[ { "id": 205306, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n91\n\nas the American Trading Company of Borneo, with the intention of developing the concession the Sultan of Brunei had granted to an American, Charles Lee Moses. The Chinese partners supplied most of the capital. The Company established a settlement, but after a few years of ship-building, experimental planting, and trade the project was abandoned. The company did not have sufficient capital to finance the undertaking properly.24 This drain of capital may have been the primary cause of the bankruptcy of Pang Wah Ping in 1866. He had acquired his original capital from profits of trade in unprepared opium, and during his years of prosperity his name appears on the various documents used as criteria for élite status.\n\nThe Li family, however, was more firmly established and survived the failure of the American Trading Company of Borneo. Its interests were diversified. It had large real estate holdings in Hong Kong which regularly brought in rental income. It was perhaps the largest broker for coolie labor and charterer of ships for these emigrants. In 1868 gambling was legalized in Hong Kong and the monopoly was bought up by the Li family firm. They also had interests in the opium monopoly.\n\nTheir financial investment in Hong Kong appears to have led them to identify their interests with the British at the time of the Second Opium War, and a Chinese source states that they \"gave contributions to foreigners to the extent of over a lakh of ready money and recruited native braves who went to the front at Tientsin. When peace was declared they shared in the War Indemnity as well as in the Imperial effects and curios of the Yuen-ming-yuen (Summer Palaces)\".25 They were accused of supporting France in its efforts to gain control of Annam. The Chinese authorities of their home district tried to derive some benefit from the fortunes of the family, by requesting large contributions for the reclamation of waste land. When the family seemed somewhat hesitant to meet the full demands of the authorities, they sought to provoke generosity by seizing a member of the family who happened to have returned to his home district, imprisoning him, and eventually putting him on trial.\n\nThis account of the troubles the family encountered in its relations with Chinese officialdom illustrates the predicament the wealthy merchants and compradores found themselves in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206487, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK: AN ANOMALY IN THE 19TH CENTURY BRITISH COLONIAL SCENE\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT*\n\n(The text of a lecture given to the Branch on 18th January 1972)\n\nTo the reading public a hundred years ago the name of Raja James Brooke and his oriental kingdom of Sarawak, then a medium-sized principality on the northwest coast of Borneo, conjured up visions of dark impenetrable jungles; tropical rivers and mangrove coasts infested with the fiercest and most barbaric of pirates; and a pagan headhunting primitive people, ruled over by a Malay sultan and a court of Malay chiefs who had over long years of decline and corruption been reduced to only slightly more respectable status than the pirates. Brooke was usually presented in a highly romantic light—the best type of British export, the humanitarian colonial who helped penetrate the barbaric darkness of remote Borneo and who was holding the thin precarious line of civilization. Joseph Conrad and later, Somerset Maugham, added to the romance and colour surrounding the Borneo and Malay world of which Brooke was an important part.\n\nMuch that went to make up this mental picture of Borneo in the English reading world was fact. There were pirates aplenty. The Sultanate of Brunei had declined to a low state of impotence and corruption, Brunei was by the nineteenth century one of those decaying Moslem states of the Malay world about which the historian Lennox Mills wrote,\n\n+\n\nThe rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave, they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes. The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects.\n\n+\n\nMany of the Dayaks were indeed the fierce headhunters that were depicted in the nineteenth century accounts. And James Brooke\n\n* Dr. Wright is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Origins of British Borneo, Hong Kong University Press, 1970.\n\n1 L. A. Mills, British Malaya 1824-67, (Singapore 1925), p. 284.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206489, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n31\n\nslavery. One of the Brunei princes, Raja Muda Hasim, had shown a rather more friendly attitude toward European traders out of Singapore than had the pirate chiefs. Brooke was commissioned to make contact with Hasim and see what he could do to make English ships welcome in the rivers of Borneo. Brooke was given a letter from Governor Bonham addressed to the Sultan of Brunei, Omar Ali Saifuddin.\n\nSarawak in those days was the southernmost part of the Brunei sultanate, little more than the Malay village of Kuching and the Sarawak River. The local Malay chiefs had for some time been in rebellion against the extortionary rule of the Brunei governor, and Raja Muda Hasim had been sent to suppress the rebellion but without much success.\n\nIt was in Sarawak that Brooke, on the 15th August 1839, met Hasim and his brother Bedruddin who impressed him with their “overawing and stately demeanour”, and their above average intelligence and political acumen. They were not at all the ordinary dissipated Malay chiefs that proliferated in the environs of the Brunei court. Brooke was made welcome and carried on conversations about Malay politics and trade. He then continued his voyage to Celebes and again returned to Kuching in the summer of 1840.\n\nWithout going into the details of Malay intrigue and procrastination that surrounded a most fascinating episode of British colonial history, suffice it to say that within a year Brooke had successively: convinced himself that it was worthwhile attempting to settle the rebellion in a just and fair way; had thrown the considerable weight and prestige of his expedition behind Hasim; had negotiated an end to the rebellion, which characteristically included a fair and humane amnesty for the rebellious chiefs; and had accepted in the bargain the governorship of Sarawak. Brooke wrote a lively account of the proceedings for his journal entry,2\n\nUnder the guns of Royalist, and with a small body of men to protect me personally, and the great majority of all classes with me, it is not surprising that the negotiation proceeded rapidly to a favourable issue. The document was quickly drawn up, sealed, signed, and delivered; and on the 24th of\n\n2 R. Munday, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes from the Journals of James Brooke, Esq. (John Murray, London, 1848), Vol. I, p. 271.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206490, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "32\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nSeptember 1841, I was declared Rajah and Governor of Sarawak amidst the roar of cannon, and a general display of flags and banners from the shore and boats on the river. Some observers in Singapore pronounced Brooke's new position a sentence rather than a reward. Nevertheless the new Raja set about vigorously organizing the state and establishing a rule of law, roughly based upon the Bengal code and local adat or customary law. In 1842 he visited the sultan in his ramshackle wooden palace in Brunei Town, an unattractive clutter of Malay huts built on stilts over a sluggish tidal stream. From the sultan he obtained confirmation of his appointment. The following year it was made hereditary, in perpetuity, and in 1846 the sultan executed a deed of cession of Sarawak to Brooke and his heirs. In subsequent years Brunei ceded additional portions of territory to the Brooke dynasty of white rajas, until by 1890 the state of Sarawak reached approximately its present size.\n\nThis, in a somewhat sketchy way, is how Raja James Brooke acquired control of an oriental state almost as large as England and sparsely inhabited by a conglomeration of frequently fierce pagan peoples, a few Malays and some Chinese. In the remaining part of the paper I want to consider ways in which, to my mind, Sarawak under Brooke rule stood out as an anomaly in the British colonial experience.\n\nII\n\nFirst, let me consider Raja Brooke's position in his own state of Sarawak. Brooke considered that he had been prevailed upon by the Malay chiefs to become their raja, that they chose him. He described, in his journals, the scene upon the occasion in 1842 when the Sultan's confirmation of his appointment was proclaimed in Sarawak.4\n\nWhen we returned from Borneo the Sultan's letter giving me the country was read in public, and when finished we had a scene. Muda Hassim, who was standing, asked aloud, whether anyone dissented; for if they did they were now to make it known.\n\n3 For a study of the growth of British influence in Borneo see L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo (Hong Kong University Press, 1970).\n\n4 R. Munday, op. cit., pp. 323-24.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\nNo one dissented, whereupon\n\n33\n\nMuda Hassim then drew forth his sabre, and raising it, proclaimed in a loud voice, that any one who contested the Sultan's appointment, his head should be split in two. On which ten of his brothers drew their krisses and flourished them\n\n+\n\nAs we have seen James Brooke acquired Sarawak as a private individual; but there is little question but that elements within the Brunei court, centered upon Hasim and Bedruddin, which came to be known as the \"English party\" wished to bring the British into an alliance with them to further their own political ends, and they saw Brooke as an agency by means of which this goal might be pursued. Although given a pseudo-political mission by the Singapore authorities Brooke undertook no official duties for Britain until 1844 when he was appointed \"agent near the person of the Sultan of Borneo\", a \"special and temporary office\", and was commissioned to find a site for a naval station along the northwest coast of Borneo.\n\nWhen Labuan was purchased from Brunei and created a British colony Brooke became its first governor in 1847. The same year he negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan and was named consul to Brunei. His dual appointment from the Foreign and Colonial Offices came largely as a result of the reputation he enjoyed in England as a result of his successful battles against Borneo pirates. Not only was he popular with officers of the Royal Navy in the East who aided him in his anti-piracy warfare on the coast. His exploits had also been well publicised at home. In 1847 he returned to England, the hero of the day. He was fêted, given the freedom of the City of London, presented at Court at Windsor Castle, where the Prince Consort found him an interesting conversationalist, and was knighted.\n\nAt the end of the 1840s, then, Brooke found himself the possessor of three posts. He was Raja of Sarawak in his own right, and an officer of the Crown as Governor of Labuan and Consul to Brunei. The nature of his responsibilities in the three positions very soon created a conflict of interest situation and in 1854 he resigned his crown appointments.\n\n5 Aberdeen to Brooke, 1 November 1844, Foreign Office Series 12, Volume 2 (FO12/2).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206492, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "34\n\n!\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nThe issue of Brooke's status revolved around, firstly, the question of whether or not a subject of the Queen could hold the position as a sovereign prince of a foreign state; and, secondly, whether Brooke was in fact an independent ruler or a vassal of the Sultan of Brunei.\n\nThe issue, however, was not a burning one in the ministries of Whitehall. Despite the fact that Borneo was of concern to Britain as the guardian of the eastern flank of the South China Sea route to the China coast, and was to assume, gradually, more strategic value as first France and later Germany began colonial operations in the area, at mid-century Britain possessed a colony and naval station at Labuan and a (“good strong”) consular treaty with Brunei which gave her a certain measure of control, if she chose to indulge it, in Brunei's relations with foreign states. Most of the Colonial and Foreign Secretaries in London, until the 1870s were not very interested in defining precisely Raja Brooke's status,\n\nFor the most part, Whitehall grudgingly approved of Brooke's “civilizing influence\" in Borneo. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in 1846, offered naval support for the suppression of piracy, and during a later term of office gave standing orders to the Eastern squadron to visit Sarawak at regular intervals. But the Foreign Office generally held to the view that \"it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government that British subjects should possess territory on the mainland of Borneo\".\n\nLord Clarendon, when Foreign Secretary in the mid-1850s, came close to disavowing Brooke's position in Sarawak. In 1853 the Raja took issue with a Foreign Office statement that seemed to assume that Brooke was a vassal of Brunei. Clarendon minuted,\n\nIt seems to me that the various documents tend to prove how cautiously the government abstained from recognizing his (Brooke's) independence although in various ways the anomalous character of his position has been admitted.\n\nBut Clarendon did not leave it at that. When in 1855 Spencer St. John succeeded Brooke as Consul in Brunei he suggested to the Foreign Office that he also be accredited to Sarawak as an independent state. The Raja agreed and insisted that the new consul must receive his exequatur from him. This act would render the desired\n\n6 FO to Admiralty, 24 July 1846, FO 12/4.\n\n7 Clarendon minute upon Brooke to FO, 27 September 1853, FO 12/13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206494, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "36\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nSarawak. Was Brooke an independent sovereign prince, or was Sarawak a vassal state under the suzerainty of the Sultan of Brunei? And if a vassal, was it quite proper for a subject of the Queen to occupy such a position?\n\nThe Raja was anxious to make Sarawak over to Britain as a colony or a protectorate and so ensure the continued political stability of his state and the progress of his people. Very much in the tradition of Raffles in his Java period from 1811 to 1816, Brooke sought the extension of British interests in Southeast Asia, not merely for the sake of commerce and trade, but for the civilizing effect that the presence of British rule of law entailed. Like Raffles he found little to admire in Dutch colonial rule either in Java or Borneo. He wrote,10\n\nIf the British public be indifferent to the sufferings of this unhappy race, now for the first time made known to them they are not what I believe them to be, and what they profess themselves.\n\nIt was necessary to establish \"a proper British influence\" in Borneo.