[ { "id": 204590, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "60\n\nTHE OLD BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING, 1860-1959\n\nBased on a lecture delivered on 20 August, 1962\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG, M.A.*\n\nOn the afternoon of March 26th, 1861, Frederick Bruce, the first British minister to China to reside in Peking, entered the grounds of the former palace of Duke I-liang, and the history of the old British Legation had begun. The desire of Great Britain to have a minister resident in the capital was of long standing, and had its origins in the eighteenth century. From at least 1760, some English merchants in Canton had been arguing that only when an ambassador from England resided at Peking would their grievances be properly represented to the Emperor of China and their position improve. Eventually, this point of view was strong enough to influence the Government of England. Indeed, one of the prime objects of the embassy of Lord Macartney to the Court of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793 was to secure for England just such permanent representation at Peking. However, there was not the slightest chance that such a request would be granted. All foreign embassies to China were regarded as tributary missions of a temporary nature, and all foreign countries as inferior. Even the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, and the subsequent Treaty of Nanking failed to obtain this object. From the Chinese point of view, relations with the western barbarians were still a local matter to be carried on by the Governor-General at Canton or by the Governor-General at Nanking. The foreign powers, for their part, were still unable to gain direct communication with the Imperial Government at Peking, and therefore were unable to protest effectively when the treaties did not appear to be working properly, or when they wished to revise them. This was the background to the War of 1858-1860, in which English and French forces were used to secure the Treaties of Tientsin, by which the earlier treaties were revised. Article III of the British Treaty of Tientsin stated (in part): \"It is further agreed that Her Majesty's Government may\n\n* Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. Author of An Embassy to China, reviewed on page 136 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204591, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n61\n\nacquire at Peking a site for Building, or may hire Houses, for the accommodation of Her Majesty's mission, and that the Chinese Government will assist it in so doing\". Then, when the Imperial Government appeared to procrastinate over the ratification of these treaties, another English and French force fought its way to the capital and compelled the Manchu authorities to ratify them by the Convention of Peking. This was signed by the British envoy, Lord Elgin,1 and by Prince Kung,2 the chief Chinese representative, on October 24th, 1860 in the Hall of Ceremonies situated in what was later to be called Legation Street. The second clause of the Convention stated that \"Her Britannic Majesty's Representative will henceforward reside permanently, or occasionally, at Peking, as Her Britannic Majesty shall be pleased to decide”. \n\nLord Elgin proposed that Prince Kung's own residence should be rented to the British, but Prince Kung memorialized the throne as follows: \n\nAs regards the matter of the English residing at the capital in the near future, we have been discussing it with them during the past few days. The chief barbarian official [Lord Elgin] considers that the quarters in Prince I's [Prince Kung] palace are spacious and he insists that it is to be their future residence at the capital. Moreover, he stated that there were still open spaces in the palace and that he wants to build houses there himself. It seems to your ministers that to \n\n1 James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin. He served as Governor-General of Canada 1846-1854. In 1857 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to China and signed the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, returning to England early in 1859. In 1860 he was again sent to China as special envoy, and signed the Convention of Peking. He returned to England in 1861 and was appointed Governor-General of India in the same year. He died in India in 1863. \n\nHis younger brother Frederick William Bruce held the post of Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong from 9 February 1844 until 27 June 1846. In 1857 he accompanied his elder brother to China as principal secretary. