[ { "id": 211341, "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-1988", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "33\n\n57\n\nBourboulon to Walewski, 6 September, 1858, CP, vol. 22, fol. 147, AE, and D'Abouville to Min. de la Marine, 27 November, 1858, BB4763, fol. 12, AN.\n\n5# Alcock to Bowring, 12 April, 1859, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714 (1860) and Alcock to Bowring, 6 April, FO881894, p. 4, incl. 2 number 1, PRO.\n\n50 Alcock to Bowring, 12 April, 1859, FO881894, Confidential Print, p. 1 in no incl.\n\n1 in no. 1 no folio # PRO.\n\nAlcock to Bowring, 12 April, 1859, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2761 (1860) PRO.\n\nHuang Proclamation, trans. by Parkes, 6 April, 1859, BB4763, fol. 93-100, Armee.\n\n62 Proclamation of April 7, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714 (1860) p. 4, no. 1, PRO.\n\n6.3 Prospectus stating the conditions on which the British Government is willing to engage **Emmigrants** for her West Indian Possessions,\" 13 October, 1859, CCC, Canton, vol. 2, fol. 148, AE.\n\nLao to Allied Commission, 27 October, 1859, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714 (1860) fol. 16, PRO.\n\nD'Abouville to Min. de la Marine, 27 October, 1859, BB4763, fol. 288-91, AN.\n\n66 Bruce to Russell, 5 December, 1859, Confidential Prints, FO405: 6, fol. 31 in no. 7 PRO.\n\n47 Allied Commission Memorandum, 24 January, 1860, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714, (1860) fol. 30 and \"Rules under which houses for the Reception of Chinese Emmigrants. no date, [prob. November 1859] Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714 (1860), encl. 12 on no. 6, vol. 18, PRO.\n\nL\n\n”\n\nStraubenzee & Hope to D'Abouville, 12 January, 1860, CCC, Canton, vol. 2, fol. 158-160, AE.\n\nStraubenzce to Sidney Herbert, 14 January, 1860, Accounts and Papers, LXIX 2714 (1860), PRO and D'Abouville, to Com. de Chef de Mers, 13 January, 1860, BB4763, fol. 344-45, AN.\n\n70 Charles de Mutrecy, Journal de la Campaigne de Chine 1859-60, vol. 1. (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1861) vol. 1, p. 225.\n\n71 Charner to Min. de la Marine, 13 November, 1861, CP, vol. 37, fol. 10, AE, and **Account of Evacuation of Canton on 21 October 1861**\" Accounts and Papers, LXII 2919, (1862), p. 3-4, PRO.\n\n72\n\nSteven A. Leibo, \"The Sino-European Educational Missions, 1875 to 1886,\" Asian Profiles [TBA].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212728, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "22\n\nAlthough from several of his comments in his Miscellany Mesny would appear to have remained a God-fearing Christian, at one point, he confessed that he had grown up with a strong inclination to sinfulness and, he continued, in 1865 he had added to his gallantries the vicious habits of gambling and drinking having just lost his 'fair charmer,' a Chinese widow. However, 'having lost my fear of God and drifted from the narrow path that leadeth unto salvation,' fortunately, he wrote, the Revs. Josiah Cox and Griffith John, Dr John Falconer and Wm Grant Gordon never forsook him. They gave him good advice and showed good examples which he followed. His fall from grace appears to have been of short duration and was never again referred to.\n\nHe made the point several times that he was a Christian believer and, for example, he began a lengthy paragraph with the sentences, 'From my earliest departure from home in 1854 unto the present day [1896] the Holy Bible has been my constant companion, and the Lord God Almighty has been my refuge and strong tower, and I have had much reason to praise the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever. The VIII Psalm, and more especially the 4th and 5th verses of that Psalm, also the 1st and 2nd verses of the IX Psalm, have been very appropriate to my personal experience at various times and at various places.' He continued in this vein for the rest of the paragraph, ending with ‘Of late years I have often had reason to apply the prayer of David to my humble self as it is given in Psalm LXXXVI.’\n\nIn a card sent by him in his last year he referred to himself not only as a friend of China but also a 'Student of Primitive Christianity and Christian Science.'\n\nMesny recounted at some length, as was his wont, the cleansing of the soul of a very wild Liverpudlian who roamed the Yangtze in his lorcha and took great pleasure in killing any Chinese with his great sword in revenge for the great harm they had caused him. The Liverpudlian called on Mesny some time in the early 1860s and finding him kneeling in his daily devotions joined him, and begged Mesny first to say a prayer for him. He then asked to be purified and absolved. Mesny did as he requested and the Liverpudlian 'went away very much changed. He came boldly as a lion and departed timid as a sheep.' Mesny heard later that the Liverpudlian had disappeared from the river [the Yangtze] and was never heard of again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212742, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "36 \n\nsomething