[ { "id": 214837, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "219\n\n\"Playing at War\": Poor View of Chinese Good Faith and Criticism of Captain Elliot\n\nTurning, now, to their views of the Chinese way of waging war, however much they respected individual courage, our British soldier and sailor authors and their commanders had soon come to form the notion that Chinese leaders were untruthful, deceitful and were not to be trusted in war or diplomacy. They and their colleagues were generally highly suspicious of the deceits and ruses practised by Chinese diplomats and commanders in order to gain time, especially those palpably insincere approaches such as took place during the negotiations attending the operations in the Canton River and the heights above the City in 1841: \"all being eager for the fight, and dreading a messenger of humbug,\" as Commander Bingham put it.31\n\nThey frequently criticized Captain Charles Elliot, the British plenipotentiary, who was making every attempt both to re-open the Canton Trade and to avoid further hostilities. He was not popular when he agreed to the temporary suspension of military and naval operations; and never less so than when he agreed to ransom Canton at the end of May 1841, without consulting the commanders, who were then heavily engaged with the enemy.\n\nAfter the small British force of soldiers, sailors and marines had spent several days' fighting their way onto the heights of Canton, orders had been issued on 25th May for storming the City early on the following day. However, as Belcher recounts, \"At dawn, the ominous white flag was again displayed [by the Chinese] and for some hours there had been repeated cries of \"Elliot, Elliot!,\" as if he had been their protecting joss.\" Sure enough, he continued, a British officer who had lost himself since ten the night before and roughed it out in the paddy fields overnight, presented himself with a despatch from Captain Elliot. \"Dead silence prevailed until it was handed to Sir Le Fleming Senhouse who immediately said \"I protest against it!”\n\n32\n\nMajor Armine Mountain of the 26th Regiment, Deputy Adjutant-General to the Expeditionary Force, was forthright in his condemnation of Elliot, writing home that \"We have been playing at war, instead of waging it.\"33 Mountain was equally scathing of what he saw as the overindulgence shown to the native population adopted at Ting hae", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214839, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "221\n\nChinese officials upon shipwrecked Britons and Indians, and upon captives generally, was strongly condemned throughout the Expeditionary Force. There was universal outrage at the treatment accorded to the survivors of the brig Kite, including the wife of its Master who had been lost in the wreck.\n\n\"Where shall I find language sufficiently strong to execrate the beings that inflicted the following cruelties on wrecked and starving fellow creatures?” asked Commander Bingham in his account.41 The terrible treatment of Captain Stead of the Pestonjee transport, ending in his death, excited similar outrage;42 as did, when they became known, the brutalities and executions visited upon many of the mainly Indian personnel on board another transport, the Nerbudda, cast away on Formosa.43\n\nPoor treatment of Chinese by Other Chinese\n\nHowever, during the course of the War, many British officers came to realize that ill treatment of prisoners by the Chinese authorities was the norm in dealing with their own population. They also came to see that some Chinese treated their fellow-countrymen very badly. Upon taking Chinese towns and cities, they were astonished at the Chinese mobs that came out to loot them, and did so much more effectively than the British troops who had captured them. Similarly, during naval operations along the coast the crews of British warships saw how ruthlessly Chinese pirates treated peaceful traders and harmless villagers.\n\nBritish commanders' readiness to attack the pirate ships always won the heartfelt appreciation of Chinese fishermen and country people. Bingham cites a good example. Some fishermen had pointed out three pirate junks off the mouth of the Pei-Ho. A colleague's subsequent encounter with them, upon his boats' crews being attacked, led the sufferers to express \"the most lively feelings of gratitude for being delivered from the vagabonds who had been for some time plundering them.\"44 Bingham also mentions the effrontery of several pirate craft that had hoped to evade attention by anchoring near his ship but had been informed against by the people they had been plundering.44\n\n45", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]