[
    {
        "id": 204651,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1963",
        "page_number": 132,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "118\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe Yangtse was now open to foreign trade and navigation for almost 1,400 miles from the sea, and access had been gained to the rich and populous province of Szechuen, of which Chungking was the chief port.\n\nThe section of the river between Ichang and Chungking was known as the Upper River, and the first steamer to navigate this section belonged to Archibald Little, whose Y-Ling had been the first steamer to navigate the Middle River. Little was a member of a well-known Shanghai family, and he was the real pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse. He had commenced his career as a tea taster for a German firm in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon went into business on his own and was one of the first to appreciate the possibility of trade in Szechuen Province and beyond in Tibet. He settled in Chungking soon after it became a treaty port, and started up several industries connected with wool, bristles, and coal—to mention some of the more prominent, and also engaged in marine insurance, specialising in covering cargoes on the Upper Yangtse.1 The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce had sent two prominent British merchants—Alexander Michie and Robert Francis—up the Yangtse to Chungking as early as 1869, to investigate trade prospects there, but no important developments followed. In 1887 Little made a much more intensive trip from Ichang to Chungking by junk, and formed the opinion that there were great possibilities for trade in Szechuen Province and beyond. The following year he attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking with a stern wheeler specially built on the Clyde called the Kuling. Because of a clause in the Chefoo Convention stipulating that foreign steamers could only go to Chungking after Chinese steamers had gone there, the Kuling was not allowed to go beyond Ichang. Little then sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, who employed her on the Hankow-Ichang service.\n\nOne of his brothers was a famous editor of the North China Daily News, and another a well-known doctor in Shanghai.\n\n[Robert Swinhoe, British Consul at Amoy was sent up the Yangtse by Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, in March 1869 to enquire into the trade of the Upper River. He reached Chungking in May of the same year. His account of this journey was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. XL (1870), pp. 268-85. It is accompanied by a folding map of the Upper River from the Tungting Lake to Chungking compiled from the charts made by two survey officers specially sent up the Yangtse for this purpose. Ed.]",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
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    {
        "id": 205332,
        "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": 94,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "THE CHINA COASTERS\n\n87\n\nChina Navigation Company, the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and to a lesser extent to ships of some smaller British companies such as the Douglas Steam Navigation Company and the Hong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company. The 'outside' ships belonged to a disparate group of owners, British and Chinese, in both Hong Kong and Shanghai; and officers on the 'regular' ships considered themselves superior to those on the 'outside' ships. The latter were usually old ships which had passed their best days in the service of the regular companies. Some maintained a respectable standard of seaworthiness and seamanship, but many had a bad reputation in this respect. British masters and chief engineers were carried mainly to satisfy the requirements of the classification and insurance societies. Like the ships themselves, many officers on the outside ships had formerly served on the regular ships.\n\nBy the First World War, at least so far as the regular companies were concerned, China coast shipping had become divided into a number of liner services, for each of which a particular type of coaster had been designed. The China Navigation Company was then the largest company, and its principal trades were the Yangtse and Tientsin trades based on Shanghai, the interport trade between Hong Kong and Shanghai which also served the intermediate ports, and the Singapore and Bangkok emigrant trades and the Canton River trade based on Hong Kong. The Indo-China and the China Merchants Steam Navigation Companies were similarly organised, but neither was so vitally concerned with the emigrant trades in the south; and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company's largest ships operated their long-established service between Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Japan.\n\nOne important trade which was seasonal, did not fit into this framework. This was the beancake trade between Manchuria and South China, in which the China Navigation Company was predominant. Newchwang was the main export port, and most of the trade was concentrated in the few months of spring after the Newchwang River was opened to navigation, and the few months of autumn before it was closed by ice. When the China Navigation Company first entered the beancake trade in the 1870's, they employed specially designed coasters, but this practice was gradually discontinued. By the early 1900's, by which time the",
