[ { "id": 204238, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 6, "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\n3\n\nTHE NORTH CHINA BRANCH started in Shanghai in 1857 under the name of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society. Its first President was the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D.D., the first American missionary in China and the founder and manager of the Chinese Repository. Its first Journal appeared in 1858 in the name of the Literary and Scientific Society, but in that year the Society became affiliated to the Royal Asiatic Society as its North China Branch. Except for a brief period between 1861, when Dr. Bridgman died, and 1864 when the Society was reanimated through the unremitting efforts of Sir Harry Parkes as President, the Society maintained for nearly 85 years—until the outbreak of the second world war in December 1941—almost an unbroken vigour and a high reputation as the principal centre of Oriental culture among the foreign and Chinese communities in Central China. It also kept up a high standard of scholarship and of cultural appeal in its Journal, which appeared unfailingly every year. After the war it continued its work until, after 1948, it was forced through political troubles to cease its activities. The last issues of the Journal had been published with the co-operation of the International Institute of China.\n\nThe Society in Shanghai was from its early days fortunate in the support of a generous public and of the British Government, which in 1868 provided it with a site at a nominal rent for its own building, completed in 1871. Later the property was conveyed to the Society in perpetuity or for so long as it was used for the Society's purpose. Thus, in 1931 the Society was able, with the aid of public subscriptions and generous municipal grants, to build in Museum Road close to the British Consulate a commodious building of its own; it contained a lecture hall named after the late Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a floor to accommodate its Oriental Library of 12,000 volumes and adjacent reading rooms, as well as space for an excellent natural history museum and for the exhibition of Chinese paintings and other works of art.\n\nIn 1941 the Society had nearly 800 members, including most of the leading Oriental scholars, explorers and travellers. Amongst the outstanding personalities who had been associated with the North China Branch a few may be mentioned—Dr. Joseph Edkins, Thomas W. Kingsmill, Dr. Emil Breitschneider, Henri Cordier (at one time the Society's Librarian), P. G. van Mollendorf, Sir Robert Hart, Sir Harry Parkes, Sir Byron Brennan, W. H. Medhurst, Sir Edmund Hornby (the first British Judge in China), Sir Rutherford Alcock, H. A. Giles, G. H. Parker, H. B. Morse, A. P. Parker, Alexander Hosie, Samuel Couling, Sir Sidney Barton and Dr. J. C. Ferguson, an American, former President of Nanking University and a man of profound learning and wisdom who, in the course of half a century, served the Society as President, Secretary and Editor of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204465, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "86 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nDespite the presence of troops, military posts and police of two types in the Territory, besides the assistance of the local kuk, the magistrate's power to prevent crime appears to have been limited. Piracy, in particular, was rampant at different times, and ranged from the anti-dynastic activities of Koxinga in the mid-seventeenth century on behalf of his former masters the Great Ming, (which occasioned the removal from the coast) through the widespread depredations of large pirate bands at the beginning of the nineteenth, to the milder but still disconcerting activities of the period under review. \n\nIt is necessary to emphasise the prevailing unrest, since until quite recently the only striking difference between the New Territory in 1898 and the territory we know to-day was the imposition of the pax britannica. Until the British Government got into the saddle and established its police stations and patrolling launches, the people were subject to piracy, robbery and other forms of violence as from time immemorial. The Governor mentioned specifically in a despatch to the Secretary of State in April 1899 that “the (Tai Po) district is well known in Canton (i.e. to the Viceroy) to be turbulent, that to the N.E. of Mirs Bay being noted for piracy, and so ill-disposed that I am informed no Customs Official dares to land there except with the support of a revenue cruiser”.30 He probably had this from \n\nLockhart, his main source of reliable information at this time. Of course, the local population were sometimes not averse to such efforts themselves, and as a British Consul wrote at the time \"The old free-booting spirit still survives among many who are now apparently peaceful traders and fishermen [of which] we occasionally get startling proofs in some unexpected daring act of piracy on the high seas or along the coast\".31 Smuggling was also common, whether of salt or opium.** \n\nLooking outside the district to the province and its capital city Canton, the political scene, as revealed by the Trade Reports to the Foreign Office of consuls in the several British treaty ports of Canton, Amoy, Samshui and Pakhoi was the reverse of satisfactory. Though written by a succession of men of obviously varying temperament and outlook they reveal a sad state of affairs. Everywhere there were disturbances which the civil authorities were slow, or incapable to correct, and clear signs that the dynasty was held to have exhausted its mandate from", "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": 204591, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n61\n\nacquire at Peking a site for Building, or may hire Houses, for the accommodation of Her Majesty's mission, and that the Chinese Government will assist it in so doing\". Then, when the Imperial Government appeared to procrastinate over the ratification of these treaties, another English and French force fought its way to the capital and compelled the Manchu authorities to ratify them by the Convention of Peking. This was signed by the British envoy, Lord Elgin,1 and by Prince Kung,2 the chief Chinese representative, on October 24th, 1860 in the Hall of Ceremonies situated in what was later to be called Legation Street. The second clause of the Convention stated that \"Her Britannic Majesty's Representative will henceforward reside permanently, or occasionally, at Peking, as Her Britannic Majesty shall be pleased to decide”. \n\nLord Elgin proposed that Prince Kung's own residence should be rented to the British, but Prince Kung memorialized the throne as follows: \n\nAs regards the matter of the English residing at the capital in the near future, we have been discussing it with them during the past few days. The chief barbarian official [Lord Elgin] considers that the quarters in Prince I's [Prince Kung] palace are spacious and he insists that it is to be their future residence at the capital. Moreover, he stated that there were still open spaces in the palace and that he wants to build houses there himself. It seems to your ministers that to \n\n1 James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin. He served as Governor-General of Canada 1846-1854. In 1857 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to China and signed the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, returning to England early in 1859. In 1860 he was again sent to China as special envoy, and signed the Convention of Peking. He returned to England in 1861 and was appointed Governor-General of India in the same year. He died in India in 1863. \n\nHis younger brother Frederick William Bruce held the post of Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong from 9 February 1844 until 27 June 1846. In 1857 he accompanied his elder brother to China as principal secretary. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Emperor of China in December 1858, but had to wait until March 1861 before actually taking up residence in Peking. He left China on his appointment as British Minister to Washington in 1865. \n\n2 I-hsin (1833-1898), the first Prince Kung, was the sixth son of Emperor Tao-kuang. When the joint French and British forces approached Peking in September 1860 the Emperor Hsien-feng fled to Jehol leaving his half-brother, Prince Kung, to make peace with the allies. When a prototype Chinese foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, was set up in 1861, Prince Kung was in charge of it, and he played an important part in Chinese affairs for the next fifteen years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204593, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n63\n\nThese extracts give the official Chinese version of how the British came to occupy their first Legation quarters, and agree closely with Lord Elgin's own account contained in a despatch to Lord John Russell, the Foreign Secretary, dated Tientsin, 13th November 1860:\n\nOn the 7th instant Mr. Bruce reached Peking, having hastened up from Shanghae in compliance with my request. His arrival was most opportune, as it was very important that before my departure from the capital I should be able to confer with him on various matters, and more especially on the subject of the place of residence for the future of Her Majesty's Representative in China. Mr. Bruce informed me that he was perfectly willing to take up his abode in Peking at once. On consultation with Baron Gros and General Ignatieff, however, I found that the latter was about to leave Peking for the winter, and that the former was of opinion that it would not be advisable that M. de Bourboulon should establish himself in the capital until the spring. I considered it, therefore, to be my duty to advise Mr. Bruce to return with me for the present to Tien-tsin, and to remain there until a suitable residence should be provided for him in the capital. In order, however, that there might be no misapprehension on the part of the Chinese Government in reference to this point, we selected a house which we thought might be adapted to the purpose, and which was procurable on easy terms, and we accepted the services of Mr. Adkins, one of the Student Interpreters, a very promising young man, who volunteered to remain at Peking, and to superintend the arrangements necessary for putting it in order.