[ { "id": 204648, "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-1963", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n115\n\njourney by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China.\n\nIn 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.\n\nThe formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed.\n\nIn 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204971, "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-1965", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "70 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nmiddlemen in trade between the two countries. There was a flavour of irony in this, as the Portuguese were to prove as great pirates as the Japanese, Their most famous pirate was Mendes Pinto, who flourished in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and who seems to have been a combination of Sir Henry Morgan and Baron Munchausen. Pinto's exploits are characteristic of Portuguese history during those early centuries, displaying that amazing mixture of gallantry and greed, of religious zeal, bigotry, and cruelty. \n\nThe eastern seas had always been full of violence, and the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, and the Dutch a century later, increased that violence. The Dutch lacked the religious zeal of the Portuguese, but substituted an equally unattractive obsession with trade. Much of the European trade in the Far East at that time was based on piracy. The Dutch, for instance, were excluded from direct trade with China until 1729, and in their Japan trade in which Chinese silk was the most important commodity they obtained much of their silk by plundering Portuguese and Chinese ships. \n\n— \n\nThe persistence of piracy in Chinese waters for so long after regular trade had been established there by Europeans, was due to the peculiar conditions under which that trade developed. In India, and in the East Indies, European trade was succeeded by a steady increase in European power, although in both places there was a considerable time lag between establishing political power on land and the suppression of piracy at sea. \n\nBy the mid-nineteenth century, however, British and Dutch naval power had made Indian and East Indian waters comparatively safe for European commerce. The situation in China was very different, however, and piracy continued there for fully another century. Not until after the First China War of 1841-42 were there any centres of European power in China, and the few centres established then were separated from each other by hundreds of miles of Chinese territory. The situation was aggravated by the increasing anarchy and lawlessness which became endemic over much of coastal China from the early nineteenth century, as the authority and power of the Manchu Government declined. \n\nWhen the East India Company's monopoly of the China trade was abolished in 1833, and the trade thrown open to all comers,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204977, "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-1965", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "76\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe countryside for miles from the coast. The leaders of such fleets were often opposed to the ruling dynasty, sometimes being disaffected former high officials. Koxinga, the greatest of all Chinese pirates, comes into this category. Koxinga was a supporter of the fallen Ming Dynasty against the Manchus, and the Chinese honour him to this day as a great patriot. His greatest exploit was the capture of Formosa from the Dutch in 1661. This type of rebel cum bandit cum pirate continued to appear down to modern times.\n\nThe expansion of the China trade, and the opening of Japan to foreign trade resulted in a great increase in British naval forces in the Far East. The first naval ships to operate in the China seas were based on the East Indies station, but very soon China became an important sphere of naval operations on her own. The suppression of piracy was only one of the Navy's responsibilities. The distance between Britain and China meant that unusual and interesting duties were often entrusted to naval officers, especially before telegraphic communications were established and when senior Foreign Office or Diplomatic officials were unavailable. Hong Kong became the headquarters of the China station, which extended from Singapore to Shanghai, and later to Japan. It continued as such until, as the result of a reorientation of naval policy in the inter-war period, Singapore became the major British naval base in the Far East. Even after that Hong Kong continued to be the headquarters of the anti-piracy forces.\n\nUntil France sent naval forces to co-operate with the Royal Navy in the Second China War, the Royal Navy was the only effective naval force in the China seas, and undertook the protection of all shipping. Even after the United States and France stationed naval forces permanently in these waters, the major responsibility for the suppression of piracy remained with the Royal Navy. It was British policy to station a warship at or near each treaty port, whether it was a coastal or a river port. This meant warships of two distinct types. There were the larger ships and their auxiliaries, which only saw action on rare occasions, and which were based in Hong Kong, with a summer cruise to Wei-hai-wei. Then there were the shallow-draft river gunboats, specially designed to operate on the Yangtze and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205330, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n85\n\nwere very small, but had very powerful engines and steering gears. Only the high passenger and freight charges enabled them to run at a profit. One of the most important cargoes from the Upper Yangtse was tung oil, which was latterly carried in bulk. This oil was used in the manufacture of high quality paints and lacquers, and was so valuable that the privilege of cleaning out the cargo pumps after discharge was one of the most highly prized perquisites of the engine room staff. The Upper Yangtse was too dangerous for night navigation, so that the Gorge boats anchored each night at dusk, and set off again at dawn. Officers on these ships were paid a special bonus after a season on the Upper River, and also given local leave.