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    {
        "id": 206293,
        "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": 110,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "104\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nimposture and contemptible impudence\". He later was part of Chan Lai Tau's ambassadorial staff at Washington, and upon his return to China in 1882, he promoted the organization of the Canton and Hong Kong Telegraph Company.38\n\nAssociated with Ho Shan Chee in the Telegraph Company was a kinsman, Ho Kwan Shan (何崑珊) alias Ho Amei (何阿美),†Œ4 the Secretary of the On Tai Insurance Company in Hong Kong. Ho Kwan Shan had been educated at Dr. Legge's Anglo-Chinese College in Hong Kong, being a schoolmate of the sons of Ho Asun. Upon completing his education, Ho Kwan Shan joined his elder brother, Ho Low Yuk (何陸玉) in Australia in 1858. From Australia in 1865 he went to New Zealand to arrange for the importation of the first Chinese laborers to New Zealand. Returning to Australia, he served for a time as interpreter at Ballarat, Victoria. In 1868 he came back to Hong Kong. Here he became a clerk in the Registrar General's Office. Later he became interested in developing mines on Lan Tau Island as well as at other places in Kwang Tung Province.39\n\nThe most prominent of the Ho clan, however, was the family of Ho Tsun Shin (何遵善) or as he was better known in Christian circles, Ho Fuk Tong (何福堂).† His father had been a block cutter for the press of the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca. Ho Fuk Tong joined him there and became a student at the College. He showed scholastic aptitude and for a time accompanied the son of the senior missionary at the Malacca Station to India for advanced study. Upon the arrival of the Rev. James Legge at the Mission, a close bond was established between the two young men. Ho Fuk Tong was his junior by three years. When Legge removed to Hong Kong in 1843, Ho Fuk Tong accompanied him and was ordained as the Chinese pastor of the London Missionary Society congregation in 1846. He continued as a faithful minister of the congregation (now Hop Yat Church) until his death in 1871. He was conscientious and faithful in his service to the church, but he was also very successful as a financier. After his death there were numerous Court suits over the interpretation of his will and the administration of his estate. Some of the difficulties arose because Ho Fuk Tong held his property under various aliases. In one of the cases a barrister gives his opinion why Ho Fuk Tong followed this procedure:",
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    {
        "id": 209444,
        "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": 101,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "79\n\n58\n\nofficials and gentry-merchants (shen-shang) are [agents]. There is no need for [professional] agents.\n\nWe have no means to prove or disprove Chang's somewhat extravagant claim, but we can be certain that there was at least some truth in it.\n\nIn Ho Amei, we have an example of Chang's \"Man in Hong Kong\". Ho is one of the most colourful personalities in 19th Century Hong Kong, and, as such, was one of those whom the Rev. Carl Smith has chosen to write about in several of his works on the Chinese in Hong Kong. Ho Amei had worked in Australia and New Zealand, in mining and emigration; for a while he worked at the Registrar-General's office in Hong Kong. He also worked in the Chinese Customs Service for a time. In 1882, he started the Telegraph Company in Hong Kong which the Chinese Government took over 2 years later. Then and after, he had many business connections with the Chinese Government, in emigration, mining, railways and telegraphy. In 1884, he was secretary of the On Tai Insurance Company, a position which entitled him to sit at the meetings of the predominantly European Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.\n\nThroughout the Sino-French War, he regularly sent telegrams to the Canton authorities reporting on French movements around Hong Kong. As we have seen, at the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, he condemned the French for searching junks. At the same meeting, he spoke out for China's right to block the river entrance in Shanghai in case of a French attack, an opinion which found no sympathy in the Chamber. Indeed, he was voted down as \"an interested party\".01\n\nInterested party he certainly was, but what we must not overlook amid the complexity of his material interests was his courage in speaking up for China, knowing full well his lone opinion would not reverse the resolutions reached by the predominantly European members of the Chamber. There was no need for him to please the Canton Government with a declaration of allegiance at a Chamber of Commerce meeting; it demanded loyalty of him in other ways. The public stand he made, and it was well publicised in the papers, was made out of his own convictions on the question of China's sovereign rights. He protested against the French not as a Chinese agent, but as a",
