious increase in sleeping sickness. CO323/1298/10, Public Record Office, London (PRO).\n\n4. See for example J. Riedel, The Industrialization of Hong Kong (Tubingen, 1974), 5-6; F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (London, 1993), 451; D. Lethbridge, The Business Environment in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1980), 1–2. A contrary view is given by Frank Leeming, \"The Earlier Industrialization of Hong Kong', Modern Asian Studies, 9 (1956), 337-42, who cites evidence from Hong Kong and Macao Business Classified Directory (1940, in Chinese).\n\n5. Minute by G.L.M. Clauson, 7 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Memoranda and Draft Report of Interdepartmental Committee 1937, CO852/164/6 and T160/763/F14811/1 and 2, PRO.\n\n6. According to D.J. Morgan, The Origins of British Aid Policy 1924-1945 (New Jersey, 1979), 9, the proportion of general revenue in the colonies derived from customs duties in 1933 was:", "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": 215387, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "TERAKR Bar: A XXS NAVAR\n\n2001 * 12 9 14ÜIADAVKUGAN\n\nCharles Pinker RL.\n\nDavid Blur (Anne) A A\n\nAlexandra Blair' AL\n\nAndrew Blau\n\n113\n\nThe descendants of Sir Frederick Lugard, the Pinker and Blair families, have generously agreed to present The Tribute on permanent loan to the University of Hong Kong. Members of the family attending the presentation ceremony on Friday December 14, 2001, and representing Major Richard Pinker, include (with their relationship to Sir Frederick Lugard):\n\nMr Charles Pinker (great great nephew)\n\nMrs David Blair (Anne) (great great niece)\n\nMiss Alexandra Blair' (great great great niece)\n\nMr Andrew Blair (great great great nephew)\n\n盧押在香港\n\nLugard in Hong Kong\n\n1858 年 1 月 22 日\n\n(Fort St George, Madras)\n\n教士,他出任香港總督一職前,擔任英國\n\nRoyal Niger Company 工作的經歷,使他在 1900 年至 1906 年間出任尼日利亞高級專員。\n\n## 1902 年 Flora Shaw 與 Lugard 結婚\n\n...\n\n旅行家、作家,曾擔任倫敦《泰晤士報》殖民地編輯。\n\n由於 Flora 的健康問題,盧押辭去尼日利亞高級專員的工作,離開當地,並於 1907 年後接受任命為香港總督。\n\n盧押在香港的工作及功績並不屬於本文介紹的範圍。但值得一提的是九廣鐵路通車和香港大學的成立,是他任內發生的重要事件。\n\nFrederick John Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger, was born of missionary parents on January 22, 1858 at Fort St George, Madras, India.\n\nBy the time he arrived as Governor of Hong Kong, his work and exploits in Africa on behalf of the British Army, the British East Africa Company, the Royal Niger Company and the Colonial Office were legendary. He was High Commissioner of Nigeria from 1900 to 1906. In 1902, he married Flora Shaw, herself a great traveller and writer and Colonial Editor of The Times of London until the end of the 19th century.\n\nBecause of Flora's health and her inability to be with him in his colonial posting, Lugard resigned his post and left Nigeria. However, he accepted the Governorship of Hong Kong in 1907.\n\nLugard as perceived by the cartoonist \"Spy\" in Vanity Fair's \"Men of the Day\" series, December 19, 1895\n\nThe events which followed and Lugard's role and achievements in the life of the Colony are mostly beyond the scope of this introduction to The Tribute. They would, however, include the opening of the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the foundation of The University of Hong Kong.\n\nMiss Blair, who is the assistant foreign editor of The Times of London, continues a family association with the newspaper begun by Flora Lugard.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215521, "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": 298, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "248\n\nThe Chinese Burial Ground having become offensive in consequence of the corpses being so close to the surface it was found necessary to spread a quantity of quick lime over the whole area at a cost of £20.16s this was provided for by Requisition 5 of 1856.\n\nIn was in the same year that an ordinance was passed to regulate Chinese Burials, and to prevent certain Nuisances, within the Colony of Hongkong. This Ordinance 12 of 1856 became the first step taken by the government to regulate Chinese burials by the establishment of special Chinese cemeteries. In addition to regulating the burial grounds, due to the 'nuisances' described above, the ordinance also stated that 'a Grave of less than Five Feet in depth from the ordinary surface of the ground to the uppermost side of the Corpse or Coffin therein deposed, shall for every such Offence forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding Fifty Dollars, nor less than Five Dollars.'\n\n58.\n\nHowever, it was only fifteen years later in 1871 that the first designated Chinese burial ground was created, which was located in Kowloon. The plot of land was ‘situated about one Quarter of a mile to the North-east of the Village of Yau-ma-Tee.' It became the only lawful place for the Chinese inhabitants of British Kowloon to inter their dead until the establishment of another cemetery in 1885. But no designated Chinese burial ground on the island has so far been traced prior to this announcement. The first Chinese cemetery on the island was selected and appointed in 1882, at Mount Davis ‘measuring on the North thereof 40 feet, on the South thereof 40 feet, on the East thereof 60 feet, and on the West thereof 60 feet.”59\n\nIn 1882, the first two cemeteries for Chinese Christians were authorized. The first one was located ‘on the Eastern slope of the Shaukiwan Hills, on a contour line about 300 feet above the level of the sea, marked by four boundary stones and measuring on the North thereof 200 feet, on the South thereof 200 feet, on the East thereof 400 feet, and on the West thereof 400 feet.\" The second one was on the west side of the island, ‘on the Western slope of the Hills below the Pokfulam Road, marked by five boundary stones, and bounded on the North by Mount Davis on the South by Crown Land, on the East by the Pokfulam Road, and on the West by the Sea (Sandy Bay) high water mark, and containing about 43 acres.