[
    {
        "id": 205547,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 89,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "84\n\nARMANDO M, DA SILVA\n\nOne could reasonably suspect that the edifice was used more for signalling and coast watching than for outright defence, and as a navigational landmark. The stone walls are made from local material, the porphyritic granite. Certain nearby boulders of this granite have drill markings on them, the drill holes 3 or 4 inches apart. The fort appears to be built on an older stone base measuring some 225 by 130 feet, the walls of which are surmounted by superstructure walls of fired gray bricks (plate 8). A red clay found nearby, when mixed with lime, blocked and fired, could have produced this type of Chinese gray brick. The stone blocks and the gray bricks are held in place by lime cement made of lime mortar mixed with fine sand particles.5 The possibility that the bricks were produced from materials close at hand should not be dismissed.\n\nMany of the stone blocks and gray bricks have subsequently been removed by villagers for their own use. The Tin Hau temple nearby, for example, may have been partly constructed from bricks looted from the old fort (plate 9).\n\nWhen was the station constructed? The San On Yuen Chi makes no mention of any date but hints that law and order were established after troops were stationed at various outposts on the Chu Kong estuary after the order for the Coastal withdrawal (tsin hoi) had been rescinded in 1669. We have a brief mention in that district gazetteer that the Kai Yik Kok fort, as well as the forts located at Nam Tau and Chik Wan further up the estuary, were garrisoned by troops engaged in the restoration of order in \"dangerous\" areas not previously altogether under their control.\n\nThe persistent belief, still current today, that the ruin was of Dutch origin derives from the fact that Dutch ships in the early decades of the 17th century frequently stopped by the offshore islands of the Chu Kong estuary to take potable water. They were denied anchorage in Macau by the Portuguese and prohibited from entering Chinese ports by the Chinese. The myth of Dutch origin has been reinforced by confusion of the name with that of the Dutch fort of Castel Zeelandia built on Taiwan in the 17th century, which is also known as Fan Lau ($), meaning \"foreign building\". It takes no stretch of the imagination to ascribe to the fort at Kai Yik Kok, a Dutch, or Portuguese, or any other foreign origin. Fan\n\n...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208946,
        "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-1980",
        "page_number": 108,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "76\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\nJapanese junks owned or commanded by Portuguese interlopers. Much of their cargo consisted of supplies such as wheat-flour, salted meat and fish, but also woven silk, screens, cutlery, arms and armour, and lacquer ware. Some of the supplies were used to furnish the ships sailing to Mexico. Payment was made by the Spaniards in silver rials and the Japanese traders took back raw Chinese silk, gold, deerskins, brazil-wood, palmwine, Spanish wine, glass and other European curiosities as well as old Chinese pottery and porcelain found in graves in the Philippines and used by connoisseurs of the tea ceremony.28\n\nThe Macaonese felt themselves threatened by this trade between Manila, China and Japan—particularly the re-export of Chinese silk from Manila—but they were of course keen to continue trading with Manila themselves. Portuguese ships, sometimes sailing from India via Macau, would come every year to Manila with African slaves, Indian cottons, spices, amber, ivory, precious stones, toys and curiosities from India, Persian and Turkish carpets, gilded furniture made in Macau and \"other commodities of great curiosity and perfection\".29\n\nIn 1624 the Viceroy rejected the petition of the Senado of Macau that the Manila voyages be officially sanctioned but the Macau-Manila trade in silk was sufficiently profitable to both sides for it to survive all bans. It remained in Portuguese hands and there were in consequence some who advocated Macau transferring its allegiance from Portugal to Spain.30 In 1625 the Spanish founded a settlement which they called La Santissima Trindad at Keelung on the northern tip of Taiwan, partly as a counterweight to the Dutch settlement of Fort Zeelandia established in Taiwan the previous year and partly as an entrepot for the Chinese silk trade which they hoped might eventually supersede Macau. The Governor of the Philippines, D. Fernando de Silva, stated in 1626 that the Dutch had already diverted much of the carrying trade in silk to Fort Zeelandia. \"This damage is clearly seen\", he wrote, \"from the fact that the fifty Chinese ships which have come to these islands have brought less than forty piculs of silk, whereas the enemy have 900 excluding the textiles and, if it were not for what has been brought from Macau the ships from Nueva España would have nothing to carry\". The short-lived Spanish attempt to lessen Manila's dependence on Macau ended with the fall of La Santissima Trindad to the Dutch in 1642.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208950,
