[ { "id": 207789, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nWest China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.\n\nAn interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. \"European Navigation on the Yangtze\" in Vol. 3, 1963, \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965, \"The China Coasters\" in Vol. 7, 1967, \"Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade\" in Vol. 10, 1970 and \"Early Steamships in China\" in Vol. 13, 1973.\n\nPlates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207790, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n163\n\nValley. A tea committee was formed whose findings were favourable, and experimental tea gardens were opened at Jaipur in Upper Assam. By 1859 over 4,000 acres were under cultivation, and the industry was assured of a bright future. Ample British capital was available for expansion, the British public's appetite for tea seemed inexhaustible; but scarcity of labour was a serious handicap. Assam was thinly populated, and the planters were dependent on Bengalis, who took a long time to get acclimatised. The idea of importing Chinese labour by the overland route was suggested, as at this time Chinese labour was considered indispensable to economic development in the tropics, and the Indian government was sympathetic. There were several possible land routes between India and West China, some passing through Burma, and Article 9 of the 1862 Commercial Treaty between Britain and Burma allowed entry into British territory from the Burmese side. The tea planters, however, failed to recruit Chinese workers, and blamed their lack of success upon the difficulties and hardships of the overland routes. This led to pressure on the government to improve the major land routes, and to several expeditions across the debatable borderlands between India, Burma, and China.\n\nFrom the 1860s until near the end of the century, therefore, there was rivalry between British commercial circles in India and those in China, over access to West China. In addition to these two approaches, from India and from the Yangtze, there were others from the south; by the Mekong or Red River from Indo-China, and by the West River from Canton and Hong Kong. Anglo-French colonial rivalry was acute during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in the Far East. The French were keen to find and exploit a trade route to West China; and while Britain was investigating routes from Burma, the Yangtze, and the West River, France was investigating possible routes from the Mekong and Red Rivers.\n\nAs became widely known by the end of the century, and suspected by realists before then, West China and its borderlands comprise some of the most difficult regions of the world in which to build roads or railways, or in which to improve river navigation. There are high mountain ranges divided by deep valleys, densely forested in many places; and all the great rivers—the Yangtze, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Red River, and Salween—are seriously impeded by rapids", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207791, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "164 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nand gorges in their upper reaches. Yet British and French explorers light-heartedly planned roads and railways through the region, when earth moving and other civil engineering techniques were primitive by modern standards. \n\nPolitical difficulties were equally formidable. In addition to Anglo-French rivalry, there was an involved relationship between Britain, Burma, China, and the Kachin and Shan hill peoples in the borderlands. A further complication, from 1855 to 1873, was the devastation of Yunnan by the Panthay Rebellion, a Moslem uprising almost as destructive as the more famous Taiping Rebellion. \n\nAlthough the Treaty of Yandabo had established Britain in Lower Burma, Upper Burma continued as an independent state, with an ill-defined tributary relationship with China. However, during the sixty years before Britain annexed Upper Burma in 1886, Britain obtained the province of Pegu (1852), and mounted a succession of expeditions to find a practicable trade route from Burma into Yunnan, contemporary with other expeditions up the Yangtze from Shanghai. \n\nBetween Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, and the French priest M. Huc in the 1840s, practically no European had travelled in West China. So little was known of it that while their compatriots in China looked on neighbouring Szechwan as the El Dorado of the East, the British in Burma and India had their eyes on the province of Yunnan. The extravagant and over enthusiastic appraisal of Yunnan's potential wealth gave rise to what became known as the \"Yunnan Myth\". \n\nThe first British attempts to reach Yunnan and West China came from Burma in the late eighteenth century. When Captain Sorrel went to Ava in 1792 to deliver a letter to the King of Burma from Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, some Burmese offered to take him overland to China. Sorrel's reference to this aroused great interest in India. Over a century earlier, Dutch East India traders in Ava and Syriam had given glowing accounts of a flourishing trade between Burma and China, conducted through Chinese merchants in Bhamo. In 1795 when Captain Michael Symes was sent on an official mission to Burma, he was instructed to “find a mart in the south west dominions of China by means of the great river of Ava”. Symes' report was enthusiastic. He said the principal export from Ava was cotton, which went up the Irrawaddy in large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207792, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n165\n\nboats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India.