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    {
        "id": 209582,
        "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": 239,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "CARL T. SMITH\n\nTHE HONG KONG AMATEUR DRAMATIC CLUB AND ITS PREDECESSORS\n\nTHE PROLOGUE\n\nTo set the mood for an article on Amateur Dramatics in Hong Kong, I quote a prologue to the performance of \"the screaming farce\", 'I've Written to Brown' presented on 21 April 1871 by the Hong Kong Amateurs.\n\nLadies and Gentlemen, the pleasing task\n\nIs mine tonight your kindly smiles to ask,\n\nFor those who now behind the curtain wait,\n\nWith biding, anxious hearts to learn their fate.\n\nSo let your verdict generous be, the while\n\nWe strive a pleasant hour to beguile.\n\nBut who can now a pleasant hour boast,\n\nWith thirteen steamers daily up the coast\n\nSharebrokers pressing one to sell or buy\n\nWith telegrams cach minute from Shanghai\n\nWith stern Welsh witnesses, who'd rather brook\n\nA Judge's ire than kiss a dirty book,\n\nAnd, by their word prepared to stand or fall\n\nSay they'll be if they will swear at all!\n\nWith piece goods market all to pieces gone,\n\nThrough sales of damaged shirtings ex the Don,\n\nAnd, piling agony, beyond endurance\n\nWith Oily Phantom's new Chinese Insurance;†\n\nWhere, of our interests most august protectors,\n\nThey've such a crushing army of Directors!\n\nSince last we met, though some enlivening rays\n\nOf social light have cheered our nights and days,\n\nA quiet Picnic to Victoria Peak\n\nPhotos in High Life, taken once a week\n\n†The American firm of Olyphant and Company organized in 1871 at Hong Kong the Chinese Insurance Company. It was the first insurance company on the China coast to cater especially to Chinese shippers and merchants. Its Board was composed of both Chinese and foreigners.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210874,
        "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-1986",
        "page_number": 225,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "208 \n\nCARL SMITH \n\nlency Chen Lan-pin, I had the honour through Dr. Eitel to receive your kind remembrance of me and my family. Your ever affectionate pupil and friend, Ho A-lloy.\" Time and fortune had not loosened the ties between pupil and master. \n\nWhen a new Chinese Ambassador was appointed to the United States, Ho Shun-chee returned to China. He served for a period as Secretary of the China Merchants Insurance Company at Shanghai. Tong King-sing, a former schoolmate, was the chairman of the company. \n\nIt was proposed that Ho Shun-chee be put in charge of a newly organised telegraph company, the Wa Hop, formed to build a line between Hongkong and Canton. The company was principally financed by Chinese capitalists in Hongkong. Later the company was taken over by the Chinese Government. \n\nThe careers of his brothers are not as well documented as that of Ho Shun-chee. The third brother, Chung Sang, was a worry to his elder brother. When A-lloy was teaching in the Government school he wrote to Dr. Legge about Chung Sang, who was then a student in the mission school. A-lloy thought it would be much better if his brother were more directly under his supervision. He requested Dr. Legge to release him that he might transfer to the school where A-lloy was teaching. He expressed a low estimate of his brother to Dr. Legge, describing him as \"by nature a very stupid, lazy and disobedient boy..., all play, flying his kite.” \n\nFurthermore he had been accused of stealing some money. The boy could not have been as stupid and lazy as his brother alleged for he was later manager of the Wah Tze Yat Po, a Chinese newspaper published in Hongkong. When his lease for the paper expired in 1889, it was taken over by Ho Wyson and Dr. Ho Kai, two of the sons of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong. \n\nA-lloy's second brother was A-fuk. Prospects for his career were bright. He too began by teaching English in a Chinese school supported by the Hongkong Government. From there he went into the Hongkong office of the North China Insurance Office as interpreter and Chinese manager. He died in 1873. \n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
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    {
        "id": 210890,
        "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-1986",
        "page_number": 241,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "224\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nSecretary of the On Tai Insurance Company. He remained at this post until his retirement in 1898.\n\nDuring these years he was involved in many other business ventures and in community affairs. He was an enterprising entrepreneur and financier, as well as a prominent public personality.\n\nThe organisation of the On Tai Insurance Co was one step in the latter part of the 19th century of the intrusion of Chinese into areas of commerce and finance formerly monopolised by foreign merchants.\n\nWith the introduction of steam vessels into the China trade, more and more Chinese firms began to ship by them rather than by junks. Insurance as practised in Western trade was not a feature of traditional Chinese business methods. The more progressive Chinese merchants, however, realised its value. They began to patronise the established marine and fire insurance companies.