[
    {
        "id": 204757,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1964",
        "page_number": 60,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE \n\n49 \n\nexperimental stations. And there is literary evidence for stating that all the hills between here and Canton were densely forested, as hills of similar geological structure still are in countries such as Japan, where the population does not destroy every tree before it is ten years old as they have been doing in South China for several centuries. Exactly what trees grew in these forests I cannot say; here is another missing piece in the puzzle which can probably be filled, as I shall soon suggest. The forests are supposed to have had two different kinds of human inhabitants, or at this time perhaps more than two, (a document of the early Yuan Dynasty mentions two types of hill-dwellers by name) but until further evidence comes to light, I suggest that in view of the small size of this territory, there is little reason to pre-suppose the existence of a third, and as I shall indicate later, my own preference is for a view that only one people lived here. \n\nOf the two non-Chinese peoples mentioned, one, the Yaos, are well-known and documented from South and Southwest China, Vietnam and Laos. Their languages have been studied, not an easy matter since their society comprises many small units, each possessing its own dialect and none having any form of writing; and work has been done on their customs and religion. There is an exhibit in the National Ethnological Museum at Leiden in Holland which shows the principal elements of their cultural and social life, including the type of house and the traditional patterns which they weave into their cloth, which in South China is made of wool. The exhibit at Leiden is particularly interesting because the adjoining showcase contains, or did contain when I visited that museum, an exhibit of a people from the island of Celebes who, although physically dissimilar in appearance, built somewhat similar houses and used almost identical patterns in their cloth, which however is bark-cloth. I asked the Assistant Curator whether the juxtaposition of the two exhibits was accidental or whether they had evidence of some connection between the Yao and the people of Celebes; he said that it was not fortuitous, because the resemblances were considerable, but there was no actual evidence of any connection and, as far as he knew, the peoples were of different racial types and spoke unrelated languages. Here is another gap to be closed. \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206488,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 36,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "30\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nentered the Borneo scene in 1839 very much the idealist-humani-tarian, nineteenth century liberal, gentleman adventurer, in the colonial tradition of such forerunners as Francis Light of Penang and Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and sometime British governor of Java. Even much of the colour and romance painted by the early travellers and story writers bears up under the careful scrutiny of the historian.\n\nJames Brooke came from stock which had produced a seven-teenth century lord mayor of London. His father and uncle were civil servants in the East India Company, and James lived until aged 12 near Benares on the Ganges in British India where he was born in 1803.\n\nBrooke himself entered the military service of the Company after a somewhat indifferent education which involved only two years of formal schooling in the Norwich Grammar School. He was severely wounded in a campaign of the first Anglo-Burma war in 1825, and after a prolonged convalescence resigned from the Company, largely, we are led to believe, because of disenchantment with its conduct of eastern affairs and because of widespread corruption among Company servants.\n\nWhen in 1835 Brooke's father, then a retired nabob living in Bath, died leaving him a comfortable fortune of £30,000, James bought a schooner and fitted out an expedition to Borneo and the Celebes Islands, an area in the East Indies with which he was familiar from earlier voyages and from exhaustive reading of the accounts of George Windsor Earl and Stamford Raffles.\n\nBrooke's schooner sailed in December 1838 under the colours of the Royal Yacht Club. He looked forward to satisfying his adventurous curiosity about Borneo and perhaps doing some trading. He particularly wanted to penetrate to the interior of Borneo, and had in mind exploring up the rivers which flowed into Marudu Bay, on the northern end of the island. He was a private voyager, but the colours of the Royal Yacht Club commanded respect in naval and colonial circles and he was well received in Singapore where he arrived in May 1839.\n\nI\n\nThere he was given a pseudo-official mission to perform in Borneo. Several Singapore-based vessels had recently been ship-wrecked or plundered by Bornean pirates and their crews sold into",
        "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": 210341,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 312,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "Page 31\n\n2\n\n291\n\n1886: Returning Home\n\nHis work in Singapore concluded, Woods returned on the Flying Fish to Japan in September 1885 for a second, longer visit. (There is no mention of his passing through Hong Kong on the way.) Woods' stay in Japan was extended by epidemics and the resulting quarantine, and it was February 1886 before he could leave Japan and proceed to Hong Kong.\n\nThere are no available details of his last stay. He rejoined the Flying Fish, which left Hong Kong on 19 March 1886, and travelled on her, via Manila and the Celebes, reaching Port Darwin in Australia on 23 June 1886. Immediately he resumed his Australian researches.\n\nWoods seems to have used every voyage as an opportunity for research, and some sixteen of his scientific publications are based on his work in Asia. In one of these, we find his description of Hong Kong. It is obviously a composite, based on his various visits:\n\nI first visited the south Chinese coast in 1885, arriving at Hong Kong in the middle of January, or, as I may call it, the depth of winter. It was piercingly cold at the time. All the inhabitants who could afford them were wrapped up in winter furs. The air was cloudy, damp, gloomy and raw to an extent which recalled to my mind the melancholy fogs of London. Having come straight from the fervid temperature of Singapore, the change can be imagined. Three days after leaving the Straits, all our Chinese passengers came on deck swathed to the eyes in quilted silks or cottons. It was evident that we were in a new region. We were passing many fishing junks of the unmistakable Chinese pattern: the sails of palm canvas, with bamboo laths across them like Venetian blinds. These junks, with thin radiating ribbed sails, apparently lop-sided and conspicuously down by the head, are characteristic sights to be seen nowhere but in China. In their marine architecture, as in everything else, the Chinese keep distinct from all the world.\n\nAmid the fog and mist which came thickly down upon us,\n\nPage 31\n\n2\n\n291",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    }
]