[ { "id": 213316, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "119\n\nTHE TAKING OF CHAPU\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nRecently my daughter and I visited Chapu, a town which for a moment in history was the scene of one of the first encounters between British Forces and the Tatars of the Imperial Chinese Army.\n\nChapu, sometimes recorded as Chapoo but now romanised as Zhapu, is a small town lying almost exactly half way between the cities of Shanghai and Hangchou, the latter being the provincial capital of the central Chinese province of Chekiang. It used to be an important port on the north coast of the Bay of Hangchou noted for its connections with the Japan trade during earlier times; however, by the 1840s it had become a backwater garrison town for the Chinese army of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in support of the small Manchu garrison. The original Ch'ing fighting force, the Tatar Banners from Manchuria and Mongolia, had become effete through soft living, whilst the provincial forces of Chinese so-called soldiery, the Green Banners, were ill-equipped, ill-trained, and under strength.\n\nDuring the eighteen thirties, China wanted nothing of foreigners, whilst the Europeans, seeing a vast land teeming with millions of potential customers, wanted admission into China and its lucrative trade. Europeans, and to a certain extent the Americans too, were becoming more and more frustrated by the Chinese attitude towards foreigners in general, refusing to accept them under what was considered in the West as normal international relations.\n\nMisunderstandings were centred around China looking upon Great Britain and other European countries as tributary states, and the British East India Company, which had had its monopoly abolished in 1833, had entered the opium trade. Opium was banned by the Chinese authorities, and after an official was sent from Peking to Canton—the only port open to foreigners for trade in general—especially to put an end to the opium trade. British officials became involved due to confusion over recognition of their status and the question of the illicit trade of opium. A further quarrel broke out over the jurisdiction of Chinese courts in cases involving British subjects.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213641, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "212\n\nTarlar\n\nGarrison\n\n+\n\nMILITARY SKETCH\n\nof the Attack on the Chinese Position before\n\nCHAPOO.\n\non the 13 May 1842.\n\nDrawn by Lieutts Randall & Johnston\n\nof the Madras Engineers.\n\nCITY of CHAPOO\n\nChinese Forces entrenched.\n\nBritish Troops.\n\nNaval Brigade\n\n4. Inshorego\n\nPlan of Attack", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214560, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 418, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "This Monument is erected\n\nby the non-commissioned officers\n\nof the above Regt\n\nAs a token of respect\n\nMay They rest in peace.\n\n387\n\nThe undated and unsigned manuscript report held in the archives of the Regimental Museum of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment in Carlisle reads as follows:\n\n\"As no opportunity presented itself of obtaining a passage in one of HM's Ships to Chusan I deemed it advisable after waiting over three months, to delay no longer and accordingly chartered a native boat in which I left for Chusan on the 20th inst.\n\nI found that the reports as to the dilapidated condition of the monument in question were by no means exaggerated. The structure, which is an oblong brick cube about 6 feet high and 4 feet wide and deep, with stuccoed edges and a granite tablet on which the inscription is cut inserted on the eastern side, is in a wretched state of decay. Many of the corner bricks have crumbled away and in a very few years the whole block will fall to pieces unless some repairs are speedily undertaken. At the back, or South side of the monument, a mud cottage forming one of a row of four is built, the roof of which almost touches the summit of it and adds materially to the progress of the decay by the drippings from it which sink into the ground at its base. These cottages are tenanted by four families of squatters and in front of them - the back being towards the monument - are two other monuments, oblong in shape and about three feet high, which appear to be used as tables or beds, as the case may be, by the squatters. One of them, erected to Captain Colin Campbell of the 55th Regt, who died of a wound received in action at Chapoo, has lost a large portion of the base upon which the stone bearing the inscription lies and must soon fall to pieces unless the progress of the decay be arrested.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214848, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "230\n\n47 United Service Journal 1841, pp.531-2. The latter could not always be guaranteed, as we have seen.\n\n48\n\nThe British navy was the major element in this technical superiority. These were still the days of sail, when its ships' commanders' chosen tactic in a fight was to force their enemy into submission. This was achieved by means of the broadside, the firing together of all guns on one side of a ship, resulting in \"the hull-and-gun-crew-smashing at which they excelled\" (Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870, Fontana Paperbacks, 1982, p.146). In China, the same \"hull-smashing\" tactics were employed by the British navy against forts and city walls, with equally devastating effects. The inclusion in the expeditionary force of war steamers like the famous Nemesis, which could sail into any bay or anchorage regardless of wind and tide, meant that the British navy's supremacy was completely overwhelming.\n\n49\n\nSome examples may suffice. Upon coming from India, leaving only six men sick at Fort William, the 26th Regiment had numbered 28 officers and 902 other ranks. By the end of 1840, only 110 were fit for duty, having lost 240 by death and hundreds of others in hospital or too weak to go on parade. Yet this was the regiment, which, thanks to the healthy regime instituted in India by Colonel Oglander, had had a remarkable record of freedom from death and sickness. Holt, p. 112. Between 21 July 1842, upon its first landing at Chin-kiang-foo up to February 1844 - a period of little more than eighteen months - the unfortunate 98th Regiment had lost by death alone 432 out of 766 non-commissioned officers and men. Shadwell, p.123.\n\n50 Cree, pp. 117-8.\n\n51 Davis, ibid.\n\n52 \"The country round Chapoo beats anything we have yet seen, indeed I defy anything hardly to equal it in beauty, one immense valley as far as the eye could reach covered with the most luxuriant vegetation, with the people going on with their employment in the fields quite unconcerned.\" Blackwood's 1964, p.157.\n\n53 Holt, pp.152-3.\n\n54 Cited by Davis, Chinese Miscellanies, p. 179.\n\nBingham, Vols. 1, pp.3 and 277, and 11, p. 156", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]