\n\nCaptain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back.\n\nAfter this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868.\n\nThe Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze.\n\nSee pp. 169-170 below.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "166 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nIn 1868 T. T. Cooper, a British merchant in Burma, came to Shanghai and attempted to improve on Blakiston's feat. His venture was partly financed by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. Cooper went up the Yangtze to Chungking, and then overland to Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan. Here he received permission from the Governor General to travel on through Szechwan and Tibet to India; but he met such determined opposition and hostility from the lamas on the Tibetan border, where he was imprisoned for five weeks, that he was forced to turn back. \n\nIn the following year, Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, sent Robert Swinhoe of the China Consular Service to investigate trade prospects on the Upper Yangtze. Vice-Admiral Keppel, R.N. was making a survey of the river, and Swinhoe's party, which included Alexander Michie and Robert Francis of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and two naval surveyors, travelled to Ichang on H.M.S. Opussum. This was the first time a steamship had reached Ichang, and the Chinese pilot refused to go any further. A junk was hired for the passage through the Gorges to Chungking, and soundings and surveys taken en route. The surveyors, however, gave an unfavourable report on the feasibility of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze. They particularly commented on the force of the current, lack of suitable anchorages, intricacy of navigation because of the changeable channel, and so on. They also thought descent would be even more difficult than ascent. The chief engineer of Opossum described a sample of coal obtained half way between Ichang and Chungking as resembling good anthracite in appearance, but requiring large furnaces and a long time for combustion. \n\nThis was the most thorough navigational survey of the Upper Yangtze, and many of the factors militating against steam navigation between Ichang and Chungking were investigated and made known. The bed of the river falls 470 feet in the 360 miles between the two places, and this fall of one and a third feet per mile is the cause of the strong currents and rapids in this section of the river. The most difficult stretch is the first half of the Upper River between Ichang and Wanhsien, where the most difficult rapids and gorges are encountered. The Ichang Gorge begins five miles above Ichang, and then come the Ox Liver and Horse's Lung Gorges, and the Hsintan Rapid immediately after the latter. The most spectacular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207795, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "168\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nMeanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire.\n\nThere was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe.\n\nThe Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "170 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\ndays later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon.\n\nMargary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze,\n\nSir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.\n\nMore than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207798, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n171 \n\nwhich was brought out in sections and assembled in Shanghai. The Chinese, however, refused to allow the Kuling above Ichang, and after a year of wrangling, Little sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, reputedly at twice she had cost him, and she was put on the Hankow--Ichang service. \n\nLittle was not disheartened, however, and set himself up in business in Chungking, among other activities specialising in insuring cargoes on the Upper Yangtze. At last in 1898, three years after the Treaty of Shimonoseki, he had the satisfaction of taking his wooden twin-screw launch Leechuan through the gorges to Chungking, acting as his own captain and chief engineer. The Leechuan was too small to carry any cargo, and needed trackers to pull her up the rapids; but this success enabled Little to enlist support from friends and form the Upper Yangtze Steam Navigation Company. The new company built a much larger steamer in Britain, the Pioneer, at Dennys of Dumbarton. This was a paddle steamer 180 feet long, sixty feet across the paddle boxes, drawing six feet when carrying a full cargo of 150 tons deadweight, and several hundred deck passengers. \n\nThe Pioneer made her first voyage between Ichang and Chungking in 1900, a few months after two British river gunboats, Woodcock and Woodlark had also made the passage; but these only drew two to two and a half feet of water. These gunboats, later, sometimes went a further 130 miles above Chungking to Suifu, at the junction of the Yangtze and Min Rivers. A similar type of French river gunboat also made the passage between Ichang and Chungking in 1901, the Orly, under the pilotage of Captain Plant who