\n\n61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215541, "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": 318, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "268\n\n38 Fortune, Robert (1935). THREE YEARS' WANDERINGS IN THE NORTHERN PROVINCES OF CHINA. Shanghai: The University Press, p. 22 (footnote),\n\n39 Inscriptions found at the entrance of the cemetery. However, in Barbara-Sue White's TURBANS AND TRADERS: HONG KONG'S INDIAN COMMUNITIES (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17, the year stated is 1854.\n\n40 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith.\n\n41 \"The cemetery can be found in an 1863 map, see Hal Empson, p. 132.\n\n42 Smith: A SENSE OF HISTORY, p. 401\n\n43 Ibid, p. 402.\n\n44 A HAND-BOOK TO HONGKONG BEING A POPULAR GUIDE TO THE VARIOUS PLACES OF INTEREST IN THE COLONY, FOR THE USE OF TOURISTS (1893). Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, p. 94.\n\n45 杜瑞樂 (Joel Thoraval)著(張寧譯)(2002):《葬禮與祈禱的安排:香港回教信託基金總會歷史概貌》(1850-1985),載陳慎慶編:《諸神嘉年華:香港宗教研究》(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, p. 392.\n\n46 Empson, p. 132. The cemetery is also shown in another 1866 map in the same book, see p. 49.\n\n47 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith. Details regarding the founding of this cemetery are not known as yet. In a 1863 map, at the site of the subsequent Muslim cemetery, an area marked as 'Indian soldier' can be found, which might be an early burial ground for Indian soldiers, but details regarding its founding is not known, see Empson, p. 133.\n\n48 The graves in this cemetery were removed to Cape Collinson Catholic Cemetery, around late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Father Louis Ha, long after the Bethanie had been purchased by the University of Hong Kong in the early 1960s,\n\n49 \"For the breakdowns of population figures, see Blue Books or HKGG of the corresponding years.\n\n50 The figure included that of 'British Kowloon,' i.e., the area south of old boundary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215574, "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": 351, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "301\n\na Petty Officer in the Hong Kong Royal Naval Reserve (Lack; 1999).# Deakin later became Assistant Superintendent of Lights, the Number Two to Terrence Vincent Courtney, an Australian. When the latter retired Deakin took over as Superintendent although he himself never actually served as a lighthouse keeper. He proved to be an excellent man-manager (according to Lack), and he significantly raised the efficiency and morale of the Lighthouse Section. He followed in Courtney's footsteps in improving the living conditions of lighthouse staff. He was described by Lack as the \"salt of the earth.” Attempts were made, it is understood, unsuccessfully, to get him a decoration in the Queen's Honours List for which competition was keen.\n\nAt one time Deakin started, so he told the author in 1990, to write a history of lighthouses. It was never finished. He was buried in the Chiu Yuen Eurasian Cemetery, at Mount Davis, in 1995. On his gravestone, in both English and Chinese, are the characters, ‘A fighter to the end.\" The author attended his funeral.\n\nAt one stage Deakin told the author, when Waglan Lighthouse was managed by the Chinese Maritime Customs from 1893 (which is the date on the lighthouse bell), it was manned by German keepers. That was before it was taken over by the British Colonial Government on 1st January 1901. After it was handed over to the British it soon became the practice for lighthouses to be manned by Eurasians, in the same way that railways in India were staffed to a large extent by Anglo-Indians.\n\nThe post of lighthouse keeper was seen rather as a middle management, technician-type of job, which offspring of, typically, British military fathers and Chinese mothers, could handle adequately. Indeed servicemen sometimes took their discharge in the Crown Colony. The job of lighthouse keeper required a reasonable amount of intelligence, integrity, attention to detail, personal discipline, self-sufficiency and the ability to live communally,\n\nUp to about 1960, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank recruited Eurasian and Portuguese as clerks, secretaries and typists. The Bank only recruited Chinese as janitors and for similar, low-level posts. Likewise, in those days Chinese were not employed as lighthouse keepers. In the late 1990s a (Chinese) member of staff of the Marine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215646, "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": 423, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "375\n\nANOTHER DONATION TO THE\n\nHONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL\n\nASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nOur Branch possesses a number of archives and artefacts, including photographs. Details of these are given in an article by Dan Waters entitled, Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: Possessions on Permanent Loan to other Institutions (JHKBRAS, Vol. 37, 1998, p. 177). In addition, 515 books and a number of items were kindly donated to our Branch by the late Arnold Graham. Please see Arnold Graham 1905-1996 by Dan Waters (JHKBRAS, Vol. 38, 1998-99, p.305),\n\nIn order to build up our collection, in February 2001, HKBRAS member Barbara Park suggested I write to Douglas Franklin who lives in Brisbane, Australia. Mr Franklin was very helpful and replied that he had some photographs in good condition and that he would be pleased to donate some to HKBRAS. We are extremely grateful to him for this donation.\n\nThe late Frederick Percy Franklin (father of Douglas Franklin who made the donation) emigrated from Bournemouth, England, to Sydney, Australia, in 1912. He joined the Australian army in 1915 and served in France. He first came to Hong Kong in 1922, when he was appointed Manager of the Hong Kong Telegraph. This was the daily afternoon paper published by the South China Morning Post.