\n\nThese insurance companies were profitable ventures and paid substantial dividends to shareholders. The Chinese, however, found it difficult to acquire shares. They were shut out. The excuse was given that the companies could not determine the financial standing of prospective Chinese shareholders because of the secrecy and complicated arrangement of their firms.\n\nIn 1871 a group of Chinese merchants in Hongkong secured the services of the American firm of Olyphant and Co to assist them in organising the Chinese Insurance Company and in providing foreign management for it. At its organisation the board consisted of five foreign merchants and two Chinese.\n\nThe press recognised its formation as a revolutionary move in the balance between Chinese and foreign business in China. \"The step will mark an important era in the history of commercial affairs in China; as there can be very little doubt that the plan will be followed in other matters besides insurance. It is already well known that the Chinese merchants are large supporters of some of the most important companies, and their adoption of the plan of organising companies consisting avowedly chiefly of Chinese",
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    {
        "id": 210891,
        "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-1986",
        "page_number": 242,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "225\n\nshareholders will, in all likelihood, result in a species of competition such as must gradually work a complete revolution in enterprises of the natives.\n\nThe foreign businessman did not have long to wait before this prognostication began to be realised. In 1872, under the patronage of the Chinese Government, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co was organised at Shanghai. Progressively the Chinese entered areas of business formerly monopolised by foreigners.\n\nIn 1877 the On Tai Insurance Co was organised in Hongkong. At the annual meeting of the Chinese Insurance Co, the chairman took notice of the new competition. The two companies had almost the same constituencies.\n\nThe chairman reported at the meeting that this overlapping threatened to have a serious effect on the company's resources, but as yet was not as disastrous as had first been expected. He remarked: “This is proof that the habit of insuring is being developed amongst the natives of this mighty empire.”\n\nIn 1881 the On Tai Insurance Co applied for and was granted membership in the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce. They were its first Chinese members.\n\nAt the annual meeting at which the firm was elected as a constituent member, Ho A-mei thanked the chamber and then asked if the rules permitted him, as a new member, to propose anything. If so permitted, he wished to bring up a matter that was to the general interests of the commercial life of the whole Colony. The chairman ruled him to be quite in order.\n\nA-mei then proposed: “That a memorial be addressed to His Excellency, the Governor, asking that restrictions recently put upon emigration to Honolulu be done away with.”\n\nNot only had Ho A-mei a long-standing interest in emigration, but the Wo Hang firm of the Li family, whose interests he represented and who were the principal shareholders in the On Tai Insurance Co, had been engaged in the sending of Chinese labour",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
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    {
        "id": 211491,
        "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": 207,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "183\n\nMaine, from 1953 to 1958. With some help from us and from scholarships, both managed to obtain a college education on their own earnings, Gar Shucy from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1960 and Gar Ling from Pembroke College in 1962.\n\nBefore long I was working temporarily as an interpreter with the U.S. Immigration Service and later as a typist for the Library Mutual Insurance Company. In November 1954 I found permanent work as a social worker at the Children's Unit of the Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham. I left this psychiatric setting for a day care agency, the Associated Day Care Services of Metropolitan Boston, in September 1959, because I felt that preventive work with young children was more effective than attempts to restore their mental health. It was depressing to feel the guilt and anguish of those parents who had mentally-ill youngsters. The day care experience proved to be challenging and rewarding. By the time I retired in 1973, I had become Director of Social Service under Mr. Sibley Higginbotham, a very sensitive and understanding administrator. From August 1975 to October 1976 I served there once more to fill a temporary vacancy. I am now enjoying permanent retirement with time to appreciate married life with a calm and supportive husband, and an excellent relationship with other members of the family and with my friends.