had commanded the Pioneer on her successful voyage. In later years these, and similar gunboats, made regular patrols along the open stretch of the Upper Yangtze above the rapids and gorges, between Wanhsien and Suifu. \n\nIn December 1900 the first of many serious casualties occurred on the Upper Yangtze, when the German steamer Suichsiang was wrecked at the Tungling Rapid thirty-six miles above Ichang on her maiden voyage. This and the Boxer and other political troubles delayed further attempts to establish a regular steamer service on the Upper Yangtze for many years. When this eventually came about in 1908 it was through the initiative of Captain Plant of Pioneer fame. The Pioneer was requisitioned by the Royal Navy during the Boxer troubles, and used to evacuate British subjects down the Yangtze, and rechristened H.M.S. Kinsha. Afterwards", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "172 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nshe was retained as the headquarters ship of the Royal Navy's Upper Yangtze squadron. \n\nThe Royal Navy had always maintained a strong presence on the river, since British ships commenced to trade on the Yangtze in the early 1860s. So far as the Yangtze was concerned, ‘trade followed the flag\". Naval ships were the first British ships to navigate the lower Yangtze, and continued to lead the way as British shipping extended its operations further up the river. As we have seen, H.M.S. Woodcock reached Chungking and beyond to Suifu a few months before the Pioneer made the first successful commercial passage of the Upper Yangtze. By the mid 1920s, when British shipping had reached its peak there, the Royal Navy's Yangtze Squadron consisted primarily of six general purpose gunboats of the \"Insect\" class based on Hankow. These had been built originally for service against the Turks on the Tigris and Euphrates in World War 1. Each carried fifty-four officers and men, and had two six-inch guns, and they were powerful little ships in flat country. For the Upper River there were several smaller ships of the \"Bird class\", which carried twenty-six or thirty-one men. Two operated on the Tungting Lake and on the Siang River to Changsha, and another two on the Upper Yangtze to Chungking, with occasional trips to Suifu. In the high water season the \"Insect\" class ships could also operate on the Upper River. \n\nThis force was commanded by the Rear-Admiral, Yangtze, at Hankow, who came under the overall command of the Commander-in-Chief of the British naval forces in the Far East at Hong Kong. The Yangtze Squadron, therefore, consisted of about 500 officers and could be quickly reinforced from Shanghai and Hong Kong if necessary. It was also possible for a 10,000 ton cruiser to reach Hankow in the high water season. The Royal Navy was frequently called on to protect British ships and British interests on the Yangtze, sometimes against rebels, pirates, war lords, or threats from other foreign powers. The term 'gunboat diplomacy' probably originated from the operations of the Royal Navy on the China coast and on the Yangtze. \n\nThe most notable naval occasion on the Yangtze, since the First China War of 1839-42, was the Wanhsien Incident of 1926. This originated in the refusal of the captain of the China Navigation Company's Wanliu to carry soldiers of Yung Lin, one of the war", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207801, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "174 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nproblems involving steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze may be said to have been solved, or at least understood. Only political unrest, civil wars, and the preoccupation of Britain with the First World War prevented further development.\n\nSzechwan suffered severely from the breakdown of the central government after 1915. At times trade was almost at a standstill because of civil war and organised brigandage, and to a lesser extent because of floods and famines. In spite of this, steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze flourished, a tribute to the keen business instincts and adaptability of the Chinese merchants. The first British steamer to appear on the Upper Yangtze since the Pioneer of 1900 was the Asiatic Petroleum Company's Anlan which went into service in 1918, and was followed in the following year by their Anning.* In addition to carrying petroleum products, these ships carried a few European passengers.\n\nThis heralded a period when there was a great increase in steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, remarkable in that it took place against a background of continuing and increasing civil war, political unrest, and general trade depression.\n\nOther British companies followed the Asiatic Petroleum Company. In 1919 Mackenzie and Company of Shanghai built the famous Loong Mow at Shanghai's Kiangnan Dockyard, 196.5 feet long by thirty-one feet beam, moulded depth of nine feet six inches and gross registered tonnage of 1,112. The twin reciprocating engines and oil-fired water tube boilers were built by Thorneycroft of Southampton, and the luxurious accommodation for both Chinese and foreign passengers led her to be called \"The Queen of the Gorges\". Soon after this the China Navigation and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company at last built their own ships for the Upper Yangtze, until then having used chartered junks flying their house flags for their Upper River trade. Then the Stars and Stripes appeared with several Dollar Line ships and some small tankers of the Standard Oil Company; and in 1925 by several steamers of the Yangtze Rapids Steamship Company. For a time this latter company operated a through service between Shanghai and Chungking. French, Italian, and Japanese steamers also appeared at this time. By the end of 1925 there were at least thirty-two steamers on\n\n*This company was the Far Eastern branch of the Shell Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207802, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n175\n\nthe Upper Yangtze-eight British, seven American, three Chinese, six French, five Italian, and three Japanese.