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Emperor of China in December 1858, but had to wait until March 1861 before actually taking up residence in Peking. He left China on his appointment as British Minister to Washington in 1865. \n\n2 I-hsin (1833-1898), the first Prince Kung, was the sixth son of Emperor Tao-kuang. When the joint French and British forces approached Peking in September 1860 the Emperor Hsien-feng fled to Jehol leaving his half-brother, Prince Kung, to make peace with the allies. When a prototype Chinese foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, was set up in 1861, Prince Kung was in charge of it, and he played an important part in Chinese affairs for the next fifteen years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204593, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n63\n\nThese extracts give the official Chinese version of how the British came to occupy their first Legation quarters, and agree closely with Lord Elgin's own account contained in a despatch to Lord John Russell, the Foreign Secretary, dated Tientsin, 13th November 1860:\n\nOn the 7th instant Mr. Bruce reached Peking, having hastened up from Shanghae in compliance with my request. His arrival was most opportune, as it was very important that before my departure from the capital I should be able to confer with him on various matters, and more especially on the subject of the place of residence for the future of Her Majesty's Representative in China. Mr. Bruce informed me that he was perfectly willing to take up his abode in Peking at once. On consultation with Baron Gros and General Ignatieff, however, I found that the latter was about to leave Peking for the winter, and that the former was of opinion that it would not be advisable that M. de Bourboulon should establish himself in the capital until the spring. I considered it, therefore, to be my duty to advise Mr. Bruce to return with me for the present to Tien-tsin, and to remain there until a suitable residence should be provided for him in the capital. In order, however, that there might be no misapprehension on the part of the Chinese Government in reference to this point, we selected a house which we thought might be adapted to the purpose, and which was procurable on easy terms, and we accepted the services of Mr. Adkins, one of the Student Interpreters, a very promising young man, who volunteered to remain at Peking, and to superintend the arrangements necessary for putting it in order.\n\nHarry Parkes, who was Lord Elgin's interpreter at this time, writing to his wife on November 17th 1860 gave a few more details:\n\nPeking is in a wretched state of dilapidation and ruin, and scarcely one of their palatial buildings is not falling into decay. We have obtained one of the best, and yet it is quite\n\n* Elgin to Russell, 13 November 1860. Parliamentary Papers, “Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China 1859-60\", 2754 of 1861, No. 119, p. 254. See also ibid. p. 259 for a note from T. Adkins to Frederick Bruce dated Peking, 12 November 1860, reporting that the capital was returning to normal and that he had found no opposition to his residence there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204601, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n71\n\n1866 the student-interpreters put on an amateur theatrical performance, consisting of Our Wife, and To Paris and back on £5. The female parts were all taken by the students, and it was voted a great success. The faces of the Chinese servants, watching from the back of the hall, gave Mitford a lot of quiet amusement. The next summer he was staying in a temple which he calls Ta Chio Ssu or \"Temple of Great Repose\", about twenty-three miles from Peking, having moved there with all his furniture together with chickens and a cow and its calf. But even there he could not entirely escape the despatches. \"Copying despatches with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, with a basin of water and a towel at one's side for very necessary hand-wiping, and a pad of blotting-paper over the blank part of one's paper, is indeed an affreux métier.\" The climate took its toll, and Mitford mentions two of his young companions who died of fever.\n\nMitford left Peking for Japan in 1866. In the same year Major Crossman of the Royal Engineers was sent out from England by the Government to inspect the British Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan. From one of his reports, written at Shanghai in July 1867, we can glean some more information about the early development of the Legation at Peking. For instance he gave a hint as to the origin of the Legation Chapel when he wrote: \"There is a large house opposite to the Chinese secretaries' quarters, used partly as a theatre and partly as a lumber-room, well and solidly built, which can be converted into a good church by the addition of an external porch, removing the flooring of the upper storey so as to throw it open to the roof, and by the addition of some wood work and ornament, to give it a somewhat ecclesiastical appearance.