\n\nHarry Parkes, who was Lord Elgin's interpreter at this time, writing to his wife on November 17th 1860 gave a few more details:\n\nPeking is in a wretched state of dilapidation and ruin, and scarcely one of their palatial buildings is not falling into decay. We have obtained one of the best, and yet it is quite\n\n* Elgin to Russell, 13 November 1860. Parliamentary Papers, “Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China 1859-60\", 2754 of 1861, No. 119, p. 254. See also ibid. p. 259 for a note from T. Adkins to Frederick Bruce dated Peking, 12 November 1860, reporting that the capital was returning to normal and that he had found no opposition to his residence there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204594, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "64 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\nuninhabitable according to our notions, and we therefore tell the Chinese that the Minister is obliged to postpone taking up his residence until the residence is fit to receive him. Mr. Adkins is therefore charged with the task of repairs, and in March of next year or possibly earlier Mr. Bruce expects to take up his quarters there. His arrival at Peking before we quitted it was a happy hit. Formal interviews took place between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung at which the former introduced his brother and abdicated in his favour; so that before we quitted Peking Mr. Bruce had commenced his business with the Chinese authorities, while that of the Special Embassy terminated.7 \n\nSo interpreter Adkins remained alone in the Palace of Duke I-liang throughout the winter of 1860-61, until in March 1861 Bruce set out from Tientsin, accompanied by Thomas Wade, his interpreter, and Dr. Rennie, physician to the new Legation. Colonel Neale, the Secretary of the Legation, with two attachés, St. Clair and Wyndham, had gone ahead with the baggage. We are fortunate to have a detailed account of the first year at the British Legation kept by Dr. Rennie. In the Preface to his book Peking and the Pekingese he explained that \"a few months after Her Majesty's Legation had been established in Peking, a feeling began to be entertained by its members, that, with a view to future publication, some record should be kept of the various incidents which were from day to day occurring, during what may be termed the inaugural period of foreign diplomatic residence at the capital—the most important event in the modern history of Anglo-Chinese intercourse.\" Since Rennie had been keeping \n\n7 Quoted in The Life of Sir Harry Parkes by Stanley Lane-Poole, 2 vols., (London, 1894), I, 404-5. \n\nParkes was born in 1828, and came out to China in 1841 to join his two sisters who were living with their cousin, the wife of the Protestant missionary, the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff. Parkes was attached to Sir Henry Pottinger's suite in the expedition up the Yangtze in 1842 and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He started to learn Chinese and at the age of fifteen was attached to the British Consulate at Canton. Many appointments as interpreter and consul followed until 1865 when he was appointed Minister to Japan. In 1883 he became British Minister at Peking. He died in 1885. \n\n* D. F. Rennie, Peking and the Pekingese during the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, 2 vols. (London, 1865) vii. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "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": 204837, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n115\n\nAs it happened, the north end of Lantao remained almost untouched for 150 years. It was leased to Britain in 1898 for 99 years, but little development was undertaken until 1960, when large schemes of reclamation and resettlement were prepared. The slumbering rural character of the island is now beginning to change rapidly.\n\nWhy was Ma Wan chosen for survey? Nearness to Macao? Access to the Pearl River and Canton? Ships occasionally came down the China coast from the east, and took a short cut to Canton through the Kap Sui Mun Channels, but Parish's report seems to suggest that this was regarded as a hazardous piece of sailing. These ships, however, would all have to pass Ma Wan, and so the island was at that time the best-known in Hong Kong waters. Also, the approach in a square-rigged sailing vessel to the then uncharted coast gave a confusing variety of small islands, promontories, and near-islands. The approach from the west was probably better known, and was easier to find. But it is to be regretted that Parish was forced by his orders and the bad weather to waste so much energy on such an unsuitable site.\n\nCONCLUSIONS\n\nWhen the East India Company's trading monopoly to China came to an end in April 1834 the position of English merchants at Canton changed. Lord Napier was sent out as Superintendent of Trade, though the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, tended to regard him as a representative of the King. Napier soon came into conflict with the officials at Canton over what may be called matters of national prestige, and relations between England and China began to deteriorate. More especially relations were embittered over the increasingly large amount of opium being brought to China from India in British-owned ships. It was illegal to import opium into China by Chinese law, and as a result a swarm of Chinese middlemen co-operated with the foreign merchants in smuggling opium along the coast, especially in the province of Kwangtung. However, in 1821 the Kwangtung authorities were much stricter in enforcing the anti-opium smuggling regulations and as a result the foreign merchants could no longer bring it up to Canton, but instead took it to the \"outer anchorages\" where permanent receiving ships were stationed during the trading season (approximately October until April). The main base for opium smuggling was the island of Lintin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205429, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "184\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nlung, who was concurrently a Grand Councillor and a Grand Secretary.\n\nThis inadequate chapter on the Macartney mission demonstrates the basic weakness of the whole book, namely the author's failure to use the best primary sources both Chinese and Western. The story of the abortive Macartney mission is a fascinating one because it marks the first cultural confrontation between China and a major Western power, and as such has historical overtones which are relevant to a full understanding of the confrontation which we are witnessing today. But Mr. Coates has failed to bring out this significance mainly, I suspect, because of his unfamiliarity with the primary English and Chinese sources. For instance, there is no indication from his account that he has read Lord Macartney's own journal of his embassy which was published in full in 1962. From the bibliography it appears that this chapter was based almost entirely on the official account of the embassy written by Sir George Leonard Staunton which is dull and florid in comparison with Macartney's own private journal.\n\nIt is only fair to say, however, that the last 50 pages of the book are devoted to the events following the death of Lord Napier in 1834 and leading up to the formal cession of Hong Kong in 1843, and that here the author appears to be on more familiar ground. For instance, he brings out clearly the difficulties which faced Captain Charles Elliot as British Superintendent of Trade and he guides the reader towards a fair and balanced judgment of Elliot as a statesman. It is time that the reputation of Charles Elliot, created mainly by the strictures of Queen Victoria and Palmerston, be reassessed.\n\nIn conclusion, Prelude to Hong Kong is not in any way an original work of scholarship and contains almost nothing which cannot be read more reliably elsewhere. It may be of some value to those who have recently become aware of Hong Kong's existence and want to read up, in brief summary, the train of events which resulted in its founding. But for those who already know something of the history of Macao and the development of foreign trade at Canton, this modest little book will be a disappointment since the author has failed to draw sufficiently on the richness of the archives of the period and thus the reader is compelled to view the story through the eyes of the author rather than through", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "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": 205785, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n85\n\nCrawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: \"A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below...\" An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: \"In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful\". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of \"ordinary glass lamps\" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else!\n\nFortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: \"If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary\".\n\nFour years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205786, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 206011, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "86 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\n1860's, cannot have been much worse than those experienced by contemporary European emigrants to America and Australia; and may have been better than those experienced by many thousands of Irish emigrants to America during the famine years of 1846-48. In her book \"The Great Famine\", Cecil Woodham-Smith gives horrifying details of the sufferings of these unfortunate people. Two of the most tragic cases concerned the British ships Larch and Virginius, which left Sligo and Liverpool respectively for Quebec at this time. Of the Larch's 440 passengers 108 died at sea, and 150 of the remainder were landed sick; while of the Virginius' 476 passengers 158 died at sea and 106 of the remainder — including the master and mate — were landed sick. At that time American ships were superior to British, and their fares were higher than on British ships, because they applied the Passenger Acts more strictly. Also during this same summer of 1847 German ships were constantly arriving at Quebec with hundreds of healthy, robust, and cheerful passengers. It was surely a mastery of British understatement for Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to write that \"the desire to reach America being exceedingly strong, many emigrants are content to submit to very great hardships during the voyage\". Nor is it to be wondered that fully 90% of these emigrants later crossed over into the United States, among them the father of Henry Ford. The greatest