        "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-1980",
        "page_number": 112,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "80\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\n24 Investigations at Manila concerning trade with Macau. In E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson (eds.). The Philippine Islands 1493-1803. 55 vols. Cleveland, Ohio, 1905. VIII. pp. 174-196.\n\n25 Miguel de Benevides, Bishop of Nueva Segovia to the King. Tulac, 17 May 1599. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. X. p. 193.\n\n26 Memorial to the Council. 26 July 1586. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. VI. p. 169.\n\n27 See Morga, op cit., pp. 136-149, Boxer, Fidalgos, pp. 46-47, Idem, Great Ship, pp. 61-62, Spate, op cit., pp. 163-164.\n\n28 Morga, op cit., p. 341 and Boxer, Great Ship, p. 73.\n\n29 Morga, op cit., pp. 341-342.\n\n30 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 111.\n\n31 D. Fernando de Silva to the King. 30 July 1626. In Boletin de la Sociedade Geografica de Madrid. XII. pp. 142 sqq. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, p. 144. For an account of Fort Zeelandia see F. R. J. Verhoeven, Bijdragen tot de oudere koloniale geschiedenis van het eiland Formosa. The Hague, 1930.\n\n32 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 117.\n\n33 On the Red Seal ships see Boxer. Christian century, pp. 261-267 and N. Peri. Essai sur les rélations du Japon et de l'Indochine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Hanoi, 1923.\n\n34 Antonio Francisco Cardim S.J. Relação der gloriosa morte de quatro embaixadores portuguezes da cidade de Macao com sincoenta e sete Christãos de sua Companhia... a tres de Agosto de 1640. Lisbon, 1643. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, pp. 165-166.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210386,
        "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-1984",
        "page_number": 357,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "336\n\nThis book contains several technical flaws. Many of the Chinese works and place names romanized in the text do not appear in the glossary and place name index. The first two chapters present differing numbers for the size of the Dutch military force found on Taiwan. Hsu (p. 15) using a Japanese translation of the Dagh-Register, Batavia and an article by Nakamura Takashi, states that the Dutch forces never exceeded 2000 while Wang (p. 36) gives no source but states that the Dutch troops numbered 2200. A similar figure to Wang's can be found in James W. Davidson's The Island of Formosa. There are also some technical mistakes such as no scale nor direction indicated on a map (p. 149) and lack of unified spelling for the city of Jilong (Keelung, p. xv; Chilung, p. 140). The map on page 40, presumably indicating migration routes in Taiwan during the late seventeenth century, shows Fort Zeelandia (near modern Tainan) on the mainland portion of Taiwan as it is today due to silting at the mouth of the Yanshui River. Other maps or pictures display the fort on a sandspit, in some cases connected to the main island (pp. 29 and 119) and in one case on a separate small island (p. 13). On the linguistic side, the character for a Chinese picul which is pronounced dan (tan) is romanized by its other pronunciation (shih) which means a rock or stone.\n\nMore crucial is the lack of a central theme to the essays selected as a whole. This is perhaps an inescapable problem of a book in which several authors are presenting their findings on singular aspects of a vast and complex subject. The contribution of this book, therefore, lies in the collection, within one English volume, of articles on various aspects of Taiwan's historical geography.\n\nRICHARD LOUIS EDMONDS\n\nThe University of Hong Kong\n\nThe Birth of Vietnam, by Keith Weller Taylor, Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1983. xxi + 397pp, tables, maps.\n\nKeith Taylor has provided a much needed and detailed account of Vietnamese history during the first millennium — its formative",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    }
]