[ { "id": 204288, "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-1961", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n52\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nLibrary, sanctioned by the Trustees, shall be published, with a Catalogue of the Books, and a copy of the same be placed in the hands of all those who are admitted to the privileges of the Society and the Library.'\n\n\"The Regulations of the Library\" were published in the Anglo-Chinese Kalendar for ... 1839 and include a provision that \"Any person, who is not a member of the Society, may be admitted to the privileges of the Library, by the payment of $10 per annum, or of $5 for six months or any shorter period, (* A single contribution of not less than $25, or an annual contribution of $10 constitutes membership.)\"\n\nThe \"Second Annual Report of the Morrison Education Society\" of 3rd October, 1838, says: --\n\nThe Library, as was contemplated, has been opened in a convenient apartment in Canton, and is now of easy access to all those who desire to enjoy its benefits. The trustees recommend the early adoption of measures for its enlargement. As a public library, it ought, in the course of a few years, to rise from its present limited number of two thousand volumes to a hundred times that number, and thence to increase until it shall equal some of the best collections of books in the world.\n\nThe Society moved to Macao in 1841 and the Library containing between two and three thousand volumes was again open to those who desired to borrow books from it at the Society's house, near St. Paul's, under the care of Mr. Brown. \"The Third Annual Report\" of the Society was not published until this year, the gap since 1838 being caused by the disturbed conditions prevailing in the intervening years. By 1842 the Society had already established itself in the newly ceded island of Hong Kong.\n\nAt the fourth annual General Meeting of the Society on 28 September, 1842, it was reported that, as the result of correspondence with Sir Henry Pottinger, (the Superintendent of Trade and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in China) a site had been granted to them for a permanent headquarters on Morrison Hill, a hill which at the time of writing is quickly nearing complete demolition just over one hundred years later. One of the larger rooms of the building to be put up was designed for the Library which now contained nearly 3500 volumes. The usual vicissitudes occurred which seem to beset so many libraries run on a voluntary or partly voluntary basis. An 1843 report says:\n\nThe Society's Library requires some attention in order to preserve it, and render it of greater public utility. I believe there are not far from 3500 volumes in it; but of these, a large number, perhaps one third are so injured as to make them unfit for circulation. Some sets have been broken by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204322, "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-1961", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n86\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe prince Siddhartha thereupon asked, \"Is there any good bow in this city which will suit my strength?\" The father, King Suddhodana was very glad and said, \"Yes, there is.\" \"Where is it then, Your Majesty?\" asked the prince. \"Your grandfather Simhahanu (the lion's cheek) had a bow which is now kept in the temple and flowers are offered to it. No man has ever been able to bend it.\" The prince urged the king to send for it, and when it had been fetched, all the Shakya nobles were allowed to have a trial, but no one could string, nor draw it. Then the minister Mahanama was given an opportunity. He exhausted all his energy yet he could not move a single inch of the string and so he presented it to the prince. The prince remained seated without moving. He seized the bow with his left hand and bent the string with a single finger of his right hand. A startling noise broke out throughout the city Kapilavastu which made all the people frightened. \"What noise is it?\". \n\n+\n\n28\n\nIn Ch.2 of the Pei-yu-chi, the king of the Kingdom of Ko-ko () received a tribute from the Western tribes. It was a bronze drum twelve inches thick. Upon the challenge of the tributary messenger, no one in the court, not even the generals, could pierce its surface with an arrow. The prince, \n\nThe prince, who was only seven, claimed that he could shoot through it. \"He seized the bow with his left hand and put on the arrow with his right hand. The arrow darted off and pierced the surface with the feather of the arrow left outside.' \n\nThe age of No-cha and that of the said prince were seven years. We can see that No-cha's story is derived partly from the Pei-yu-chi and both originated from the story of the Buddha.\n\nNo-cha's arrow darted off to a far distance and accidentally killed a Taoist disciple of Madame Shih-chi (ENR), who was a goddess of the Intercepting Sect. Shih-chi sent the Athlete of the Yellow Turban to bring Li Ching to her grotto in the K'u-lou Shan (Mt. Skeleton) and pressed him for an explanation, Li Ching vowed his innocence and was set free so that he could investigate the matter. No-cha again admitted to his father what he had done, and followed Li Ching to Shih-chi's place to settle the matter. At the entrance to the grotto he had a desperate clash with the goddess, and though he hurled all his precious weapons they fell into her hands and sleeves. No-cha fled to Mt. Ch'ien-yüan for protection. His master, the Immortal T’ai-I had a violent quarrel with Shih-chi on his behalf, and the quarrel\n\n28 No. 190, The Tripitaka in Chinese, translated by Jfianagupta; also Sister Nivedita & Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists, Harrap, 1914, pp. 261-2.\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 204594, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "64 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\nuninhabitable according to our notions, and we therefore tell the Chinese that the Minister is obliged to postpone taking up his residence until the residence is fit to receive him. Mr. Adkins is therefore charged with the task of repairs, and in March of next year or possibly earlier Mr. Bruce expects to take up his quarters there. His arrival at Peking before we quitted it was a happy hit. Formal interviews took place between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung at which the former introduced his brother and abdicated in his favour; so that before we quitted Peking Mr. Bruce had commenced his business with the Chinese authorities, while that of the Special Embassy terminated.7 \n\nSo interpreter Adkins remained alone in the Palace of Duke I-liang throughout the winter of 1860-61, until in March 1861 Bruce set out from Tientsin, accompanied by Thomas Wade, his interpreter, and Dr. Rennie, physician to the new Legation. Colonel Neale, the Secretary of the Legation, with two attachés, St. Clair and Wyndham, had gone ahead with the baggage. We are fortunate to have a detailed account of the first year at the British Legation kept by Dr. Rennie. In the Preface to his book Peking and the Pekingese he explained that \"a few months after Her Majesty's Legation had been established in Peking, a feeling began to be entertained by its members, that, with a view to future publication, some record should be kept of the various incidents which were from day to day occurring, during what may be termed the inaugural period of foreign diplomatic residence at the capital—the most important event in the modern history of Anglo-Chinese intercourse.\" Since Rennie had been keeping \n\n7 Quoted in The Life of Sir Harry Parkes by Stanley Lane-Poole, 2 vols., (London, 1894), I, 404-5. \n\nParkes was born in 1828, and came out to China in 1841 to join his two sisters who were living with their cousin, the wife of the Protestant missionary, the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff. Parkes was attached to Sir Henry Pottinger's suite in the expedition up the Yangtze in 1842 and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He started to learn Chinese and at the age of fifteen was attached to the British Consulate at Canton. Many appointments as interpreter and consul followed until 1865 when he was appointed Minister to Japan. In 1883 he became British Minister at Peking. He died in 1885. \n\n* D. F. Rennie, Peking and the Pekingese during the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, 2 vols. (London, 1865) vii. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204598, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "68\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nand shown the sights of Peking. This became an agreeable task for the members of the Legation, and there was a constant stream of visitors to Peking enjoying the hospitality of the old Legation right up until its closure in 1959. One of the earliest of these visitors was Sir Robert Hart, the Acting Inspector-General of the Chinese Customs. Meanwhile the business of engaging Chinese clerks, gate keepers, and language teachers proceeded. At various times Rennie mentions such familiar things as burglaries within the Legation, and the virulence of the mosquitoes. By now the Legation was the haunt of curio dealers, many of the things they had to offer being of real value, since the destruction of part of the old Summer Palace by the British and French forces had occurred as recently as the previous autumn, and a great deal of loot was now in Chinese hands. In fact, what with buying antiques, conducting visitors round the sights of Peking, and going to the Western Hills in the summer the members of the foreign legations had already set a pattern during their first year in Peking which has continued much the same until the present.\n\nThe local craftsmen found nothing beyond their capacities, and one Chinese tailor made a fine new Union Jack with the old one to copy from. Rennie remarks: \"The Peking tailors have already mastered the making of European clothing, and several members of the Legation have had things made by them\". The total number of Europeans in the three legations (English, French and Russian) was twenty-two. The first American minister to reside at Peking did not reach the capital until July, 1862. On 23 August, 1861 Rennie records: \"We have been busy to-day getting ready for Her Majesty's Foreign Office a large bird's-eye view of the Leang-koong-foo, made by a Chinese artist. Figures for reference have been painted on it by Colonel Neale, and a key also made. The drawing is very exact, every building being carefully depicted.\" In October buildings next to the Legation on the south side were bought by the British Government from a brother of Duke I-liang. This new area was leased to a medical missionary, William Lockhart, who wanted to set up a medical mission in Peking. By January 1862 the extensive alterations to the Legation had come to an end, and the Chinese interpreter, who had made a good harvest of 'squeeze' out of it, now resigned and departed for Tientsin where the foreign troops were stationed. The time ran out.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204607, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n77\n\nQueen. While we were waiting for our examiner, a sudden desire seized Gordon to show his loyalty, after the custom of the country; so he dropped down in front of the portrait, and solemnly knocked his head nine times on the floor, kotowing in proper form. He seemed much inspirited by it, and had a feeling that he was now in some way under the special tutelage of Her Majesty, and could be trusted to floor the paper.\n\nThe impression given by Wilkinson's account is that student life in Peking at that period held much that was enjoyable.\n\nHowever, there was plenty of work for them to do on being sent to their posts. As one observer wrote in 1900 \"Our Legation ... is a bigger establishment than that of any other country, owing to the fact that the British Consular Corps in China has exceptionally large requirements. In the Legation the Student Interpreters, who subsequently become Consular Assistants and Consuls, learn the language of their adopted country and to some extent their future political, judicial and commercial work. After two years at Peking they move on to a Treaty Port and begin to put theory into practice. There are often as many as twenty of them in Peking at a time, besides an efficient staff of older men who act as the Chinese Secretaries.”21\n\nMeanwhile trouble was imminent and another visitor at this same period mentions the marines. Describing the Legation Quarter he wrote: \"The familiar redcoats of British marines drilling on the lawn lent perhaps an extra touch of homeliness to the well-kept grounds. For in view of possible troubles, most of the foreign legations were provided last winter [1895- Ed.] with a special guard drawn from the fleets in the Gulf of Tchih-li. They have since been for the greater part withdrawn. ... As if to heighten the contrast, the Chinese authorities had also assigned to each legation a special guard of their own braves who were encamped along Legation Street.\n\nIn 1900 the marines were to lend a more than homely touch to the scene inside the Legation. By mid-May of that year the anti-foreign massacres inspired by the Boxers had alarmed the Europeans, who were coming into Peking for protection.\n\n20 Ibid., 266-7.\n\n21 Clive Bingham, A Year in China 1899-1900 (London, 1901), 47-8.\n\n22 Valentine Chirol, The Far Eastern Question (London, 1896), 42-3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204614, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "82\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nexpansion. Thus a new student-interpreters' mess was built and also a new house for the Counsellor in a pleasant garden. A barrack was also built for the Legation guard on the site of the former Chinese Board of Works, Board of War, and Court of State Ceremonies, an area with historic associations. The barracks were large enough to house 500 men though normally not more than 100 were stationed there at any one time. As a result of this enlargement the British Legation now covered about thirty-five acres, and was the largest foreign Legation in Peking. While this reconstruction was going forward the opportunity was taken to make the Legation more self-contained so that if ever it were again besieged it would be in a better state to resist. With this object in view the Ministry of Works built a thoroughly ugly electricity power-plant and a water tower. A large coal dump was also formed so that now the Legation had its own supply of water, coal and electricity.\n\nGradually memories of the siege became less vivid and life settled down into a routine which was much the same as before the siege. Perhaps the only difference was that by 1908 there were signs of some modernization in Peking itself such as macadam roads, handsome cabs and electric light. Meanwhile visitors to Peking continued to enjoy the hospitality of those living in the British Legation, and no clear change can be seen until 1928 when the Kuomintang was victorious over the Northern warlords and the capital was established at Nanking. As a result the British Ambassador moved south of the Yangtze and resided mainly at the British Consulate in Shanghai while the majority of his staff moved to Nanking, though the student-interpreters continued to study at the Legation in Peking which now became a Consulate. When war broke out between England and Japan in December 1941 some British nationals and American nationals, who were sick or elderly, were interned in the Legation. The Swiss Consul looked after the buildings, aided by Chinese employed by Her Majesty's Ministry of Works. The buildings were reoccupied as a Consulate at the end of the war, but in 1948 the Chinese Communists captured Peking, and at first the government of the Chinese Peoples' Republic refused to recognize the status of the British Consulate there. However, in January", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204722, "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-1964", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER\n\n \n Soldiers with matchlocks, bows and arrows, flags and songs moving across the Square to reinforce those stationed on board the Chop and other boats.\n \n \n Tomorrow is Captain Elliot's last day, when I am quite sure the passports required will not be granted11. The heat of the weather is such that much of our provisions is spoiling.\n \n \n New China Street still remains closed with bars of wood nailed across the gates and police stationed to guard them. The Chinese houses in all directions filled with people looking from the roofs and out of the windows but none daring to attempt an entrance into the Square which is perfectly clear, except the police force. Foreigners move across the Square and into each others Hongs without impediment.\n \n \n Captain Elliot received a communication this morning from the Commissioner direct which ordered him to give up all the opium outside.