hardships during the famine emigrations took place on ships chartered by landlords anxious to clear their estates of impoverished tenants, and some of the worst cases are said to have involved Lord Palmerston's own tenants. Lord Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister for most of the 1840's, and prominent in the campaign against the African Slave Trade, probably knew little about his tenants' misfortunes, in itself one of the most telling indictments of the Irish land system. \n\nIn all the long period of Chinese emigration and until the early years of the 20th century, very few Chinese women emigrated, a factor which has had an incalculable effect on South-east Asian history. It is said that the Chinese authorities, while comparatively lax in preventing the emigration of men, took great precautions to prevent women emigrating, and it was not, for instance, until the mid 1920s that the authorities in Hainan Island allowed women to emigrate. A Chinese woman was a rare sight in the streets of Bangkok until about 1910, but within twenty years", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "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": 206362, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n163\n\nfor defence and internal security purposes. This Ordinance was similar to that introduced in Britain in the early post-war years, and was equally unpopular. It was suspended in 1961, having outlasted the British one by two years. Thereafter the Force reverted to Volunteers. Apart from retaining one infantry company and a Home Guard Company, the former infantry organisation was discontinued and the Hong Kong Regiment was reorganised as a reconnaissance unit with internal security duties, companies converting to squadrons, one of them later equipped with armoured cars.\n\nVOLUNTEER PERSONNEL\n\nWho were the Volunteers during this hundred years and more of service? Generally speaking they were mostly Europeans up to the establishment of Chinese companies in 1937-38, since when Chinese have played an increasingly important part in the manning of the Volunteer Force. The names of the famous Ninety-Nine who signed the Colonial Secretary's circular on 30th May 1854 show a predominantly British group with some Portuguese, Germans and Scandinavians.\nBy 21st June following their number had risen to 127 comprising 92 British, 4 Danes and Swedes, 8 Germans, 16 Portuguese, 1 Italian, 1 Frenchman and individuals from 5 other countries. This mixture was representative of the polyglot foreign population of the time. It has been a feature of Volunteer life in the early and later periods, though not in the middle years from 1893. The Ordinance of 1862 made it easy for persons who were not British subjects to join. Volunteers needed only to be \"such and so many of the Inhabitants of Hongkong as shall volunteer and offer themselves, and as His Excellency the Governor shall approve of\" (Clause 1). Neither did the Rules and Regulations approved on 14th May 1862 make any stipulations about nationality. Christians and non-Christians alike were acceptable and could make either an oath or declaration of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria and of faithful service during the term of enrolment (Clause VIII). There then came a change. Whilst the 1893 Ordinance, though being more specific in many things, still said nothing to exclude\n\n37 Vol, 1954, p. 21\n\n38 Vol, 1954, p. 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "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": 206495, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n37\n\nFrance, and in 1859 he \"broke off\" relations with Britain, upon which the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell commented,12\n\nTell Brooke that the people of Sarawak are welcome to any independence they can achieve and maintain but that a British subject cannot throw off his allegiance at pleasure.\n\nAnd Spencer St. John noted13 that \"the Raja's correspondence during this year with Her Majesty's Government was not pleasant, and ended, apparently, in complete estrangement”.\n\nOver the years Brooke had acquired a respectable following of supporters in Britain and Singapore, among whom were some influential figures such as Lord Grey, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, and the late Victorian philanthropist, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, later Baroness Burdett-Coutts. His friends now took up his cause and lobbied Whitehall from the Prime Minister's office down.\n\nBritain refused to extend a colonial or protectorate status to Sarawak on practical political grounds. Henry Layard, an under-secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote that a protectorate was declined because of the \"inconvenience of such relations between this country and a foreign territory\", because Sarawak “would not be of sufficient value politically and commercially\", and because Brooke's title was not \"sufficiently clear\"14\n\nBrooke's friends persuaded the Government to have another look at Sarawak, and in 1861 Lord Elgin, who was about to depart as the new viceroy of India, was instructed to investigate the prospects and potential of Sarawak. He delegated the task to Colonel Cavenagh, Governor of the Straits Settlements. In due course Cavenagh and Elgin provided an optimistic assessment of Raja Brooke's state and suggested making Sarawak a lieutenant-governorship under Singapore. \"I am disposed to think\", wrote Lord Elgin,15\n\nthat the acquisition of Saigon by the French and the persistent endeavor of the Dutch authorities to cripple British trade... give enhanced importance to the preservation of the independence of Sarawak as a matter affecting British interests.'\n\n12 See correspondence between the Foreign Office and Raja Brooke between 26 November and 17 December 1859, FO12/35.\n\n13 Spencer St. John, Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, (Edinburgh, 1879) p. 327.\n\n14 Layard memorandum to Lord Elgin, 2 January 1862, FO12/35.\n\n15 Elgin to Russell, 8 January 1863, FO12/35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "38\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nIn the meantime Brooke's friend St. John, the Consul in Brunei, provided strong evidence to support Sarawak's claim of independence. In correspondence between the Sultan and the Foreign Office, Raja Brooke's relations with Brunei were the subject of discussion. Lord Russell in 1861 asked the consul if it was true that Brunei looked upon Sarawak as an independent state. He had been told that the Sultan honoured the Raja with a twenty-one gun salute whenever he visited Brunei Town. St. John replied that the Sultan did indeed consider Sarawak independent of Brunei. St. John also produced minutes of an interview he had had with the leading chiefs of Sarawak in which they unanimously confirmed that they had chosen the Tuan Besar, James Brooke, to rule over them in place of the harsh and tyrannical chiefs of Brunei, and that they owed no allegiance to the Sultan of Brunei.16\n\nWhen, then, St. John's tour as Consul in Brunei ended in 1862 Brooke's friends, with a concerted lobbying effort, prevailed upon the Palmerston government to appoint a consul to Sarawak as distinct from Brunei. In August 1863 the Cabinet approved the appointment \"as the most direct and least formal method of recognizing it as an independent state\". Whatever in the way of reservations Lord Russell may have held concerning Brooke and Sarawak he was aware that the appointment meant recognition. He minuted some time earlier,17\n\nIf we appoint a consul I suppose he must be appointed to reside in the territory of the rajah of Sarawak as an independent sovereign.\n\nAnd later, when Russell was urged to inform Raja Brooke \"that the Cabinet had consented to recognize Sarawak by appointing a consul there\", the Foreign Secretary instructed his undersecretary, \"We may write to Sir James Brooke to say that he has reason to believe it\". The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, concurred.\n\nHowever, bureaucratic procedures now took over, and the Consul's instructions directed him to procure his official acceptance from\n\n16 See L. R. Wright, Origins of British Borneo, pp. 75-76; and St. John, \"Minutes of an interview with Sarawak Chiefs\", 25th October 1855, FO 12/22.\n\n17 Russell minute on a memo, by Brooke, 13 August 1863, in the Layard Papers (British Museum), ADD.MSS. 38989, f. 244,\n\n18 Russell minute, Layard Papers, ADD.MSS. 38989, f. 245.", "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": 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": 207724, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n97\n\nPeking. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company had been doing business with Hawaii. Their two steamers, the Ho-Chung ** and Mei-Foo, ✯✯ were used to transport Chinese laborers to Hawaii in 1879 and 1880.*\n\nIn Tientsin, King Kalakaua was received by Viceroy Li Hung-chang ✶ who asked penetrating questions about Hawaii: \"How many islands are there in your Kingdom? Do you have a Parliament? You have many Chinese in your country. Do you treat them well?\" The secretary and interpreter for the Viceroy was Li Sun (Tsang Lai-sun, a graduate of Hamilton College in New York.)\n\nThe King wrote back on April 6, 1881 to William L. Green, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, that he went to North China to see Li Hung-chang \"for the purposes I had in view: First, of stopping, if possible, further immigration of Chinese to the Islands [who came alone] without carrying their wives, and Secondly:--to secure for our government the same privileges as granted to the United States Government, the right at any time to restrict, return, or remove, the large influx of Chinese to our islands. On these two subjects our mission has been successful.”\n\nThe Royal party returned to Shanghai and embarked on the S. S. Thibet for Hong Kong, arriving on April 12, 1881. Already Hong Kong officials had been informed of the King's coming and were ready to extend a royal welcome. Owing to the considerable commerce between Hong Kong and Hawaii, the King was represented as Consul General by a British merchant of high standing William Keswick of Jardine, Matheson and Co. The twelve-oared barge of Sir John Pope Hennessy, the Colonial Governor, also appeared alongside with an invitation asking the King, in the name of Queen Victoria, to be his guest. The Hawaiian King had to adjust his schedule to accept the Governor's invitation for a royal reception at the Government House. As Armstrong recorded in his book, \"While we were taking coffee, the next morning, the forts, with seven warships, fired the usual salute of twenty-one guns. From the balcony of the Government House, high above the city, we looked down on a dense mass of smoke, rolling away to the mainland, pierced with the flashing of the guns, the Hawaiian flag", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "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": 208579, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n9\n\nHong Kong, stated without authorization but from his \"knowledge of the movement of opinion in England\", he felt confident that when the time came to deal with Hong Kong, the Chinese would be completely satisfied.