\n\nDuring my years in Brookline, I brought Mother home several times for extended visits or have gone to Honolulu whenever she was ill. Since her death in 1974 John and I have continued to make an annual trip to the place of my birth, no doubt to recapture precious memories and relationships which have made my life so meaningful. In my twilight years, always aware of the fragility of life, I have endeavoured to record some aspects of my life and of those people who touched upon it, with the expectation that in the future someone in the family might become interested in his roots. It is also due to my own need to leave part of myself behind. In addition, it is my hope that what I have gathered would give a bit of historical perspective of the early Chinese immigrants as reflected in the history of our families; that it would give an insight to their industriousness, sacrifices, and handicaps, their hopes and ambitions, and the opportunities opened to them; and that it would give a glimpse of some of their social and cultural practices. I am a simple, uncomplicated person, intelligent and of good common sense, but subject",
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    {
        "id": 212326,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 268,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "245\n\nBank Limited', partly to remove the impression, prevalent at the time, that it was an Indian, and not a British, bank. In the same year, a share exchange took place with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for the entire share capital of Mercantile.\n\nIn 1967 in Hong Kong, the 'Disturbances' (spill overs of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic) resulted in a flight of capital which reduced deposits in banks fortunately only temporarily. The following year, as a number of members served on both the London Committee of the Hong Kong Bank and Mercantile's counterpart, it was decided to disband the London Committee of 'Mercantile'. Finally, the full amalgamation of the Hong Kong Bank and Mercantile took place in 1982-3.\n\nInsurance\n\nIn the early days of trading in Canton insurance posed something of a problem for the small European community. Members formed a local underwriting syndicate (on the Calcutta pattern) to provide facilities for marine insurance. The Canton Insurance Office was established in 1804 (other records say 1805), and for the first 30 years of its existence it was managed alternately by Jardine's and Dent and Company, changing every three years. A great deal of trust appears to have existed between the Chinese hong merchants and the European traders, and a document shows that Chinqua, a Chinese businessman, promised to make good any loss suffered by a merchant in France, to whom he was shipping tea, without having to prove loss by the return of goods.\n\nThe Union Insurance Society of Canton was established in Canton in 1835, by a number of far-sighted British Merchants under the guidance of Dent and Company. After Dent's went into liquidation, in 1864, Union Insurance became a separate entity. It had already moved its headquarters to Hong Kong in 1842, which is still its home even though it has offices and representatives in many cities in the Far East and agencies throughout the world.\n\nIn 1861, Hong Kong had 73 merchant houses and 18 of these acted as agents for insurance companies. Jardine's has retained its early interest in insurance, and, in 1868, when the Hong Kong Insurance Company was formed, it became the agent. This, a century",
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    {
        "id": 212475,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 29,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "ports. He received a lot of honours from many countries including a baronetcy and other decorations from Britain and China. He was said to have been a “leading expert in insurance, shipping and the import and export business,” and also \"director of eighteen of the leading companies in Hong Kong and Shanghai, chairman and largest shareholder of a number of them.\" We know little of the details of his investments in the modern business in Hong Kong, Canton, or Shanghai, but we understand that he had an investment in some guandu-shangban enterprises and had close relations with Chinese officials. He was probably a multimillionaire by the turn of the century. It was known that when he worked in Jardines, he had been the manager of Jardine's affiliates, the Hong Kong Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. and the Canton Insurance Co., Ltd. He had invested in refined and raw sugar in Shanghai and most of the Yangzi and northern ports of China. He owned a lot of landed properties in Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Tsingtao (Qingdao), and London. He was a director of Humphreys Estate and Finance Co. Ltd., Hong Kong Reclamation Co., Ltd., and Hong Kong Hotel Co., Ltd. at the end of the nineteenth century.\n\nLaw Pak Sheung was the first comprador to the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank when it opened in 1865, and remained the chief comprador until his death in 1877. Law came from the port of Whampoa in Canton. His life in Hong Kong proved very successful. He was an organising director of the Tung Wah Hospital from 1869 to 1871. It became the leading Chinese charitable institution in Hong Kong.