\" He also mentioned that the number of student-interpreters was shortly to be increased to thirteen.\n\nMeanwhile Sir Frederick Bruce had been succeeded by Sir Rutherford Alcock at the end of 1865, while Sir Thomas Wade was promoted to be Minister in 1871, a post which he held for the next twelve years. In 1883 he was succeeded by another ‘old\n\n14 Parliamentary Papers, \"Reports from Major Crossman and Correspondence respecting the Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan\", 315 of 1868, No. 7, p. 22.\n\n!\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206212, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO\n\n23\n\nas a creed, or ethics, that the world ever witnessed.\" Warming to his task, Harvey declared: \"The first impression of a sensible and reasoning Englishman, on coming into contact with Taepingdom is one of horror, then of amazement, with contempt and disgust following each other in succession. Taepingdom is a huge mass of 'nothingness'... It is a gigantic bubble, that collapses on being touched, but leaves a mark of blood on the finger.” In such light, Harvey's advice was simple: \"Your Excellency may rest assured that we shall only arrive at a correct appreciation of this movement, and do it thorough justice, when it is treated by us as land piracy on an extensive scale — piracy odious in the eyes of all men — and, as such, to be swept off the face of the earth by every means within the power of the Christian and civilized nations trading with this vast Empire.\"\n\nIn his dispatch to London of April 10, 1862, British Minister Frederick Bruce enclosed Harvey's \"very able report” and added: \"No commerce can co-exist with their presence, and no specific relations are possible with a horde of pirates and brigands, who are allowed to commit every excess, while professing a nominal allegiance to an ignorant and ferocious fanatic.\" In another dispatch eight days later Bruce emphasized this theme saying that the presence of the Taipings in any district is \"accompanied by the utter destruction of the materials of trade.\"19 Thus all evidence to the contrary from Ningpo and elsewhere of Taiping efforts to encourage trade were totally ignored, to be drowned out as a matter of fact, by such sustained propaganda, so that the impression has remained ever since that the Taipings were somehow anathema to commerce.\n\nThus the stage was carefully being set for the climax. The British, with the French, awaited the opportune moment, or more precisely, an opportune pretext. This came on April 22, 1862. The occasion was the triumphant return to Ningpo of General Fan who had been away at Nanking. During a cannon salute, unfortunately aimed in the direction of the foreign settlement, some shots reportedly killed one or two Chinese within the settlement, although the report itself seems questionable. On the same day, some Taiping soldiers fired musket shots toward the H.M.S. Ringdove. The ship's Captain immediately protested, and the very responsive Taiping General Huang replied apologetically, on the very same day, promising punishment for the offenders.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206219, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "30\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\ncounter.\"'48 But, of course, this act cannot be laid exclusively to Captain Dew. Another contemporary source charged perhaps more penetratingly that the Taiping possession of Ningpo was \"peculiarly adapted\" to thwart British Minister Frederick Bruce's \"schemes for aiding and abetting\" the Ch'ing side in China's civil war. The source noted that Taiping possession of the seaport would enable them to deprive Shanghai of the greater proportion of the customs duties, which not only might now be diverted into their own exchequer, but would frustrate the object of Mr. Horatio Lay's mission to London where he was seeking to put together an Anglo-Chinese flotilla to be used against the Taipings, and \"destroy the main stay of the Imperial cause.\" The Taipings would also be able to obtain needed war munitions. Finally, they would have the opportunity to dispel \"the illusion of their being inimical to foreign trade.\" This source concluded that from \"such cogent reasons\" Admiral Hope came to agree with the Minister's views, and \"resolved on the recapture of the place by fair means or foul.