\" The Foreign Office was naturally most displeased by such an utterance,36\n\nBy contrast, the American behaviour at the conference was dis-coordinated. While much of the criticism of British imperialism and skepticism regarding the British attitude and intention in respect to the Atlantic Charter were expressed by the American participants, and while they generally supported the Chinese stand on Hong Kong, the pressure they succeeded in exerting was considerably discounted because they failed to function as a closely coordinated team. Stanley Hornbeck, a delegate to the conference, commented specifically on the organization of the American group in a memorandum on his observations of the conference: \"It needs to be kept in mind with regard to I.P.R. Conferences that, whereas, as a rule, the Groups from most countries... attend and function as “delegations” (with a certain amount of guidance if not definite instructions from their Governments), the members of the American Group attend the function simply as members (without a \"group\" organization and without express guidance and with no instructions from their Government.)\" This disjointed approach was to largely characterize the American stand regarding the question of Hong Kong during the war,\n\nSuch an approach did not long escape Britain's attention. In March 1943 Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, paid a visit to Washington, apparently on Churchill's prompting. Eden's conversations with Roosevelt and senior American officials only \"provided an exchange of views with regard to such matters as cooperation between the Governments with respect to political questions arising in connection with the prosecution of the war\"; there was no intention of commitment on either side.38 Early in Eden's visit Harry Hopkins, special assistant to Roosevelt, made the general remark, in front of the president, to the British visitor that he \"thought no useful purpose would be served at this stage of the war, and surely no useful purpose at the Peace Table, by Great Britain and [the United States] having no knowledge of [their] differences of opinion” regarding Hong Kong, Malayan Straits, and India.39 Eden could do no harm in agreeing to this comment.40 Roosevelt, however, was much more direct about Hong Kong. He", "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": 208587, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n17\n\n◄ Hornbeck to Cordell Hull, secretary of state, 20 May 1942, Hornbeck Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 465.\n\n* Generally see Thorne, op. cit., p. 163, and note 51 on pp. 168-9, referring to Leahy's diary and the King Papers. Also Hornbeck's memorandum, 3 October 1942, Hornbeck Papers, box 180.\n\n• Ballantine's diary in Ballantine Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 1. Also see Tung Hsien-kuang, Chiang Tsung-t'ung ch’uan (Biography of Chiang Kai-shek; Taipei, 1954), II, pp. 343-4; and B. W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York, 1971), p. 352.\n\n'Hornbeck's memorandum, 20 May 1942, op. cit.\n\n8 The two sets of statistics are available in Hornbeck Papers, box 466 and box 467 respectively.\n\n\"Thorne, op. cit., pp. 175-6.\n\n1o Announcement of the loan was made on 1 February, but the agreement was not signed until 21 March. For details of the loan and its use during subsequent years, see Department of State, United States Relations with China (hereafter US and China; Washington, 1949), pp. 470-71.\n\n11 Hornbeck's autobiography, Hornbeck Papers, box 497.\n\n12 For more details, see US and China, p. 37,\n\n1a Madame Chiang, however, was intensely disliked by Roosevelt's household staff at Hyde Park who found her \"arrogant and overbearing\", W. D. Hassett, then aide to President Roosevelt, Off the Record with F.D.R. (Rutgers University Press, 1958), pp. 181-2, 288.\n\n14 For text of the relevant treaty between the United States and China, see US and China, pp. 514-7.\n\n15 For more details, see ibid., p. 37.\n\n1 Chinese leaders freely expressed their anti-British sentiments to the Americans; see, for example, H. Morgenthan, Morgenthau Diary (China; Washington, 1965), II, pp. 862-895.\n\n17 Minute of Sir John Brenan, a veteran official in the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, on Anglo-Chinese relations since the outbreak of the Pacific War, 3 November 1942, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/31627.\n\n18 For elaboration on this point, see author's article, \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American Chinese Relations\", Modern Asian Studies, 11, 2 (1977), pp. 262-3.\n\n19 Thorne, op. cit., p. 195.\n\n20 Details of the British discussion leading to the invitation are available in FO 371/31627. The British government was understandably embarrassed by the Chinese response. Ashley Clarke, an official in the Far Eastern Department, confided this point to Stanley Hornbeck, his opposite number in the Department of State. See Hornbeck's attempt to explain for Madame Chiang, Hornbeck to Clarke, strictly confidential, 27 February 1943, Hornbeck Papers, box 467.\n\n21 Thorne, op. cit., p. 161.\n\n22 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)\", p. 58.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208588, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "18\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\n23 W. Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (University of Georgia Press; 1959), p. 105.\n\n24 This is according to the observation of Ashley Clarke, head of the Far Eastern Department in the British Foreign Office, during his one month visit to the Department of State early in the summer of 1942; see his report on his visit to A. Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, 11 June 1942, FO371/31804. See also Ministry of Information to Colonial Office, 22 October 1942, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/31774.\n\n25 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", pp. 266-272.\n\n26 Brenan's minute, 3 December, on J. G. Winant, American ambassador to London, to Eden, 2 December 1942, FO371/31664.\n\n27 Eden to Winant, 7 December 1942, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), China, 1942 (Washington, 1956), p. 390.\n\n28 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", op. cit., pp. 284-5.\n\n29 Ibid., pp. 287-8.\n\n30 Ibid., pp. 288-9.\n\n31 War cabinet conclusions 173 (42), 28 December 1942, Cab65/28. Also Eden to Winant, 29 December; and Eden to Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, tel. 8264, immediate, 29 December 1942, FO371/31665.\n\n32 Thorne, op. cit., p. 179, and note 53, p. 198, referring to G. Atcheson to Hornbeck, 29 December 1942, Department of State, Decimal and Other Files, National Archives (Washington D.C.) 793.003/12-2942.\n\n33 W. L. Tung in his book V. K. Wellington Koo and China's Wartime Diplomacy (New York, 1977), based on the Wellington Koo Papers deposited with Columbia University, gives a possible explanation: \"Koo was then Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain and returned to Chungking for consultations. As an experienced diplomat well familiar with the attitude of British official and unofficial circles, he counselled the government to conclude the treaty on the relinquishment of extraterritoriality but reserve the right of later negotiations on the Kowloon question”, p. 53.\n\n34 Halifax to Eden, tel. 6310, immediate, 31 December 1942, FO371/35679.\n\n35 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)\", pp. 58-68.\n\n34 Ibid., p. 68.\n\n*7 See memorandum in Hornbeck Papers, box 466.\n\n** Cordell Hull, secretary of state, to United States chargé d'affaires in London, tel., 4 April 1943, in FRUS, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, The Far East, 1943 (Washington, 1963), III, pp. 46-7. Also see R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 707.\n\n30 For American interest in India, especially early in the war, see for example, M. S. Venkatramani and B. K. Shrivastava, \"The United States and the Cripps Mission\", India Quarterly, XIX, no. 3 (July-September, 1963), pp. 214-65. See also author's article, \"Britain's Reaction to Chiang\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208590, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "20\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\n62 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)”, p. 72.\n\n63 Brigadier A. J. H. Dove of the War Office to C. H. M. Weldock of the Admiralty, 12 August 1945, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/46251, and Admiralty to commander-in-chief, British Pacific Fleet, tel. 131957A, important, 13 August 1945, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/46252.\n\n64 Seymore to Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary, tel. 857, most immediate and top secret, 16 August; tel. 865, most immediate and top secret, 17 August; tel. 909, most immediate and top secret, 23 August; and Bevin to Seymore, tel. 984, 25 August 1945, FO371/46252.\n\n**Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman (New York, 1965), I, p. 492.\n\n**Thorne, op. cit., p. 649.\n\n67 General Hurley, now United States ambassador at Chungking, to secretary of state, tel. 1414, 21 August 1945, in FRUS, The Far East, China, 1945 (Washington, 1969), VII, pp. 507-8.\n\n**Truman, op. cit., pp. 493-4.\n\n*Hurley to secretary of state, tel. CFB$633, 23 August 1945, in FRUS, The Far East, China, 1945, op. cit., p. 511.\n\n70 Truman, op. cit., pp. 494-5.\n\n71 Truman, ibid., p. 496.\n\n72 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 302.