\n\nI conceive that policy dictates these measures at the present time, because in case of any delay it will no longer be in our power. From the distractions of Borneo, some European state must very shortly interfere in their concerns, and the supremacy of the Dutch government would be the knell of the British trade which now is carried on, and effectually stop all measures of improvement.\n\nAnd later, to tempt British strategists, he added,\n\nWe shall have a post in time of war highly advantageous as commanding a favourable position relative to China—we shall extend our commerce—suppress piracy and prevent the present and prospective advantages falling into other hands—and we shall do this at a small expense.\n\nWhen ministers in London answered with a cold \"no\" to all of Brooke's requests for a colony or a protectorate the Raja became angry and bitter. He threatened to sell Sarawak to Belgium or\n\n10 James Brooke, A Letter from Borneo, (pamphlet published by L. and S. Sealy, London, 1842), copy in FO12/1.\n\n11 James Brooke, Memorandum on piracy, 31 March 1845, FO12/3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 206498, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "40\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\ngoverns it so well and cheaply for them, they will do nothing for him or Sarawak.\n\nWhen first France and then the United States and Germany showed signs of intruding into Borneo, or when they came close to a potentially threatening position over the important British lines of empire north and south through the South China Sea, or when the Foreign and Colonial Offices in London felt the hot breath of imperial competition, it was then that the offshore colony of Labuan and a by now weak little consular treaty with Brunei were found to be inadequate to justify, in the international arena, Britain's position in Borneo. Sarawak along with North Borneo and Brunei were incorporated into the British empire as protected states. Still for many years Britain assumed no responsibility for the internal administration of Sarawak, and adamantly refused any expenditure of imperial grants for the privilege of colouring these areas pink on the imperial maps of the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207003, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS*\n\nIn my research into Chinese iconography I made a considerable nuisance of myself in three particular two-storey shophouses in the middle of Singapore's Hokkien (Fukienese) area (see plate 1), by questioning the god carvers' every action during the process of carving and repairing images of Chinese gods.\n\nIn Singapore three families are in partial competition, yet from their full order books business would appear to be thriving. Two of the families are Hokkien originating from near Foochow and Amoy respectively and the third is Teochew (Ch'ao chou) from Swatow, all being second or third generation Singaporeans who have never visited their homeland. Into these shophouses are crowded the unmarried longterm employees in addition to the families themselves, notably the apprentices who sleep on campbeds in the shop and eat en famille. One master carver bewailed the shortage of apprentices who in this age of affluence were unwilling to undertake a long and poorly paid apprenticeship.\n\nI have always referred to these craftsmen as god carvers and their shops as godshops. My article \"Three Deities\" in this Journal in 1972 provoked the editorial comment that the term was colourful and as such would be left unedited. My terminology is a far cry from the jargon of the anthropologist and it is my intention to describe, in my own terms, the production of gods in one of these godshops.\n\nThese godshops are ten foot square or ten by twenty foot work-spaces on the ground floor of the shophouses. Here new gods are carved and painted and the old repaired, not only for the island of Singapore but also for places as far north as Thailand and Cambodia, as far east as Borneo and Brunei and as far south as Java. This group of godcarvers is unique in being the only Fukienese and Ch'ao chou specialist carvers still plying their trade save for a few\n\n* Major Stevens' other contributions on the interesting subject of Chinese gods in South-east Asia and Taiwan appeared in Vols. 12-13 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207200, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LIST OF MEMBERS\n\nORDINARY OVERSEAS MEMBERS:\n\nJOHNSON, Mr. & Mrs. Paul K. +\n\nJOHNSTON, James J.\n\nJUNKER, Mrs. Sibylle\n\nKRAMERS, Dr. R. P. -\n\nKIDD, S. T.\n\nLEAKE, Mrs. Sima B.\n\nLECKIE, J. B. H. - + -\n\nLYNCH, Rev. P. Francis, M.M.\n\nMACK, A. M.\n\nMcCOY, J. -\n\nORR, Iain C.\n\nPENNELL, W. V. -\n\nRAINBIRD, S. W. O.B.E.\n\nRASSIM, Mrs. E.\n\nSCOTT, J. M. P +\n\nSMITH, Dr. Ralph B. -\n\nSMITHIES, Michael\n\nSOO, Dr. Hoy Mun\n\nSTOKES, John -\n\n265\n\nc/o Nan Shan Life Ins. Co. Ltd., 15, Nan King E. Road, Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan.\n\nP.O. Box 65, Marshall, Arkansas 72650, U.S.A.\n\nc/o Federal Foreign Office, Referat 412, Bonn (Germany-West), Adenauerallee 101.\n\nc/o Ostasiatisches Seminar, Der Universetat Zurich, Muhlegasse 21, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland.\n\nc/o Hong Kong Govt. Office, 54, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1, England.\n\nc/o American Consulate, Calcutta, India.\n\nc/o H.K. Trade Development Office, Britannia House, 30, Rue Joseph 2nd, Brussels 4, Belgium.\n\nMaryknoll Centre House, 120 San Min Rd., 1st Section, Taichung City 400, Taiwan.\n\n34, Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1, England.\n\nDept. of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14850, U.S.A.\n\nPearce Institute, Govan Cross, Glasgow, S.W.1, U.K.\n\nCan Boyet Mear Puerto Pollensa, Majorca, Spain.\n\nc/o Hong Kong Govt. Office, 54, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1, England.\n\n101, Holland Road, Hove 2, Sussex, England.\n\nc/o The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., 9, Gracechurch Street, London, E.C.3, England.\n\nSchool of Oriental & African Studies, Malet Street, London, W.C.1, England.\n\nEng. Language Training Unit, University of Jadjahmada, Jogjakarta, Indonesia.\n\n249, Jalan Pekeliling, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.\n\nc/o Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., Bandar Seri Begawan, State of Brunei.\n\nSTRICKLAND, Mrs. P. G. Jaishan, Apartada 56, Marbella, Provincia de Malaga, Spain.\n\nSTURM, Dr. F. G. + c/o Dept. of Philosophy, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, U.S.A.\n\nUHALLEY, Dr. Stephen, Jr. 7103, Kukii Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96821, U.S.A.\n\nWATSON, Dr. James L. - + c/o School of Oriental & African Studies, Malet Street, London, W.C.1, E7 HP, England.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207976, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S Report TREASURER's Report THE LIBRARY\n\nCONTENTS\n\nPage\n\n1\n\n6\n\n10\n\nTRANSACTIONS :\n\nBrunei: A Historical Relic - LEIGH WRIGHT\n\nBehind Japanese Barbed Wire: Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong 1942-1945 - G. C. EMERSON\n\nA Journey to Yenan 1946 - W. A. REYNOLDS\n\nARTICLES:\n\nTwo Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-An, Kwangtung - J. T. KAMM\n\nUnder Altars - K. G. STEVENS\n\nSocial Organization and Ceremonial Life of Two Multi-Surname Villages in Hoi-p'ing County, South China, 1911-1949 - YUEN-FONG WOON\n\n\"Little Fujian (Fukien)” Sub-Neighbourhood and Community in North Point, Hong Kong - GREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nReprinted ARTICLES:\n\nCheung Chow - Long Island - W. J. HINTON\n\nMemories of the District Office South, Hong Kong - W. SCHOFIELD\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nNotes for the Royal Asiatic Society Visit to Tai Mo Shan, 3rd April 1976 — (I) L. B. and S. L. THROWER (II) JAMES HAYES\n\nNotes for the Visit to the Tang Family Graves, 11 December 1976 - DAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES\n\nRoyal Asiatic Society Visit to Tsuen Wan, 10th December, 1977 - A Village War'. JAMES HAYES\n\nThe Rural History Project in Yuen Long and Field Notes on the Social History and Fung Shui of Kam Tin - J. T. KAMM\n\nBean Skim, A Product of Blood and Sweat\n\nFour Chinese Banks Fail, Partners Blame Head\n\nTwo Letters From Wartime China\n\nA Further Note on Feng Yun-Shan and Gützlaff - Jen Yu-wen\n\nReptiles New to Hong Kong - J. D. ROMER\n\nThe Public Botanic Garden of Hong Kong\n\nBirds of Tai Mo Shan - MICHAEL Webster\n\nOccurrence of the Birds - J. D. ROMER\n\n12\n\n30\n\n(55)\n\n85\n\n101\n\n112\n\n130\n\n144\n\n179\n\n(185)\n\n199\n\n216\n\n218\n\n220\n\n228\n\n232\n\n234\n\n236\n\n237\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207979, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "largest, and most famous of the New Territories' Chinese kinship groups being settled in the area for over 900 years. Notes were again provided and will be published later in the Journal.\n\nThe December tour of Sri Lanka was very comprehensive and included a number of archeological sites not usually possible to visit in a short tour by the average tourist. We were fortunate enough to obtain the expert guidance of Ms. de Silva who volunteered to lead the tour and Ms. Berger who helped make many of the arrangements. I know that some members found the housekeeping side a shade more primitive than they would have preferred but I think that we compare favourably with many tourist agencies arranging accommodation from Hong Kong and providing a great deal more guidance and variation than does the average tour. It is not always possible to see places off the well-worn commercial track and enjoy all the facilities of the modern commercial world, to some extent these objectives being mutually incompatible. However if any members have suggestions as to how to improve the arrangements and take in the more unusual kind of visit—of course, in the same length of time—we would appreciate very much hearing from them, and this goes also for members who would themselves like to arrange a tour on our behalf.\n\nIn February a young exponent of the classical dance of South India gave a talk illustrated with the basic dance movements and related gestures and expressions. Also in February the tour of Borneo took place, participants visiting Sarawak, Brunei, and Sabah. The tour was very fortunate in gaining the help of people associated with museums in Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei who also provided unsolicited hospitality. I would like particularly to acknowledge our gratitude to Mr. Lucas Chin, Curator of the Sarawak Museum, Mr. P. M. Shariffuddin, Director of Museums, Brunei, and Mr. David McCredie, Curator-designate of the Sabah Museum.\n\nOn February 16, Mr. Chuang Shen of Hong Kong University's Department of Chinese talked about newly discovered rock engravings in China, and made comparisons with findings and techniques of engraving in many other parts of the world. A tour of the Chinese porcelain exhibition at Fung Ping Shan Museum, University of Hong Kong, took place also in February—or I should say three tours—for so popular was this event arranged in connection with the Arts Festival, that three different parties had to be arranged for our members. Dr. Michael Lau, Curator of the Museum,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207989, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: AN HISTORICAL RELIC\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT*\n\nI\n\nVery little is known about Brunei before 1500. Place names identified with locations in western Borneo and which were connected with Indonesia in trade in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. are mentioned in some recent research. The same sources suggest a considerable \"political, economic and cultural development” in northwestern Borneo as early as the 7th century. The existence of a \"state\" in the area of Brunei Bay first appears in the Chinese records of the early Sung dynasty when a kingdom called Po-ni sent tributary missions to the court of China in 977 and in 1082. By the 14th century Po-ni was also tributary to the Javanese empire of Majapahit while continuing to send trade/tribute missions to the Ming court. The Ming court entertained such missions in 1371, 1405 and 1408. The ruler of Po-ni visited China on the latter date and died while there. He was buried \"with honour\". From 1408 to 1425 missions went to China at three-year intervals bearing trading goods and tribute gifts. After that date the Ming restrictions on foreign trade discouraged any further intercourse,\n\nHistorians generally identify ancient Po-ni with modern Brunei. There is no hard evidence of a continuity, nor is there hard evidence to indicate otherwise. The position of Brunei Bay in the trading system of Nan Yang at an earlier time and in the 16th century, and the descriptive similarity would seem to lend credence to the theory.\n\nThere is in Brunei tradition a legend about the origin of Brunei.2 The legend is related in Malay folklore common to much of northern Borneo and is contained in a long epic called Sha'er Awang Semaun. Legendary Brunei was founded “29 reigns ago by fourteen brothers of heroic stature and semi-divine descent\". The brothers were sired by a father who descended in an egg from the heaven of the ancient pre-Muslim Malay gods. The father, called\n\n* Lecture given before the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) on Monday, December 6, 1976.\n\nDr. Wright is Reader in History at the University of Hong Kong. He is also a Councillor of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207991, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "14\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nAt the height of Brunei's \"golden age\" the earliest contacts with Europeans occurred. The best records of the early contacts are found in the account of Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan's circumnavigation voyage. In 1521 Magellan's fleet visited Brunei. I quote at some length a description of Brunei under Sultan Bulkiah.4\n\nWhen we reached the city, we had to wait two hours in the prau, until there had arrived two elephants, caparisoned in silk-cloth, and twelve men, each furnished with a porcelain vase, covered with silk, to receive and to cover our presents. We mounted the elephants, the twelve men going before, carrying the presents. The present for the king consisted of a vest velvet in the Turkish fashion, a chair of purple velvet, five yards of red broad-cloth, one cap (beretoo), a gilded goblet, a glass vase with a lid, three quires of paper, and gilded inkstand. We brought for the queen three yards of yellow broad-cloth, a pair of silver-embroidered shoes, and a silver case filled with pins. We thus proceeded to the house of the governor, who gave us a supper of many dishes. Here we slept for the night on mattresses stuffed with cotton (Bambagic), and cased with silk. Next day, we were left at our leisure until twelve o'clock when we proceeded to the king's palace. We were mounted, as before, on elephants, the men bearing the gifts going before us. From the governor's house to the palace the streets were full of people armed with swords, lances and targets: the king had so ordered it. Still mounted on the elephants we entered the court of the palace. We then dismounted, ascended a stair, accompanied by the governor and some chiefs, and entered a great hall full of courtiers, whom we shall call barons of the realm (Baroni del regno). Here we were seated on carpets, the presents being placed near to us.