\"49\n\nSmall wonder that the story of the Taiping occupation of Ningpo has received little subsequent attention in Western historical accounts of the Taiping period. When it has, it has too often been sadly distorted. It is not a happy episode to think about. But however that may be, it is an historical experience that is well worth reflection upon. It was a passing moment of history which, in a telescoped span of time, rather accurately reflected a larger contemporary story. It demonstrated that Chinese revolutionaries of the early 1860s had the capacity to achieve major objectives against a weak established government, including the conquest of much of the territory of the richest provinces in the lower Yangtze River basin and the seizure of a principal seaport. It also demonstrated that the Taipings did treat foreigners respectably well and promoted trade, which was, after all, the matter of greatest importance to foreigners. It also proved that neither the apparent military nor the civil capabilities of the revolutionaries made much difference to those key foreign officials who were determined to assist the weak established government. Finally, it showed that the intervention of foreign powers made a great deal of difference in the ultimate outcome of the civil war in China. At the most, the experience at Ningpo from December 1861 to May 1862 suggests the story in microcosm", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206220, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO\n\n31\n\nof the entire Taiping Revolution from 1853 to 1864 as it related to foreign powers. At the least, it suggests once again a need for renewed consideration both of the Taiping period in itself and of the historical tradition which transmitted our understanding of it.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Romaine to Hammond, No. 34, Admiralty, February 17, 1862, Inclosure 1, Hope to Admiralty, Shanghai, December 22, 1861, Blue Books, pp. 90-91.\n\n2 Harvey to Hammond, No. 32, Ningpo, December 7, 1861, Inclosure 1, Ibid., p. 85.\n\n3 The letters to both Taiping generals are translated as Inclosures 3 and 4 in Harvey to Hammond, No. 32, Ibid., pp. 86-88.\n\n4 Harvey to Hammond, No. 33, December 18, 1861, Ibid., p. 89.\n\n5 Romaine to Hammond, Admiralty, February 17, 1862, Inclosure 3, Ibid., p. 95.\n\n6 Ibid.\n\n7 Frederick Wells Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D., New York, 1889, p. 336.\n\n8 W. H. Sykes, The Taiping Rebellion in China, London, 1863, p. 34.\n\n9 The China Mail, Hong Kong, May 8, 1862, reprinted from the Shanghae Commercial News, May 2, 1862.\n\n10 Sykes, p. 19.\n\n11 Ibid.\n\n12 Ibid., pp. 49-53.\n\n13 G. E..., \"Rebels in the Ningpo District,\" North China Herald, No. 615, May 10, 1862.\n\n14 Harvey to Hammond, No. 36, January 3, 1862, Inclosure 1, \"Correspondence respecting....\" Blue Books, p. 107.\n\n15 Romaine to Hammond, No. 34, Inclosure 5, Corbett to Hope, Ningpo, December 20, 1861, Blue Books, p. 97.\n\n16 This seems evident, for example, in the writings of A. E. Moule obtainable at the Church Missionary Society archives in London, and in his undated Personal Reminiscences at the Essex Institute Library.\n\n17 Harvey to Hammond, No. 3, Ningpo, March 20, 1862, Inclosure 4, \"Further Papers....\" pp. 12-16.\n\n18 In this dispatch, Bruce makes another unwarranted generalization about foreign views of the Taipings: \"The experience of several years and the testimony of all foreigners who have been among them, show that they are unable to govern.\" Bruce to Russell, No. 14, Peking, April 10, 1862, Ibid., pp. 18-20.\n\n19 Bruce to Russell, No. 15, Peking, April 8, 1862, Ibid., p. 21.\n\n20 Admiralty to Hammond, No. 32, July 28, 1862, Inclosure 4, \"Further Papers relating to....\" Blue Books, p. 44.\n\n21 Inclosure 9 in No. 32, Ibid., p. 48.\n\n22 Inclosure 6 in No. 32, Ibid., p. 45.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207641, "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-1976", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "14\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nforeign military aid reaped few long-term gains. Western officers from \"Chinese\" Gordon to Constantin von Hanneken introduced a measure of modernity to at least a few armies in the late Ch'ing period, but none of these individuals was able to promote more basic institutional reform.10 The effects of Japan's success and China's failure in this regard were far-reaching.\n\nGenerally speaking, China's approach to military reform in the years from 1860 to 1895 may be compared with that of Japan in the years from 1853 to 1868. In each instance, foreign assistance was acquired piecemeal by both the central government and local governments, with no real coordination between the two. Similar rationales were offered, and similar results obtained, although in the case of China the new knowledge and technology acquired was used to bolster rather than to undermine the existing central government.11\n\nA high priority for both pre-Meiji Japan and late Ch'ing China was the training of troops and officers in Western techniques. In each country, the use of foreign military assistance followed similar lines. The training program established for the Bakufu by the French Minister, Leon Roches, at Yokohama during the mid-1860's, for example, may be compared with the central government training program set up by the British