\n\nAs the Japanese approached the Colony all able-bodied British subjects were required to register for essential services. Frederick Franklin joined a British Royal Engineers unit. He was wounded on Christmas Day 1941, the day Hong Kong fell. His wife, two daughters and son, Douglas - who was 14 at the time - were evacuated on British Government orders to Sydney in August 1940, together with 3,000 women and children.\n\nWhen Hong Kong fell Frederick Franklin was captured and spent the whole of the war in the Argyle Street Prisoner of War Camp. After the war he returned to the South China Morning Post offices, then in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215769, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1\n\nARTICLES\n\nTHE TRANSFER OF THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: A REVISIONIST APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL LAW AND ADMINISTRATION\n\nANDREW ABRAHAM\n\n[Hon. Ed. - The Straits Settlements was a former British crown colony on the Strait of Malacca, comprising four trade centres, Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, established or taken over by the British East India Company. The British settlement at Penang was founded in 1786, at Singapore in 1819; Malacca, occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, was transferred to the East India Company in 1824. The three territories were established as a crown colony in 1867. Labuan, which became part of Singapore Settlement in 1907, was constituted a fourth separate settlement in 1912.\n\nThe Straits colony, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, was broken up in 1946, when Singapore became a separate crown colony. Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, became a part of Malaysia in 1963, and became an independent republic in 1965. Labuan was incorporated in North Borneo (later Sabah) in 1946, which in turn became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Penang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union in 1945, the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and Malaysia in 1963.]\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe Straits Settlements were transferred in 18671 to the Colonial Office's administration due to the dissatisfaction of the European merchants with the Indian government's rule. Their grievances were cited in a petition in 1857, the most contentious of which cover complaints of the East India Company's (EIC) attempts to introduce measures damaging to trade, problems with piracy and convicts, and failure of the Indian government to build up an influence in the Malay peninsula.\n\nHowever, a study of the history of the Straits Settlements shows evidence of a booming economy, many cases of intervention by the EIC in the affairs of the Malay states, and issues such as those concerning piracy, convicts and currency more or less resolved. Furthermore,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215784, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "16\n\nXIX, Belgian Treaty Art. XLIV; Spanish Treaty Art. XVI; Italian Treaty Art. XIX, quoted from Fox, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates 1832-1869\n\n4 Turnbull, supra, p 255\n\n4 Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore pg 756; The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce, 13 Oct 1857\n\n\"Emerson Rupert, Malaysia - A Study in Direct and Indirect Rule, Chap 2. p 91\n\n46 Hall DGE, A History of South East Asia, p 511\n\n47 Ibid, p 511\n\n* Mills LA, British Malaya 1824 – 1867\n\n49 Act 24th George III Cap 25;\n\n174\n\nNB: This act was retained until 1858, when England assumed full control of India. However, the policy of non-intervention in the Malay States still continued until 1874.\n\n50 Philips, The East India Company 1784 - 1834, Chap 2, p 32\n\nsi Purcell, Malaya, Outline of a Colony, Chap 6 p 70; Jones, Public Administration in Malaya, Chap I p 8\n\n52 Mills, supra, p 174\n\nTan DE, A Portrait of Malaysia and Singapore, Chap 9 p 119\n\n54 However, it should be made clear that in the pre-1874 era, the nature of intervention was limited. Though there were cases of British intervention in the Malay States, their actions were “inactive” or passive. The governors were often reminded of the official non-intervention policy, and this policy remained unchanged until 1874, when a new law (the Pangkor Engagement) was observed.\n\nCases of non-intervention\n\nThe EIC's non-intervention policy started from the earliest years of British rule", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215796, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "28\n\nMisra, B B, 1959, The Central Administration of the East India Company, 1773 - 1834, Manchester\n\nMontgomery, Martin R, 1837, History of the British Possessions In the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, Whitaker, London\n\nMukherjee Ramkrishna, 1974, The Rise and Fall of the East India Company, A Sociological Appraisal, Monthly Review Press, London and New York\n\nNewbold, T J, (1839) 1971, British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, Vol 2, Kuala Lumpur\n\nA\n\nOliver, A S B, 1956, Outline of British Policy In East and Southeast Asia, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London\n\nOnraet, Rene Henry de Solminihac, 1947, Singapore: A Police Background, Dorothy Crisp & Co, London\n\nParkin, CN, 1960, British Intervention in Malaya 1867 - 1877, University of Malaya Press\n\nPhang, Boon Leong Andrew, 1990, The Development of Singapore Law, Historical and Socio-legal Perspectives, Butterworths, Singapore\n\nPhilips, CH, 1940, The East India Company 1784 - 1834, Manchester University Press\n\nPridmore, F, (1955) 1975, Coins and Coinages