\n\nPage 10\n\nLaw died in 1877. He had interests in at least five businesses as mentioned in his will. He might also have had other business interests which were in the name of his sons or other relatives. The five firms mentioned in the will were a ship chartering office, a store, a gold dealer's shop, a native bank, and a general trading company. These he left to his third son Lo Hok Pang (Luo Hepeng), who succeeded him as comprador. In 1879, two years after the death of Law Pak Sheung, his son was said to have had connections with Chinese banks and had invested in a number of firms. He was regarded as one of the leading businessmen in the Chinese community; this was in addition to his position as a comprador. Law might also have had business interests in Canton or elsewhere which were not mentioned in his Hong Kong will. The testator's shares in insurance companies and a Chinese newspaper are signs of one who has moved away from strictly Chinese business enterprises, though the insurance shares were not large, but these were",
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        "id": 212488,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 42,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "22\n\nHao has selected modern enterprises such as steam shipping, coal mines, cotton textile, and machine manufacturing and detected the share of investment by compradors as being substantial.\n\nIn steamship enterprise, compradors' capital in British and American steamship companies established between 1862 and 1875 amounted to 499,975 taels; a modest 19.5% of the total of 2,559,000 taels. However, in steamship companies wholly Chinese-owned and under Chinese directorate between 1871 and 1893, compradors' investment amounted to 54.5% while the government had only 6.94% of the total capital of 1,958,000 taels. In the modern coal mines, compradors' capital amounted to a bigger share of 62.7% or a total of 1,350,116 Mexican dollars. In the total Chinese investment of 18,047,544 dollars in cotton textile manufacturing, compradors' share was 23.23%, second only to the 33.89% of gentry-officials, and in the machine manufacturing industries, the largest share of investment fell to the compradors with a percentage of 27.68 or a total sum of 2,887,000 dollars. The compradors were the first Chinese merchants to invest in the insurance business. They were the pioneers in introducing new types of business such as insurance and later other business methods such as contract, insuring, and limited liability.\n\nNew forms of business like the joint-stock company with limited liability proved successful in attracting investment from the private sector in some guandu shangban enterprises, which also were the first Chinese large-scale modern enterprises like the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co., the Kaiping Coal Mines, and the Shanghai Cotton Cloth Mill, in which compradors' capital shared 77.8, 100.0, and 70.4 percentages respectively. Definitely, compradors played a decisive role in forming the above enterprises, for they were the first generation of modern enterprises owned and operated by Chinese.\n\nCantonese Compradors in Shanghai\n\nThe compradors played the role as entrepreneurs in modern Chinese enterprises. They were not only fund suppliers but also employed new ways of raising the large amounts of capital needed for these large-scale industrial projects. The typical examples of Cantonese compradors active in Shanghai were Xu Run, Tang Tingshu, and Zheng Guanying. They successfully used the joint-stock system in raising capital for the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. in 1873 and Shanghai Cotton",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212490,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "24\n\nAs Table 4 shows, the largest amount of Xu's investment was real property. Xu was said to have started the business in real property when his boss E. Webb advised him to do so before Xu retired from Dent & Co. in 1868. He told Xu that a boom in landed properties in Shanghai would come within a few years as Shanghai was developing and its population was expanding. Xu did more than Webb said; he bought a lot of land and built a number of houses from which he could derive a rental income of about 122,980 taels per year. Xu was quite confident he could derive a large amount of profit even though he had to borrow money at a high rate of interest. Though Xu did plan to share his business with other persons by setting up a new firm named the Baoyuanxiang Real Property Co. with a subscribed capital of four million taels, his plan was unfortunately interrupted when he recognized it was not easy to raise sufficient capital in Shanghai. Even worse, his only partner, Boyd & Co. in England, failed to solicit the capital and suddenly withdrew from partnership. Therefore, he became the sole proprietor liable to all the debts of this company. In 1883, he had accumulated a loan of 2,522,237 taels from twenty-two native banks. Unfortunately, in 1883, Shanghai experienced a financial crisis and foreign banks and the Shenxi bankers withdrew financial credits from the native banks in Shanghai. At a time when real properties were declining in price, Xu was forced to repay debts. He finally became bankrupt. As Xu estimated, due to the recovery from depression in Shanghai after the crisis, the total value of his property in 1883 was now valued at about eighteen million taels. He complained he had lost a million taels.