\n\nAt the end of the great hall, but raised above it, there was one of less extent hung with silken cloth, in which were two curtains, on raising which, there appeared two windows, which lighted the hall. Here, as a guard to the king, there were 300 men with naked rapiers (stochi nudi) in hand resting on their thighs, at the further end of this smaller hall, there was a great window with a brocade curtain before it, on raising which, we saw the king seated at a table masticating betel, and a little boy,\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207992, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n15\n\nhis son, beside him. Behind him, women only were to be seen. A chieftain then informed us, that we must not address the king directly, but that if we had anything to say, we must say it to him, and he would communicate it to a courtier of higher rank than himself within the lesser hall. This person, in his turn, would explain our wishes to the governor's brother, and he, speaking through a tube in an aperture of the wall, would communicate our sentiments to a courtier near the king, who would make them known to His Majesty. Meanwhile, we were instructed to make three obeisances to the king with the joined hands over the head, and raising, first one foot and then the other, and then kissing the hands. This is the royal salutation.\n\nBy the means pointed out, we made it to be understood by him that we belonged to the King of Spain, who desired to live in peace with His Majesty, and wished for nothing more than to be able to trade in his island. The king answered that he would be much pleased to have the King of Spain for his friend, and that we might have wood, water, and trade in his dominions, at our pleasure. This done, the presents were submitted, and as each article was exhibited, the king made a slight inclination of the head. To each of us was then given some brocade, with cloth of gold and silk, which were placed on the shoulder and then removed, to be taken care of. After this, we had a collation of cloves and cinnamon, when the curtains were drawn and the window closed. All the persons present in the palace had their loins covered with gold-embroidered cloth and silk, wore poniards with golden hilts, ornamented with pearls and precious stones, and had many rings on their fingers.\n\nWe remounted the elephants and returned to the house of the governor. Seven men preceded us, bearing the presents which had been given to us, and as soon as we reached the house, to each of us was given his own, the cloths being laid on the left shoulder, as had been done in the king's palace. To each of these seven men we gave recompense for their trouble a couple of knives. After this there came to the house of the governor ten or twelve porcelain saucers with the flesh of various animals, this is, of calves, capons, pullets, peafowls (?), and others, and various kinds of fish, so that of meat alone there were thirty or two-and-thirty dishes. We supped on the ground on mats of palm-leaf. At each mouthful we drank a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207993, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "16\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nporcelain cup full, the size of an egg, of a distilled liquor made from rice. We ate also rice and sweetmeats, using spoons of gold shaped like our own. In the place where we passed the two nights, there were always burning two torches of white wax, placed on tall chandeliers of silver, and two oil lamps of four wicks each, while two men watched to look after them. Next morning we came on the same elephants to the sea-side, where, forthwith, there were ready for us two praus, in which we were re-conducted to the ships. The city is entirely built in the salt water, the king's house and those of some chieftains excepted. It contains 25,000 fires or families. The houses are all of wood, and stand on strong piles to keep them high from the ground. When the flood tides make, the women, in boats go through the city selling necessaries. In front of the king's palace there is a rampart constructed of large bricks, with barbacans in the manner of a fortress, on which are mounted fifty-six brass, and six iron cannon. During the two days we passed in the city many of them were discharged. That king is a Moro and his name Raja Siripada. He was forty years old and corpulent. No one serves him except women who are the daughters of chiefs. He never goes outside of his palace, unless when he goes hunting, and no one is allowed to talk with him except through the speaking-tube. He has scribes, called Xiricoles who wrote down his deeds on very thin tree bark.\n\nThus Pigafetta's description of Brunei.\n\nII\n\nThe nature of the traditional kingdom in the Malay world differs markedly from the western conception of state. In very general terms it consisted of a ruler and his followers whose kampong or court was at a relatively strategic location such as on a narrow strait, (e.g. Malacca), at the mouth of a large river, or at the confluence of two streams where his forces could collect tolls on water traffic and his city could act as a trading center or entrepot. From his court the sultan's power radiated outward along the coasts, up rivers and along waterways as far as both his revenue collectors could operate, and his ecclesiastical title as sultan was respected. His kingdom or “empire” had no bounds as such. He \"owned\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207994, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n17\n\nand ruled over people not territory per se. The structure was somewhat feudal in social terms. \"Everyone owned somebody else; everybody was owned by someone\" is not too inaccurate a description of society. Southeast Asian traditional society was, and is, hierarchical. Headmen of villages owed allegiance and tribute to a riverine chief; the chief (pengeran or dato) in turn owed allegiance and was protected by a higher chief, a prince, or his sultan. The feudal dues of protection downward and allegiance and tributary payment upward pertained. The sultan was a despotic ruler, but a limited despot, restrained in practice by a council of the chief princes of the royal blood, whose sanction was usually necessary in important matters. One of the chief functions of the council was to provide for the succession.\n\nBrunei on the northwest coast was well located in a flourishing trade center between China on the north and the Arabian-Indian dominated trading system of south Asia. Brunei suffered the fate of most maritime southeast Asian states when European mercantile monopolizing practices entered Asia. The Dutch and the British eventually wrested the dominance in the south Asian trading system from the Muslims. At the same time Spanish encroachment from the north considerably limited Brunei's power. The result was a falling-off of trade and a shrinking of revenues. A long, slow decline set in. The sultan's power, his ability to collect revenue and tolls and to command respect for his title, shrank until he could be said to hold authority only over the immediate coastal and riverine areas close to Brunei Bay.\n\n17\n\nWhile Spain neither acquired nor probably coveted Borneo, the impact of Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, plus the declining fortunes of Brunei, caused a vacuum of sorts around Borneo which was filled by pirates. The pirates of the area were nominally Muslim seafarers from southern Philippines and Borneo -- some were impecunious princes of the royal houses of Sulu and Brunei -- who raided shipping and coastal villages; whose communities were, by the 19th century, located all around the northern coasts of Borneo in territory nominally within the sultan's realm. As he could neither tax nor control the pirate communities, and as his revenue-income was shrinking or already non-existent, the sultan often condoned piracy. Sultans and princes invested in pirate cruises and shared the profits. Brunei Town became one of the major pirate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207995, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "18\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nmarks for booty and slaves, along with other places such as Endau on the east coast of Malaya, and Jolo the seat of the sultan of Sulu in the archipelago to the southwest of Mindanao.\n\nNo wonder that 18th and 19th century accounts of Brunei were so uncomplimentary. It was by one account,5 \"a nest of bandits\". Sea captains were warned to keep well away from Brunei:6\n\nThe predatory and treacherous disposition of the inhabitants of the extensive coasts that encircle the great island of Borneo have now discouraged almost every European from venturing to trade there.\n\nthere is no inducement for a ship to touch there or at any other of the bays on the northwest or northeast coasts of Borneo, the natives being inhospitable and perfidious.\n\nAnd the keen observer and writer Spencer B. St. John wrote of Brunei in 1860:7\n\nThe divisions among the nobles themselves prevent them ever uniting to regain an influence over their distant provinces, which one by one are falling from them. There is a poverty among these men which is almost inconceivable in a rich country, as whatever the amount obtained from the neighbouring villages, it can but support the idlers who throng round the chiefs.\n\nBrunei contains at least 25,000 inhabitants, half of whom depend, directly or indirectly, on the nobles, and in their name carry on a system of plunder unintelligible in other countries. If the followers be sent to make a demand on a certain village, they will obtain double the amount for their own shares. If the inhabitants refuse to pay, their children are seized; and if their means are really exhausted, the little ones are carried off into slavery.\n\nI knew a man, named Sirudin, who at one time brought over seventeen children obtained in that way from the people of Tutong, and this occurred during the spring of 1857. The parents laid their complaints before the sultan; but Sirudin had sold them off to the principal nobles, and no redress was to be had. The sultan pretended to be very angry with the man, but put the chief blame on the Pangeran de Gadong, who, he said, was beyond his power. The aborigines have often risen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207996, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n19\n\nin insurrection; but being disunited, they have not thereby improved their condition: the Bornean Government always threatening them with calling in the Kayans to subdue any opposition. The Muruts and Bisayas of Limbang are the most impoverished people I have ever met,\n\nMy own findings concerning the sultans of Brunei during this period show quite conclusively that they supported and frequently had financial interests in pirate fleets.\n\nBrunei throughout the nineteenth century is pictured by most authorities as a decrepit principality whose chief characteristics are political weakness and anarchy.\n\nBrunei is in a state of anarchy and the sultan too mixed up with trading affairs and piracy to care for administration of justice or the welfare of the country.8\n\nThat less than sanguine description was written in 1854. Almost twenty years later the situation remained generally unchanged:\n\nThe picture that has been presented to us is of an aged prince devoting the last years of his life to the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth... ruled by his petty rajas, whose first aim is their own aggrandizement.9\n\nBy the middle of the 19th century the physical look of Brunei, built over the mud flats of the Brunei River, had changed only in terms of its now lack of pretension and prosperity from what Pigafetta had observed three hundred years before. The following is a description of the place by Raja James Brooke of Sarawak—taken from an 1841 entry in his journals. It describes the town and Brooke's reception by the sultan's court, and contrasts rather vividly with that of Pigafetta.\n\n**24th At 7 A.M. the state-boat, a shabby concern, decorated with yellow flags, arrived; at eight the letters were borne away under a salute. Thus we had a second time the satisfaction of getting rid of the mob at an early hour.\n\n\"25th At 9 A.M. I started with Williamson in the gig, with the long-boat in company, carrying the presents. On approaching the town, before the ebb had run long, it appeared to be a very Venice of hovels, a river Cybele rising from the water. For those who like it, the locality is not ill chosen. The hills recede from the river, and form an amphitheatre; and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207997, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "20\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nseveral other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water, stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed by boats which preceded and followed us, and we passed the floating market, where women, wearing immense hats of palm-leaves, sell all sorts of edibles, balanced in their little canoes, now giving a paddle, now making a bargain, and dropping down with the tide, and again regaining their place when the bargain is finished. The first impression of the town is miserable. The houses are crowded and numerous, and even the palace does not present a more captivating aspect, for, though large, it is as incommodious as the worst. We had been seated but a few minutes when Pangeran Usop arrived, and directly afterwards the Sultan. He gave us ten leaf-cigars, and sirih, and, in short, showed us every attention; and, what was best of all, did not keep us very long. Our apartment was partitioned off from the public hall, a dark-looking place, but furnished with a table brought by us, and three rickety chairs, besides mattresses and plenty of mats. We were kept up nearly all night, which, after the fatigues of the day, was hard upon us.\n\nFurther observation confirmed us in the opinion that the town itself is miserable, and its locality on the mud fitted only for frogs or natives; but there is a level dry plain above the entrance of the Kiangi river, admirably suited for a European settlement; and across the Kiangi is swelling ground, where the residents might find delightful spots for their country-houses. The greatest annoyance to a stranger is the noisome smell of the mud when uncovered; and all plated or silver articles, even in the course of one night, get black and discoloured. The inhabitants I shall estimate moderately at 10,000, and the Kadien population are numerous amid the hills.\n\nAnd yet another graphic picture of the city of Brunei written in the early part of the present century. This is an observation by C. A. Bamfylde, an officer in the service of the Raja of Sarawak, Charles Brooke,11\n\nIt may be as well here to give a description of Brunei and of its Court.\n\nThe Brunei river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207998, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n21\n\nvery small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the \"Venice of Borneo\" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,* and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Brunei of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,† with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.§ Brunei has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a\n\n* \"I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes.\" The Rajah called the place a \"Venice of hovels.