Minister, Frederick Bruce, at Tientsin in the early 1860's.12 Similarly, the various foreign-training efforts begun in Chōshu and other han during the 1860's bear a basic resemblance to the post-Taiping training camps established at Shanghai, Canton, Foochow and elsewhere.13 The Japanese even had their own rough equivalent of China's famous Ever-Victorious Army.14 Common problems in these early military improvement programs included language difficulties, foreign rivalries, financial limitations, lack of standardization in arms and training, and foreign meddling.15\n\nChina never overcame these problems. From the 1860's to the early 1890's, a handful of foresighted individuals, most notably Li Hung-chang, undertook a variety of modernizing enterprises aimed at building up China's “wealth and power.” Their efforts succeeded in a limited way, but were severely hindered by obscurantism, official opposition, bureaucratic inertia, and the deliberate policies of the Empress Dowager, Tz'u-hsi, who carefully manipulated political factions in order to maintain and enhance her own power.16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214152, "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-1998", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Keith Stevens - Another Dilemma for Today's Youth in China ... \n\n369\n\nKeith Stevens - An Irish Fantasy.. \n\n372\n\nPenny Robbins, Meredith Tong-Draper and Geoffrey Roper - Backstreets of Beijing: Notes on the RAS HK Easter, 1998 Visit to Beijing \n\n375\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - Monument to the Westmoreland Regiment The 55th Regiment of Foot in Dinghai City on Zhoushan Island...................... \n\n383\n\nDan Waters - Tracing Graves in Hong Kong: Research Methodology \n\n395\n\nKeith Stevens - An Unusual and Extraordinary Ancestral Image \n\n399\n\nPhotographs of the Function to Mark the Award of the Bronze Bauhinia Star to Dan Waters contributed by Phillip Bruce............. \n\n403\n\nPaul Bolding - Visit to the Aurel Stein Collection of the British Museum by the Friends of the RAS \n\nBOOK REVIEWS \n\n404\n\nGerald Choa - The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai, a Prominent Figure in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong....... \n\n407\n\nGillian Bickley - The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart \n\n411\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215955, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "188\n\ndeaths of Chinese persons within these fourteen personal absences Legge experienced, one stood out over time because it became so formative in shaping Legge's public image in Hong Kong. The images of both Legge and this seminal Chinese figure were first promoted through extracted letters and reading literature of missionary journals where the story about Ch'ea Kam-Kwong first appeared. After Ch'ea's murder, however, it became a festering and frustrating element within the larger political scenario of the unequal treaties period in foreign policy between the Qing Manchurian empire in China and the newly established British ambassador. Legge made the issue all the more prominent in 1863 by publicly challenging British officials' complacence about the matter and condemning attempts by Sir Frederick Bruce (1814-1867), the first British ambassador to the Qing empire, to defuse the whole tragedy by general claims about missionary incompetence.\n\nThe period from 1861 to 1863 was pivotal in Legge's missionary-scholar career because of three books and two supremely “felt” public absences. In February and November 1861 he published the first two of the eight-tome-five-volume series he entitled the Chinese Classics. In October and at the very beginning of 1862 he faced news about the deaths of Ch'ea Kam-kwong and his eldest brother George respectively, writing special memorials to both men in the subsequent months. In the latter case, James Legge edited and introduced his brother George's selected lectures and sermons (an introduction of just over 100 pages!), an act of filial respect simultaneously Scottish Nonconformist, Ruist/Confucian, and Victorian in style and content.\n\n2\n\nYet Ch'ea's death in October 1861 and its consequences had a power over Legge's career he himself could not fully anticipate. So influential was it that in the balance of the decade of the 1860s Legge was regularly referred to in local Hong Kong and overseas missionary literature as \"James Legge of Hong-kong and Poklo.\" Here we will explore the meaning of Ch'ea's death for Legge's life, and the broader implications it had on a surprising range of “larger issues\" in the study of cross-cultural interactions during the later decades of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. Part of the significance is shown in a negative fashion in Paul Cohen's early work of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215985, "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": 284, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "218\n\nthe Zongli yámén, he cannot be faulted for missing this major tragic event among Chinese Protestants in southeast China, because it was apparently never reported or discussed by British and Qing officials.