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209652, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 309, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "Notes and QUERIES\n\n287\n\nIt is possible to trace the history of Mr. Herton's unhappy experience in the matter of transit passes in the consular correspondence from Kiungchow (H) or Hoihow (now Hai-k’ou), the port of Hainan Island facing the mainland. Briefly, the facts appear to be as follows. On 7th June 1877 the British firm of Herton, Ebell & Co. applied for transit passes to bring sugar from the interior. The reply from the Chinese customs authorities was that regulations for issue of transit passes had not yet been drawn up, so none could be issued. Edward Herton decided nevertheless to go and buy sugar and galangal (or galingale), for which he paid duty at Hai-Ant customs house. Further purchases were made in July and November 1877, on each occasion transit passes being applied for and refused, and duties at a higher rate than would have been due under the transit scheme were paid.\n\nOn 8th May 1878, Messrs. Herton, Ebell & Co. made a formal complaint to H.M. Consul at Kiungchow, claiming $20,000 against the Chinese Government for excess duty paid and losses incurred due to the non-issue of transit passes. The acting consul, James Scott, forwarded this to Hugh Fraser, H.M. Chargé d'Affaires in Peking on 30th May (F.O.228, v.612, p.273-4), with his comment that there was insufficient supporting evidence for such a large claim. Scott had previously submitted to Fraser on 8th May (F.O.228, v.612, p.267-71) a claim on behalf of Messrs. Herton, Ebell for excess duty amounting to $909.57, for which there was supporting documentation. What happened to this earlier claim is not clear, but Fraser forwarded the larger claim, which was in the form of a petition to the Secretary of State with supporting documents, to the Foreign Office on September 25 (F.O.228, v.603, p.262-3) with the comment:\n\n“British traders may perhaps not unjustly ask to be reimbursed the amount actually paid by them as Transit duty over and above that which they would have had to pay had passes been allowed them; but I am not prepared to support any such demand for an additional ‘indemnity’ as that which is made in Mr. Herton's letter to acting Vice Consul Scott of the 8th August last.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "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": 210156, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "106\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nNor did he mince his words. “You have disobeyed and neglected your instructions” he told Elliot. \"You seem to have considered that my instructions were waste paper which you might treat with entire disregard, and that you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy.\" The Foreign Secretary accused Elliot of having settled with the Chinese for much less than he had been told to demand “without the full employment of that force which was sent to you expressly for the purpose of enabling you to use compulsion, if persuasion should fail”. He was not impressed by the cession of Hong Kong “a barren island with hardly a house on it” and clogged by conditions which made it doubtful if it was a cession in full sovereignty.\"\n\n196\n\nThis myth, for myth it was, has died hard. Indeed, I fear it is not yet dead. It has always been more striking to compare the glowing present with such an insignificant past, and this has been the case at all times in Hong Kong's later history. Over forty years after the British occupation of Hong Kong, Governor Sir G.F. Bowen, addressing the Legislative Council at the opening of the 1884-85 Session, stated that \"... the Island of Hong Kong... when annexed to the British Empire in 1843 (sic) was merely a barren rock, inhabited only by a few fishermen and pirates.” This view was expressed another forty years on by the American Consul-General, George E. Anderson, writing on the Hong Kong Consular District in an official publication of the American Department of Commerce. \"The island of Hong Kong consists of a broken ridge of lofty hills, the highest, Victoria Peak, being approximately 1,800 feet in height. There are few valleys of any extent and scarcely any ground for cultivation... In general, the hills and mountains are bare and the soil is poor.\" He added usefully, \"The island of Hong Kong, 28 square miles in extent, is about 11 miles long and from 2 to 5 miles broad; its circumference is 27 miles\".*\n\nIs this a justifiable description? Was Hong Kong ‘a barren island with hardly a house on it\"? Were its people, such as they were, \"a handful of fishermen and pirates\"? The answer is NO, on both counts. There were several villages of some size, as well as hamlets, and a few larger coastal villages which served as market towns for the villages and as home ports for a permanent boat population and visiting craft. The land people were settled, and as we shall", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211113, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "149\n\nThese local views were expressed in the dispatch of the Governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, to the Colonial Office in London and in a memorial from the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce. Both reflect, as we shall see, the uneasiness underneath the comfortable life of the expatriate in nineteenth century Hong-kong.\n\nCOLONIAL PRESSURE STOPS CONSUL MOVE\n\nIn 1891, Ho A-mei wrote to the newspapers supporting a proposal of the British Foreign Office that a Chinese Consul be appointed for Hongkong. It was an issue which in the past had sharpened differences between Hongkong and the Home Government.\n\nThe matter had first been raised in 1868. When news reached Hongkong at that time that it was being considered by the Foreign Office in London, there was an immediate outcry.\n\nThe Governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, rushed off a protest to the Colonial Office. He objected not only to the proposal, but also to the manner in which the British Minister at Peking had ignored Hongkong.\n\nThe Governor was not on good terms with the Minister, Sir Rutherford Alcock. He complained that it had been his experience that Sir Rutherford was not concerned about the interests of Hongkong and in his negotiations with China paid little attention to Hongkong opinion.\n\nThe Governor wrote to the Secretary of the Colonies that it was no surprise to him that Sir Rutherford had sent the suggestion of a Chinese Consul to the Foreign Office without consulting or informing the local government, nor had he given Hongkong an opportunity to register its opinion on the matter.\n\nWhen the Governor had eventually heard the British Minister's suggestion, he immediately called together his Executive Council to consider the issue. At that time all the members of the Council were Government officials.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211594, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "joined the Society since 3 April 1989. Inevitably, there have been losses too, but with more coming in than going out. May I extend a warm welcome to all new Members.\n\nLocal Ordinary and Life Members total 718, with 571 addresses; indicating that we have a fair number of husband and wife joint memberships. 99 Members have Chinese surnames, the best we can do in estimating this segment, which comprises over 13% of the total. (The Council, on the other hand, has 5 Chinese members out of 14). As for domicile, 448 Members (79%) live on Hong Kong Island, 75 (13%) \"belong Kowloon-side\" and 48 (8%) have New Territories' addresses.\n\nOverseas Members total around 80. The number is less than last year's, since one result of circulating the letter to the British Foreign Secretary to overseas as well as local Members was to learn, with regret, that there had been some unreported deaths.\n\nAdministration\n\nThe tried and tested team of our three ladies, Eveline Caldwell, Anita Wilson and Sharon Bruce, continued to provide the administrative back-up which keeps us moving forward, with occasional input from Phillip Bruce who is unable to avoid some \"overflow\" from his wife Sharon's duties. Or perhaps he just gets \"drafted\"! Our Hon. Treasurer, Robert Nield, gives help and advice from the side, always ready and willing when needed.\n\nI am most grateful to them all, and wish to record their conscientious, willing and friendly cooperation and assistance at all times. No President can do without them!\n\nThis is also the place to thank Dr. Anthony Siu who has translated the new RAS Brochure issued after the last AGM. Anthony was also responsible for the printing arrangements. The Chinese version, judiciously distributed when occasion offers, should help to bring in more Chinese members.\n\nFinance\n\nI will leave Robert Nield to make his annual report. The only thing I would like to add is that following upon the support given at last year's\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211599, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 14, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "hope to catch up soon, with the aid of the Editorial group which includes Dr. Betty Wei, Dr. Thomas Lau and myself!\n\nFinally, a word of thanks to our printers, Messrs Yee Tin Tong, and especially to their Mr. Henry Law who is the soul of courtesy and cooperation.\n\nEvents in China\n\nI turn now to a world event which it was impossible to ignore, especially in Hong Kong. Like other associations in Hong Kong, the RAS Council felt it had a plain duty to write to the British Government, leading Parliamentarians and other influential figures in public life, expressing concern for Hong Kong's future in the light of the repressive action taken in Beijing in May-June 1989. A copy of this letter was sent to all local and overseas members of the Society, and many of us circulated it more widely among friends or sent copies to persons who they felt ought to know that a letter had been sent.\n\nBoth as President and as an individual, I received a number of responses from Members at home and abroad. These were all supportive of the action taken by the Council. I regret to have to say, however, that there was no response from the Foreign Secretary's Office, to whose head the letter was addressed, not even a printed acknowledgement slip, despite a courteously worded reminder enclosing a copy of the original letter. Surely two copies could not have gone astray?