of the Straits Settlements and British Malaya 1786 - 1951, National Museum of Singapore\n\nPurcell, Victor, 1946, Malaya, Outline of a Colony, Nelson and Sons Ltd, London, New York\n\nRose, Saul, 1962, Britain and Southeast Asia, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore\n\nSandu, K S, (1966) 1968, ‘Tamil and Other Indian Convicts in the Straits Settlements A D, 1790 - 1873', Proceedings of the First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, I, 197 - 208\n\nSankaran, R, (Dec 1966), \"Prelude to the British Forward Movement of 1909”, Peninjau Sejarah, I No 2", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215798, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "30\n\nPersonalities and Principles, JMBRAS, xxx, no 1, 134 - 163\n\nTurnbull, CM, 1970, 'Internal Security in the Straits Settlements, 1826 - 67', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, i, no 1, 37 - 53\n\nTurnbull, CM, 1972, The Straits Settlements 1826 - 67, Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Oxford University Press\n\nWaldron, T, 1872, Letters and Journals of James 8th Earl of Elgin, London\n\nWilbur Marguerite Eyer, 1945, The East India Company And the British Empire In the Far East, Stanford University Press. Stanford, California\n\n+\n\nWong, Lin Ken, 1960, 'The Trade of Singapore 1819 - 69' JMBRAS, xxxiii, no 4", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215897, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1900\n\nGough Battery first mentioned with two 6-inch BL Mark VII guns.\n\nRollo, 1992, p.187\n\nGough Battery was in existence as early as 1900:\n\n1901\n\nA compass sketch drawn by Colonel L. Brown, C.R.E. in China, and dated 13.0.1901 shows the \"Plan of Proposed Site for New Barracks: Devil's Peak\" at the present Yau Tong industrial zone. The plan had the annotation \"new road to batteries.\"\n\nCO129/305\n\nIt had a history of more than a century by the date of production of this paper.\n\n1902\n\n1902\n\n6 October 1906\n\nA compass sketch of ground to north of Devil's Peak showed land to be acquired by the War Department, with the locations of Gough and Pottinger Batteries indicated as \"New Batteries.\" Signs of quarrying at the present Lei Yue Mun Valley were shown.\n\nThe construction of Taikoo Docks at Quarry Bay on the island of Hong Kong commenced.\n\nAugust 1902: a 9.2-inch gun was delivered to Pottinger Battery.\n\nOwen Committee Report dated 6 October 1906 stated that Hong Kong was the principal naval base of the British fleet in the Far East and a commercial port of great importance liable to a Class A Attack by Battleships.\n\n[Therefore, one of the 6-inch guns proposed for Gough Battery by the 1898 Committee was replaced by a 9.2-inch BL Mark X gun by 1910.]\n\n6 February 1907 Royal visit by Field Marshal His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, who arrived at the Colony on 6 February 1907.\n\nLater, the Duke observed firing exercises for the 9.2-inch guns at Pottinger Battery and the 6-inch guns at Gough Battery.\n\nPRO219\n\nEastern District Board 1994, p.25\n\nRollo, 1992, p.70, p.79\n\nRollo, 1992, p.79, p.80, 187\n\nRollo, 1992, p.83\n\n129", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215911, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "144\n\n\"My car is white so wave at me when you see me, I'll be there in seven minutes,\" said Hase as he gave me directions to wait at the McDonald's in Tai Wo KCR station for our interview. It has taken me almost an hour to get here. I'm in the New Territories.\n\nHe is dressed in a loosely fitting top with colourful embroidery around the edges, and his hair is shorter and seems to have gone a bit lighter than when I last saw him a few months ago. He is friendly and I'm feeling relaxed despite having been a bit nervous in anticipation of our meeting. I fear my questions will not be good enough, or intelligent enough for him.\n\nHase's home is just as I had imagined it: east meets west, and serene. I am served English tea in a Chinese mug and we are using bronze coasters with Chinese characters on them.\n\nWhen I go back to Toronto, my friends often say I sound a bit British, and sometimes they say they don't know what I sound like. But Hase's English accent hasn't been corrupted by his learning Cantonese.\n\n\"Cantonese is difficult because of two things. The first is, it's not written,\" said Hase. \"Now if you're learning Mandarin, you can learn to read it and learn to speak it and the two help each other...The second problem is the tonal structure, which is very complicated, infinitely more complicated than it is in Mandarin and that's very difficult for foreigners...\"\n\n\"So, when I'm speaking Cantonese, my tones are not bad but if I get angry, if I lose my temper, then my tones start to change.\"\n\nHard to believe that Hase arrived in the colony not knowing a word of the language. The government wasn't looking for people who knew the language, just for people who wanted a job.\n\nHase was born in the United Kingdom and got his Ph.D. from Cambridge in an aspect of 7th Century English History. Hase was unable to get a job teaching and opted for a job with the government as an Administrative Officer with his first posting as Administrative Assistant in the Urban Services Department. He arrived in the territory in 1972\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215938, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "171\n\nCommunists and the China coast for Major Egerton Mott of the SOE. * Holmes referred to guerrillas who would be known to Kendall. He was convinced that the expansion of the Communists into British territory in the New Territories 'was planned in some detail before the Japanese attack on the Colony,' so working with this group required uncommon discretion and diplomacy on the part of any Britisher trying to win their support. Holmes, working with Kendall before the war and with the guerrillas later, would have been unusually well informed. He identified the Communist leader in the Hong Kong area as Tsoi Kwok Leung, a man ‘formerly connected with minor Chinese industrial enterprises in Hong Kong and Amoy and...consumptive.'