\n\nPolitical troubles, however, had forced the pioneering Szechwan Steamship Company out of business in 1920. During the previous few years its Shutung and Shuhun had so often been forced to carry troops for the different war lords as to make their operations uneconomic. After 1920 the Chinese flag was flown by the China Merchants Steam Navigation and the Ming Steamship Company, both of whom seemed more able to accommodate themselves to the political changes. Captain Plant, however, was still active on the Upper Yangtze, but in a different capacity. He had left the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company in 1913 to become River Inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs, and his work was one of the factors contributing to the development of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze in the early 1920s.\n\nThere was a period during the brief heyday of the Kuomintang government between 1927 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when shipping on the Upper Yangtze almost settled into a regular pattern. Probably 1928 was the peak year, when there were seventy small steamers in regular service between Ichang and Chungking; the smallest about thirty tons and the largest just over 1,000 tons. The average time between Ichang and Chungking was three days, as against an average of a month by junk. Britain had fifteen ships of 5,357 tons; China twenty-six of 3,672 tons; and America eleven of 2,934 tons.\n\nLosses, however, were heavy. Several of the smaller companies were forced out of business, some selling their ships to the China Navigation Company. In this manner, the latter acquired the famous Loong Mow in 1923, which was renamed Wanliu I, and the Alice Dollar in 1926, which was renamed Wantung. This company also built six ships at Yarrows on the Clyde between 1922 and 1926. These included the Wanhsien, 210 feet long with a loaded draft of eight feet and reciprocating engines of 3,000 indicated horsepower, the most powerful ship on the Upper Yangtze; two turbine steamers of less than half this tonnage, the Kiating and the Kintang, for the low water season; and two small motor ships, the Siushan and Suiting, of 296 gross tons for the Top River above Chungking. British shipping was supreme on the Upper Yangtze for the last few years of the treaty port era, since political troubles hampered", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n177 \n\nAlthough British commercial shipping operations on the Yangtze and on the China coast came to an end in 1940, the official death knell came in 1943. On the 11th January of that year China concluded new treaties, on a basis of equality and reciprocity, with Britain and the United States. This ended the period of the 'Unequal Treaties', the 'treaty port' era which had started with the 1842 Treaty of Nanking between Britain and China. Not only British shipping in Chinese waters, but significant British and Western influence in China on the former pattern came to an end with the treaties of 1943.\n\nLooking back, and with some measure of hindsight, it is evident that there was no solid commercial basis for West China providing an expanding market for British industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All the Western countries concerned with the China trade failed to appreciate the self-sufficiency and poverty of China's predominantly peasant population. Although Szechwan was considered a prosperous province, neighbouring Yunnan was sparsely populated and poverty-stricken, and much of its reputed mineral wealth was nearing exhaustion when Europeans first heard of it. As on the coast, and on the Lower Yangtze, the success of British shipping depended on established domestic trades, some of which it stimulated further. Two economic activities which expanded greatly on the Upper Yangtze during the latter years of the treaty port era were the Chinese passenger trade between the treaty ports, and the import of kerosene; while an important export from Szechwan was tung oil, a valuable wood oil used in the manufacture of high-quality paints and varnishes.\n\nThe motives of the British effort to open up West China to British trade may be questioned by some today; but the courage, determination, and ingenuity displayed by British merchants and sailors are still worthy of admiration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212607, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "141\n\nThe Mongols conquered Burma in 1287, but the conquest did not last long; and a later invasion was repulsed in 1769. The British came in the nineteenth century to occupy Lower Burma. The French established themselves in Indo-China, whence they intrigued into Upper Burma, producing a situation not unlike that which, ten years later, led to the Fashoda incident on the Nile. The British, who had been having trouble with King Thibaw, decided to forestall French projects, and march on Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed and the Court of Ava sent into exile. The British are not Burma's real problem: they have, as usual, provided stability and security. The danger lies to the West and to the East, where 400 millions in India and 450 millions in China, hem in a small country. It is not as if Burma is densely populated; the density is only 64 to the square mile, as against 295 in India and 145 in China.