\n \n \n Captain Elliot's secretary and myself went to the cow-yard with a small piece of paper containing a list of a few articles, such as rice, bread and meat which they wanted in the Company Factory. We thought we could bribe the cow-man to buy them and secrete the articles amongst the straw till we could carry them away a little at a time, but we were so closely watched we had no opportunity to speak to the man and finally the police drove him out of the yard.\n \n \n 27 March\n \n \n This morning Elmslie12, Captain Elliot's secretary, came round with a circular to the foreigners in which was requested that all opium owned by British subjects should be surrendered to him for the use of Her British Majesty's government to be delivered to the Commissioner.\n \n \n We made our list and gave up under receipt:\n \n\n \n 980\n chests Malwa\n \n \n 356\n chests Patna\n \n \n 33\n \n 97\n chests Benares\n \n \n 40\n \n 4\n 33\n \n 100\n piculs Turkey\n \n \n 700,000 dollars\n \n \n 1437 chests the cost of which is upwards of all belonging to our constituents in Bombay", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205183, "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-1966", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n133\n\nNOTES\n\nThe place names are all in Cantonese and can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication The Place Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1960). Where not otherwise stated my authority for information given in the paper comes from the old people mentioned in note 16. The aim of this article is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century.\n\n1. E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, p. 360.\n\n2. The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. The text can be found on pp. 198-199 of the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, i.e., papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\n3. Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong and Kowloon for 1864... presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty in 1865 to be found in Parliamentary Papers, China, 1861-66, p. 16.\n\n4. C.O.129/85 in the Public Record Office, London.\n\n5. The Commissioners sent an abstract of these documents to London. These were as follows:\n\n\"No. 1 | List of Red Deeds Owners not belonging to the Teng Family—contains 91 Deeds, comprising an area of 176 acres value computed at $25,865.32\n\nNo. 2 List of Deeds belonging to the Two Branches of the Teng Family contains 78 Deeds comprising an area of 276 acres value computed at $40,561.52\n\nNo. 3 List of squatters showing the number to be 222—spread over 90 acres value computed at $13,226.16*\n\nThe \"Teng\" family mentioned in Nos. 1 and 2 above is the Tang (*) family of Kam Tin, who are Cantonese and are the oldest, richest and best-known of the New Territories landed families. See SUNG Hok-Pang. \"Legends and Stories of the New Territories\" Parts III-IV, Kam Tin, in The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII.\n\n6. Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860. The population at this time contained a preponderance of men; 3356 to 971 women and 778 children (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 22 February 1862).\n\n7. For instance, the genealogies (##) of the Ng (吳) clan of Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po and the Lam (林) clan of Chuk Yuen and Po Kong show that their settlement dates back to this period.\n\n8. I base this statement on personal knowledge of the fifty or more Hakka villages in the Sai Kung district of the New Territories.\n\n9. Hong Kong Government Blue Book for 1871 p. 148.\n\n10. See G. N. Orme's \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" in Sessional Papers 1912 p. 55 and J. H. Stewart Lockhart in Sessional Papers 1899, p. 189. My second statement is based on conversations with families of Hakka stonecutters at Ngau Tau Kok Village, Kowloon.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205413, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "168\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nble for financing and managing these arrangements, and its leaders were not allowed to canvas outside their own Fong to obtain funds. The Hung Shing Temple, being the larger and older of the island's two temples, was the hub of these activities.26\n\nIV. ABERDEEN DOCKS\n\nWhilst passing through Aberdeen you should note the old Dry Docks a little to the west of the Post Office. One was built in 1863 but two years later (to quote from the Centenary Brochure of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Co., Ltd.):\n\n\"In 1865, the Company concluded negotiations with Mr. John Lamont for the purchase of his property at Aberdeen, comprising the Lamont Dock then in working order, and the Hope Dock then in course of construction, together with the Workshops, Machines, etc.\n\nThe Hope Dock was opened in June, 1867, by the then Governor of Hong Kong, Sir R. G. MacDonnell, and for a number of years was largely used for docking ships of Her Majesty's Navy and other large vessels.\n\nV. SHEK WAN POTTERY FIGURES AT THE TIN HAU TEMPLE, ABERDEEN.\n\nOn your way from the Ap Lei Chau ferry pier to the Resettlement Department Office in the Shek Pai Wan Estate (for tea), you should note the Tin Hau Temple on the left at the foot of Aberdeen Reservoir Road. This is an old temple which was given its last major repair in 1873. Any members who attended Professor Skinsnes' recent illustrated talk on Shek Wan Pottery should have a look at the roof decoration on the way. It gives the name of the firm who made it and is dated the equivalent of 1873.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205414, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n169\n\nNOTES\n\nI am most grateful to Mr. Yuen Chun-fang, Liaison Officer, Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for help with the interviews which yielded part of the information given above.\n\n1 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, 1845 (London, W. Clowes & Sons, for H.M.S.O., 1846) p. 147 and the same for 1846, p. 230.\n\n2 G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong, Birth Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937) p. 208, quoting from the Canton Press, February 1842.\n\n3 Sayer, p. 91.\n\n4 Sayer, p. 30.\n\n5 A. R. Johnston (H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade) \"Note on the Island of Hong Kong\" first published in the London Geographical Journal Vol. XIV, and reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846.\n\n6 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 28 March 1857 p. 4, Table No. 4.\n\n7 The Last Year in China......by a Field Officer actually employed in that Country. 2nd edition (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843) p. 75.\n\n8 K. S. MacKenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London, R. Bentley, 1842) p. 160.\n\n9 See Hong Kong Administrative Reports for 1934, 1935 and 1936 at pp. Q.86, Q.84 and Q.81 respectively.\n\n10 This information, like any other for which no specific source is quoted, comes from Mr. CHOW Chik-san of Kau Wai, aged 77 and Madam CHAN CHOW Ping of San Wai, aged 81.\n\n11 Rev. W. Lobscheidt, A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China Mail office, 1859).\n\n12 See Summary of Report of Squatters Commission 1891-1906, pp. 97-103.\n\nThis volume of MSS. is kept in the Library, Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong.\n\n13 For accounts of Cantonese and Hakka see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong etc., Kelly and Walsh Ltd., 4th edition, 1903) pp. 202, 211 and 323-326.\n\n14 LO Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) pp. 80-88. This is the English translation of the text, but not the notes, of their work published in Hong Kong in 1959.\n\n15 This information is taken from the accounts given at p. 5 of Prof. Woo Sing-lim's The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Co., 26th year of the Chinese Republic, 1937) published in Chinese and English and at pp. 578-579, under the name CHOW Cheong-ling, of Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, published in London, Shanghai etc. by The Globe Encyclopedia Company, 1917.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205643, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "180\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nBACKHOUSE, E. and BLAND, J. O. P.\n\nAnnals and memoirs of the court of Peking, from the 16th to the 20th century. London, Heinemann, 1914.\n\nBALL, J. Dyer.\n\nThings Chinese; or, Notes connected with China. 5th ed., rev. by E. Chalmers Werner. Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1925.\n\nBELCHER, Sir Edward.