[
    {
        "id": 206969,
        "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": 40,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "34 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna was joined by Father Guerlach, a missionary who had lived in the Moï region for many years and spoke several local dialects. On 3 June 1888, the members of the confederation accepted a constitution drawn up by Mayréna, which made him king. It is suggested by Marcel Ner1 and other scholars that Mayréna owed much of his success to his skill at prestidigitation, for the Moï were extremely superstitious and accepted his tricks as a sign of moral excellence and divinity. \n\nMayréna by a surprising turn of fortune had become Marie, King of the Sedangs. The new kingdom was named after the Sedangs simply because this tribe formed the most populous element in the confederation of Moï tribesmen. He made Mercurol, the middle-aged, malaria-riddled adventurer from Saigon, the Marquis of Henoui, and created a number of orders of chivalry. His most fanciful creation was the Order of Merit pour récompenser les lettres, les arts, les sciences, l'industrie et le dévouement à la maison royale. It is difficult to understand for whom this order was intended since the Sedangs were totally illiterate. His Annamite mistress—Ahnaïa20—became Queen of the Sedangs, but although the official religion of the kingdom was now Catholicism, the young Ahnaïa resolutely refused to give up her pagan practices, much to the disgust of the missionaries who had foregathered at Mayréna's capital, Kon-Djeri, where the royal palace was a primitive hut above which, however, the royal standard fluttered. \n\nMayréna led his warriors into several campaigns against recalcitrant tribes with varying success; but his real problem was not one of warfare but of money. He lacked the means to live in the style which he now felt was his due. It was the search, therefore, for financial support which led him to Hanoi and Haiphong and in November 1888 to Hong Kong. \n\nThe Marquis de Morès21 \n\nAntoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent-Manca de Vallombrosa, marquis de Morès et de Monte-Maggiore, was born in Paris in 1858. Unlike Mayréna, he was of noble blood. His ancestors, the Spanish Mancas, had been granted feudal estates in Sardinia in the fourteenth century. The family remained based in Sardinia until the early nineteenth century when the Marquis' grandfather settled in France. Morès received the conventional education of one of his class; he was first tutored by an abbé, then sent to the Catholic",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206974,
        "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": 45,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n39\n\ntic, sly campaign that gradually revealed Mayréna's shady past. Bain at first simply published extracts about Mayréna from the Courrier d'Haiphong and other sources. On 24 December the Mail reported that there was a rumour in town that M. de Mayrénna (sic) King of the Sedangs, has placed his country under a German protectorate We can scarcely believe the report, although the king does not seem to be consumed with a desire to speedily revisit his new found subjects, and might not regret if he were pensioned and the very heavy responsibilities of Kingship taken off his shoulders'. On 26 December two columns were again published on Mayréna and this time the Mail quoted from an article by Father Guerlach in the Courrier, which made clear that the Mission had been swindled by Mayréna and that he was appallingly dishonest.\n\nThe attacks upon Mayréna's integrity by Bain did not go unchallenged. The King was defended with magnificent pomposity by Fraser-Smith, editor of the Telegraph. The rival editors excoriated each other's opinions with a ludicrous solemnity, reminiscent of the pen-and-ink duels fought daily by Mr. Pott and Mr. Slurk at the time of the Eatanswill election in Pickwick Papers. Father Guerlach's disclosures, for example, were dismissed by Fraser-Smith in these words: 'like most missionary utterances, this one breathes hatred and uncharitableness throughout, and on that account loses any influence on the impartial reader',35\n\nOn 14 January Bain further disclosed that there were 'warrants out for the arrest of the \"King of the Sedangs\" should he touch French territory. He is accused of having declared himself King of a country under French protection; and for one or two other reasons our local monarch would find Saigon an extremely hot place if he returned there'. The next day Bain reported that another letter from Father Guerlach had been published in the Courrier and ‘the charge therein made against the \"King of the Sedangs\" is of so serious a character that we hesitate to translate it, not being in a position to verify the statement. We may say, however, that the letter contains a warning against placing reliance on a letter of credit for 200,000 frs, purporting to be signed by Monseigneur Van Camelbecke, Bishop of Quinhon, no such letter having been written or signed by the Bishop.'\n\nOn 7 January 1889 the Mail published a long editorial entitled \"The King of the Sedangs-Some Interesting Revelations', in which\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206986,
        "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": 57,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG \n\n51 \n\nboarded Huck Finn's raft on the Mississippi went by the names of the Duke of Bilgewater (Bridgewater) and the Dauphin. But a title not only helped to disarm potential sceptics but allowed an adventurer to secure credit, often a necessity for the realisation of his schemes. Mayréna, as we have seen, kept himself afloat for some time by the sale of bogus titles, decorations and honours. A title, as it were, gave the claimant a fake persona, a social mask or facade behind which the predator could lurk. In this century, however, a devaluation of titles has taken place coincident with the rise of meritocracy.\n\nPoor communications helped an adventurer of the impostor or swindler type, for if knowledge of his past leaked out too soon, this would undermine any claim to respectability and diminish confidence in his intentions. News flowed more sluggishly in the nineteenth century, though it was a period of great achievements in the development of a network of world-wide communications. In 1853 the P. and O. had established a regular mail service between Hong Kong and Calcutta, thus establishing fortnightly communications with England; in 1863 the French Messageries Maritimes opened a route to the East; telegraph connection with Manila was achieved in 1880, with Canton in 1882. Nevertheless, mail, newspapers, and reading matter of all kinds took time — usually a month — to reach Hong Kong from Europe, even at the end of the century. There was also no Interpol to flash news by telegraph or wireless about international swindlers, pretenders and other social pests. The Hong Kong public had to wait several weeks before Le Courrier d'Haiphong brought news of the accusations Father Guerlach had levelled against Mayréna. It was not until 24 December 1888, six weeks after his arrival in Hong Kong, that the general public acquired some knowledge of Mayréna's chicanery and general untrustworthiness.\n\nIt was not only the pursuit of adventure, of fame or fortune, that drew adventurers to alien shores. Some left their homelands to escape from the cultural constraints and legal bind of their own societies — an escape, as they saw it, into freedom, innocence and, its corollary, libertinage.57 Laurence Hope, the wife of Lieutenant-General M. H. Nicolson of the Bengal Army, in 1902 wrote:\n\nUpon the City Ramparts, lit up by sunset gleam,\n\nThe Blue eyes that conquer, meet the Darker eyes that dream,58",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]