\n\nBecause they operated in inland waters, the Yangtse riverboats were exempt from certain of the manning regulations which applied to deep sea British ships. Certificated masters and chief mates were always carried, but sometimes the second mates had no British qualifications, and were either White Russians or Chinese. During the inter-war years these White Russians were often former officers of the Imperial Russian Navy, and without exception were very capable and efficient. On the engine room side the chief and second engineers had British qualifications, but sometimes Chinese third engineers were employed,\n\nThe opium clipper tradition inherited by the 'China coasters' resulted in smart and well run ships, a credit to the owners and crews concerned. The pre-war 'China coasters' were probably the smartest ships in Britain's Merchant Navy, and their bright paintwork, gleaming brass work, and smart red-sashed quartermasters would have gladdened the heart of old Admiral Benbow. Their closest rivals under the Red Ensign were the coasters of the Straits Steamship Company which were based on Singapore, and which traded round Malaya and the East Indies. 'China coasters', apart from officers, had all Chinese crews, while the Straits coasters and their Dutch K.L.M. rivals had Malays on deck and Chinese down below, a good combination in pre-Sukarno days. Sailors and firemen sometimes spent a lifetime on one ship, and often the bosun and Number One Fireman would have started their careers on the same ship twenty-five years earlier. The Arab and Indian practice of the bosun and Number One being responsible for their department was followed on the China coast, and each department was very much a family and clan affair.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206007, "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-1970", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nmarine surveyor was appointed to enforce the provisions of this Act. This resulted in many of the emigrant ships leaving Hong Kong harbour with the prescribed number of passengers on board, and then picking up many more outside Green Island, on its western limits. Even the very modest space of 12 square feet (6 feet by 2 feet) was only provided in the few good ships, and in some sailing ships each coolie had only 8 square feet. Another step to remedy abuse was taken in 1869, when emigration of Chinese to places outside the British Empire was prohibited. A more important step outside China was the appointment of British officials as Protectors of Chinese in Singapore and Penang in 1877 and 1880 respectively, followed in 1901 by the appointment of similar Dutch officials in Indonesia. (It should be remembered in any comparison between British and Dutch colonial administrations, that slavery was not abolished in the Dutch East Indies until 1860). Perhaps the last major improvement was taken in 1914, when Britain abolished indentured labour throughout the British Empire, an act of altruism which destroyed the Penang sugar industry.\n\nBesides emigration to the Nanyang and to South America, the discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1849 and 1851 respectively, started Chinese emigration to both places; and the first official returns of emigrants from Hong Kong in 1854 showed 10,491 emigrants leaving for California and 4,341 for Australia. The Chinese called California ‘Kam Shan', Golden Mountains; and Australia San Kam Shan, 'New Golden Mountains', a name this country still retains among many Chinese to this day.\n\nMost of the emigration to California and Australia was voluntary, and as stated above, the greatest abuses in the emigrant trade involved South America and the West Indies, and in particular the Peruvian guano islands and Cuba. In 1856, for instance, the master of a British ship which had left Hong Kong with 332 emigrants for Cuba, reported losing 128 from suicide and disease during the voyage. The first suicide took place on the first day out, and there was an average of three per day until the ship passed through the Sunda Straits. The captain had received $70 in passage money for each man who boarded the ship in Hong Kong, and collected a further $400 for every one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206775, "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-1973", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "46 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nsteamships in India operated on the Hoogly in the early 1820s, mainly as tug boats. \n\nThe first steamship in the Dutch East Indies was the Van der Capellen, a paddle steamer of 230 tons, designed to operate a coastal service in Java. The Van der Capellen was built by a consortium of British merchants in Sourabaya in 1825, and equipped with engines built by Fawcett and Company of Birmingham. \n\nDue to the close association between British India and Canton through the East India Company, it was not long before steamships were introduced on the Canton River. Although he did not live to see his scheme carried through, a Mr. T. J. Robarts of the Company's Canton staff is the pioneer of steam navigation in China. When on leave in London in 1821, just nine years after the Comet was launched on the Clyde, he suggested to the Court of Directors that a steam tug could be usefully employed on the Canton River. Because it was thought that the Chinese might object, his scheme was turned down, but Mr. Robarts decided to go ahead on his own. He ordered two 16 horse-power engines and a copper boiler from Henry Maudslay and Company of London, and