more than ordinary adventure.' \n\nAgain, after a theatrical performance by a Chinese actor and actress in a provincial town in Kueichou province, Mesny wrote that local people, believing him [he was then 36] to be very old as he had a beard, knew that foreign women must be inferior; \"They must be, “they added\", as foreign men pass by but never foreign women, and foreign men marry Chinese wives.' Mesny added that he had one 'with very small feet and wears elegantly embroidered red satin shoes!' This must have been in 1878. \n\nWriting a paragraph under the heading of 'Slave Girls', Mesny noted that it was a common thing for well-to-do people to present a couple of slave girls to a daughter as part of their marriage dowry. It was also customary with respectable people to release slave girls when marriageable. Mesny added that he had bought three different girls, two in Szechuan, for a few taels each [less than 15 dollars Mexican]. One he released in Tientsin, another died in Hong Kong; the other he gave in marriage to a faithful servant of his. \n\nIn his Miscellanies he described a number of Chinese women, young and beautiful, who [or so he claimed] desired to marry him. Some he encouraged but in each instance the story peters out, others disappear out of his stories without explanation or further mention. He also had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow, who did not appear to be short of money, and who accompanied Mesny down river to Hankow where they remained in a house near the Yamen where Mesny frequently visited her. He noted at one point that 'there was nothing like gushing love between us, but I could not fail to admire such an admirably sensible woman. What she thought was admiring in me I know not, but I know she said from the first that she required my protection. The only time that I ever noticed anything like affectionate love on her part for me was on my first visit to her after my misadventure at the Lung-wang Miao\". Then she wept. She took my head very gently between her fine hands and repeatedly kissed the fresh scars of my recent wounds... we were both silent.' Despite this, he shortly afterwards described in the Miscellany that he, Mesny, 'had been busy at work and with his friend Pickerell, and paid frequent visits to my charmer near the Tao-t'ai's Yamen. She complained of the scarcity and brevity of my visits and showed unmistakable signs of being in a condition likely to increase the already great population of the vast empire of China.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212744, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "38\n\nHe covered several of his printed pages with descriptions of various groups of attractive 'fairies' who treated him as a great Lord and fussed him with food and attention. He explained that he had wondered who they were and had come to the conclusion that they were well-to-do daughters of officials captured by the Taipings and were part of the Taiping chieftain's retinue.\n\nHe implied at one point that the 'unknown charmer' who had been closely chaperoned by her sister, yet met him daily during his captivity in Nanking to learn English, was one of the daughters of the Taiping ruler Hung Hsiu-ch'üan\". She passed him a note as he was leaving with the Royal Navy rescue party, which, though lengthy and in semi-verse, left no doubt that the maiden, whoever she might have been, was expressing her desire for Mesny to return to marry her. No clue was given why Mesny should believe her to be a daughter of Hung Hsiu-ch'üan, and yet again we are left in the dark with his 'fair admirer' unidentified.\n\nAlthough there was no mention of marriage in this instance, his army commander in Kueichou province in 1870, returning home at the end of the first campaign, had offered to take Mesny back to Hunan with him where he could live en famille. Mesny then went on to say that he told the General that he had been away from his home and family in Jersey for some sixteen years and preferred to return there to get married in his own country rather than in China.\n\nThe priests or monks of the Ch'ien-lin Shan monastery more than once asked him to become a member of their order with a view to becoming eligible as a ruler over the four hundred monks in that monastery. He declined as he said that he had always had an inclination to marry some European lady of education, or to otherwise secure the life companionship of a distinguished European lady writer with whom he might associate as pupil or assistant in her literary career [this was written after he had been married to several Chinese women].