\n\nConcerning Xu's investment in modern enterprises, it is to be noted that he had been active only after his failure in the speculation of landed property in 1883. Table 5 shows Xu's business interests were not only confined to Shanghai but also other parts of China, including Hong Kong. The amount shown in this table is mainly based on Xu's autobiography. It is interesting that in stating his total investment, he had omitted the amount of investment in foreign enterprises and also partnership in the native banks. Perhaps he thought they were not in the category of modern Chinese enterprises. Of his investment in modern Chinese enterprises, the biggest amount was in steam navigation, mines, industrial manufactories, insurance, and land reclamation.43\n\nTang Tingshu (1832-1892)\n\nAs has been described before, Tang Tingshu was born in Zhongshan",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212491,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 45,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "25\n\nItem\n\nTable 5\n\nXu Run's Investment in Modern Enterprises\n\n  \n    Company\n    Amount (T)\n    %\n    Place\n  \n  \n    China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co\n    480,000\n    33.44\n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Yun Wo Insurance Co.\n    100,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Chi Wo Insurance Co.\n    50,000\n    10 45\n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Kaiping Coal Mines\n    150,000\n    \n    Tianjin\n  \n  \n    Guichi Coal Mines\n    100,000\n    \n    Anhui\n  \n  \n    Sanshan Silver Mines\n    60,000\n    \n    Rehe\n  \n  \n    Pingchuan Copper Mines\n    60,000\n    \n    \n  \n  \n    Jinzhou Mines\n    50,000\n    \n    \n  \n  \n    Other Mines\n    10,000\n    29 96\n    \n  \n  \n    Shanghai Cotton Mill\n    50,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Shang Jinglun Cotton Mill\n    170,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Craseman & Hagen's Filanda (Yantai Saosi Ju)\n    10,200\n    \n    Yantai\n  \n  \n    Paper Manufactury\n    20,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Chinese Glass Works Co.\n    30,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Shanghai Dairy Farm Co.\n    30,000\n    \n    Shanghai\n  \n  \n    Hong Kong Liyuan Sugar Refinery\n    30,000\n    \n    Hong Kong\n  \n  \n    Tianyi Land Reclamation Co\n    5,000\n    \n    Jinzhou\n  \n  \n    Taggu Cultivation Co.\n    30,000\n    2.44\n    Tianjin\n  \n  \n    Zhongshan Tongyi Ranyuan Cultivation Co\n    1,000($)\n    \n    Guangdong\n  \n  \n    Total\n    1,435,200\n    99.99\n    \n  \n\n(+$1,000)*\n\n* Mexican dollars have not been added in the total or calculated in the percentage\n\nSource: Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi Xiansheng Run Zixu Nianpu.\n\nbut educated in Hong Kong. He first came to Shanghai as an interpreter in the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1859. It is believed that he was introduced by an officer named Horatio Nelson Lay whom Tang had met in Hong Kong. Tang was recruited as a comprador by the Jardine, Matheson & Co. in 1863 but he left in 1872. During the decade of his compradorial career, he invested, planned, organized and assisted in the sale of stocks of a number of enterprises. These enterprises were called modern because they had adopted a new form of ownership, organization and management. Moreover, some of them such as steam navigation and insurance companies were the first to take place in China. Unlike Xu\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212498,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 52,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "32\n\n29\n\nThe term 'comprador' in Chinese history is quite argumentative. In late Qing times it referred to a commercial broker, an agent and employee of a foreign firm. With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the Republican period, the meaning was gradually expanded beyond its original sense to include politics in a negative meaning or collaboration with foreigners of serving interest of imperialists. In Chinese Marxist scholarship, comprador has taken on a political meaning. See Jung-fang Tsai (1981), The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists, pp. 191-7. However, economic historians such as Wang Jingyu, realizing the role of Chinese merchants in the economic development of the nineteenth century, said they included compradors who had large investment in modern enterprises, been active in huashang fugu huodong as well as buying capital in from foreign aggressive enterprises. See Wang (1965), Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The Activities of Chinese Merchants to Buy Capital-Shares from the Foreign Aggressive Enterprises in China During the Late Nineteenth Century) and (1983b) Shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The Economic Invasion of Western Capitalism on China in Nineteenth Century), pp. 483-526.\n\n10 Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, pp. 4-5.\n\n31\n\nAs Xu himself stated, the estimate value of this amount after discount should be 3,219,470 taels. See ibid, p. 68.