\" Mercator in his Atlas describes it as \"being situated on a salt-water lagoon like Venice,\" hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo.\n\n† Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteen century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago.\n\n§ The Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments, such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this would still point to a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207999, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "22\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\ntongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.\n\nWhen the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes.\n\nBrunei was by the 19th century then one of those decaying Malay-Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia about which the historian Lennox Mills noted,12\n\nThe rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes ... The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects...\n\nIII\n\nThe political map of Southeast Asia was determined largely by imperialist interests and considerations of the last century. In most instances boundaries and demarkations were the results of international rivalries involving two or more European powers, with only now and then a consideration of the interests of indigenous states. In Borneo this principle does not apply entirely. The boundaries of the states of Eastern Malaysia, formerly British Borneo (Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak), are the result not so much of international rivalry as of the rivalry between Englishmen. This rivalry was centered in commercial circles in Borneo and England and involved the Foreign and Colonial ministries in Whitehall.\n\nBy the 19th century Britain's chief interest in the area was strategic: to protect her commercial routes to China.13 She was concerned firstly, with the location of a suitable naval station along the eastern flank of the South China Sea, and secondly, with the assumption of political control over the northwestern coast of Borneo so as to prevent those areas falling to a European rival. Britain was not worried about the relatively weak Dutch and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n23\n\nSpaniards. She worried about the presence of France in Indochina on the opposite side of the South China Sea at mid-century; and later on she suspected imperial Germany of coveting northern Borneo and the Philippines.\n\nThe British sphere was initiated by the private efforts of an English adventurer, James Brooke, a former officer in the Bengal Army. In 1840, he helped bring an end to an insurrection in the Sarawak River, in the southern-most area under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Brunei, and was rewarded by being granted the province. In 1845 Brooke was appointed diplomatic agent to Brunei and supervised the transfer of the island of Labuan to Britain as a colony and a naval station. He also, in 1847, negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan which effectively gave to Britain control over Brunei's foreign relations. The colony of Labuan languished but the quasi-protectorate over Brunei served as the de facto and legal base for Britain's sphere of influence in Borneo. Such a sphere was proclaimed in 1868 as a warning to all European nations to keep out.\n\nThe real carving-up of the carcass of Brunei began in earnest in 1878 with the founding of another private venture, that of a syndicate of City of London businessmen which later became the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company. The syndicate was under the control of Dent Brothers Company. Alfred and Edward Dent were sons of the owner of the former Hong Kong firm of Dent and Company. Raja Brooke had annexed, by treaty with the Sultan, additional chunks of territory before 1878. In 1853 he purchased northward to and including the large district of the Rajang River. And in 1861 he purchased the five so-called “sago rivers” as far north as Kidurong Point. When that point was reached, the Governor of Labuan objected to any further northward encroachment of Sarawak and Labuan's wishes were supported by Britain.\n\nWhen, however, the British North Borneo Company purchased the large area of Sabah, the whole of the island of Borneo to the northward of Brunei Town, with strong support from the Foreign Office, both Raja Brooke and the Colonial Office protested. It is interesting to note that the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office who midwifed the company charter through officialdom in Whitehall was Julian Pauncefote, who was a former attorney-general.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208001, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "24\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nof Hong Kong (1866) and who acted on occasion as legal representative of Dent and Company in that Colony.14\n\nThe Colonial Office by 1879 was favourably disposed toward Sarawak's expansionist plan in Brunei. A compromise was eventually achieved between the Colonial and Foreign Offices whereby Brooke was allowed a further cession of Brunei territory, the Baram River district, while North Borneo was confirmed to the company and it was allowed to acquire several territories on the north and east of Brunei Bay.\n\nAs to the attitude of Brunei toward the carving-up of its territory, few of the rajas of Brunei Town objected, for they were paid handsome cession monies from both Sarawak and North Borneo. In general, the temptation of a considerable monetary payment in hand overrode any desire to retain nominal title to territories over which Brunei sultans had long since ceased to rule and from which little, if any, revenue was obtained. That the presence of the British and the monetary payments tended to bolster a declining court and infuse it with vigour, if but superficially, was not lost upon the sultan and his rajas.\n\nThe keen competition which arose between Sarawak and North Borneo over the charter issue and the cession of Baram created a strong and bitter rivalry between the two states. Their attention was soon drawn to the remaining territory of Brunei. It seems clear that both Raja Brooke and the Company fully expected the demise of the sultanate, and each was determined to obtain as large a share of the remaining territory as possible. Raja Brooke had, for example, as early as 1874, offered to take over the administration of Brunei.\n\nIn 1890, Raja Brooke did annex the Limbang River district at the invitation of its Kayan chiefs, who had carried on a long rebellion against the extractions of corrupt Brunei rajas. After some on-site investigations, Britain reluctantly agreed to the acquisition. The raja was on firm legal ground, for he had obtained the chop of the sultan to the cession. But the loss of the Limbang was bitterly objected to by the rajas, who at almost the eleventh-hour began to realize that their individual selfishness and rivalry was bringing about the gradual extinction of the sultanate. The Limbang issue remains to this day a point of controversy between Brunei and Sarawak.15 No one at the time seemed to notice that Sarawak's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208002, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n25\n\nacquisition of Limbang cut right across the middle of Brunei territory. It was only later discovered after the Foreign Office was able to obtain accurate maps of the region. Hence Brunei is bifurcated and each part almost surrounded by Sarawak territory.\n\nThat Brunei was not completely annihilated is perhaps due to the late and strenuous objections of the rajas themselves, as well as to some feeling of conscience on the part of officials in the colonial and foreign offices. Some in Whitehall thought it a good thing and a great convenience for the future to allow Sarawak and North Borneo to divide up the carcass. Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary in 1888, noted that Sarawak and North Borneo were \"rapidly crushing out\" Brunei between them. He noted,16\n\nI think we had better let them finish it, and make no agreement with the Sultan of Brunei which would stand in the way of a consummation which is inevitable, and, on the whole, desirable.\n\nNevertheless a protectorate was agreed to in 1888. Sarawak and North Borneo also became protected states. But very little change occurred in Brunei. Except for being saved from extinction the new status merely formalised a situation that had prevailed since 1847—the sultan and rajas continued their misrule while Britain retained control of foreign relations.\n\nIV\n\nTwo further events contributed to the salvation of Brunei and its resuscitation. In 1906 Britain finally agreed to appoint a resident advisor to help the sultan manage his affairs.17 And in 1929 oil was discovered in commercial quantities in the southern part of the state at Seria in the Belait district.\n\nModern Brunei is oil rich and not unlike in that respect some of those other Muslim sultanates, in the Persian Gulf. Its 2,226 square miles is inhabited by 144,000 people, with two largish urban concentrations at Bandar Seri Begawan, the new name for Brunei Town, still on the sluggish Brunei River in its old location, and Kuala Belait-Seria some 80 miles to the south, surrounding the oil fields. The urbanites are largely Malay and Chinese with numbers of Ibans working the oil fields. The remainder of the indigenous peoples are Kedayan, Dusun and Murut, mostly living along small streams in the interior. The high per-capita income and wealth created by steady oil revenues have created the stability so lacking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208003, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "26\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nin the last century. Modern highways and new buildings, and a jumbo-size airport are the most obvious indications of the 20th century windfall from oil. But all may not be well in Brunei's economic future. One observer writing some time ago suggested that the current well-being has an \"air of impermanence\" about it.19\n\nEveryone knows that the supply of oil which provides Brunei's wealth will not last forever. There seems little attempt at a serious answer to the question, 'What then?'.\n\nIn form, society exists in much the same way as in ancient times. The persistence of traditional ways and social ranks is marked. Following the establishment of the British residency in 1906, some re-articulation of ruling practices took place. A more centralized system with a growing bureaucracy in Brunei Town emerged, away from the traditional rights of individual district chiefs and rajas. Nevertheless, the traditional despotic nature of government persists. A British High Commissioner replaced the resident as the leading British official of the protectorate in 1959 when internal self-government was proclaimed. Much of the old power of the Sultan, which was taken over and \"modernized\" by residents between 1906 and 1959, now reverted to the Sultan. He directs government through a council of appointed ministers led by the traditional Mentri Besar.\n\nA minority of members of a legislative council, which has primarily advisory powers, were elected under the reforms of 1959. But in December 1962, an insurrection occurred led by Sheikh A.M. Azahari, and when it was suppressed, the 1959 constitution was set aside and replaced by emergency powers.\n\nAll important posts in this Sultan's government are appointive and held at the pleasure of the Sultan. \"The Sultan has sponsored studies and measures to revive the traditional political system\" to a greater degree than has existed in the recent past.20 And although the legislative council and the elective principle have re-emerged, official positions remain the monopoly of the Malay aristocracy in Brunei.\n\nAs in the Malay states, in Brunei too, the decline and extinction of the political power of the traditional Malay elite was aborted by the establishment of a British residency and by the continuing patronage of the Malay aristocrat by colonial policy. But unlike", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208004, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n27\n\nMalaya a \"new nationalism” has not yet emerged. It is in a sense \"bought off\" by the prosperity and good times made possible by the oil revenues.\n\nA recent account of Brunei in a well-known western journal began this way: 21\n\nThere are moments when visitors feel this sleepy state on Borneo island's northern shore is something dreamed-up in a Hollywood script conference.\n\nOur film opens in some place wild like the South China Sea coast. It's a place run by a sultan — you know, a chap with a turban and a name like Sir Omar Ali Saifuddin. He lives in this big box of a palace with a flock of cars and a bunch of hungry relatives.\n\nAnd get this, the country sits atop a huge pool of oil so nobody wants to work. In fact, most everyone just kinda mooch-es off the government, which sits back and collects millions from the oil company.\n\nThen we need something spectacular like a huge mosque with a gold-plated dome that's lit with coloured floodlights at night.\n\nExcept for the presence of the opulent gold-domed Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin mosque which now towers on the skyline Pigafetta of Magellan's crew would still recognize Brunei if he were able to sail up the river to the town today,22\n\nThe \"Water Village” (Kampong Ayer) has changed little in character. More than half the people in the capital live in houses built on piles above the water of the river, and it is said that some old women in the kampong have never set foot on land, having spent their whole lives in the river village. Today, however, Kampong Ayer is dominated by the mosque, constructed at the water's edge and opened in 1958. This dignified building, the pride of the present and the fulfilment of the hopes of the past, approached from water on one side and land on the other, seems to stand symbolically where tradition and progress meet. For although the water village changes little, on the landward side Brunei Town grows, encouraged by the easy wealth obtained from oil revenues and by the fervent desire, both patriotic and religious, to outdo its neighbours,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208005, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "28\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nThe state of Brunei annual report for 1956 describes the water city, Kampong Ayer, this way,\n\nSet in a wide sweep of the river, this river town is in its way unique. At high tide under favourable conditions of light it takes on quite a remarkable beauty; viewed at close quarters it is even more remarkably ramshackle. The houses are grouped together in small villages, being connected by precarious plank walkways, and there the inhabitants carry on their multifarious activities in much the same way as if they were on land.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See e.g. O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce; a study of the origins of Srivijaya, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); and D. E. Brown, Brunei: the structure and history of a Bornean Malay sultanate, (Brunei: Brunei Museum, 1970).\n\nThese works have drawn upon the earlier studies of such scholars as W. P. Groeneveldt (1880) and Lien Sung (1919).\n\n2 See Brown, op. cit., Ch. XI.