\n\nIn my personal capacity as President, I also sent a private submission to the Basic Law Drafting Committee last autumn, before the period allowed for submissions expired. It gave my own statement on how this Society has been able to operate without let or hindrance, fear or favour, and relying upon the open, willing cooperation of others for almost thirty years, and how essential it was for us, and Societies like us, to be able to continue operating in this way after 1997. A copy of this letter has been tabled at this meeting, and the text will be annexed to this report when it is published in the appropriate number of the Journal,\n\nThe Council\n\nYou will have noted that David Gilkes has been nominated as President for the coming year. No other nominations have been received, and this is a very appropriate appointment in view of his 23 years on the Council\n\nxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212213, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "132\n\nrates and land taxes which work out at only 7.50 dollars per capita, compared with an average assessment in Great Britain of over 17 dollars.\n\n\"The work of the Council, and especially of the Foreign Members thereof, has been largely political, as well as administrative. Since the development of Nationalism in China, it has had to wage an incessant struggle to maintain, and to prevent encroachments upon, its privileges, especially in such matters as taxation, and interference with the administration of justice and the police. In the last resort, of course, controversial issues have to be adjusted between the Chinese authorities and the Consular Body, and the success of the Council in upholding the status of the Settlement depends upon the support accorded to it by the Foreign Consuls. But unless the Council had taken the initiative and watched very jealously over its privileges, the administration would have taken a very different form from what we see today. It must be considered remarkable, when you come to think of it, that from the early eighteen-sixties a succession of men — mostly merchants with little or no municipal experience, should have administered the Settlement in an honorary capacity, in such a manner as to develop a huge, well-governed, and normally peaceful city out of an area of marshy ground. Although for political reasons the Council has not been popular with Chinese officialdom, the presence within its boundaries today of nearly three million Chinese is evidence of the confidence reposed in it by the ordinary Chinese.\n\n\"Anglo-American interests still predominate in the Settlement. Ever since the amalgamation of the American and British areas in 1863 there has been the closest co-operation between the American and British communities. An American has on several occasions been Chairman of the Council. An American citizen has for the past ten years occupied the highest executive post in the Council, that of Secretary-General. Until comparatively recently the Foreign Councillors were invariably Europeans or Americans. In addition to Americans or Britons, Germans, Russians, Scandinavians, and others have at various times served upon the Council. The growth of the Japanese population, which increased from 736 in 1900 to 7169 in 1915, made it only reasonable that there should be a Japanese representative on the Council, and the first Japanese Councillor, Mr. Ishii, took his seat in the latter year. As the Japanese population continued to increase it was well over 20,000, compared with 6,700 British in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212739, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "33\n\nbefore Mesny reached Hami,\n\nDuring the Franco-China War of 1883 when Tso was Governor-General of the southern provinces of Fukien and Chekiang, which included Formosa [Taiwan] where the French did much of their fighting, Mesny was invited by Tso's private secretary in Foochou to come to that city to see Tso with a view to undertaking some of the 'progressive' works he, Mesny, had recommended years beforehand, including telegraphs, railways and mining. Mesny was involved at the time transacting some business in Shanghai for Viceroy Chang Chih-tung and replied that he would call at Foochou on his return from Canton. Viceroy Tso, however, died before Mesny arrived in Foochou.\n\nMesny appears to have revelled in including short tabloid-style titbits usually revealing some appalling or unspeakable act by a Chinese official. One such was the tale of the Manchu bannerman who became such an intolerable nuisance as a Chinese government spy at the British Legation in Peking, where he had been employed as a teacher for many years, that he was expelled from his job. Mesny added that as a reward for the efficient secret services he had rendered his government he was given the rank of Expectant prefect of Kueichou, in about 1874, where he did much mischief and was then transferred to Kuangtung where he remained as an ‘incorrigible anti-foreign mischief maker under the protection of the notorious anti-foreign Tatar, General Chang-shun.'\n\nMesny went into a little detail on the subject he called \"Traitors in Camp' [Nei-ying or li-ying]. These he noted were greatly depended upon in all official (and most other) undertakings. He supposed that there was not a Yamen or office in which there was not some individual paid by a rival to disclose the affairs of that place. Writing in 1905 he accused some of the anti-Christian Chinese of sowing discord amongst Christian missionaries. The latter he claimed 'are so bigoted yet simple that they are very easily imposed upon by designing mischief makers who wish to embroil the missionaries and bring them into evil repute'.\n\nAlthough the majority of titbits on Chinese culture, the social scene and personalities, consisted of one or two paragraphs, Mesny occasionally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "93\n\nthe first anti-foot binding societies in China.\n\nLovatt, W N\n\nEx-Royal Artillery serving in Honan Road in Shanghai. He, with Massagorra, taught Mesny the skills of guns and gunnery in 1864. He later became a Commissioner of Customs in Korea.\n\nMason, Charles H. A. W.\n\nA young Imperial Customs Assistant who was the main figure in the 'Mason case'. He joined the Customs in 1887 and after an involved plot was arrested for smuggling arms into China with the intention of providing foreign weapons for the Ko-lao Hui, a secret society whose aim was to overthrow the Imperial government.\n\nMassagorra, W\n\nFormerly Royal Navy and subsequently mate on one of the large lorchas plying the Yangtze: he, with Lovatt, taught Mesny gunnery.\n\nMayers, W F\n\nChinese Secretary at the British Legation in Peking in the mid-1870s. His best known work was the Chinese Reader's Manual. [Mesny culled a large number of items from Mayer's Manual and included them in his Miscellanies]\n\nRichard, Timothy\n\nBaptist missionary in Shantung and Shansi provinces. He met Mesny in Taiyuan Fu where Richard was superintending a branch of the English Baptist Mission. Richard was renowned for his humanitarian work during the great famine in Shansi in 1877-1878.\n\nSu Chin-wang\n\n[Shan-ch'i ## or Shan Ai-t’ang #E#: born ca 1865]\n\nThe Manchu Prince with whom Mesny had breakfast in Peking in 1892 when Su had not yet inherited his title and was then simply the captain of the Emperor's Bodyguard. A black and white photograph", "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": 213041, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "89 \n\n+ \n\nThe reason given was the LMS financial position. Yet the fares, salary and expenses of the lady doctor had been guaranteed by the Chinese subscribers at a rate of $2,000 per annum on a five or six year contract basis. \"If there is the slightest prospect of a Lady who would be either self-supporting or supported privately I would prefer to wait a year even\" Dr. wrote to Mr. Cousins and, in a postscript added: 'Mr. Pearce has suggested a code of answer by telegram and I strongly recommend the Society's answer to be \"wait\". While saying that he saw a lady doctor as important for the credibility of the maternity hospital and claiming that she would be equal, his resistance to the type of appointment which was eventually made is clear. Dr. Gibson's position is consistent with his medical training and the social mores of his day. Edinburgh had been the site of strong resistance to female medical students, and the admission of women doctors to the British Medical Association was recent. As well as the 'nature' perception of women, the organisation of medical work itself was modelled on patriarchal family roles and relationships, wherein male doctors were dominant.\n\n10 \n\n申 \n\nDr. Sibree was warmly welcomed, however, began her language classes and was introduced to the Chinese subscribers and visited their wives. Dr. Gibson noted that she seemed ‘eminently fitted for the task which lies before her.'\" In June, 1904, the new six-bed hospital was opened.\n\nAlthough, as Paterson notes, Dr. Sibree's Annual Reports show the growth of the maternity work and midwifery training, her correspondence with the Joint Foreign Secretary of the LMS paints a different picture. Dr. Sibree, within six months of the hospital's opening, complained of lack of work and the LMS District Committee General Meeting of 1904 recorded support for her opening of a dispensary for women and children at Sham Shui Po to provide more work.\n\nThe problem appears to have been two-pronged. With respect to Chinese people, their knowledge of and therefore use of the maternity facilities was low, at an average of 1.5 patients per week in the early years. The wives of the Chinese subscribers also did not use her services, either because they were not in Hong Kong, were ignorant of the service, or were already patients of private doctors.\n\nThose we did see were in perfect ignorance of the whole scheme. Mr. Wells took a great deal of time and trouble in trying to explain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "224\n\nseemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that \"all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns.\"\n\n50\n\nThere was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few.\"5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China \"this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that \"it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world.\"54\n\n53\n\nNone of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies\" for their opponents,55 and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,\"56 but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows,\" \"Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians\" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as \"the Chinese\" or \"Chinamen.\" Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.\n\nIn short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57\n\nThese facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "227\n\nChinese, except as regards the use of Opium, are exceedingly temperate in their habits and we cannot account for the immense distilleries which have been discovered here.\"\n\n19 Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970, Vol.II, p.152.