a hull of oak frames; all of which arrived at Canton in 1822 and aroused great curiosity and admiration. Unfortunately, bad health caused Mr. Robarts to retire prematurely, and there was no one at Canton able, or willing to continue with his scheme. Everything was therefore sent to Calcutta, and arrived there in June 1822. \n\nThe parts were assembled at Kyd and Company's yard at Kidderpore, and the vessel, known as the Diana, was launched on 12th July 1823. However, the original oak hull was discarded in favour of a new hull built locally of teak. The name Diana was taken from the figurehead which had accompanied the original hull. The total cost of the Diana was 70,000 rupees, and the government declining to take any part in the enterprise--this was financed by a group of Indian agency houses. \n\nThe Diana ran successfully, but not profitably, on the Hoogly for a year, and was then sold to the government for use in the Burma War, 1824-1826. It was Captain Marryat, then the senior naval officer in India, who recommended her purchase to the government. The Diana took part in the first expedition to Rangoon, and proved so useful that she was retained on the Irawaddy for the whole of the war. She suffered at times from overloading, as not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206968, "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-1974", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n33\n\nLegion of Honour for Bravery. That same year he published Souvenirs de la Cochinchine,17 an account of his life and adventures in Indo-China in the years 1863-1868. It is extremely difficult to decide what is fact and fiction in this chronicle for Mayréna had already matured into a remarkable mythologiser and phantasist—a monumental liar.\n\nLittle is known about Mayréna's life for some years after 1871, except that he set himself up as a banker in Paris, dabbled in journalism and led the existence of a boulevardier, ogling the girls at Tortoni's and the Napolitain. Then in July 1883 he was accused of swindling, a warrant for his arrest issued, and he fled to Holland. From Holland he embarked for the Dutch East Indies and arrived there penniless in September 1883. In August 1884 he was repatriated to France at the expense of the Dutch colonial administration. But only a few weeks after his return to France he was again on his way back to the East, this time as leader of a scientific expedition of exploration to Java, financed by the Baron Roger Seillière.\n\nMayréna did not proceed to Java as planned but stayed on in Saigon. The 30,000 francs, handed to him by the Baron for equipping the expedition, he spent lavishly in the cafés of Saigon, relating wild Munchausen-like tales of his previous adventures in the East. The police soon compiled an extensive dossier on this troublesome fellow, who was suspected of gunrunning, swindling, and a variety of other offences. In August 1885, the Commissioner of Police wrote of Mayréna and his brother, who had accompanied him on this last trip, that they were 'faiseurs et monteurs de sociétés à exploiter les naifs'.18\n\nMayréna made several expeditions into the interior of Indo-China in the years 1885 to 1888, but it was his last journey which concerns us here. In March 1888 he landed on the coast at Quinhon at the head of a semi-official expedition of exploration into the independent region of the Moï country. The expedition had the blessing of the Secretary-General at Saigon. On 21 April 1888 the party left Quinhon. It included a seedy adventurer from Saigon, Mercurol; a trader, Paoli; two Annamite women; a few Chinese; and a contingent of local levies and porters. Mayréna was amazingly successful in a short space of time. He signed a treaty with an important Moï chief and soon succeeded in welding together a number of disparate Moï tribes into a confederation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208803, "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-1979", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n233\n\nview, states \"this volume will occupy an essential place . . . . in any library claiming to cover the affairs of the Far East in general and those of south-east Asia in particular\". He adds that it is “much more than a tale of crime. It touches unceasingly, and sometimes commandingly, the everyday life's economic activities and official governments of the Chinese population, incidentally throwing sharp lights and shades on the character, social organization, and politics of the Chinese A vivid piece of research not....\n\ndead history + 抒 + + a scrap of\n\nI am not an expert on secret societies, nor have much to offer by way of useful comment on the modern period of the book, but I am most impressed with the account given of Chinese associations in the early period of Chinese immigration and the reaction of the British Colonial authorities to the problems encountered in their train. They were dealing with an enigma and found it difficult to separate the clearly often respectable side of Chinese associations from the secret society or criminal aspect. Where they could be separated (which was not always the case) each type of society had yet come together for mutual self-help. Even the most criminal retained this feature which was so important and continuing a part of the movement. For me, interested in the association side of Chinese life at home and abroad — where, it is necessary to remind oneself, it had initially to operate against a background of all-male life in one or more alien cultures and a different climate — this confusion, the variety across the spectrum and the wealth of material provided in the book are more fascinating than the criminal involvement of certain societies and their leaders at different times.