\n\nSome form of SOE organisation was clearly in place in China, covertly, awaiting the Japanese attack before becoming fully activated. Col Chauvin had been removed from Hong Kong on 18th December, on the very day that the Japanese landed on Hong Kong Island, and sent to the British Military Mission in Chongqing. As the battle raged around them, Kendall, Talan and McEwan were stood by for special orders. Col. Harry Owen Hughes who had ostensibly been seconded to liaise with Chinese Armies in the 7 War zone, moved back to the Hong Kong area to await the arrival of something important. This was the arrival, in deep secrecy, of perhaps the most important escape party to ever leave occupied Hong Kong.\n\n[\n\nAt the very moment that Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese, a car was hurrying towards Aberdeen harbour. Inside sat Admiral Chan Chak, the Chinese Nationalist government's chief representative in Hong Kong, and a number of his KMT assistants. The group was led by DM MacDougall, an official seconded to Hong Kong from London to work on political affairs. He had been assigned to look after the Admiral personally, and maintained twenty-four-hour contact with the Admiral's party during the hostilities. They were to rendezvous with five boats of the 2nd Motor Boat Flotilla, who had been held back in battle. Reaching the pier an hour after the surrender, they found the boats gone. The only functioning vessel they could find was a fifteen-foot launch but the party piled in, knowing that the Japanese would be on them at any moment. Hardly had they gone 500 yards when they were fired on by Japanese occupying a post on Brick Hill, opposite, on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. The boat's engine disintegrated under the heavy fire, killing several men and wounding others, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215941, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "174\n\nwhich the Police Commissioner handed over $20,000 without question when advised of the plot, though it was claimed that the bribe money came from the Shanghai triads leader Tu Yueh Sheng, then a refugee, albeit wealthy, in Hong Kong. Whatever the truth behind the story, it gained currency as it made the escape of General Yee and Admiral Chan Chak palatable to colonials by portraying it as an honourable act by the British to reward Yee for his assistance in saving them.\n\nIt was almost certainly also a smokescreen to disguise the removal from Hong Kong of something important to the British. MacDougall claimed in 1942 that he had not planned to go but had been persuaded at the last moment by senior government officials. MacDougall however was circumspect, careful not to betray sensitive information in an open letter. He could, however, say that during the last two years his work had 'become increasingly political in character. Officially neutral in the Sino-Japanese War, I had nevertheless behind the scenes consistently exerted what influence I possessed toward blocking and hampering the propaganda and other activities of the Japanese and the adherents of the Wang Ching Wei....I had worked very closely with Chinese organisations and did all in my power, consistent with the interests of the Colony, to aid them.' It should also be noted that he was not an officer of the colonial establishment but belonged to the Ministry of Information. He was to return to Hong Kong on liberation to reinstate the administration. While no high-profile officers escaped with the Chan Chak group, it is probable that some were carrying information. There were men from Army, Navy, and Air Force, and they were chosen for the mission, only one man being a \"guest.\"\n\n* xviii Major Goring was to spend much of the war attached to various strategic planning groups in the China theatre.\n\nThe extent of KMT activity in Hong Kong was considerable. Hong Kong was a sort of open house where all factions of Chinese politics from left to right could operate, as long as they were discreet. Overt acts of terrorism and subversion in other colonies, like the Malayan federation, were suppressed. The territory was also the port through which arms and armaments flowed into China. Technically this was in breach of the Hague Convention as Britain was supposed to be neutral, but there were ways of smuggling and circumventing the system. Baileys, the Hong Kong shipyard, built river gunboats that were outfitted with guns once they entered China. The same technology that enabled\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215942, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "175\n\nHong Kong shipyards to do marine engineering could also be used to make armour cladding for ships and vehicles. Hong Kong was also the base from which British aircraft manufacturers wanted to penetrate the Chinese market - the Far East Flying School wanted to train Chinese to fly so they would buy British rather than American or German planes. Hong Kong was also a centre for financial transactions both within and outside the banking system, a source for remittances and money transfers, more secure than Shanghai after the Japanese conquest. A large KMT community operated out of and lived in Hong Kong: almost a parallel government. While there was sympathy for the Nationalists, the colonial administration was uncertain how to maintain a balance between the Japanese and the Chinese Government. Riots against Japanese living in Hong Kong had been suppressed, and no protests made against Japanese attacks on the junk fleet. When the St Johns Ambulance wanted to send an ambulance to bombed Canton, the Colonial Office refused permission. Groups of Chinese 'terrorists' were arrested