\n\n3 The fullest account of the Moro wars is in E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493 - 1898, (Cleveland, 1903 -09).\n\n4 Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed.), The first voyage round the world by Magellan, by Antonio Pigafetta, (London: Hakluyt Society, 1874).\n\n5 J. Hunt, \"Some particulars relative to the Sulo islands in the Archipelago of Felicia”, in Malayan Miscellany, I, (Bencoolen, 1820).\n\n6 James Horsburgh, Directions for sailing to and from the East Indies and China, (London, 1811), the navigational handbook for generations of British sea captains. This work drew heavily upon the surveys of eighteenth century seafarers such as Alexander Dalrymple (1774) and Thomas Forest (1780).\n\n7 S. B. St. John, Life in the forests of the Far East. (London, 1862), Vol. 2, pp. 248-49.\n\n8 British Parliamentary Papers, 1854-55, XXIX (253),\n\n9 Sarawak Gazette, 26 April, 1872.\n\n10 Henry Keppel, The expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the suppression of piracy, with extracts from the Journal of James Brooke, Esq. of Sarawak, (London, 1847),\n\n11 S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde, A History of Sarawak under its two white rajahs, (London, 1909), pp. 82-83.\n\n12 Lennox Mills, British Malaya, 1824-67, (reprint: Kuala Lumpur, 1966), p. 248.\n\n13 British interests in Borneo are treated extensively in, L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo, (Hong Kong, 1970).\n\n14 See L. R. Wright, \"The Foreign Office and North Borneo\", in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, (January 1969).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208006, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n29\n\n15 The best account of the Limbang issue is in C. N. Crisswell, “The origins of the Limbang claim\", in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, (September 1971), but see L. R. Wright, \"The partition of Brunei\", in Asian Studies, Vol. V, No. 2 (August 1967).\n\n16 Public Records Office, London, Foreign Office series 12 (Borneo), volume 78, minute of January 1888.\n\n17 See C. N. Crisswell, \"The establishment of a residency in Brunei, 1881-1905\", unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1971.\n\n18 United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1974.\n\n19 Nigel Heyward, Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo, (Singapore, 1963).\n\n20 Brown, op. cit., Ch. XII.\n\n21 Norman Sklarewitz, \"Brunei: an improbable land with problems”, in The Wall Street Journal, 31 Dec. 1965.\n\n22 Heyward, op. cit.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208486, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "194 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nare in rural areas. The major Sheng Gong cult temple in Taiwan is in Taiwan City, from which place his portable image is taken by sedan chair to other cult temples in the vicinity to renew the efficacy of the images there. Evidence of the presence of his cult has been seen, too, by the writer in Sarawak, Brunei and Indonesia, in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.\n\nSheng Gong is a comparatively little used short form for the local Fujian cult of Guang Ze Zun Wang (廣澤尊王) whose full personal name was Guo Zhong-fu (郭忠福) and who is equally well known as Guo Sheng Wang Gong (郭聖王公); hence the \"Sheng Gong.\" He has some half a dozen other titles but all with a very limited local use, apart from Bao An Zun Wang (保安尊王). This is occasionally included in the title of his temple (*\n\nas compared with the more popular title of the Phoenix Mountain Temple (鳳山寺). He should not be confused with another and entirely different Fujian local cult deity, Hui Ze Zun Wang(惠澤尊王)\n\nThe Saintly Guo's image is not difficult to recognise as it has certain characteristics which, whilst not individually unique, together identify him at a glance. He has a youthful, clean-shaven face; is seated dressed in robes over armour with his right foot raised parallel to the ground, pointing towards his left leg at knee height. His face is a dark red and he has protruding round eyes.\n\nThere are two images of the Saintly Guo in the one temple in North Point, Hong Kong. One is the main, large image swathed in embroidered robes donated by devotees, and the other is a small wooden carving on the main altar before and between Guo and his consort. Neither were easy to photograph, and therefore I have gone through some old photographs, the best of which is to be seen at illustration at the back of this volume.* In this photograph Guo is the main deity on the altar of a temple in Seremban, West Malaysia, flanked by two other images of another Fujian local cult, Fa Zhu Gong (法主公). Guo is prayed to for the usual blessings though in certain temples he is specifically looked upon as a healer of the sick, a protector of children and as a wealth god for businessmen. He is also the patron of those who bear the same surname as himself.\n\n* Plate 22.\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208595, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS REMEMBERED\n\n25\n\nextraordinary, mixed administration. If this understanding is someday to be improved upon, a systematic effort now to collect and preserve the oral testimonies of these and other surviving former Chinese officials is essential.\n\nThe interviews were also intended as a small experiment in oral history. Oral history as a data-gathering device for studying the past is, of course, nothing new. But it was only in the last several decades that a more sophisticated methodology, with the help of the tape-recorder, began to emerge and attract more serious practitioners. At many universities abroad, especially those in the United States, oral history is gradually evolving into an important branch of research. At important centers, such as Columbia University, oral history collections have become rather substantial. In Hong Kong, however, oral history has not been given the attention that it deserves. How our records of local history would be enriched if only the oral testimonies of those residents who have witnessed the great changes that occurred in the past 30 or 40 years could be used to supplement the written sources! Some, like the former Customs officials, may also have been informed by personal experiences about specific aspects of twentieth-century Chinese society. But one can never be sure of what is available in Hong Kong, a cultural and political crossroad in its own right, until one starts searching. Conceivably, every aspect of life in Hong Kong has a history capable of reconstruction, and every one living here has something to contribute to the remembrance of a collective past. In this, with its special techniques for collecting and preserving information, oral history renders good service. As for the reminiscing individual, he may find in oral history an efficacious means of relating self to society, past to present, and may learn in the process a broader significance of his own existence than that previously known.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See John K. Fairbank, \"Foreword,\" The I. G. in Peking, ed. John K. Fairbank, Katherine F. Bruner and Elizabeth M. Matheson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975, I, xi.\n\n2 For a discussion of the \"authorized” inauguration of the Inspectorate system, see Jack J. Gerson, Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino-British Relations, 1854-1864, Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University Press, 1972, pp. 98-101.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209704, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 361, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n339\n\nand arrogant views of Rajah James Brooke toward Chinese in Sarawak (a better interpretation would be his suspicion of “Triads” among the kongsi as well as of “bad elements” among other ethnic groups).\n\nAnd the book contains a few glaring errors: \"Ferdinand Magellan's call at Brunei in 1521\" (p. 7); the infusion of Chinese blood into the Brunei royal house (p. 4) (It is not at all a historical certainty how this occurred.)\n\nThe author, a one-time civil servant in the Ministry of Welfare Services in Sarawak, is more certain of his facts and hence more convincing in his description of political developments in the state since World War II (Chs. 8-9). These chapters cover the period of direct British colonial rule, 1946-63, and the recent experience of Sarawak as a member state of the Federation of Malaysia, 1963 to present.\n\nThis section is valuable as an outline of the positions and stances of the conglomeration of political parties which proliferated upon the Sarawak (and Malaysian) political landscape during the last two decades. The development of ethnically mixed parties of the left, right and center has been vigorous; the role of Chinese citizens, energetic. But once again the lack of detail gives it a cursory flavor perhaps sufficient for the outside observer but hardly meat for the student of politics.\n\nThe book is skimpy on sources; the reader who is looking for the \"blood and guts\" of Sarawak's dynamic political and social scene will be disappointed. This is a primer on the success and general stability of a multiracial society. As such it is just adequate.\n\nThe Name of Brooke: An entirely different experience awaits the reader of this meticulously documented study of Sarawak's politics from the 1920s to the imposition of direct British rule in 1946. It covers the eventful years which saw the weakening of the Brooke raj, through the Japanese occupation, to the final denouement of this \"medieval\" fiefdom as it gave way to the modern depersonalized rule of British colonial bureaucrats.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211260, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 321, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "296\n\nIndividual treaty ports in China as well as other parts of Asia, large and small, are receiving attention from scholars. Meanwhile, British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers should be read by all who are interested in modern China or who are interested in the British in Asia. Dr. Atwell has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the British administered one small locality and coped with demands of modern forces. Her work can be used as a guide or springboard for comparison of British colonial policy in various East Asian places, such as Brunei and the Straits Settlements, Hankow, Tientsin, and Shanghai, say, with Hong Kong tossed in for good measure.\n\nWEI PEH T'I*\n\nSteven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China, Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, China Research Monograph 28, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1985.\n\nProsper Giquel, edited by Steven A. Leibo, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985.\n\nThese two works, one of compilation and assessment based on a doctoral dissertation, the other of translation (with the help of Debbie Weston) and annotation with a lengthy introduction, have a considerable intrinsic interest because they deal with a rather extraordinary man. They have also a degree of relevance, over a century later, for the West's involvement with present-day China's modernizing programme.\n\nThey are to be read in conjunction with other modern works on this period of China's self-strengthening efforts, including those listed in Dr. Leibo's introduction to Transferring Technology.\n\nProsper Giquel, a French naval officer, came to China during the Second China War. After service with the Joint Commission\n\n* Wei Peh T'i is Honorary Lecturer, Department of History, and Research Associate, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China (1987).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211992, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 407, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "382\n\nRobert Hart, Bart., GCMG Inspector General of Customs and Post, Peking [set in hard bound volume] + photograph and clippings re Congress (CARTON 1)\n\nWedding picture of European couple with Chinese mandarin guests (CARTON 2)\n\nConferences (CARTON 2)\n\nInteriors (CARTONS 1 and 2)\n\n1 red invitation in English to Hart from Viceroy of Chihli to dinner at the \"Naval Secretariate” (sic) 23 Feb 1894 (CARTON 3)\n\nList of mourners (CARTON 3)\n\nNOTES\n\nE. SINN\n\n1\n\n2\n\nThese notes are partially based on notes previously prepared by the Rev. Carl Smith.\n\nRobert Hart was Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1863-1907. See Juliet Bredon, Sir Robert Hart: The Romance of a Great Career (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1909); Stanley Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: Wm. Mullen & Sons, 1950); John King Fairbank et al., eds. The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868-1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press at the Harvard University Press, 1975); Katherine F. Bruner et al., eds. Entering China's Service. Robert Hart's Journals, 1854-1863 (Cambridge, Mass. & London, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986).\n\n3\n\nHere, Hart refers to Sir Robert Hart; Robert refers to his grandson.\n\nA SONG FROM SHA TAU KOK ON THE 1911 REVOLUTION\n\nVery few documents remain from the New Territories which refer to the 1911 Revolution, or which display any interest in the political disputes which lead up to it. One revolutionary document, a ferocious anti-Manchu and anti-Kang Yu-wei pamphlet, survives among the Yung Sze-chiu papers from North Sai Kung,1 and must represent a type of revolutionary ephemera to be found in the area at that date but no longer remembered - Yung Sze-chiu presumably picked it up in his local market town of Sai Kung about 1908. In general, however, local sources, both written and oral, pay little attention to the Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212027, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 442, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "417\n\ninterested in modern China or who are interested in the British in Asia. Dr. Atwell has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the British administered one small locality and coped with the demands of modern forces. Her work can be used as a guide or spring board for comparison of British colonial policy in other East Asian places, such as Brunei and the Straits Settlements, Hankow, Tientsin and Shanghai, say, with Hong Kong tossed in for good measure.\n\nWEI PEH T'I, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong\n\nSteven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China, Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, China Research Monograph 28, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1985.\n\nProsper Giquel, edited by Steven A. Leibo, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985.\n\nThese two works, one of compilation and assessment based on a doctoral dissertation, the other of translation (with the help of Debbie Weston) and annotation with a lengthy introduction, have a considerable intrinsic interest because they deal with a rather extraordinary man. They have also a degree of relevance, over a century later, for the West's involvement with present day China's modernizing programme.\n\nThey are to be read in conjunction with other modern works on this period of China's self-strengthening efforts, including those listed in Dr. Leibo's introduction to Transferring Technology.