\n\nOnly twice in his writings does he ever refer to European women as either attractive or otherwise, and interested in him. One was a young English lady of 'prepossessing appearance and fascinating manners,' who surprised everyone in Hankow by declaring that Mesny, who was unprepared to avail himself at the time as he had set his affections on another lady, 'Lydia,' (a girl at home in Jersey) reciprocated her love in a marvellous manner though they had not met since he was 11 and ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216054, "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": 353, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "287\n\nThe Consulate was on the most commanding elevation, at least fifty feet above the road with a steep mountain behind. About two hundred unruly soldiers gathered round the lower enclosure but seeing the four armed men did not approach. A written message was sent off to General Tao, commanding the permanent camp, half a mile off, stating that the man would not be released until the general came in person, identified the prisoner and punished him. After half an hour General Tao in his chair, with Colonel Peng on his charger, arrived and were informed that there was no intention to claim jurisdiction over or be harsh with the arrested man, but that it had to be clearly understood that if any soldiers or even officers came in to the settlement, they would be forced to obey the municipal bye-laws; and the Consul was the municipal chairman. The General was not too happy about the position he found himself in but was civil. He went with Parker to the prison, spoke with the man through the bars and as a result the man received about twenty slight bastinado-strokes on the spot and all was settled.\n\nThe winter of 1877-8 was unusually bitter, the year of the great Shanxi famine when millions of Chinese perished from sheer want of food. Neighbouring provinces were invaded by endless streams of refugees and more especially so through the area surrounding Zhenjiang - because all roads from the north lead there. The authorities had provided thousands of mat hovels, on and against the city walls where shelter from the bitter wind was obtainable. Skilly was served out gratis twice a day with between fifty thousand to a hundred thousand refugees congregated around Zhenjiang.\n\nAs we have already noted Zhenjiang was far from being the ideal posting and at least one consul there, in 1923, is known to have committed suicide. Consular duties brought hazards which, while not thought of as routine, were certainly sufficient to cause many a consul to look back with horror and amazement at what they had survived. One such consul would recall that in 1913, during the early days of the period of the war lords following the foundation of the Republic, with petty armies looting and causing endless unrest, soldiers of one such war lord, Zhang Xun, approached Zhenjiang bent on plundering the city. The British consul and a lone western merchant went out to face them - then, after very nearly being shot they held them at bay until one of their officers appeared and brought them under control. In another incident during the anti-British movement troubles of 1925 the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216061, "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": 360, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "294\n\nalive and a prisoner of the Taiping in Nanjing Mesny was rescued by the Royal Navy in March 1863 after four to five months not too unpleasant captivity after a threat from the captain of the Royal Navy gunboat HMS Slaney to bombard Nanjing. Aboard the gunboat was Adkins, the British Vice-Consul from Zhenjiang, who informed Mesny that he had been given up for dead a long time ago, and that an account of his slaughter and dismemberment had been published in Shanghai papers. Released from Taiping captivity at Nanjing in April Mesny was taken by the British Vice-Consul to his station at Zhenjiang where he was fêted for a day or so before being advised to take the opportunity of a lifetime' as mate aboard a large American owned lorcha, damaged by fire and being towed to Hankou by the Express, a British river steamer.\n\nAdkins lived his lonely and dangerous life in Zhenjiang where his health deteriorated to the extent that he had to take medical leave. He also made occasional trips to the Taiping capital at Nanjing to demand compensation for the plundering of British vessels by the Taipings, which were far from enjoyable, even on occasions, sickening. In a letter to his father dated 20 March 1863 Adkins wrote that I received information that an Englishman was a prisoner in Nankin. My purpose here is to get the unfortunate fellow out of the clutches of the Rebels. I have just sent a dispatch to the head swell [Rebel] here and am awaiting his reply. I shall probably have to go to the city tomorrow'. From the date of Adkin's letter this almost certainly refers to Adkins'trip up Nanjing to effect Mesny's release from Taiping captivity.\n\nto\n\nBefore Mesny decided to return to Hankou, he later explained, he had seriously considered going back to Nanjing where he would have used his unique triangular yellow Taiping flag which would have ensured his welcome, there to wed the 'fair charmer' [the daughter of one of the Taiping leaders] who had written such a beautiful poem expressing hope that he would return to marry her. Mesny was now offered a number of contracts to sail cargoes through the Taiping lines, all of which he rejected on the advice of the British Vice-Consul, Adkins.