\n\nNarrative of a voyage round the world, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, during the years 1836-1842, including details of the naval operations in China from Dec. 1840 to Nov. 1841. Publ. under the authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. London, Colburn, 1843, 2 vols.\n\nBERNARD, W. D.\n\nNarrative of the voyages and services of the Nemesis, from 1840 to 1843; and of the combined naval and military operations in China: comprising a complete account of the Colony of Hong Kong, and remarks on the character and habits of the Chinese, from notes of W.H. Hall, London, Colburn, 1844. 2 vols.\n\nBISHOP, John L., ed.\n\nStudies in Chinese literature. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U.P., 1965.\n\nBLAND, J. O. P., and BACKHOUSE, E.\n\nChina under the Empress Dowager; being the life and times of Tzu Hsi, compiled from state papers and the private diary of the comptroller of her household. New and rev. cheaper ed. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1914.\n\nBODDE, Derk.\n\nChina's first unifier: a study of the Ch'in dynasty as seen in the life of Li Ssŭ († 208 B.C.). Hong Kong, University Press, 1967.\n\nBOUCHOT, Jean.\n\nScènes de la vie des Hutungs; croquis des moeurs pékinoises. 2e éd. Pekin, [Nachbaur] 1922.\n\nBREDON, Juliet.\n\nHundred altars. Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1936.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205707, "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-1969", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE COUNCILS IN HONG KONG UP TO 1941\n\nT. C. CHENG, O.B.E., M.A.(LOND.)*\n\n(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 29 April 1968)\n\nOn 5th April, 1843, Her Majesty Queen Victoria granted to Hong Kong a Royal Charter which declared Hong Kong a separate Colony. The main provisions of this Charter, published in Hong Kong in June 1843, included, among other things, the following:\n\n(i) There should be a Legislative Council to be composed of the Governor and of such Public Officers within the said Colony, or of such other persons as shall from time to time be named or designated by Her Majesty for the purpose;\n\n(ii) An Executive Council should be established to advise and assist the Governor, who was authorized to summon as an Executive Council such persons as may from time to time be named or designated by Her Majesty.\n\nIt was, however, not until January 1844 that the Legislative Council first met, being composed of all officials, viz., the Governor (Sir Henry Pottinger), the Lt.-Governor (Major-General D'Aguilar) and the Chief Magistrate (Major Caine). The Clerk of Councils was the Legal Adviser to the Governor (R. Burgass).\n\nMajor-General D'Aguilar and Major Caine were also appointed members of the Executive Council.\n\nIn June 1850 the first British unofficial members were nominated to the Legislative Council. They were Messrs. David Jardine and J. F. Adger, both elected by the unofficial Justices of the Peace. Even at this early period of the history of Hong Kong, dissatisfaction was already expressed, mainly among the British community, with the small number of unofficials serving on the Council. In the case of the Chinese, they were, however, inarticulate because there were then very few Chinese who were educated through the medium of English and who could communicate adequately in that language.\n\n\"Mr. Cheng has been President of United College in The Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1963. Prior to that he was in Hong Kong Government service since 1939, his last post being Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205782, "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-1969", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "82\n\nKING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN\n\nROBERT BRUCE*\n\nWhen Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning.\n\nThe Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation.\n\nForce had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had\n\n* This article, entitled \"King Mongkut of Siam\", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968.\n\nMr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205786, "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-1969", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205794, "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-1969", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "94\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nnecessary for the late King? He would be welcome then, that is in 1852. At the same time he took the initiative in improving trading conditions. Monopolies were partly removed and duties on imports and exports reduced. For a moment it seemed that Siam's foreign relations could be improved without formal treaty and the British Government did not press the matter. But in fact there was much to be done, and with a new British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong it was opportune to resume discussions.\n\nSir John Bowring was a very different diplomat from his three British predecessors, Crawfurd, Burney and Brooke or the American envoys Roberts and Ballestier. He was an intellectual, a radical reformer, a disciple and editor of Jeremy Bentham, a linguist who could prattle in a dozen languages, an ex-Member of Parliament and a writer of hymns, an inveterate talker, a man with limitless energy and a Victorian capacity for pomposity and self-glory. After a career of business, politics, writing and self-appointed diplomacy in the courts of Europe, Bowring, being short of money, accepted public office as Consul at Canton. That was in 1849 when he was fifty-seven. Some five years later he became Governor of Hong Kong, Superintendent of Trade and, most glorious of all, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary responsible for relations with China, Japan, Siam and all countries in the Far East.\n\nBowring's five years' Governorship of the island colony on the coast of China was anything but successful. Some of his senior officials were incompetent and even corrupt, and he was unpopular among the British merchants. Worst of all he precipitated the second Anglo-Chinese war by sending warships to bombard Canton over a quite unworthy incident. But he was completely successful when he sailed to Bangkok in March, 1855, to negotiate a treaty with the Siamese.\n\nMost of the detailed business of the negotiations was done by Bowring's young assistants, his son John C. Bowring, an employee of Jardine, Matheson and Co. in Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, his secretary, who was later to have a distinguished career as Consul at several ports on the China coast, (Mongkut referred to the young men as \"Mr. Parkes and Your Excellency's upspring\".) But it was Bowring and King Mongkut who created the favourable atmosphere which allowed progress to be rapid and the discussions congenial. It was clear from the start that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205797, "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-1969", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n97\n\nceremonies, audiences and banquets. A white elephant had been captured the previous year, the most auspicious of auguries for the new reign and now its presence seemed to be bringing the expected good fortune. Mongkut seemed to enjoy the company of the Englishmen, particularly Bowring whom he called “my friend”. As a parting gift he offered Sir John two elephants, but they were gracefully declined owing to transport difficulties. But Bowring did accept two tufts of hair from the white elephant's tail, which he later presented to Queen Victoria.\n\nThe gates were open. Within a year the Americans and the French had signed their own versions of the treaty with King Mongkut. In the next three years half a dozen European nations had similar agreements with the Siamese. By April, 1856, Harry Parkes returned with the Queen's instrument of ratification and a personal letter from Her Majesty. King Mongkut was delighted with this royal favour from mighty Britain and ordered a procession for formal delivery of the letter. In fact these ceremonies infuriated Townshend Harris, the newly-arrived American envoy, as he had to wait many days before he could begin discussions on his own treaty.\n\nThe effect of Mongkut's treaties with the West were far-reaching. Trade increased rapidly and had more than doubled by the time of the King's death in 1868. The character of the trade changed. There was virtually no export of rice before 1855, and by the end of the century rice accounted for nearly seventy per cent of Siam's exports. Bangkok grew rapidly, foreign merchants set up offices in the capital and there was an increase in the number of Chinese entering the country. The King's fiscal system had to change. Instead of royal monopolies of imports, taxes were charged at an agreed level.