and deported from time to time. As late as May 1941 the colony's police force raided premises at 98 Robinson Road and destroyed a wireless transmitting station which had been operating for three years. The leader of this group was Chan So, an agent of General Wu Te Ching. When Governor Northcote sought guidance, the Colonial Office was advised by the Foreign Office that British policy had to vary according to circumstances, and support for China should be rendered 'compatible with the safety of Empire and avoidance of actual hostilities with the Japanese.'xix Nonetheless, there was a significant understanding between the Goumindang and the British when it came to matters of mutual benefit. When war officially broke out, their clandestine relationship could come out into the open. When Phyllis Harrop,\n\na civilian consultant working with the police reported for duty right after the outbreak of hostilities, she was assigned to work with the KMT who had already started to occupy offices with the police.\n\nThe Japanese were all too aware of the importance of Hong Kong to the KMT. The Japanese Foreign Minister had softly but firmly reminded the British Ambassador to keep the KMT under control. Even before their push to the south, the Japanese had identified KMT activists and targeted educated, articulate overseas Chinese as a threat and source of resistance. In Malaya and Singapore, they were to massacre thousands of Chinese in the wake of their advance, a fact obscured by the emphasis on the sufferings of Europeans interned in camps. In Hong Kong, on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215943, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "176\n\n22nd December, in the midst of some of the most savage fighting on Hong Kong Island, the single largest atrocity involving civilians of the entire battle period occurred. Much has been made of atrocities that affected Europeans, but this incident is worth analysing because it gives us hints on what the Japanese knew about Hong Kong. Ma Tso Yuen recounted how, while his family were having dinner, they heard shots and found that their building, No 42 Blue Pool Road, was surrounded by Japanese. The inhabitants of the building and its neighbour, No 44, were systematically rounded up and herded together. Through a door, Ma saw a neighbour being beaten for resisting. The women were separated, many raped, and then killed. The men were taken down near the nullah and bayoneted, with Japanese stabbing the bodies to make sure all were dead. Ma survived, although he suffered nine separate wounds, because he lay hidden. When the danger was over, he realised he was surrounded by the bodies of 30 men, including that of his own son. **The number of men, women and children killed in other parts of the building is unknown; the buildings were small, low-rise apartments, but crowded: in one flat, some fourteen people were sheltering. Phyllis Harrop, through her KMT contacts, estimated that at least forty persons in her building alone were killed. No other atrocity against civilians was as systematic, organised, or as savage as this. Normal battle mayhem was not the motive. Kempeitai agents travelled with battle units, even though they were not part of the normal military structure. Under cover of fighting, they could settle other opposition. Blue Pool Road was targeted because it was where KMT officials and agents lived with their families. It was no random massacre. Among the dead included men from the Ministry of Communications and the Central Trust, a front organisation for the KMT, whose offices had been searched by the British and whose members had been arrested and sometimes deported. Ma himself had been an employee of the Central Trust.\n\nThe relationship between the KMT, the colonial government, and individuals involved in undercover work might bear further investigation. Phyllis Harrop mentions in her private diary that 'at the request of Chinese members of the Dai Li organisation who had been left behind in the colony, (she) was asked to go to Chongqing with the complete details of the guerrillas' arms and ammunition, which was buried in various homes and gardens in the island, to deliver information and arrange for instruction to be given to the men remaining in Hong Kong to carry on their work. My escape was engineered by the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216094, "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": 393, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "327\n\nin China. They did not complain. In any case Government did not answer letters written to newspapers but people did not generally criticise Government. That was why, when a column called \"Tiger Talk\" was written by an English solicitor in 1962 and published in the Sunday Tiger Standard, it attracted considerable attention.\n\nThe district of West Point, where legalised brothels for Chinese had been situated up to the mid-1930s, was still an important entertainment district in the mid-1950s, with restaurants with 100 or more Chinese tables capable of seating in excess of 1,200. Sing song girls, the Chinese version of the Japanese geisha, could still be found there.\n\nMy Chinese wife, born in 1936, lived in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. After the War Canadian Sergeant Major John Osborn, who was born in Norfolk, the same county where I was born and raised in England, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. It is the most prestigious British award for gallantry on the field of battle. It was the only such award ever made in the colony.