\n\nMaybe the \"oversight\" happened because the turn of events shifted attention to the military problems associated with the resistance of Tàiping forces during the next three years before they were destroyed. They had become the target of a common effort by the Qing armies as well as some foreign (and particularly British/Scottish) militia under General Gordon, probably causing a host of special problems demanding the \"immediate attention\" of the British Ambassador, Sir Frederick Bruce.4 Nevertheless, it was against the Ambassador that Legge expressed his most piercing salvo of Protestant Dissenter displeasure in 1863, nearly two years after the riots in Poklo and Ch'ëa's murder had taken place.\n\nIn a brief note leaked to the public a year after it had been written, Sir Bruce explained his opinion to Lord John Russell (1792-1878), then Secretary of State, that missionaries should not be permitted to enter into China because of the troubles they caused and the dangers they faced. His arguments stood in blatant opposition to the conditions codified by the 1860 treaty, but were nevertheless read with approval by Lord Russell. This occasioned an outburst of righteous anger from Legge, who took Bruce's letter apart piece by piece, and showed its insensitivity to missionary work as well as its incoherence in the face of the recent treaty conditions. In and of itself, this letter written by Legge, first published in the Patriot in London and soon afterward in the local China Mail in Hong Kong, was one of the most perceptive and articulate pieces of political analysis he ever wrote. But the coup de grâce came in the end, where the level of frustration Legge felt against British bureaucratic reticence and its discounting of missionary and Chinese Christians' rights had grown to a new height.\n\n95\n\nI will conclude this long letter by referring to a case in point,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215986, "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": 285, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "219 \n\nand in doing so will avail myself of a rough copy of some remarks which I addressed to Her Majesty's Consul in Canton [Harry Parkes, 1828-1885] upon it in January of the present year [1863]. The outrages complained of were then of more than twelve months' standing; the Consul had been more or less in correspondence with the Chinese authorities about them during all that time; he had submitted the case, he told me, to Frederick Bruce, but had got no reply; nor has he got any, I suppose, up to this time. Everything provided for by the treaties has been broken at Pok-lo; Christians pursuing their calling peaceably were interfered with and persecuted; our Catechist was torn from the house which has been purchased to be converted into a place of worship, and barbarously put to death, because he would not renounce Christianity; placards were issued offering rewards for the head of any Foreign Missionary who should visit the district, and for the heads of all Chinese Christians who should assist him in his measures. These and other violent proceedings were taken, and the Government has yet done nothing effectual to show its regard for the treaty stipulations. I should be sorry now, after the lapse of time, if life were to be taken, even by justice, for the life that was sacrificed for Christ, and still more sorry if the district were to be visited with the scourge of military operations in avengement of the deeds done. But can nothing at all be done? I do not doubt that you represented gravely, again and again, to the Governor-general here, how serious the offences were. Since those representations have proved ineffectual, Her Majesty's Representative at Peking will surely bring the case before the high officers of the Imperial Government. Her Majesty is committed may I not say so? - by the articles of the Treaty not to let the matter rest, without signifying by Sir Frederick Bruce her strong displeasure, and entering her solemn protest at least against the impunity allowed to such despite to her subjects, and such persecution of Chinese Christians. \n\nSo Legge voiced his protest, full of Dissenter concerns opposed to military escalation, but based on treaties purchased at the price of military muscle. The irony of this situation would play itself out in the multitudinous problems encountered by missionaries and Chinese Christians within the subsequent decades of the Qing \n\nPage 285\n\nPage 286", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]