\n\nThe political effects were even more important. Foreign consuls lived in the capital and Siam sent embassies to Europe for the first time. The King took the initiative in employing foreign experts in his civil service. This practice was greatly extended in the next reign, that of his son, King Chulalongkorn. British officers were employed in the police force. A Belgian advised on legal reform. Germans were invited to plan the building of railways. Americans and Danes were appointed to civil and military duties. Most notorious of these appointments was that of Anna", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205852, "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-1969", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nwhich they appear. We know, too, that the author did not go to the East until 1849 when he received the appointment of Her Majesty to be Consul in Canton.\n\nNow it is entirely possible that Bowring saw an illustration of the church somewhere. Mr. David Keir, author of THE BOWRING STORY (The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1962) to whom I submitted this problem, informs me that Bowring visited Portugal in 1815, and may have run across one there. But it is also possible that he had to go no farther than London. \"At the Hispano Portuguese Library in Belgrave Square,\" Keir writes, \"there is an illustration of the church.\" It \"is a high pagoda-like building, rising above many steps, with a Cross at its peak. As most churches have a cross on the roof somewhere, it is still inconclusive whether this was the church he had in mind.” “It is also possible (for instance),\" Mr. Keir continues, \"that he might have been inspired to write the hymn following his visit to the Pena Convent in Portugal - an experience which seems to have impressed him very much, for he writes in his Autobiographical Recollections:\n\n'I also went to the Pena Convent, which towers [note the use of this word] over the highest of the precipices. The rude path, which leads to it, winds round the rugged steep, and if ever there was a spot fitted for those who would withdraw from the world, it is this. Here might misanthropy revel in perfect abstraction for scarcely could any earthly idea enter into that secluded and weather-beaten temple....'\n\nCan any reader of the Journal offer any better hypothesis? Columbia University, 1969.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nBOOKS FROM THE VICTORIA LIBRARY\n\nAs a kind of postscript to \"Notes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century,\" which appeared in the last volume of this Journal between pp. 56-66, it may be of interest to record that two titles formerly the property of the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms (1848-1871) have come to light.\n\nThe first was bought by Mr. James Hayes, our Hon. Editor, from a 'fly-by-night' bookstall in Causeway Bay. This is:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205952, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "LORD ELGIN AND THE TAIPINGS\n\n27\n\nThe next evening, the squadron anchored off the city of T'ai-p'ing, also in Taiping hands, after having previously silenced some other forts a few miles below under equally questionable circumstances. Nevertheless, at T'ai-p'ing a request came to the British from the Taipings for assistance against the Imperialist war junks. The request note referred to its writer as \"your younger brother\" and was addressed to \"your Excellencies the Foreigners.\"12 In reply, Elgin sent a note recalling what had happened the previous day at Nanking, indicating that this had been a \"warning to all who may be hereafter minded to interfere with the ships of Her Majesty.\"3 For their part, however, the Taipings apologized for the firing at Nanking, explaining that it had been a mistake. Assurances were also given that the mission would not again be molested. Elgin conceded that he believed the Taipings to be sincere.14 Their request for assistance, however, was ignored.\n\nTwo days later, on November 23, the English arrived at Wu Hu, where they paused and sent ashore Thomas Wade \"to ascertain the disposition of the insurgents\" and \"in particular to determine if supplies could be obtained.\"15 This proved to be another instance of unmitigated presumption on the part of the visitors, and we see this by reading the English account only. Even though the Taipings' suggestion as to the form in which the request be made (a letter to the Taiping chief) was ignored by the English, the Taipings were still quick in making available the requested provisions. In spite of this gracious and generous Taiping hospitality, Wade's report of this visit is filled with language prejudicial to his hosts. There is not the slightest indication that appreciation was felt, or expressed.16 The squadron continued its progress up the Yangtze,\n\nThe next clash, at Anking, remains a classic instance of international effrontery. As the English ships approached this city it was under attack by Ch'ing forces, an assault that may have been coordinated with the English arrival. According to eyewitness Laurence Oliphant: \"It seemed that the Government troops had received notice of our approach and had determined to take advantage of it, in order to make a grand attack upon Ngan-king…\". Aside from these circumstances, not mentioned in most accounts of the affair, Elgin himself knew that the Taipings", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205999, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "74\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\naltogether. Further, their settlement there had been \"perfectly voluntary\" and they had all \"enjoyed the profits of their respective callings without contributing a penny to the expenses of the colony\". If any refused to move, they were to be told that they could \"leave the Colony whenever they like.\" The Committee found that there were 112 authorised lot-holders but a further 24 were, in the eyes of the Committee, disqualified by reason of their houses \"being dedicated to disgraceful purposes\" (but who should nevertheless receive $25 compensation).14\n\nNothing was done to put the Committee's proposals into effect and when Davis arrived to succeed Pottinger, it was clearly a matter of urgency, for the Government had pledged to provide an alternative site and to give up the site to the new owners by 22 July 1844. The lot-holders clearly could not be moved until the new site was prepared and, indeed, they showed every intention of sitting tight where they were. Davis directed the work of drawing up an estimate and a contract for the work as quickly as possible. But 22 July approached still without any progress even on this, and Davis directed that the work of levelling proceed without first obtaining an estimate. The work cost $5,956.40 but Major Aldrich of the Royal Engineers certified that the money had been properly spent.15 In view of the high cost of effecting the removal, Davis decided that no monetary compensation at all should be paid and that the 'rent holiday' should only last for four years and not the five suggested by the Committee.\n\nAt the sale on 22 January, the purchasers had been promised possession of their lots by 22 July 1844 but that date arrived with the lot-holders still in situ. Bruce, the Colonial Secretary, therefore, published a Notification on 25 July to the effect that they should remove by 25 August so that possession could be given to the purchasers by 31 August. If they failed to comply with the direction, they would forfeit the materials on the sites now belonging to Crown lessees. The Notification further informed them that the ground for relocation was being marked out for them at Taipingshan and would be cleared for them free of charge, rent due would be remitted and no rent would be payable for a period of four years.16\n\nThe Press was disturbed: the Friend of China commented that \"though legally Her Majesty's representative could claim", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206362, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n163\n\nfor defence and internal security purposes. This Ordinance was similar to that introduced in Britain in the early post-war years, and was equally unpopular. It was suspended in 1961, having outlasted the British one by two years. Thereafter the Force reverted to Volunteers. Apart from retaining one infantry company and a Home Guard Company, the former infantry organisation was discontinued and the Hong Kong Regiment was reorganised as a reconnaissance unit with internal security duties, companies converting to squadrons, one of them later equipped with armoured cars.