*\n\n* This confusion was noted by others in touch with Chinese in Colonial Society at the time. In this connection, the following extract from a work by an English Presbyterian missionary in Singapore (Archibald Lamont writing under the pseudonym \"John Coming Chinaman\" in Bright Celestials, The Chinaman of Home and Abroad (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1894)) may be of interest. At pp. 183-184 he relates a conversation by his hero, a Chinese emigrant who is discussing a secret society with his employer, a Dutch planter in the East Indies.\n\n'But although our Society has its dangerous and unworthy subsections and cliques, comprising men who use Society privileges for selfish and criminal ends,' said Tek Chiu, ‘our real aims are the highest and the best. And although there are bad men in our membership, the loyalty that we owe to the Society becomes all the greater. We who are free from crime act as a conscience to the blackguards, who, however bad they may be, will on account of the oath that binds them, do us no wrong. And on the other hand, we may do them much good in dissuading them from evil courses.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213205, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "6\n\nMissionaries and religious institutions\n\nThe Rev. Karl Friedrich August Gutslaff - or as he became known in his later life Rev. Charles Gutzlaff was a colourful and significant figure in the introduction of Protestant Christianity among both the overseas Chinese and those who lived in China. He was born in Pomerania in 1803 and came to the Dutch East Indies as an agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1827. He severed his relationship with the society and became an independent missionary agent. To secure funds for his work he successfully publicised the missionary cause in Europe and America. His books, articles and letters aroused much interest and some controversy. Critics regarded his assessment of the prospects for the easy and immediate conversion of China as too visionary, but this did not prevent a large number of sympathetic supporters from forming societies to undergird his work,\n\nBefore settling in Macao in 1830, Gutzlaff was in Singapore and Bangkok. He was an able linguist and mastered a number of Chinese dialects. When hostilities broke out between Britain and China in 1838, the English employed him as an interpreter. During the British occupation of Chusan he was appointed a magistrate, and on the untimely death in Hong Kong of John Morrison the son of the Rev. Robert Morrison, Gutzlaff succeeded him as the Chinese Secretary of the British Superintendent of Trade in China and the Hong Kong Government. He remained in this well-paid post until his death in 1851. His official duties did not prevent him from continuing his missionary activities.\n\nGutzlaff was convinced that China should be converted by Chinese. To further this he organised the Chinese Union in 1844. Its members were converts who were given a somewhat brief course of instruction and then, carrying bundles of tracts and scriptures, were sent to spread the Christian message in the interior of China. The scheme was imaginative, but Gutzlaff did not have the time nor practicability to supervise it closely; consequently, some of his trainees used it for their own enrichment. They pocketed the travel allowance, while sheltering in Kowloon or their home village, and then resold the Christian literature back to the publisher, and submitted false reports of their evangelistic achievements in China. Nonetheless, the Union made its impact on China, particularly providing Christian elements for the ideology of the Tai Ping rebellion in China in the 1850s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215805, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "37\n\nforces to the north would tire themselves out trying to link up with the beachhead. Should the Chinese collapse in the face of a Japanese attack, then an Allied campaign to recapture Hong Kong would be jeopardized.\n\nJapan had an incentive to retain Hong Kong. Besides being a part of Japanese-held China, Hong Kong also lay just outside Japan's Inner Zone. This zone included Japan Proper, Korea, Manchuria, North China, Formosa, the Pescadores, the Ryukyus, and the Japanese half of Sakhalin Island. Well before the war, the British had already gained an appreciation that a Hong Kong in Japanese hands would augment the defence of the Inner Zone. Moreover, Hong Kong helped guard Japan's LoC to points west and her oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese could still afford to trade space for time by forfeiting many other parts of their Pacific empire to the Allies, but they were certain to defend their Inner Zone and the positions that anchored their LoC to and from it with the utmost vigour. If the Japanese lost Hong Kong, this would provide hope to people living under Japanese rule elsewhere, while it would send a message to the Japanese people that the war was proceeding unfavourably for them.\n\nBy late 1943, the Allies had gained the upper hand over the Japanese in the Pacific. It was the Allies who could dictate where the next move would fall. As China was still in the game, Allied planners began to take a closer look at the feasibility of a Hong Kong campaign. One opponent the Allies couldn't overcome, however, was Mother Nature, so heed was paid to Hong Kong's weather and how it could affect an Allied campaign there.\n\nA timeless enemy\n\nNature at its cruellest is a phenomenon that humanity's best efforts still cannot match. Even during a high-technology conflict like World War II, the weather proved to be as indomitable a nemesis as it had been throughout the history of war.\n\nWith World War II being fought over a greater expanse of the planet than any other war in history, its participants had to endure extreme variations in the weather, like the freezing cold of the Arctic and the Soviet Union to the sweltering heat of New Guinea, or the oppressive humidity of the South Pacific to the barren aridity of North", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]