\n\n17 Other investments, though the amounts are uncertain, can also be ascertained from his autobiography. They are: a pier company at Guangdong, a grocery at Shanghai; also silk cloth shop, tea shop, partnership in Huya'an Insurance Co., Huaxing Insurance Co., Difeng Co., Shanghai Land Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Tramway Co., Xunhuan Newspaper in Hong Kong, a water works, and Tongyi cultivation company in Guangdong. See Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, preface.\n\n33\n\nSee Liu Kwang-ching (1962), Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, p. 155.\n\n14\n\nSee Hao (1970a), p. 100. As Xia Dongyuan found that in the Zheng's zhushu (will) written in 1914, Zheng regarded 4,088 taels the interest from share-stocks as one of his main sources of income. See Xia (1985b), p. 268.\n\n35 See Zheng Guanying, Zhi Li Zhaomin Fangbo lun zhuang Lundun Hongyuan Gongsi (Letter addressed to Li Zhaomin in discussing the founding of Hongyuan Company in London), in Xia Dongyuan (1988a), pp. 507-3; Wu Chang-chuan (1974), pp. 86-8.\n\n36 As Wang Shui has concluded from various sources, during 1840 to 1894 Chinese compradors had accumulated a total income of about half a billion taels, see Wang (1983), Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An Assessment of Compradors' Income and Its Spending Ways in Qing Dynasty), pp. 298-307.\n\n37 See Thomas G. Rawski (1970), Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875, pp. 451-73.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213881,
        "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-1996",
        "page_number": 233,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "207\n\nThe reply he received from the Registrar-General stated that \"no sound men of business in Hong Kong were connected with the scheme.\" Ending his despatch, the Governor commented that the \"principal promoter [of the company] was Li Yutang, whose name was enough to damn... the Chinese Firms were likely to subscribe only because they dare not refuse.”\n\nThe Governor's comment might have some truth. Li Yutang in years to come would be named the \"Insurance King\" (保險大王) of South China. In an interview with Mr. Li's grandson, I was told how Li Yutang multiplied his wealth in these years. Mr. Li said \"my grandfather converted to Christianity.” I doubt that the asset of Li Yutang in insurance business was his religion or his entrepreneurship. His greatest asset, I suspect was his political influence, or other's belief that he was politically influential.\n\nTo support this speculation I cite the following event. As the attempts to establish a joint-stock company failed, the Siyi men attempted to organize all the regional chambers of commerce in the colony into a “Overseas Chinese Society for the Promotion of Patriotic Subscriptions\". The Governor observed that:\n\nthe circulation [of Canton currency, which had fallen to 30% of its face value] is maintained here (in Hong Kong), in spite of its general unpopularity ... not only by official pressure from Canton but also by means of intimidation practiced by so-called patriotic associations & by the influential persons who are financially interested.\n\nThese \"influential persons who [were] financially interested\" - a reference to the Siyi men, were in actuality the directors of the Bank of Canton, Li Yutang. The Governor recorded that:\n\nIn addition to the authorized issue of $16m...... Li Yuk-tang made an issue of $5m for his own benefit. He left Hong Kong a poor man but has, since his return, invested largely in the Colony and is now reported to be a rich man.\n\nAgainst this background, the Governor of Hong Kong also observed a significant development among the non-Siyi Hong Kong Chinese.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215678,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 455,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "407\n\nTHE LIFE AND TIMES OF\n\nCAPTAIN SAMUEL CORNEL PLANT, MASTER MARINER AND SENIOR INSPECTOR, UPPER YANGTZE RIVER,\n\nCHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS\n\nA.C. BROMFIELD WITH ROSEMARY LEE\n\nHow it started!\n\nGrave Number 8496 28479\n\nSection 12\n\nHong Kong Cemetery\n\nIn memory of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant Upper Yangtze River Inspector of the Chinese Maritime Customs\n\nThe first to command a merchant steamer plying the river (1900). Born Framlingham Suffolk 8th August 1866 Died at sea 26th February 1921\n\nAlso in memory of Alice Sophia Plant, Captain Plant's wife and devoted companion throughout his 20 years of toil on the dangerous section\n\nof the Yangtze River between Ichang and Chunking. Born 29th November 1870. Died at Hong Kong 28th February 1921.\n\n(Restored by members of the Merchant Navy Guild, Hong Kong 1957. Researched by\n\nRosemary J. Pyatt, 23rd December 1997)\n\nArchibald Little and the Three Gorges\n\nIn 1859, a young Scot named Archibald Little, (he was a very large man), started working as a tea-taster for a German company in Kiukiang. He came of a prominent, expatriate, Shanghai family, one of his brothers being a doctor in Shanghai and another the editor of the North China Daily News. He soon became bored with tea-tasting and set up in business for himself, becoming interested in many aspects of trade, brokering and insurance. He was one of the first expatriates to",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "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
    }
]