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation my wife recalls seeing arms and legs lying in the streets first thing in the morning. Breakers of the curfew had been mauled by Japanese police dogs. Women did their best to make themselves look old, ugly and undesirable. People wandered the hillsides and seashores as hunters and gatherers looking for anything to eat. Occasionally, human flesh was on sale in butchers' shops, something sometimes denied today. As my wife's family owned a salt-fish shop they were better off than most. They had food and something to barter. My wife and her two sisters survived the occupation although their father never forgave them and his wife for not having a son to \"buy water\" for him at his funeral (Today a symbolic ceremony based on filial piety and the washing of the corpse by the eldest son.).\n\nWhen I arrived in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s conditions had already improved considerably. Although there was rationing still in Britain, you could buy just about anything in Hong Kong - provided you had the money. I stayed together with other government servants in Winner House, a small hotel at North Point, a district sometimes known as Little Shanghai. A number of Fukienese also lived there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216095, "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": 394, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "328\n\nThere was a great deal of respect for Britain in the 1950s and when I bargained with a stall holder to buy a piece of electrical equipment he said to me: “This is not Japanese you know. It's best quality. It's British!' As late as the mid-1960s one of my Chinese staff, teaching surveying, refused to use a theodolite because it was made in Japan. War time memories died hard!\n\nAlmost wherever one went in the colony during the 1954-55 winter one could hear the song, Whatever will be, will be, blaring out over loudspeakers or being hummed or sung. I was told that I should not tip more than 20 cents for odd tasks and, at the end of the month, I should tip my hotel room boy and my waiter each $10. I could go out then and have a haircut, a shave, a shampoo and a manicure for $2.80, and, being a generous sort of chap, I gave the 20 cents change as a tip. As I have said, I did not arrive immediately after the Second World War when people were prepared to work for two bowls of rice a day.\n\nThere was no income tax in Hong Kong until 1939 when a 10 per cent \"war tax\" was levied. This was supposed to come off when the war ended but it never did. When I arrived in the mid-1950s the maximum salaries tax one could pay was 12 per cent. It had been increased from 10 per cent in 1950.\n\n1\n\n2\n\nI started teaching at the old Technical College in Wood Road, Wan Chai. On my first visit a \"big man coolie team\" was grunting and manhandling heavy engineering equipment up the stairs. We did not move to Hung Hom until 1957. With the help of \"academic drift” my old College became the Polytechnic University, on the Hung Hom campus, in 1994.\n\nShortly after I arrived in the colony there was a rumour a leopard was on the prowl in the New Territories. It was probably no more than a rumour but I do believe that there were instances of South China Tigers briefly visiting the New Territories in the 1950s. If you don't believe me you should read The Hong Kong Countryside, by zoologist GAC Herklots (1951).\n\nI was taken the rounds of Hong Kong by a Yorkshire colleague within a few days of my arriving. First we went to the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (as it was known then) where I opened an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216101, "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": 400, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "334\n\nWhen I arrived in the mid-1950s, only one government department - Medical and Health - was headed by a Chinese. But he was not a local and came from Malaya. Today, of course, the boot is on the other foot. Only persons of Chinese nationality can become Government Secretaries.\n\nAlthough the Peak Reservation Ordinance was not brought back into force after World War Two, there was, nevertheless, quite a bit of covert racism - certainly among staff in the college where I taught. My old boss told me, when he learned I intended carrying on studying Cantonese, 'Only policemen and cranks learn Cantonese.' Immediately I thought, \"Yes, and I'm one of the cranks!\" One British colleague would openly say to other Europeans that he had lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and was proud that he could not count, in Cantonese, beyond three. 'After all, this is a British colony!' He used to say that no Chinese had crossed the threshold of his home as a guest. 'As a tradesman, yes. But not as a guest.' Another colleague who was not quite so racist frequently said, \"The Chinese are all right, but they need a European behind them.\"\n\nBut then I recall being stationed in the Suez Canal Zone in 1942 in, at the time, the largest military camp in the world. At Qantara railway station there were 10 toilets labelled as follows:\n\nOfficers European\n\nOfficers Asiatic\n\nOfficers Coloured\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants European\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants Asiatic\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants Coloured\n\nOther Ranks European\n\nOther Ranks Asiatic\n\nOther Ranks Coloured", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216105, "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": 404, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "338\n\nour concrete framed building, where I lived in Argyle Street, Kowloon, swayed. You could hear glass breaking, there was a constant job of mopping up. Water seals were sucked out of toilets.\n\nA problem of people\n\nAs Claude Burgess, Colonial Secretary from 1958 to '63, was fond of saying, Hong Kong has a problem of people. They have swum in on pigs' bladders across Mirs Bay and Deep Bay and come in by just about every means possible. Up until 1980 there was a touch base policy. Any illegal immigrant who reached the urban area was allowed to stay. But after that date all illegal immigrants caught have been repatriated.