\n\nMesny frequently wrote of various pretty women at the roadside during his journeys across China who had attracted him or, more to the point, were attracted by him. His descriptions of 'fair maidens' in towns and villages eyeing him and he ogling them crop up regularly with a\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216062, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "295\n\nregular aside about their breasts and occasionally their naked crotch. He also made much of his affairs with Chinese women and at this point, in 1864 had a 'romantic and intimate interlude' with a young Chinese widow. She did not appear to be short of money and, having sought Mesny's company, accompanied him up river from Zhenjiang to Hankou where they remained until she left to join her in-laws in 1865. He had been away for a fortnight to the cotton growing districts and on his return had been handed a very polite letter from the 'fair charmer' thanking him for all his attentions to her and informing him that she was continuing on to her late husband's home in Hunan there to rear her children and end her days in virtuous widowhood. She ended, wishing him joy and happiness, by saying that the Chinese banker would hand Mesny a little keepsake to be retained by him in everlasting remembrance of their unexpected meeting at Zhenjiang, their romantic adventures and intimacy on the voyage up the Great River, and their separation for ever at Hankou.\n\nMesny's visit to Zhenjiang 1874\n\nAfter he had left military service in 1874 Mesny made frequent and repeated egotistical assertions to prominence and repute within Chinese bureaucracy and commercial circles with his endeavours, so he claimed, concentrated on guiding and promoting what he described as the westernisation and modernisation in China. It is far from clear how he made a living after 1874 though later we read in his Miscellanies that he had obtained lucrative business in Guiyang at one stage; that in 1886 he had an insurance agency in Shanghai; and was also the representative for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company. He must have had many other irons in the fire to enable him to travel so widely and so far within China, of which only a few were described in his Miscellanies.\n\nIn late 1874 he travelled down river to Zhenjiang and then overland through Shandong to Beijing, spending the winter in Jinan. From the dates he gives in his autobiographical notes Mesny must have left his bride fairly soon after their marriage as he travelled through Shantung province on his way to Peking from Chen-kiang' [Mesny does not explain why he was there though almost certainly it would have been no more than a port on his journey from Hankou to Shandong]. In Shandong he visited, amongst other places, the home and burial place of Confucius at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216495, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "205\n\nYET ANOTHER ANGLE ON THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1918\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nMany of the officers of the Chinese Labour Corps in France in 1918 were or had been Christian missionaries in China recruited for their language skills. One usually hears about Protestant missionaries of various sects in uniform in France though, as far as I am aware, no Roman Catholic missionaries would appear to have been recruited. It was therefore fascinating to come across a short essay in a book containing experiences and memories of members of the Irish Maynooth Mission to China which highlights this.\n\nOne afternoon in late April 1918 a Roman Catholic Chaplain was riding along a road near the border of Artois and Picardy on the \"Poor Old Slob,\" as his groom affectionately called the antiquated charger. Some eight miles to the east he could discern the gentle rise where the line had been held during the desperate weeks which followed March 21st and it was here that he saw in a sheltered field a short distance off the road, a group of tents before which swarms of Chinese Labour men were cooking their evening meal.\n\nThe Chaplain suddenly realised that he had never heard whether there were any Catholics amongst the Chinese: and besides, it was meal time there and perhaps, with a bit of luck he would find an officer there at tea. As he rode through the camp the Chinese turned and looked at him with that impenetrable stare which is so disconcerting to the western mind. He found the officer in his tent, with his Chinese servant setting the tea-things on a soap box which did duty for a table.\n\nThe officer, as he sat to tea, said to the Chaplain, ‘Any Catholics, you ask. I should not be surprised if there were, because these chaps come from an inland village where I know there was a French Mission. We can enquire during the next parade.'\n\nAfter tea the officer paraded his men and spoke a few words to them, completely unintelligible to the Catholic Chaplain. The result\n\n'Heralds of the Orient : Maynooth Mission to China: Dalgan Park, Galway : 1924", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]