\n\nBurmese intercourse, facilitated by easy sea communications, has been greater with India than with China. In 1936 the overland trade with China amounted barely to a paltry 1,000,000 rupees. The subsequent increase brought about by the opening of the Burma road was quite artificial, the result of the blockade of the China coast by the Japanese. When the artificial conditions cease, the trade will revert to its normal channels, round by sea, and over the Indo-China railway or up the Yangtze.\n\nOwing to the relative short range of Indian pressure, overwhelming Indian penetration was what the Burmese had to fear most in the past, but signs are not lacking that the psychological effect of the building of the Burma road, and subsequently the behaviour of the Chinese troops, who retreated through Burma in 1942, may have changed the emphasis. Time will show.\n\nAlready in 1941 the most virulent whispering campaigns flourished, aimed at the Chinese, and directed more especially at the alleged graft and incompetence on the Burma road. That the Japanese were behind these campaigns is as probable as the plausibility which these rumours derived from the actual state of affairs on the road. Later, there were mixed feelings, when the Chinese troops entered Burma to take part in the defence; it would not be too strong to say that in many native quarters their entry was viewed with suspicion.\n\nAs is known, part of the Chinese troops retreated in 1942 into India, where they were reorganised and trained by American officers, but paid and equipped by the British taxpayer, under reverse lease-lend. It may be news, even to General Stilwell, that the idea of training and equipping\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "160\n\ninterested.\n\nThe British officers at the school acted as instructors. The school staff for the rest were Chinese, and I was amazed at the long hours they expected the students to work. As we had no relief instructors, I was unwilling that the lectures should exceed six hours a day; but on top of this the Chinese Commandant produced a long syllabus of other subjects, some of which, it appeared to me, hardly fitted into the picture. He even wanted us to start teaching the students English! The wretched students had to start work at six in the morning, and with two brief breaks for meals, at 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, they worked up to six in the evening. The ordinary Chinese rations were, by western standards, quite inadequate, and the consequence was that the students often seemed tired out. The situation was aggravated by the heavy incidence of malaria and scabies. The former sapped the strength of the students and the latter often broke out in boils, caused by scratching, so that students could only limp to and from classes and demonstrations. The cheerful spirit with which the students faced these hardships only increased our admiration for them; at the same time we were not so impressed with the notions of the Chinese officers.\n\nWe were handicapped by the lack of wireless for communication with the Mission in Chungking. We had to use the Chinese civil telegraph lines, which had become somewhat disorganised by the pressure of war. They, nevertheless, did serve us well enough, and we could usually expect a signal to reach Chungking within three or four days of our handing it in. Perhaps, the absence of W/T mattered less than we thought, because nobody in Chungking was really very interested in us.\n\nIn April, two more officers joined us. One of these, Pitt, had served in the Navy; he brought us a useful selection of tools and equipment from one of the British Upper Yangtze gunboats which had been dismantled.\n\nThe reinforcement was most welcome as we could now spare two officers to go forward to decide on the sites of the supply dumps, which we intended to establish at forward points near the areas where the teams we were training would operate. Leo and Mac went off on this work, and it was largely due to their initiative that any small success with which our efforts may have met is due. Leo was a tower of strength: besides a thorough knowledge of his work, he had that quiet, persuasive way,\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212716, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Chinese Military Services which have not before been recorded in English. One aspect of Mesny's writings which will bring wry smiles to a number of western faces was his occasional essay into the ever-popular art of China-watching. In 1896 his conjecture that Earl Li Hung-chang was a likely candidate to be the first ruler of a China ruled by Chinese is now, with the benefit of hindsight, amusing to say the least. Even more so was Mesny's next thought. Li perhaps might even marry the Empress Dowager and thus amalgamate his influence with that of the reigning line. He added that the Empress Dowager was however too old to bear children and would therefore only be a witness to her own departing glory by seeing her husband, [and Li would then have been 74] begetting an heir to the throne through a younger woman.