\n\nVOLUNTEER PERSONNEL\n\nWho were the Volunteers during this hundred years and more of service? Generally speaking they were mostly Europeans up to the establishment of Chinese companies in 1937-38, since when Chinese have played an increasingly important part in the manning of the Volunteer Force. The names of the famous Ninety-Nine who signed the Colonial Secretary's circular on 30th May 1854 show a predominantly British group with some Portuguese, Germans and Scandinavians.\nBy 21st June following their number had risen to 127 comprising 92 British, 4 Danes and Swedes, 8 Germans, 16 Portuguese, 1 Italian, 1 Frenchman and individuals from 5 other countries. This mixture was representative of the polyglot foreign population of the time. It has been a feature of Volunteer life in the early and later periods, though not in the middle years from 1893. The Ordinance of 1862 made it easy for persons who were not British subjects to join. Volunteers needed only to be \"such and so many of the Inhabitants of Hongkong as shall volunteer and offer themselves, and as His Excellency the Governor shall approve of\" (Clause 1). Neither did the Rules and Regulations approved on 14th May 1862 make any stipulations about nationality. Christians and non-Christians alike were acceptable and could make either an oath or declaration of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria and of faithful service during the term of enrolment (Clause VIII). There then came a change. Whilst the 1893 Ordinance, though being more specific in many things, still said nothing to exclude\n\n37 Vol, 1954, p. 21\n\n38 Vol, 1954, p. 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206492, "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-1972", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "34\n\n!\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nThe issue of Brooke's status revolved around, firstly, the question of whether or not a subject of the Queen could hold the position as a sovereign prince of a foreign state; and, secondly, whether Brooke was in fact an independent ruler or a vassal of the Sultan of Brunei.\n\nThe issue, however, was not a burning one in the ministries of Whitehall. Despite the fact that Borneo was of concern to Britain as the guardian of the eastern flank of the South China Sea route to the China coast, and was to assume, gradually, more strategic value as first France and later Germany began colonial operations in the area, at mid-century Britain possessed a colony and naval station at Labuan and a (“good strong”) consular treaty with Brunei which gave her a certain measure of control, if she chose to indulge it, in Brunei's relations with foreign states. Most of the Colonial and Foreign Secretaries in London, until the 1870s were not very interested in defining precisely Raja Brooke's status,\n\nFor the most part, Whitehall grudgingly approved of Brooke's “civilizing influence\" in Borneo. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in 1846, offered naval support for the suppression of piracy, and during a later term of office gave standing orders to the Eastern squadron to visit Sarawak at regular intervals. But the Foreign Office generally held to the view that \"it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government that British subjects should possess territory on the mainland of Borneo\".\n\nLord Clarendon, when Foreign Secretary in the mid-1850s, came close to disavowing Brooke's position in Sarawak. In 1853 the Raja took issue with a Foreign Office statement that seemed to assume that Brooke was a vassal of Brunei. Clarendon minuted,\n\nIt seems to me that the various documents tend to prove how cautiously the government abstained from recognizing his (Brooke's) independence although in various ways the anomalous character of his position has been admitted.\n\nBut Clarendon did not leave it at that. When in 1855 Spencer St. John succeeded Brooke as Consul in Brunei he suggested to the Foreign Office that he also be accredited to Sarawak as an independent state. The Raja agreed and insisted that the new consul must receive his exequatur from him. This act would render the desired\n\n6 FO to Admiralty, 24 July 1846, FO 12/4.\n\n7 Clarendon minute upon Brooke to FO, 27 September 1853, FO 12/13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206493, "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-1972", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n35\n\nrecognition. But Clarendon would not agree. He consulted the Law Officers and concluded that while it was legally possible for the Queen to permit one of her subjects to assume the sovereignty of a foreign state and to so recognize him, it is to be done only in exceptional circumstances. Brooke could not be recognized. Lord Clarendon wrote to St. John on this occasion,\n\nHer Majesty's Government entirely agree with you in thinking that British interests in Borneo are so closely interwoven with the prosperity of Sarawak that whatever injuriously affects the latter must also be injurious to the former. Therefore Her Majesty's Government hardly believe that Sir James Brooke will place himself in direct antagonism to Her Majesty's Government by refusing to allow you to act within the territory which is subject to his rule, and thereby compel Her Majesty's Government to make known to the natives that no British subject can exercise sovereign authority without the permission of his sovereign, which permission has not been obtained by him, and that consequently he is acting against the law of England; whereas if he avoids insisting upon a recognition of his independent sovereignty which is inconsistent with his position as a British subject, his supreme authority at Sarawak upon whatever basis it may rest, whether upon the grant of the Sultan or the choice of the people, will remain undisturbed and unquestioned.\n\nAlthough on this occasion Lord Clarendon had his way, it is interesting to note that the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston did not agree. He wrote later,\n\n9\n\nThe question seems to be rather between the sultan of Borneo and the raja of Sarawak than between the latter and the sovereign of England. But so far as we are concerned there does not seem to be any strong reason why we should not deal with Sarawak as an independent state, and if it is so, we might ask for an exequatur from the powers that be.\n\nIII.\n\nThis then posed the question that bothered ministers and under-secretaries for more than three decades in their dealings with\n\n& Clarendon to St. John, 9 April 1856, FO12/23. \nPalmerston memo., 6 August 1856, FO12/23,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206495, "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-1972", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n37\n\nFrance, and in 1859 he \"broke off\" relations with Britain, upon which the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell commented,12\n\nTell Brooke that the people of Sarawak are welcome to any independence they can achieve and maintain but that a British subject cannot throw off his allegiance at pleasure.\n\nAnd Spencer St. John noted13 that \"the Raja's correspondence during this year with Her Majesty's Government was not pleasant, and ended, apparently, in complete estrangement”.\n\nOver the years Brooke had acquired a respectable following of supporters in Britain and Singapore, among whom were some influential figures such as Lord Grey, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, and the late Victorian philanthropist, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, later Baroness Burdett-Coutts. His friends now took up his cause and lobbied Whitehall from the Prime Minister's office down.\n\nBritain refused to extend a colonial or protectorate status to Sarawak on practical political grounds. Henry Layard, an under-secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote that a protectorate was declined because of the \"inconvenience of such relations between this country and a foreign territory\", because Sarawak “would not be of sufficient value politically and commercially\", and because Brooke's title was not \"sufficiently clear\"14\n\nBrooke's friends persuaded the Government to have another look at Sarawak, and in 1861 Lord Elgin, who was about to depart as the new viceroy of India, was instructed to investigate the prospects and potential of Sarawak. He delegated the task to Colonel Cavenagh, Governor of the Straits Settlements. In due course Cavenagh and Elgin provided an optimistic assessment of Raja Brooke's state and suggested making Sarawak a lieutenant-governorship under Singapore. \"I am disposed to think\", wrote Lord Elgin,15\n\nthat the acquisition of Saigon by the French and the persistent endeavor of the Dutch authorities to cripple British trade... give enhanced importance to the preservation of the independence of Sarawak as a matter affecting British interests.'