\n\nProsper Giquel, a French naval officer, came to China during the Second China War. After service with the Joint Commission that guided the administration of the city of Canton during its four year occupation by the Allies, during which he laid the foundations of his knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ningpo. When that city was captured by the Taiping Army, he assisted the Sino-French \"Ever Triumphant Army” to recapture it, and later commanded it in the operations that led to the recapture of Hangzhou, for which he received high rank and honours from the appreciative Ch'ing government. Contacts made during this time led to employment after the Rebellion, in and outside China, that lasted until his death in France in 1886. His principal achievement was the construction and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216081, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 380, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "314\n\n32T. Adkins joined the China Consular Service in 1854 and was the first Vice-Consul in Zhenjiang, being posted there in May of 1861, preceded by an assistant, Phillips, in February who had been sent to the ruined city to set up the Consulate in a ruined temple. Within a week of Adkins' arrival, he had moved the Consulate a mile down river to safer accommodation away from the Taiping fighting. He remained there, on an island, living a monotonous life alone as Phillips had been transferred elsewhere. He left Zhenjiang in poor health in February 1865 after serving there for three and a half years to return to the UK.\n\n33 This was the Cantonese title by which the bandits were known. In Mandarin it would be Shiwu Zi† £ 'The Fifteen Sons'.\n\n* Parker E.H. John Chinaman and a few others: John Murray: London: 1902\n\n35 Robert Anderson Mowatt, former consular official: acting Chief Justice and Acting Consul-General Shanghai, April - October 1891.\n\n* The Elder Brother Society (Gē Lǎo Huì): a secret society sworn to overthrow the Imperial government, the foreign Manchu Qing dynasty and replace it with a Chinese emperor.\n\nMesny's son would have been about six at the time of this story, whilst his only other child, his daughter, had not yet been born.\n\n**Mason, C. W. (1924) Chinese Confessions. London: Grant Richards Ltd\n\n\"Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson, ed (1975). The I.G. in Peking: Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press\n\n* Transit Passes are discussed in a separate chapter below.\n\n4\n\nAccording to Mason in his Confession, Croskey had told him that Croskey's father was an English baronet in business in Vancouver and his mother a Spanish Creole of San Diego in California.\n\n42 Parker, E.H. (1903) China Past and Present: Chapman and Hall Ltd: London\n\n\"Cook, Christopher (1982) The Lion and the Dragon - British Voices from the China Coast: London: Elm Tree Books.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216355, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "63\n\nA NEW DISCOVERY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE: THE STATUTORY DECLARATIONS MADE BY SIR ROBERT HART CONCERNING HIS SECRET DOMESTIC LIFE IN 19TH CENTURY CHINA\n\nLAN LI AND DEIRDRE WILDY\n\n[Hon Editor: See also NOTES ON THE ROBERT HART PAPERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARY, JHKBRAS, Vol. 29, pp. 367-382]\n\nIntroduction\n\nSir Robert Hart (1835-1911) was one of the extraordinary Westerners who made a substantial contribution to both early China's modernisation and its foreign relations with the West. He was the only Westerner in the latter half of the nineteenth century to occupy an official post in the metropolitan bureaucracy—a position that allowed him daily access to China's highest officials in the Grand Council and Zongli Yamen. He built the first modern institution in China, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Custom (CIMC), and he also played a crucial role in China's imperial politics, significantly influencing its internal reform and diplomatic policy.\n\nDuring the early period of his life in China (1857-1865) Hart was involved in a sexual relationship with a Chinese girl called Ayaou. The relationship had a significant influence on Hart in that it immersed him deeper in Chinese society. Hart's success in China has been attributed to his good understanding of Chinese tradition. He acquired this capacity in a number of ways, one of which included a long-term intimate relationship with the Chinese girl Ayaou. Hence, Hart's secret domestic life is not simply the personal life of a Western man, who, according to the prevailing custom in the colonial Asia of the 1850s, kept a Chinese girl; it is more significant and, as Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith point out, \"does him credit as a human being\" and \"also shows his capacity for immersion in Chinese society and culture.\" (1986: 232)\n\nThe paper will examine and analyse the recently discovered statutory declarations made by Hart in 1905 and 1911. These documents provide us with new primary and significant material about Hart's relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her. This will address", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 120, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "69\n\n6\n\npossible conflagration” (ibid: 1478). Although both Hart and Lady Hart were deeply concerned about the issue, they may each have had a different focus. For Hart, his main priority was his considerable reputation as Inspector General (I.G.) of the CIMC - a position of importance spanning almost forty years at this stage (1905) and inheritance of his title - the Baronetcy, while Lady Hart's main concerns were domestic matters and family interest. She married Hart in 1866 when she was 18 and Hart was 31 years of age (Bell, 1985: 24). After marriage, she spent ten years living with Hart in Beijing and then prepared herself to see the wider world. She left China in 1882 and did not return again until 1906. She “enjoyed living alone” (Bell, 1903), “a house in a good part of London, together with a handsome allowance and costly presents, all provided by Hart” (Bruner, Fairbank and Smith 1986: 323). Although Hart did not tell her anything about Ayaou and his three children by her in the first few months of their falling in love, he did later confess to the \"mistakes\" he made. She took Hart's advice and married him for the future and established a firm marital relationship with him. However, she certainly did not want to see the previous relationship between Hart and Ayaou causing any trouble during her married life. The incident orchestrated by Herbert must have worried her and made her feel the need for a legal document to prevent her family from being troubled by the wards or their descendants after Hart's death, perhaps particularly, with regard to the inheritance of his title and property.\n\nHart's confession to the relationship with Ayaou\n\nIn Declaration 1 and 2, Hart gives a full statement of his relationship with Ayaou. This provides us with a version of his confession that might well indicate the way in which he confessed to the relationship before. Although Hart completely severed his relationship with Ayaou before returning home on leave in 1866, it seemed it was not possible for him to look to the future without some shadow of the past. Hart felt all the awkwardness of his position when confessing to his fiancée Miss Hester Jane Bredon. In his diary, 13 June 1866, Hart writes:\n\n“Let the dead past bury its dead:”- that is easy enough: what is not so easy is to keep the future free from intrusiveness on the part of the products of the past. Does complete confidence mean “to have no secrets for the future”, or “to reveal all that has been done in the past”? (Smith, Fairbank, Burner 1991: 384)\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216362, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 121, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "70\n\nIn his letter to Hester on 15 August 1866 he confessed to an impetuous engagement in 1856 to an English young lady at Ningpo. This was quickly broken up by her father's refusal to accept a young consular employee so lacking in material goods and worldly prospects. However, Hart did not mention his long relationship with Ayaou and fathering three children (ibid: 364). In the letter Hart's dilemma is apparent - he wanted to be truthful to Hester on one hand, but, on the other hand, he felt too embarrassed to tell her the full truth. He repeated what he said to her before: \"Remember, Hessie, you are marrying me for the future\" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner 1991: 428), and also convinced her to accept the reality that \"men generally don't attain my age without having gone through both fire and water; I have gone through both, but I flatter myself the result has been of a kind which burns out sores, and washes out stains.\" (ibid: 428-9)\n\nLater in the same year, however, Hart did confess to his relationship with Ayaou. In his letter to Campbell on 11 August 1905, Hart writes: \"I proffered the information in 1866, but was told the past was the past and the future the future: so I said no more.\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 1479) The fact that Lady Hart visited the Morning Post when she learnt that Herbert was mentioned in the newspaper also indicates that she knew of Hart's relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her.\n\nHowever, it is not known to what Hart confessed or how he did so. In Declaration 1 and 2 we find, for the first time, a version of Hart's confession to his relationship with Ayaou and three children by her. Firstly he said:\n\nWhen I arrived China in 1854 I found that any acquaintance I made kept his Chinese girl and in 1857 I fell into the habit myself. The girl kept by me was a Cantonese named Ayaou. (Declaration 1)\n\nIn Declaration 2, he makes a similar statement:\n\nIn the year 1857 when in China I formed a connection with a Chinese girl named Ayaou. At that time it was a common practice for unmarried Englishmen resident in China to keep a Chinese girl and I did as others did.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216363, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 122, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "71\n\nHart referred to his conduct as \"a common practice\" at that time and confessed that he just \"fell into the habit myself\" and \"did as others did\", which is, unfortunately, no excuse at all. Bruner, Fairbank and Smith suggest, \"one of the many perquisites of the Westerner's higher living standard in China was his being supplied with Chinese women. Thus, \"Robert Hart's solution to his problem of solitude was nothing unusual and followed established norm\". (1986: 153) Bickers also suggests that \"In the earlier stage of the British presence concubinage with Chinese women was common, and not considered abnormal; indeed, it appears to have been encouraged, as a sort of release\". (1999: 98) Paul King, an Englishman who joined CIMC in 1874, writes in his book In the Chinese Custom Service (1980: 25):\n\nIn those days the only \"social\" intercourse between Chinese and foreigners was conducted by women of the \"Mui-tsai\" class. In justice it must be recalled that the Chinese housekeeper often did a good deal to keep her temporary lord and master straight, especially in matters of drink, or tendency to stray off to less supervised and possibly dangerous-to-health pastures.\n\nPerhaps Hart knew that the most convincing point he could make, to avoid too much embarrassment when he confessed to his relationship with Ayaou, would be the explanation that his conduct was not simply a personal sin or weakness, but a mistake anyone, in the given circumstances at that time, would possibly, or even inevitably, have made. Following this point, Hart confessed:\n\nAyaou lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. Later in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. (Declaration 2)\n\nIf it was true that Hart \"ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom\" from 1858, it is difficult to understand how Ayaou gave birth to his three children after 1858 and why Hart left the second gap in his diaries between 6 December 1858 and 6 June 1863 - a period during which he must have had an intimate relationship with Ayaou. Indeed,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216364, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "72\n\nhe did want to sever the relationship with Ayaou in 1858 when she first became pregnant. In his diary entry for 26 May 1858 he writes \"Ayaou two months\n\n\"Then, on 16 September \"I went to see Ayaou who came back from Macao the night before last... I must cut the connection. He even started managing a new native partner named Ayi. On 22 September he wrote: \"...Went to see Ayi near N.E. gate.\" 23 September: \"Settle for Ayi $100 and $22Ch. ...\" 26 September: \"Again Ayi.” The arrangement, as it is suggested by Bruner, Fairbank and Smith, is \"undoubtedly quite according to custom in the colonial Asia of the 1850s”. (1986: 232)\n\nHowever, Hart's diary entries stop two months and ten days later when Ayaou would have given, or be about to give, birth to their daughter Anna. \"The fact of fatherhood suddenly makes a difference to Robert Hart. There is no other way to account for the record, for he resumes the connection with Ayaou and they have two more children.\" (ibid) Hart might have changed the way in which he maintained the relationship since he left her at Macao - as he states in Declaration 1: \"we never lived together afterwards\" - and in that sense he could say he \"ceased to live with her\". But, it is by no means obvious that he terminated the relationship and only \"saw her but seldom”. His emotional and physical involvement in the relationship is much deeper than that which he describes above, it is significant that in Declaration 1 we find the statement: \"Ayaou was a very good little girl & well-behaved.\" Almost ten years after he finally terminated the relationship and married Hester Jane Bredon, he received photographs of his three wards from England. He wrote to Campbell (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 205);\n\nAnna is very like what her mother was when I first saw her in 1857: only her mother was not pock-marked. I want Anna to stay at school four years more, and I hope she will be a nice, presentable girl by that time. Her mother was one of the most amiable and sensible people imaginable.\"\n\nThe records show that Hart did not only treat Ayaou and his three children by her with kindness and generosity, but also with love. As Bruner, Fairbank and Smith have argued (1986: 154):\n\nIndeed, looking ahead at his twenty years of married life with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216365, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "73\n\nHester Jane Bredon (1866-1886) and the subsequent twenty-two years of living alone in Peking after Lady Hart moved back to enjoy life in London, we may surmise that Hart's years of liaison with Ayaou (roughly 1857-1865) gave him his fill of romance, including both his satisfactions and its limitations. For whatever reason, after that his need for feminine companionship declined as he steadily and inexorably became more enamoured of managing the Chinese Imperial Maritime Custom Service.