\n\nBetween 1850 and 1873 peasant discontent, both Chinese [Han] and non-Chinese, led to a wave of rebellions, some of exceptional size. These included the Taipins, the Nien and the Moslem revolts, but not Ya'qub Beg's Sinkaing rebellion which ended in 1877. Mesny first became involved in the Taiping rebellion [1850-1864] towards its latter days, a time when the imperialists were gaining the upper hand and had confronted the Taiping leadership in its capital, Nanking where he was held captive for some months. Later, whilst he was working with the Chinese Maritime Customs in Hankow, he became involved with the Nien-fei [the Nien rebels] bandits who ravaged north of the Yangtze between 1851 and 1868.\n\nThe Nien, a decentralised association of peasants, were basically bandits without any ideology as such, whereas the Taiping rebels were a pseudo-Christian movement led against the imperial rulers in Peking by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan who had adopted some elements of Christian beliefs into his ideology. The Taiping rebels, whose capital city was Nanking, enjoyed some sympathy from westerners but eventually the rebellion was defeated but not until many millions had died. When the final defeat came it was due mainly to the Chinese imperialists under Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-t'ang, aided to some extent by several foreign-trained Chinese forces which included the much-vaunted western-trained force, first under an American Frederick Ward and finally under a British colonel in the Royal Engineers, Charles Gordon, together with direct British and French military intervention in Shanghai and Ningpo areas. The rebels, with whom Mesny and many Christian missionaries at first sympathised, introduced many reforms such as monogamy, and the banning of opium, tobacco and alcohol, and foot-binding.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214166, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Appendix C\n\nRASHKB Projects Undertaken during the 1998/9 Year\n\n(a) Photographic Exhibition: From 25 to 27 May, 1998, the RASHKB held a photographic exhibition on the overhead walkway leading from the Landmark building to Swire House. The RASHKB photographs of Western and Sheung Wan aroused considerable interest among the public. The main purpose of the exhibition was to boost RAS membership. Although many RAS members helped mount and man the exhibition, most of the planning and the bulk of the work was undertaken by Robert Nield and Tim Ko. Members Philip Bruce and Arthur Hacker also helped plan the recruitment drive, with the latter designing a new RAS brochure assisted by Dr Michael Lau for the Chinese translation. We are grateful to all who assisted in any way.\n\n(b) Tracing Graves: From July to September our Branch was involved with tracing seven graves for the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia. The requests to trace these graves came from descendants of the deceased living in Britain. Four of the graves were traced in Happy Valley and Carl Smith was able to trace, from his card index system, that the fifth person had died in Ningbo. The bulk of the research in Hong Kong was undertaken by Dr Dan Waters with help from the Government Urban Services Department.\n\n(c) Samuel Cornell Plant (1866-1921): Commencing in September as an ongoing project, two of our overseas members, Captain A.C. Bromfield and Mrs Rosemary Lee, have been assisting the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia research the life of Captain Plant. He was an inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs on the dangerous upper section of the Yangtze River and he and his wife are buried in Happy Valley. The RASHKB has been involved at the Hong Kong end where research has been undertaken by Dr Dan Waters.\n\n(d) The National Library of China: From 17-24 January, 1999, RASHKB member Dr Kazimiera Gasztine worked in the National Library in Beijing, in an honorary capacity, assisting staff translate passages into English, and writing synopses of the contents of old and rare works. It is understood there is in the region of 4,000 such books in the Beijing library in languages about which the staff at the National Museum...\n\nxxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215595, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 372, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "322\n\nracing through the Gorges make this section difficult and dangerous both at low and high water. Chongqing, the chief commercial port of western China and an important distribution centre, was opened to foreign trade by an Additional Article [1890] to the Chefoo Agreement of 1876. This stretch also includes the River down to Chongqing from its junction with the Min River at Yibin [Suifu].\n\nThe fourth and final stretch, the Upper Yangzi of 1,600 miles, is torrential almost from its source in Eastern Tibet far to the west, down to Yibin. It has several major tributaries.\n\nWe, however, are interested in the Gorges. They have long been regarded by Chinese junkmen and especially foreigners who had travelled through them as passengers on river junks, as one of the most difficult stretches of river navigation on earth, with a current in places running at 13 knots.