\n\nWyndham Baker, p.156. Commenting, he had added, \"The British common soldier in fact is a strange compound, for they are very kind to their prisoners when once the excitement ceases.\"\n\n21 Beeching, p.136.\n\n22\n\n24 Beeching, p.152. Another British placard recorded by Chu warned that there was to be no more commandeering of goods without payment: ibid. However, despite good intentions, according to another Chinese diary, this time from Shanghai in 1842, rape and looting did occur there, and impressment of civilians for forced labour for such heavy work as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder [ibid., p.149]. Wyndham Baker, when landing his guns before Chin Kiang Foo, refers to \"about 100 helpless natives to assist in carrying the shot boxes.\" Baker, in Blackwood's 1964, pp.161-2.\n\nBeeching, p.139.\n\nThe British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, had agreed, minuting: “The worst proposal I have seen from Mr. Pottinger....It ought not to pass unnoticed\": Beeching, pp.139-140. But Pottinger deserves credit for preserving the famed Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking from British soldiers and sailors who, armed with chisels and hatchets, were intent on obtaining souvenirs by stripping tiles from the tower. \"Sir Henry Pottinger was very indignant at this gratuitous vandalism; a guard was stationed to keep off intruders, and no one was thenceforth allowed to visit the tower without a permit from the Admiral or Commander-in-Chief.\" Parkes wrote, \"Such an act as this is shameful and a disgrace to the British name.\" From Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901), p.32. Alas, the Porcelain Pagoda was destroyed by the Taipings not long after, in 1856.\n\n25 Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), p.139.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215282, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "where the territory was not debarred from doing so by treaty. In preparation for the negotiations at Ottawa the colonies were also asked to consider what preferences might be accorded them by the dominions and what preferences they might give to the dominions in return on the lines of the Canada-West Indies agreement.”\n\n34\n\nThe governor, Sir William Peel, discussed Hong Kong's position while visiting the Colonial Office in June 1932. Officials agreed with him that Hong Kong's status as a free port made it impossible to impose anything like a general tariff. Any such tariff would ruin the entrepôt trade which was vital to Hong Kong's existence and no practicable means could be devised of landing goods in bond for re-export without involving so much inconvenience as to drive the entrepôt trade to other neighbouring ports. Peel was prepared as a gesture to give a preference to empire products on articles such as spirits and tobacco which were subject to excise duty and to impose a higher rate of first registration tax on foreign motor cars than on cars imported from Britain and Canada. He did not ask for any preference from the dominions in return since in his view the bulk of Hong Kong exports consists of foreign goods the proportion of the cost of which, due to treatment in Hong Kong, was not large enough to secure a preference...” This showed a surprising ignorance of Hong Kong's growing trade in domestic manufactures which were largely exported to neighbouring Asian countries.\n\nThe Ottawa conference convened in July 1932. The British delegation was led by Stanley Baldwin, the former prime minister, and four other cabinet ministers. Canada, Southern Rhodesia and Newfoundland were represented by their prime ministers; Australia and New Zealand by former prime ministers; South Africa and the Irish Free State by their finance and trade ministers. India, which had been given the freedom to establish protective duties in 1923, was represented by Sir Atul Chatterjee and other members of the Viceroy's Council. The interests of the colonial empire were safeguarded by the secretary of state for the colonies, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister and one civil servant from the Colonial Office, G.L.M. Clauson.\n\nThe conclusions of the conference were embodied in agreements between the United Kingdom government and the governments of the dominions and India. Britain consented to continue the free entry of goods grown, produced or manufactured in any part of the empire, and to impose additional duties on specified foreign goods which would give empire produce a preferential margin higher than the 10 per cent tariff already imposed by the Import Duties Act. Britain also agreed to 'invite' the non-self-governing colonies and protectorates to extend to all the dominions any preference at present extended to any part of the empire, and to increase the margin of preference or impose specific duties on a long list of items requested by the dominions. In return the dominions confirmed the existing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215283, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 60, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "preferences granted to British goods, to increase the margin of preference on a few specific items and to review the level of existing tariffs which protected dominion manufactures against British goods. The dominions approved tariff preferences on specified colonial goods, mostly tropical agricultural products, asphalt, rum and cigars. Each dominion offered a different list of concessions to the colonies and not all were equally generous. South Africa granted preferences only on raw coffee and asphalt. Canada gave little more than the preferences already embodied in the 1920 trade agreement with the West Indian colonies.\" New Zealand was the only dominion which agreed to grant preferences at the same rates as were accorded to Britain to all the colonies and protectorates. The agreements with the dominions provided that the preferences accorded to British goods might be extended to the colonies, protectorates and mandated territories ‘if His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom so request'. All these preferences were for British manufactured goods. The development of manufacturing industry in the colonies was not anticipated by the governments represented at Ottawa. If it had been foreseen it is probable that the dominion governments would have raised strong objections to admitting goods manufactured under oriental conditions to their markets under a tariff designed to benefit British manufacturers.28\n\nAfter the Ottawa conference a circular despatch was sent to all colonies and dependent territories setting out the tariff preferences which would be granted by the dominions to colonial exports of foodstuffs and raw materials.\" These preferences would give the dependencies a reasonable prospect of replacing foreign imports by imports from empire sources in the dominion markets concerned. In return the dependent territories were 'invited' to grant to the dominions the preferences which the colonial secretary had negotiated at Ottawa. Cunliffe-Lister made clear that it was a matter of the highest importance that the Ottawa settlement should be put into effect as an integral whole.\n\nI should feel that I had been guilty of a breach of faith if the legislature concerned refused to grant the preference in question, unless I could put to the dominion government concerned clear evidence that there were really substantial reasons for not granting the proposed preference. It would not be an adequate ground of objection to say that the desired preference might increase the local cost of living, so long as the increase was only moderate and did not cause hardship to a particularly poor class of the community.\n\nGovernors prepared the necessary legislation for introduction into the colonial legislatures, but a number warned the Colonial Office that they\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "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": 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": 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": 215944, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 243, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "177\n\n3 xii\n\nThe whole plan was discussed with RAC North, Secretary for Chinese Affairs and JA Fraser, Defence Secretary who agreed. When Harrop went to Chongqing the first person she contacted was her old friend from pre-war, Madame Soong Ching Ling.\n\nMadame Soong was the widow of Dr Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese Republic and a former Hong Kong resident himself, and graduate of the Hong Kong Medical School which predated Hong Kong University. When Chiang Kai Shek and his extreme rightist faction won the power struggle for control of the National Government, Madame Soong moved to Hong Kong where she and other supporters of the left wing principles Sun had espoused were able to operate with more latitude. She headed an organisation known as the China Defence League which raised funds in support of the anti-Japanese war effort in China, and had connections with many left wing liberal groups, both within China and among the western intelligentsia in Hong Kong and China. This organisation was effectively a form of interface between the KMT Old Guard and more progressive groups. Agnes Smedley, Rewi Alley, Anna Louise Strong and other westerners with strong contacts with the Communist Party under Mao Ze Dong mixed in the same circles as Madame Soong and her supporters, which included Sun Fo, Dr Sun's son by a previous marriage. Sun Fo himself, though he lived in Hong Kong, frequently travelled to Moscow, ostensibly for 'medical treatment,' often staying for long periods. The league did humanitarian work, organising aid for the millions of refugees in Guangdong and in Hong Kong. Percy Chen, son of Dr Eugene Chen, Dr Sun's Foreign minister and close friend worked closely with this aspect of the League's activities. Chen was a socialist and would later declare for the Communist Party. Significantly, FW Kendall had worked with the league in organising programmes to cope with refugees. He himself was something of a refugee, having lost his livelihood in the same Japanese push in Guangdong. Contacts between this left faction of the Guomindang and British people in Hong Kong of a progressive frame of mind were also significant. Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, known as 'Red Hilda' not only for the colour of her hair, but for her politics, was part of this group, rather than a member of the conventional, highly stratified world of colonial society. Her husband may have been a member of the government administration but she did not subscribe to colonial or establishment values. Kendall also worked with Selwyn-Clarke, as did his Chinese wife, who was to be one of the Selwyn", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215985, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 284, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "218\n\nthe Zongli yámén, he cannot be faulted for missing this major tragic event among Chinese Protestants in southeast China, because it was apparently never reported or discussed by British and Qing officials.\n\nMaybe the \"oversight\" happened because the turn of events shifted attention to the military problems associated with the resistance of Tàiping forces during the next three years before they were destroyed. They had become the target of a common effort by the Qing armies as well as some foreign (and particularly British/Scottish) militia under General Gordon, probably causing a host of special problems demanding the \"immediate attention\" of the British Ambassador, Sir Frederick Bruce.4 Nevertheless, it was against the Ambassador that Legge expressed his most piercing salvo of Protestant Dissenter displeasure in 1863, nearly two years after the riots in Poklo and Ch'ëa's murder had taken place.\n\nIn a brief note leaked to the public a year after it had been written, Sir Bruce explained his opinion to Lord John Russell (1792-1878), then Secretary of State, that missionaries should not be permitted to enter into China because of the troubles they caused and the dangers they faced. His arguments stood in blatant opposition to the conditions codified by the 1860 treaty, but were nevertheless read with approval by Lord Russell. This occasioned an outburst of righteous anger from Legge, who took Bruce's letter apart piece by piece, and showed its insensitivity to missionary work as well as its incoherence in the face of the recent treaty conditions. In and of itself, this letter written by Legge, first published in the Patriot in London and soon afterward in the local China Mail in Hong Kong, was one of the most perceptive and articulate pieces of political analysis he ever wrote. But the coup de grâce came in the end, where the level of frustration Legge felt against British bureaucratic reticence and its discounting of missionary and Chinese Christians' rights had grown to a new height.\n\n95\n\nI will conclude this long letter by referring to a case in point,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 299, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "233\n\nespecially in official rituals such as this interview with foreign guests). \"Friendly conversation\" and longer \"speeches\" constituted the interview, Ch'ea continuing to interpret even though \"his Honour evidently understood us well enough.\"\n\n68. A sensitive reading of these events from both Qing and British sides with the implications for missionaries and their Chinese followers is provided in A. J. Broomhall's Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century: Over the Treaty Wall (Book 2) (Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981).\n\n69. See notes for May 7th, 1861, in Legge's Journal Of A Missionary Tour.\n\n70. Taken from notes for May 12th, 1861, in Legge's Journal Of A Missionary Tour.\n\n71. Described candidly in Legge's Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 9th, 1861.\n\n72. This incident occurred on May 19th, Ch'ea's being \"rudely handled\" by what some elders in the town (who later came to apologize) called a \"few heady youth\". Yet when Legge sought out the sexagenarian Ch'ea's response, suggesting that the beating was severe enough to consider a formal response to the authorities, Ch'ea's principles were unmoved. \"I only pray our Heavenly Father to have pity on them!\" said Ch'ea, and there the matter rested.\" See Legge, Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 9th, 1861.\n\n73. Ch'ea had suggested two places, one next to the Füzi miàao temple complex and a house located on a main thoroughfare in the town. The fact that Ch'ea had formerly been a keeper of the temple probably influenced his opinions as well as the sense of a suitable location for the first Christian church in the area. See comments made by Legge about Ch'ea's suggestions in his Journal of a Missionary Tour, notes for May 6th, 1861.\n\n74. Letter to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, dated October 14, 1861, and published with commentary in EMMC/MM 26 (January 1862), pp. 13-17, here esp. p. 15. Helen Edith Legge refers to another source (no details provided) where it is claimed that the obstructing gentryperson \"led a body of men to make a tumult at the house, assailed it with a quantity of filth, made a violent entry, plundered it of its goods, took possession of the house and threatened to put to death Ch'ea [sic] and other Christians.\" Actions reflecting anti-foreign attitudes follow this event, heightening the tension. See Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, pp. 114-115.\n\n75. So described in Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 116.\n\n76. The China Mail in Hong Kong actually described the ceremonies attending the formal evacuation of the British and French forces in its number for October 24, 1861. The event had taken place on October 21st. See China Mail #871 (October 24, 1861), p. 171.\n\n77. Recorded in Legge's essay, \"Che'a Kin KWáng,” the typescript found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 7, p. 5.\n\n78. During one point in this tense trip Legge caught Ch'ea sitting down in the corner of his room on the boat with his eyes closed, thinking at first sight that Ch'ea was exhausted from the ordeals he had been facing. Able to see the humour in the serious situation they all faced, Legge playfully chided the elder Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216051, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 350, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "284\n\nopposite extremity of the foreign settlement. Some years passed before the site was occupied. On 5th February, 1889, the Consulate building was burnt in a riot together with several neighbouring houses. The final Consulate of a main building and four houses was erected on the same site in 1890. Built predominantly of red brick with white and grey bricks forming the decoration, it had double windows to keep the rooms warm during the bitter winters and a royal reign tablet on the rear wall. This white oval plaque bearing the enjoined letters VR is still in place a century or so later.\n\nAll the British consuls serving in Zhenjiang from its opening in 1860 found time hanging heavily and a number became medically unfit within a short time of taking up their posts. Adkins, the Consul writing to his father in December 1861 wrote in passing that 'the office of Consul at a thriving port is no sinecure I can tell you. He is judge, bishop, police magistrate, coroner etc. etc etc.' As is usual his own countrymen give him the least possible support and abuse him like a pickpocket.' It was also soon realized just how unimportant Zhenjiang had become to foreigners and by 1867 it was decided to post a junior consul to the port under the aegis of the senior consul at Shanghai. However, ten years later the number of British residents had increased sufficiently to warrant a return to the consular post being restored to its former independent status. It was by no means a comfortable place to live though PD Coates wrote that all in all Zhenjiang would have been a pleasant enough post had the [foreign] community been more congenial.24 One incident in the history of the consulate in Zhenjiang related by Coates, tells how in 1879 the Chairman and Treasurer of the Zhenjiang Concession Council, Bean, a British merchant who held several of the nineteen concession leases, physically assaulted H. J. Allen, the British consul, in the Club when the latter as Consul had asked to examine the Council's books before approving its accounts. Duff, another merchant, was the Secretary to the Council. Coates describes the constant and major friction between Bean and Duff, Bean and the Consul, and between other foreign residents of the Concession and this was reiterated by William Mesny as we shall soon see. Oxenham, a subsequent Consul in 1886, described Bean as a coarse, cantankerous, uneducated man of low tastes and malignant disposition who had insulted practically every Consul and Customs commissioner serving at the port.\n\nAdkins described in one of his letters to his father how English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216407, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "116\n\nJapanese cruiser YAHAGI11 was due to arrive at 2200 hours that evening.\n\nIn the interim the freighter MADRAS MARU2 arrived. She attempted a rescue operation but this was not successful. Indeed the seas were so high that it was not even possible to contemplate sending the nine survivors across to her for repatriation to Japan.\n\nSince all these Japanese flag ships had appeared or were due to appear at the scene of the grounding Captain Mackinnon informed NASHI that he would sail for Hong Kong that afternoon, and take with him the nine men. Later he was to write:\n\n'Many friendly and complimentary flag signals were exchanged with all ships present, including the wreck. At 1700 I proceeded to Hong Kong leaving the Japanese destroyer NASHI in charge of the situation.'\n\nOn Saturday 7 November HERMES returned to her buoy at Hong Kong and a short while later the nine rescued seamen were landed ashore.\n\nIt is pleasant to be able to record that in due course official thanks were rendered by the Japanese minister of foreign affairs, Baron Kijuro Shidehara. His letter was addressed to the British ambassador to Tokyo, H.E. Sir Francis Oswald Lindley who forwarded these thanks to the Foreign Office in London from where, in turn, they were passed to the Secretary to the Admiralty.\n\nA year later, on 6th December 1932 at Hong Kong, the C. in C. came onboard our ship to present Lloyds Silver Medals to the three officers, and Bronze Medals to the six ratings who had taken part in the rescue. Also a bronze shield, mounted on a wooden base, was presented to the ship by the Committee of Lloyds.\n\nIn December 1931 an epidemic of diphtheria struck Hong Kong. Amongst those taken ill was Captain Mackinnon. Commander Baxter temporarily assumed command until the arrival of the ship's new commanding officer, Captain W.B. Mackenzie, on 25th February 1932.\n\nCaptain Mackinnon duly returned home and on 21 January 1933", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]