\n\nThis point can be proved by what Hart says in his diary entry for 23 July 1864:\n\nMerely, I presume, that I have gotten through the \"love-fever, 20@30, term of life, and that for the future something other than woman will chiefly attract me. (Smith, Fairbank, Bruner 1991: 384)\n\nHart, of course, did not want to embarrass his family by confessing to a long relationship with Ayaou, a relationship that affected his life in so many ways, including his first experience of fatherhood. Thus, in Declaration 1 and 2 he attempted to reduce the extent of his relationship with Ayaou. He even covered up the year when his third child by Ayaou was born so that the duration of his sexual relationship with Ayaou was made even shorter. (We will give a more detailed analysis of this issue later in the paper.)\n\nHart also attempted to reduce the extent of his relationship with his children by Ayaou. In Declaration 2 he stated: \"To the best of my recollection and belief I have seen Anna twice or three times only and Herbert once only. This was in China. I have never seen Arthur.\" It might be true that, as suggested before, Hart never had a chance to see his youngest son Arthur, as his intimate relationship with Ayaou might have ceased before the boy was born. However, it seems unlikely that he saw Anna \"twice or three times only and Herbert once only\". It was fatherhood that made Hart cease his relationship with his new native partner Ayi and resume his relationship with Ayaou. If he had not had both enjoyment with and responsibility for his children by Ayaou, particularly the girl Anna, he would have already abandoned Ayaou in 1858. It has been argued that (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 232) Hart “was a man of conscience and in later life affectionate, almost doting, toward little girls and young women. One can imagine how his baby", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216366, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 125, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "74\n\ndaughter Anna must have entranced him.\" Many years later when he wrote to Campbell, he still revealed his paternal care for the wards. He wanted Anna to attend a good boarding school where not only “she can devote herself to music, French, and German\", but also \"where she will be comfortably lodged and kindly treated.” (Fairbank, Bruner, Matheson 1975: 192-3)\n\n5.\n\nAlthough Hart did not confess, perhaps in his lifetime he had never confessed, fully to his relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her, what he states in Declaration 1 and 2 has given us a clearer idea of his secret domestic life in late 19th China. It indicates that Hart felt affection for Ayaou, though the relationship was initially established for a temporary relief of sexual desire. It also indicates that such a relationship caused considerable hardship to those involved. It should be noted that Hart made his statement concerning his sexual relationship with the Chinese girl Ayaou when the social norms concerning mixed-race relationships between British men and Chinese women had changed fundamentally. When describing his life in the treaty port, Swatow during 1874 to 1878, Paul King states (1980:25);\n\nHappily, all this is changed and gone for ever. The number of marriageable girls of his own race all over China gives no excuse to a white man seeking a helpmeet to risk entangling alliances with native blood; but as a temporary measure in the old dark days—well, perhaps better not to hazard an opinion.\n\nBickers also suggests (1999: 98)\n\nThe twentieth-century treaty ports were still largely bachelor societies, although the proportion of families settled there grew steadily. As elsewhere in the colonial world, British men took native partners when there was a shortage of fellow Britons or other Europeans. The presence of European women—and after 1917 especially the influx of White Russian refugees—made stable sexual relations with Chinese as much as 'unnecessary' as taboo.\n\nThe change of social norms meant that Hart's relationship with Ayaou was no longer simply a personal secret or a private matter, but an issue with regard to social conceptions, norms, and even rules which were followed by British society in China in the early twentieth century. Thus, in the declarations Hart had to make the new version of his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216367, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 126, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "75\n\nconfession as similar as possible to that which he made in 1866 to his fiancée Miss Hester Jane Bredon, but also acceptable at this later date - almost half a century after his relationship with Ayaou.\n\nHart's ceasing and resuming his sexual relationship with Ayaou\n\nThe duration of Hart's sexual relationship with Ayaou has long been vague to researchers due to limited primary sources concerned with this matter. It has only been possible to give a rough idea: \"Hart's years of liaison with Ayaou (roughly 1857-1865)...\" (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 154)\n\nIn Declaration 2 Hart himself states: \"Ayaou lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. ... In 1866 I went home on leave and on that occasion the connection between Ayaou and myself was finally dissolved.\" This confirms that Hart did indeed start his relationship with Ayaou in 1857, but it was not finally terminated until 1866. This, however, does not necessarily mean that Hart maintained a sexual relationship with Ayaou for this time. In his diary entry for 6 August 1864 Hart writes:\n\nTemptation to get a concubine is very strong, I must confess: nothing bothers me so much, as my liking for women. It is, however, more than a year since I even touched one! (Smith, Fairbank, Bruner 1991: 171)\n\nIn his diaries entry for the 14 August 1864 he also writes: \"Now, for a whole year, I have on principle abstained from womanising.” (ibid: 179) These records give us a clue to the time when he ceased his sexual relationship with Ayaou. If \"more than a year\" is traced from 6 August 1864 back or “a whole year\" from 14 August 1864 back, we are talking about the summer of 1863. This tallies with the time indicated in the second gap left in Hart's diaries: it starts on 6 December 1858 and ends on 6 June 1863 - ending at the exact time when he started to abstain from womanising. It indicates that Hart did not have a sexual relationship with Ayaou between the early summer 1863 and the late August 1864.\n\nIn both Declaration 1 and 2, Hart states: \"Between 1858 and 1864", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216368, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "76\n\nshe gave birth to three children.” It seems to tally with that stated above, indicating: Hart's sexual relationship with Ayaou starts in 1857 and ends in early summer 1863. However, On 5 June 1875 in a letter to Campbell, Hart mentions his wards, giving his third child's age: \"Arthur is almost ten years old\". (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 192) According to this Arthur should be born around June 1865, rather than in 1864 as Hart states. This can be further supported by 1881 British Census, which was taken on the evening of Sunday 3 April 1881 and shows that Arthur was 15.\nIt indicates that Hart must have had a sexual relationship with Ayaou some time between the end of August and the middle of September 1864 otherwise it would be impossible for Arthur to be born around June 1865. This raises the question: did Hart resume his sexual relationship with Ayaou even after he had struggled desperately with his natural desire for women for more than a year since the early summer of 1863?\n\n7\n\nIn Declaration 1 and 2, Hart states that he paid Ayaou $30 per month until their relationship finally terminated in 1866.\n\nShe was with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when transferred to Canton in February 1858: [.] I left her then at Macao, and, although she continued to be kept i.e. paid ($30 a month) by me till I went home on leave in 1866...(Declaration 1)\n\nLater in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom, though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. (Declaration 2)\n\nIn his diary entry for 29 October 1854 Hart says: \"Now some of the China women are very good looking: you can make one your absolute possession for from 50 to 100 dollars and support her at a cost of 2 or 3 dollars per month.\" (Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith, 1986: 71) According to this, Hart obviously paid above the average for keeping a Chinese girl at that time, particularly after 1863 when he ceased the sexual relationship with Ayaou. In his diary entry for 25 November 1854 Hart tells us his monthly salary: “My salary is $71.65 per month\". (ibid: 84) We don't know how much Hart earned during 1857 and 1866, his salary probably increased considerably when he became LG, in November", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216369, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 128, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "77\n\n1863. However, $30 was still a lot of money at that time. If Hart had completely ceased his sexual relationship with Ayaou and never resumed it after 1863, it would not seem to be necessary for him to continue to pay Ayaou a monthly sum of $30 until 1866. Some may argue that Hart paid Ayaou the money not just to keep her, but also to contribute to the upbringing of their children; however, the words Hart uses in his statement do not give us any indication of this. He states that \"she continued to be kept i.e. paid ($30 a month) by me till I went home on leave in 1866 (Declaration 1)\"; it appears to refer to female companionship.\n\nIt may also be argued that in his diary entries between 1864 and 1866, there is no mention of his having resumed his sexual relationship with Ayaou, and if he had, he would have recorded it as he did in the missing volumes of his earlier diaries. Hart did tidy up his diaries after he was asked by reporter Hosea B. Morse for permission to see them in connection with a proposed biography in 1902, and he also left two substantial gaps in the earlier diaries. However, this fact does not necessarily mean that Hart \"was forced to destroy\" some of his earlier diaries, as has been suggested (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 150-1). Hart actually left half of Volume 2 with empty pages and almost the same again with Volume 3; these form the two gaps in his diaries. This allows for the possibility that Hart simply did not write anything between 29 July 1855 and 20 March 1858, nor between 6 December 1858 and 9 May 1863. Hart himself states on the flyleaf of Volume 4 “Journals from 6 Dec. 1858 @ [to] May 1863 lost, probably in the Boxer siege 1900\", and this may be deliberately misleading on his part when one considers the empty pages. It is more likely that during his intimate involvement with Chinese women, more particularly with Ayaou, he simply stopped writing in his diary. This gives us an indication that Hart avoided mention of his intimate relationship in any depth in his diaries.\n\nHart's abstinence from womanising and his political ambition\n\nIt should be noted that Hart decided to cease his sexual relationship with Ayaou around early summer 1863—the exact time, if it is not simply a coincidence, when he knew almost for certain that he would be appointed as L.G. Hart was formally appointed as L.G. of the CIMC", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216370, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 129, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "78\n\non 15 November 1863. However, as Wright suggested, \"Hart's appointment as full Inspector-General was a foregone conclusion.\" (1950: 258) As early as June 11, 1863 a high-ranking Chinese official, Wen Xiang, gave Hart to understand that he would be the best candidate to replace Lay if he left (Wang, 2000: 63).\n\nHart took the position of I.G. very seriously and he was a man with great ambitions for power and honour. From his diaries, we know that between early summer 1863 and August 1864 he struggled desperately with his natural desire for womanising. This coincides directly with the period during which he prepared himself for and was finally appointed to the post of I.G. His expressions, such as \"They set my blood on fire\", \"desperate struggle\", \"This war of passion and principle is horrible”, and “I am mad upon the pleasure of the couch”, indicate that Hart's battle with his desire to womanise was a constant struggle. He even went so far as to say \"were I always to remain in China, I might do as the Chinese do - for though socially I consider polygamy inexpedient in the west, I do not think it inexpedient in China, nor do I consider it morally wrong in itself.\" (Smith, Fairbank, Bruner 1991:179) Although mention of his romantic chatting and pressing of hands with the girls next door is no longer present in his diaries after August 1864, it does not necessarily mean that he had finally won the battle. He still laments female intimacy and cannot stop dreaming of how happy his life would be if he could have a girl in the room with him:\n\nO Woman, lovely woman! And yet it is sexual desire - it is, I fear, more brute passion, than desire for the society of women. I like to have a girl in the room with me, to fondle when I please: and I like to have something to be affectionate with, for I have got a great stock of love in my nature. (ibid)\n\nHe chides himself constantly: \"If I don't care, passion will be off with me - confound it!\" (ibid: 180) It is obvious that during August 1864 Hart was not emotionally settled although he was determined not to go back to his old womanising ways. In this situation, the possibility that he resumed his sexual relationship with Ayaou, even occasionally, should not be ruled out, especially given the fact that their third child, Arthur, was born sometime after June 5th in 1865. Although Hart forced himself to terminate his intimate relationship with Ayaou when pursuing the position of I.G. during the period 1863 and 1864, he never disliked", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216372, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 131, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "80\n\nHart's arrangements for separation\n\nHow the relationship between Hart and Ayaou was terminated has long been a cause of speculation. L. K. Little, successor of Maze as I. G., writes in the introduction to \"The I.G. in Peking\" - \"In a private letter to me the late Stanley Wright, author of Hart and the Chinese Customs, wrote, 'Hart was married to a Chinese lady in his early days, but she was dead before his marriage to Miss Bredon,' (1975; Introduction). B. Wang, the author of the book \"Biography of Sir Robert Hart\" also suggested that Hart's happy personal life in China ceased in 1865 when Ayaou suddenly died, and this is the main reason for Hart's decision to return home on leave and find a girl to marry (2000: 97). However, the scholars, who edited Hart's early journals, noticed that Hart received letters from Ayaou in 1870 and 1872, and they noted that she \"later married a Chinese\" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner, 1991: 363).\n\n15\n\nIn Declaration 1, referring to his separation from Ayaou, Hart declares, “she was then presented with $3000 when she surrendered her children to my Agent and herself married a Chinaman.