\n\nOur story concerns two British expatriates in China who, as far as we know, never met as they were of different social circles. One is Archibald Little, a British Shanghai merchant, married to a British lady and William Mesny, a struggling entrepreneur also in Shanghai but married to a Chinese. Paul King wrote that 'One of the foreign tea-tasters who each year visited Kiukiang [Jiujiang] was Archibald Little, who was never very successful in business but found himself in Yichang in the uphill work of establishing as a fact that the rapids in the upper reaches of the Yangtze could be negotiated by steam craft. In my [King] time the Navy was represented in Yichang by H.M.S. Kinsha - the famous pioneer merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze owned and operated by the late Archibald Little.'\n\nThe first steamer to ascend the upper waters of the Great River, the Yangzi, through the Gorges above Yichang and as far as Chongqing during the low water season in the month of March 1898 was the 9-ton steam launch, Leechuen [Li Chuan], the property of Mr. Archibald Little who travelled aboard the steamer with his wife.\n\nArchibald John Little was born in London in 1838, and arrived in China in 1859 where he remained, apart from short visits back to Britain, until 1907 when he returned there and died the following year. He was a merchant, traveller and writer and is as well known to some as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216078, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 377, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "311\n\nZhenjiang city has grown beyond all recognition. Since the Communists came to power in 1949 Zhenjiang has suffered the same trials and tribulations as all other cities in China and only within the last decade or so of the 20th century did modernisation and development take off. Today it has wide streets, modern shops, drainage and factories as well as all the benefits, or otherwise, of westernisation. Also, three historical sites have been granted Asia-Pacific Heritage Protection Awards for 2001 by UNESCO. They are the Stone Pagoda, the Guan Yin Cave and a charitable association hall, all on Xijindu Street.\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nZhenjiang city walls were said by the British military to have been thirty feet high and five feet thick.\n\nAllom, Thomas (1844) China - in a series of views, displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of that Ancient Empire. London: Fisher, Son and Co Vol. IV p 41\n\n3 The area selected to be the foreign settlement was chosen in 1861 and divided into lots. Ground rent was paid to the Chinese government by leaseholders to whom titles for 99 years were issued through the British Consulate. They would have expired in 1960 had not the treaty port as a whole been formally surrendered [rendited in official parlance to avoid using the word surrendered] in 1929 after it had been decided that minor concessions were more trouble than they were worth.\n\nA\n\nCunynghame, Captain Arthur [1845] The Opium War: London\n\n\"Taot'ai [Daotai] was the term for a Qing dynasty Circuit Intendant.\n\n*Percival, William Spencer (1889) The Land of the Dragon-My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd. [Percival was a member of H.B.M's Civil Service in China].\n\n'Clennell, WJ (June 1922) The Historical Setting of Chinkiang or a Bit of ‘Consular Bluff Shanghai: New China Review: Vol IV. No. 3 [Clennell provides much greater detail than is offered here].\n\n&\n\nSun Quan's city was built on Beigu Shan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216216, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 515, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "PROJECTS AND ENQUIRIES\n\nDAN WATERS\n\n449\n\nThe main role of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is to organise lectures and visits both within and outside the Territory. We also publish an annual Journal together with other occasional publications and mount infrequent exhibitions. But in addition, the HKBRAS also undertakes various projects. Some of these are carried out by its Volunteers who assist the Government Antiquities and Monuments Office. See JHKBRAS, Volume 40, 2000, page 231.\n\nYour Branch also receives enquiries, often from overseas, requesting assistance or information about Hong Kong history and the like. We normally help the enquirer if we can and treat it as a form of community service.\n\nA typical example was in 1998 when we received a letter from the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. They had received enquiries about the locations of seven graves thought to be in Hong Kong, 'Could we help?' Yes, we would try. This project has been written up in some detail under the title, “Tracing Graves in Hong Kong: Research Methodology,” by Dan Waters, see JHKBRAS, Volume 38, 1998-1999.\n\nThen again two of our members living in England, Mrs Rosemary Lee and Captain Tony Bromfield, were undertaking research for the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, about a Captain Samuel Plant. He was an authority on navigating the Upper Yangtze. There is an article about the good Captain and his wife in JHKBRAS, Volume 41, 2001.\n\nIn 1999, we received an enquiry from Australia from Victoria Brown. She wanted information about her great-grandmother, Miranda Main (née Mann), who was headmistress of Kowloon British School during the first decade of the 20th century. Again we were able to help.\n\nThen we had an enquiry from a relative of Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Up to World War Two there was a memorial to him in Saint John's Cathedral. 'No,' we were informed, it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]