\n\n12 See correspondence between the Foreign Office and Raja Brooke between 26 November and 17 December 1859, FO12/35.\n\n13 Spencer St. John, Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, (Edinburgh, 1879) p. 327.\n\n14 Layard memorandum to Lord Elgin, 2 January 1862, FO12/35.\n\n15 Elgin to Russell, 8 January 1863, FO12/35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206497, "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-1972", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n39\n\nthe \"local authorities\" rather than from the sovereign prince of Sarawak, as was usual. Thus the anomalous status of Sarawak in the view of some officials remained, and this technicality provided an opportunity for a subsequent permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office to declare that Brooke had not been recognized as a reigning prince. Julian Pauncefote opined in 1877,19\n\nRaja Brooke has not forfeited his claims of British nationality by accepting the position of ruler of Sarawak and as a matter of constitutional law it is competent to Her Majesty to recognize him as a sovereign prince but no such recognition has yet taken place.\n\nJames Brooke died in 1868, happy at having received his country's recognition, and confident that it was merely a step toward the desired British protectorate. In this he was prophetic. Although a formal protectorate was not granted until 1888, Britain made it quite clear by a pronouncement late in 1868 that her paramount interests on the northwest coast of Borneo constituted it a British sphere.20\n\nRaja James Brooke was presented at court on two occasions, in 1847, and again in 1857. His nephew and successor, Charles Brooke, visited England in 1869 and asked to be received officially. He was told that he might write on his card and be presented as \"Mr. Brooke, Raja of Sarawak\". The second white raja was incensed and refused to appear until finally, in 1874, he was presented as \"His Highness, the Raja of Sarawak”, and granted a place just below the Indian maharajas in the order of precedence at Court.\n\nUntil 1888, Britain's empire building in Borneo was done largely by proxy, by Englishmen indeed, but by the agency of political structures and vehicles outside the direct control of Whitehall. That was the role of the Brooke raj, and later of the chartered company that ruled North Borneo, so far as they were a part of the British empire. One of Brooke's friends, John Abel Smith, M.P., was quite accurate when in 1866 he noted rather sourly,21\n\nThe English government is quite alive to the importance of Sarawak to British interests, but as long as Raja Brooke\n\n19 Pauncefote minute, 2 January 1877, FO12/43.\n\n20 FO to Hennessy, 2 December 1868, FO12/34A.\n\n21 Owen Rutter (ed) Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts, London, 1935, p. 272.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206502, "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-1972", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "44 \n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG \n\nYour servants will now discuss the situation today. The cross-fire of the \"long-haired\" and the Nien rebels is like a disease of the heart or of the stomach [i.e., the vitals]. Russia, with her territory adjacent to ours, aims to eat away our land like a silkworm and may be likened to a danger to our elbows and arms [i.e., a close danger]. England's aim is trade, but she acts violently without regard for human principles. If we do not impose a limit on her then we shall be unable to stand on our own [i.e., lose our independence of action]. This would be like an affliction of the limbs. Therefore, first we should destroy the \"long-haired\" and Nien rebels, next get Russia under control, and then control England. All we can do is to try unobtrusively to blunt the impact of their ruthless onslaught, and not try suddenly to overawe by punishing them. If Heaven relents at our calamity and the rebels abate then through Your Majesty's sacred wisdom and your servants exerting their simple efforts there must be some improvement in the situation. \n\nIf we follow our present plan and act in accordance with the terms of the treaties and do not let the barbarians exceed them in the slightest, if on the surface we show sincerity and friendship while secretly carrying out a \"loose rein\" policy, then, in a few years, even if they make random demands still they will not suddenly cause us any great harm. After very careful deliberation on the whole situation we have proposed six regulations, which are respectfully submitted for the imperial glance. We request that instructions be sent to the princes and great officials at the travelling headquarters (hsing ying) for their joint deliberation. If it receives the imperial approbation your servants will act in obedience to it. As to the remaining trivial matters some of which may require adjustments, at the appropriate time your servants will again memorialize. \n\nVermillion endorsement: \n\nLet Prince Hui, the prince-ministers in charge of the travelling headquarters, ministers of the imperial presence and grand councillors, make proper deliberations without delay and memorialize. The memorandum is attached. \n\n1. \n\n[Here follows the Six-Point Memorandum]. \n\nWe request that an office for the general management of the affairs of the various countries be established at the capital with sole responsibility for these matters. We note that previously matters", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206514, "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-1972", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "56\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nIn 1878, after success in the competitive examination held by the Civil Service Commissioners in London, he was appointed a Hong Kong cadet by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He had wished to join, like his friend E.D.H. Fraser,3 the Indian Civil Service but his address to the Civil Service Commissioners for service in India had been turned down. Lockhart was the eighth cadet officer appointed to Hong Kong after the introduction of Hong Kong cadetships by Sir Richard MacDonnell in 1861. Sir Richard had been concerned to recruit young men from Britain who would train to become interpreters, for there was a great need for such persons in the Hong Kong public service at that time. But Sir Richard's scheme was not, properly speaking, an innovation since it was closely modelled on the system devised in 1854 for supplying interpreters to the Consular Service in China. The practice in Hong Kong was for a successful cadet, who had to be between the age of 20 and 23 on the first day of his examination, to remain in Britain for one year after appointment, during which time he was required to begin learning Chinese and to attend a class for students at King's College, London, held by the Professor of Chinese at that institution. The cadet was also employed for some hours daily at the Colonial Office in the work of the Department. At the end of his year's study the cadet was examined in Chinese, and the confirmation of his appointment depended upon both his passing a satisfactory examination and on the performance of his duties in the Office. Lockhart appears to have had no difficulties in meeting these requirements.\n\nIt seems likely that the European public in Hong Kong first knew of Lockhart when they saw a notification from the Colonial Secretary, W.H. Marsh, in the Government Gazette of 1879 which simply stated: 'It is hereby notified that James Haldane Stewart Lockhart, Esq., has been appointed by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, to be a Cadet in the Hong Kong Civil Service, and that he reported his arrival in the Colony on Tuesday, the 18th November, 1879.' Lockhart had set out from England by P. and O. steamer some time in September 1879; and, as was the form, immediately reported his arrival in Hong Kong to the Colonial Secretary. At that date it was the custom for a newly arrived cadet from Britain to spend a few weeks in the Colony before proceeding to Canton. During his brief stay in the Colony, the cadet was quizzed by senior officials, instructed as to his future", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206654, "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-1972", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe following letter appeared in the South China Morning Post, 10th April, 1972. — Ed.