\" In Declaration 2, a similar statement is made: \"I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars1 and she married a Chinaman.”15 This confirms that Ayaou certainly did not die in 1865 but married a Chinaman after receipt of a large sum of money from Hart, a condition of their separation. Ayaou probably did not want to sever the connection with Hart even though she must now have realised it was inevitable. Hart, who by this time was no longer a young and inexperienced assistant for the British Consulate at Canton, but a powerful man in both the CIMC and the Qing government, had to resolve the problem by making an arrangement acceptable to Ayaou. Money must have been given serious consideration, as it would have been a precondition of the relationship for both sides in the first instance. As Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith suggest: (1986:153)\n\nThe girl Ayaou was not a solitary adventuress but came undoubtedly from a proper though lower-class background under the sponsorship of a compradore or other reliable party. Hart's upkeep of her must have included a regular monetary payment, a portion of which reimbursed her family.\n\nIn Hart's diaries requests for money from Ayaou appear frequently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216374, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 133, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "82\n\nhigh intent, and for Hart it cleared the way, as honourably as he could, for a British marriage.” (ibid: 363) Hart saw his career as I.G. in China as a long-term commitment. He was proud to hold the position of I.G. at twenty-eight years of age and on 24 December 1863 writes in his diary: \"My life has been singularly successful: not yet twenty-nine, and at the head of a service which collects nearly three millions of revenue, in, - of all countries in the world! - the exclusive land of China. \" (ibid: 53) Thus, when he planned to find a European girl to marry during his home leave in 1866 he definitely hoped that his future wife would stay with him in China. His proposal to Miss Hester Jane Bredon bears this out: \"Could you find it in your heart to come to China with me?\" (Bell: 57) Planning his future like this, sending the children to England to be educated regardless of the expense seemed the best possible solution to sever all connection with the past and to clear the way for Hart's future married life and career in China.\n\nHart certainly could not foresee the future when he made such an arrangement for his children with Ayaou. At that time he probably didn't think that his future wife would eventually return to live in London permanently even though he accepted it when it did happen because he felt \"matrimony does interfere with a man's work at times\". In 1875 when Lady Hart decided to go home, Hart began to think of a new arrangement for his three wards. In his letter to Campbell on 5 June 1875, he asked him, on his private behalf, to make some rearrangements for his three wards who at that time still lived in London and were cared for by Mrs Davison whose husband was a bookkeeper in Smith, Elder & Co. He wanted the two boys to be sent to boarding school at Clifton College and \"when being placed at one of the boarding-houses I want it to be arranged that they shall spend their 1875-1876 vacations there\"; he wanted the girl \"to be sent for three years to a Protestant boarding school on the Continent\" and \"Her vacations will also have to be spent at school.” (Fairbank, Bruner, Matheson 1975: 192-3). It should be noted that 1875-1876 is when Lady Hart prepared and finally returned to Europe. Thus it may be argued that Hart's changed arrangements for his wards in 1875 was not simply a random act resulting from some past memory of Ayaou as suggested (Wang: 140). Less than a month later in a letter to Campbell on 2 July 1875 Hart tells his friend quite clearly: \"Mrs Hart has positively declared that she'll go home next spring\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matherson 1975: 198) In this case, sending his wards to boarding school and arranging for them", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216375, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "83\n\nto remain there for the vacations must have seemed the most appropriate provisions he could make in order to maintain a safe distance between them and his family planning to live in London.\n\nThere is no doubt that Hart had great expectations for his wards and wanted to provide them with excellent educational opportunities. This is one of the reasons for him sending them to boarding schools. \"From the first I want it to be understood that they (two boys) are to be trained for the Indian Civil Service.\" (ibid: 192) As N. Ferguson suggests, positions in the Indian Civil Service, at that time, were very desirable and \"competition for places was fierce, so fierce that selection had to be based on perhaps the toughest exams in history.” (2002: 185) “As regards Anna I want her to be sent for three years to a Protestant boarding school on the Continent where she can devote herself to music, French, and German”. (Fairbank, Bruner and Matherson 1975: 192-3) Hart did not realise that his expectations were too high until the two boys failed the qualifying examination for entering Clifton College. In general the results of the children's studies were not good at all.\n\nHowever, disappointment with his wards' poor performance in their studies can't be the only reason Hart changed his mind completely later in 1879 and insisted very firmly that the three wards should not return to London. Hart knew that the Davidson couple treated the three wards well and he appreciated this. In early 1875 he wrote to Campbell \"Pay Mrs. Davidson anything that is fair: err on the liberal side, please. She has evidently treated the youngsters kindly.\" (ibid: 206) However, in his letter to Campbell on 24 August 1879 Hart refused to consider the possibility of the wards returning to their previous London home: \"I think, on the whole, anywhere rather than London, and any people rather than the Davidsons.\" (ibid: 300) At the end of the letter Hart stresses it again: \"I repeat, I am of opinion that away from London and not with the Davidsons might be the best.” (ibid)\n\nFor the period April 1878 to March 1879 Hart was on leave, reunited with his family in Paris and then later in England. Although his pregnant wife returned to China with him when his leave finished, Hart knew that she would not remain in Beijing for long. Two years later Lady Hart left China to settle in London and the couple did not see each other again for twenty-four years until 1906. Perhaps Lady Hart had made a sensible decision to absent herself and the children", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216376, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 135, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "84\n\nfrom China. Hart complained that it was difficult to get proper private tutors for their elder daughter, Evey. In his letter to Campbell on 2 July 1875 he said: \"I fancy Evey will be a grandmother by the time you find my rara avis!” (ibid: 198) Hart also wanted to concentrate on his work without disturbance. When he was finally reunited with his wife and children after almost a quarter of a century's separation, he did not feel completely comfortable and even hoped that they would be gone soon \"for I want to be alone to attend to the hundred and one things.\" Thus, during the period 1879-1881 when Lady Hart lived with Hart in Beijing, the couple must have discussed seriously future plans for her to return to settle in London. This is when Hart wrote to Campbell and insisted that his three wards should not be sent back to London to live with the Davidson couple.\n\nFrom this it can be seen that it wasn't just a matter of kindness, generosity, or even love that motivated Hart to make such expensive provisions for his three wards by Ayaou. Hart had always been cautious and gave mature consideration to his arrangements for his wards, not just in 1866 when he prepared to go home and marry a European, but also during the period 1875 to 1879 when he began to make plans for his wife's return to live in London permanently. He was kind to his wards; but he was also rational and determined to prevent both his married life and his career from being troubled by the wards.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBell, Stanley. 1985. Hart of Lisburn. Lisburn: Lisburn Historical Press.\n\nBell, Gertrude. 1903. The Gertrude Bell Archive.\n\nBickers, Robert. 1999. Britain in China. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.\n\nBruner, Katherine F, Fairbank, John K, Smith, Richard J. 1986. eds. Entering China's Service - Robert Hart's Journals, 1854-1863. Cambridge and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.\n\nFairbank, John K, Bruner, Katherine F, Matheson, Elizabeth M. 1975. eds. The I.G. in Peking - Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs 1868-1907. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.\n\nFerguson, Niall. 2002. Empire: the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power. London: Allan Lane. Pp 185\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216377, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 136, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "85\n\nGraveson, R. H. and Crane. F. R., A Century of Family Law. 1957.\n\nLondon: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd.\n\nKing, Paul. 1980. In the Chinese Customs Service - A personal record of forty-seven years.\n\nNew York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.\n\nLittle, Lester K. 1975. Introduction in Fairbank, John K, Bruner, Katherine F, Matheson, Elizabeth M. 1975. eds. The I.G. in Peking - Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs 1868-1907. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.\n\nMcCusker, John J. 2003. “Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in the United States (or Colonies) from 1665 to 2002.” Economic History Services, 2003, URL: http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/.\n\nSmith, Richard J, Fairbank, John K, Bruner, Katherine F. 1991. eds. Robert Hart and China's Early Modernisation - His Journals, 1863-1866. Cambridge and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.\n\nWang, Hongbin. 2000. He De Jue Shi Zhuan - Da Qing Hai Guan Yang Zong Guan. (The Biography of Sir Robert Hart - The Foreign I.G. of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs) Beijing: Culture and Arts Press.\n\nWright, Stanley F. 1950. Hart and The Chinese Customs. Belfast: WM. Mullan & Son (Publishers) Ltd.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 18 September 2003\n\n2 Transcribed by Lan Li and Deirdre Wildy, 15 August 2003\n\n3 It is supposed that Hart had made Declaration 1 as a legal document, as in his letter to Campbell dated 11 August 1905 he added a post script dated 19 August - the same date that Declaration I was written: \"Yours 7th July received: herewith cover with statement for Murray Hutchins.\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matherson 1975: 25, 1479) Murray, Hutchins & Co. was Hart's private solicitor, in Declaration I he mentioned: \"The children were sent to England and it was arranged that W. Hutchins my lawyer should take charge of them...\" Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 18 September 2003\n\n* In Declaration 1 Hart wrote: \"Anna died some seventeen years ago\". In his letter to Campbell on 8 July 1906, he wrote: \"The enclosed from Mr. Anderson, announcing the death of a former ward, Herbert Hart, has just reached me here through the Legation.\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 1513) \"Gertrude Bell in her diary on 5 May 1903 recorded that she went to Sir Robert", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216378, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "86\n\nHart's house and photographed him: \"He was extremely friendly, asked us to dinner, kept us talking, assuring us that he was a man busy enough always to have time to give people. Month after month, year after year, for the last 50 years has found him always at work; for 25 years he has had no holiday; he never goes away and has never been even to the Great Wall. 'My wife used to do my sightseeing and my visiting for me' he said. 'She was very useful to me. It's difficult to live alone.' I didn't know what to answer as Lady Hart seems to find it more difficult not to live alone.\"\n\n*\n\n7 The marital relationship between Hart and Lady Hart, as Bruner, Fairbank and Smith argued (1986: 322), is that \"each offered something the other was seeking.\" In his journal entry for 22 August 1867 - their first anniversary - he wrote: \"No one could have a better wife than I have got & so far, we have got on well together.\" Then he added: “At the same time, matrimony does interfere a man's work at times.\" (Volume 9, Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 15 September 2003)\n\n$\n\n* Similar statement can also be seen in Declaration 1\n\n\"Census place: Cliffton, Gloucester, England. Source: FHL film 1341597, PRO Ref RG11, Piece 2482, Folio 38, Page 22.\n\n10 See Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith edited “Entering China's Service” (1986: 150): \"Volume 3, as it now exists, begins on 20 March 1858, after a lapse of almost three years. The first pages of this new book, however, were torn out by Hart, who then wrote on the flyleaf '20 March to 6 Dec. 1858' as if that were the normal content of the volume.\" \"It seems evident that Hart did some tidying-up of his journals years later, perhaps in 1902 when Hosea B. Morse asked\n\n11\n\npermission to see them in connection with a proposed biography.\"\n\nIn March 1866 Hart left for home on leave and in late May he fell in love with Miss Hester Jane Bredon. This happened less than a year after Hart's third child was born. Hart was very determined to find a European girl to marry during his visit home. He knew that his proposal to Hester might be refused if he told her the truth, particularly the year when Arthur was born - giving proof to the fact that he continued his sexual relationship with Ayaou until at least late 1864. For Hart the best way to convince Hester to accept the reality of the situation was to let her believe that all these events had taken place a long time ago and she could therefore \"forget the past and welcome the future\". Perhaps it is for this reason that there are contradictions between Hart's statements concerning the year of Arthur's birth in Declaration 1 and 2 and those in his letter to Campbell as well as that which is recorded in 1881 British Census,\n\n12 Hart only felt a bit annoyed when he received two letters from her in 1870 and 1872 and troubled by two of his wards by her between 1904 and 1905.\n\n17\n\n13 See Declaration I.\n\n14 The sum of money equals £28,704, as $5 at that time roughly equals £1. In his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 138, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "87\n\ndiary entry for 24 November 1854, Hart says: \"Mr Meadows has made over to me the Post Office duty today. He gave me 5 dollars or £1:0:10:” (Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith, 1986: 84)\n\n15 Same statement can also be seen in Declaration 1.\n\n16 Hart diaries, Volume 9, Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 15 September 2003", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]