\n\nIn 1962, the Communists had a trial run and opened the 'flood gates.' Over a period of 25 days something like 70,000 men, women and children were allowed to surge into Hong Kong. The communist guards stepped back and directed the masses. They walked over the hills. Hong Kong was overwhelmed. And then, just as abruptly as they had opened, the flood gates shut. It seems to have been a move by the People's Republic to embarrass the colony. They wanted to show that they could take over Hong Kong at any time.\n\nWater shortage\n\nHong Kong was invariably short of water, from the early years of British rule when everyone depended on streams and wells. Up to comparatively recent years the water supply situation was a common subject of conversation.\n\nIn 1963, 'the year Hong Kong ran dry,' we were down to four hours of water on tap once every four days. In resettlement estates people started queuing for water eight hours before it was turned on and at Diamond Hill, it was reported, 20,000 people were dependent on one hydrant. Thieves stole water. Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and Christians all prayed for rain. Water was shipped in by tankers from higher up the Pearl River.\n\nPeople would say at a reception, 'I must slip off early. Our water is turned on tonight.' Of course we, who lived in flats, also stored water. Bathing in a small amount of water was an art. Children went in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216220, "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": 519, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "453\n\nYET MORE THOUGHTS ON HAN SUYIN'S A MANY SPLENDOURED THING: CONDUIT ROAD AND ITS ENVIRONS\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nIn Volume 40, (2000), of the HKBRAS Journal, there were two fine articles. One was entitled Tea, Ivory and Ebony; Tracing Colonial Threads in the Inseparable Life and Literature of Han Suyin, and the second was Some Thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing. These were contributed by Teresa Kowalska and Peter Halliday respectively. I will continue from there and include also a little more history about the interesting district around Conduit Road.\n\nAs we read in the above articles, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden, was partly shot at 41 Conduit Road in the 1950s. This film was based on Han Suyin's autobiography, A Many Splendoured Thing, where Han's lover, a British correspondent, was killed in the Korean War. In the film, in addition to the slight change of title, the hero miraculously became an American. The Chinese-style pavilion out at the back, over towards Po Shan Road, which was used in the film, still stands today. A bit further away is a watercourse, which seldom dries up even during a drought. Water was piped from there for flushing toilets, at the old mansion at No. 41, right up until it was demolished in the 1960s. There was water rationing in those days.\n\nConduit Road itself really came into being as a result of Hong Kong's first water supply scheme, which resulted from the construction of Pok Fu Lam Reservoir. Water began to flow in 1864. Before then, the entire Island depended on wells and streams. Later, a water main was laid around the southwest slopes of Mid-Levels and a road was constructed at the turn of the century, which became known as Conduit Road. The well-to-do in the Colony liked the location and some built their dwellings there.\n\nA Chinese gentleman, Mr. Mok Kon Sang, in 1911 built a palatial residence at 41 Conduit Road where Realty Gardens stands today. Mr. Mok was a comprador for Butterfield and Swire (in 1974 the name was changed to plain Swire). In keeping with rich Chinese of his times, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216514, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "225\n\nOBITUARY\n\nIan Diamond, M.B.E., F.I.M., M.A., Hon. Fellow, HKBRAS (1924-2004)\n\nOur former Hon. Secretary and Vice-President Ian Diamond, died recently at his home in Adelaide, aged 80. He was also an Hon. Fellow of our Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, an honour he greatly prized.\n\nIan was educated at St. Peter's College, Adelaide, and at the University of Adelaide (M.A.). After working as an archivist in Australia, he went to the then British Colony of Fiji where he served from 1958, establishing and running the Central Archives of Fiji and the Western Pacific High Commission until he transferred to Hong Kong in 1971 to set up the Public Records Office there.\n\nIan's service to the RAS was noteworthy. He was our Hon. Secretary 1974-78, Councillor 1978-82, and Vice-President 1983-85, when he retired from the service of the Hong Kong Government. He then returned to his native Australia, with his wife Ishbel, another fine contributor to the good of Hong Kong during their stay in the former Colony.\n\nFor much of Ian's time on the RAS Council, it used to meet in his office in the Public Records Office, then located on the first floor of the Murray Road Multi-storey Car Park at Lambeth Walk. This was but a stone's throw from the appropriately named Bull and Bear, which served as our meeting place when Ian was on overseas leave and his office temporarily unavailable to us.\n\nIan was determined to record the remaining old buildings in Hong Kong, before the developers moved in. Together, Tony Rydings (our Hon. Librarian), Rev. Carl Smith, Dr. Solomon Bard, and Ian completed a photographic survey of fast disappearing parts of the old urban area. Ian did the researching, surveying, and note-taking, and Tony was the main photographer, with timely help from the Photographic Group of the South China Athletic Association.\n\nThe recorded areas included the historic Western District of Hong Kong Island and (later) Yaumatei in Kowloon. Out of the over 2,000", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]