\n\nWHO HOISTED THE UNION JACK?\n\nIn today's (April 7) issue on page 20 you publish an article headed \"The Hongkong Club decides to go back to Victorian Era”. In the article you state \"The Club was founded in 1846, five years after the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Charles Elliot\".\n\nThe statement is not correct. It is true that Sir Charles Elliot issued a formal declaration of British sovereignty over Hongkong in January 1841 after the treaty of Chuenpi, but the Union Jack was hoisted on Possession Point by Captain Belcher commanding H.M. survey ship, Sulphur, on January 26, 1841.\n\nThe account is given in Captain Belcher's book \"Voyage round the World\" published 1843, Volume II page 157. The following is an extract:\n\n\"The only important point to which we became officially partners was the cession of the island of Hongkong, situated off the peninsula of Cow Loon within the island of Lama,\n\n\"On the return of the commodore on the 24th we were directed to proceed to Hongkong and commence its survey. We landed on Monday the 26th January at fifteen minutes past eight, and being 'bona fide' first possessors, her majesty's health was drank with three cheers on Possession Mount.\n\n\"On the 26th the squadron arrived; the marines were landed, the union hoisted on our post, and formal possession taken of the island by Commodore Sir J. G. Bremer, accompanied by the other officers of the squadron, under a feu de joie from the marines, and a royal salute from ships of war”.\n\nThere may be some uncertainty about the exact date. It is probable that the landing was on Monday, January 25 and that the more serious formalities took place on Tuesday, January 26.\n\nCaptain Belcher's history is preserved in the Colony in the names Belcher's Gardens, Belcher's Fort (and formerly Belcher's Creek)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206963, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG: THE MARQUIS DE MORES AND DAVID DE MAYRENA\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE*\n\nAdventurers at Government House\n\nIn the nineteenth century Hong Kong's Government House quickly established itself as one of the best caravanserais in the whole Far East. There were then few good hotels in Hong Kong so that His Excellency the Governor usually felt under a strong social obligation to accommodate at government expense any distinguished visitor from abroad; less prestigious persons would be invited to a function—dinner, soirée, levée — and journalists, writers, and other small fry granted in most cases only an interview. It is clear from Sir William Des Voeux's memoirs1 that at certain seasons Hong Kong swarmed with globe-trotters, nearly all of whom would wish to pay their respects to Her Britannic Majesty's representative at Government House.\n\nDes Voeux declares2 that two of the most extraordinary visitors he received at Government House were David de Mayréna, 'King of the Sedangs', and the Marquis Antoine de Morès, 'Emperor of the Badlands', both of whom arrived in Hong Kong in November of 1888 and left behind the remarkable legend that they had fought a duel. This essay is an attempt to describe their strange histories and to explore some questions relating to what may be termed 'the sociology of adventure'. Inevitably such an inquiry must invite discussion of why Europeans left their homeland, for they went overseas not only in pursuit of wealth but in search of a destiny, a term that suggests a number of psychological and sociological problems.\n\nOn 14 November 1888 the Danish steamer Frejr, a small vessel of 397 tons, engaged in the coastal trade and commanded by a Captain Lund, anchored in Hong Kong harbour after a three days\n\nMr. Lethbridge who is Reader in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong is well known for his earlier contributions on local society and government which have appeared in this Journal and elsewhere.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206966, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n31\n\nwritten his name in the visitor's book at Government House as 'Marie, Roi des Sedangs', and that hearing he was an educated man, who had brought with him respectable references, I was somewhat curious to see him, and I therefore caused him to be informed that while I was unable to acknowledge as King one who had not been recognised as such by Her Majesty, I should be happy to receive him, if he called as a private person. He adopted my suggestion, and as I found him interesting, I asked him to dinner by the name of Mons. de Mayréna. He came in a magnificent uniform, of unknown design; but as no impertinent inquiries on the subject were addressed to him, I never learnt to what corps or position it belonged.11 Mayréna's uniform—a Ruritanian, musical comedy type of costume—had been designed by the King himself and would have delighted Nathan, the famous theatrical costumier of Drury Lane. With this bizarre outfit Mayréna sported a long Annamite sword worn in a sash, Sedang style.\n\nA day or two after their meeting, Mayréna sent Des Voeux an award—a magnificently engraved diploma of the Grand Cordon de l'Ordre de Sedang. Des Voeux claims, of course, this was at once returned with my appreciative thanks, coupled with an intimation that English officers were not permitted to accept foreign orders except with the special sanction of Her Majesty. I saw nothing more of this gentleman afterwards.1 Des Voeux in any case would have seen little of Mayréna because on 27 November Des Voeux, together with his family, left for a shooting trip to Shanghai and did not return until 18 December. By then Mayréna's star had dimmed and discreditable rumours were beginning to circulate about him, fanned by comments in the China Mail. Des Voeux, a careful man, did not write very much about Mayréna, but it is clear that hidden under the regal plumage he detected a louche adventurer, a royal Raffles all too inclined to pocket the silver spoons at Government House. Des Voeux, who was a great snob,1 doubtless also felt Mayréna was only every other inch a gentleman.\n\nThe speed with which Mayréna approached Des Voeux demands little explanation. Mayréna was indeed an adventurer and time was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207147, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsurvey. Sir E. Belcher, accordingly, landed on Monday, January 25, 1841, at the foot of Taipingshan, and on the hill, now occupied by the Chinese Recreation ground, Captain Belcher and his officers, considering themselves the bona fide first British possessors, drank Her Majesty's health with three cheers, the spot being thenceforth known as Possession Point. The Point remained an open space and came under the management of the Chinese Recreation Ground Committee created in 1890.\n\nIn 1887 there was a rearrangement of streets to the south of the Recreation Ground. With the change there was a renaming. The western terminus of Hollywood Road was shifted from the present Possession Street to what was known as Gap Street, so that Hollywood Road emptied into Queen's Road on the south side of the Recreation Ground rather than on its east side.\n\nOn the south side of old Gap Street across from the Chinese Recreation Ground the original St. Stephen's Anglican Church opened in 1866. Here also the Baxter Memorial School was built in 1872 in memory of Miss Sophia Harriet Baxter. She had come to Hong Kong in 1860 and until her death five years later established schools for Chinese, Eurasians and orphans. St. Matthew's Anglican Church now occupies a part of the original site granted to the Church in 1864.\n\nThe neighbourhood could have been regarded as a good missionary area for it was dominated by establishments devoted to pleasure. Nearby was a theatre, and the present Possession Street was lined with brothels in the nineteenth century. It was also, however, near a more sobering district.\n\nThe hillside between Possession Point and West Point was used as a Chinese burial ground. The I-tsz Temple, built to house commemorative tablets for Chinese residents who died without a family to remember them, and, temporarily, for those whose families were in their home villages in China, was behind Possession Point on Tai Ping Shan Street. It adjoined the burial ground and thus, in accordance with Chinese practice, was in a convenient location to be used as a depository for those who were about to die. Publicity regarding conditions at the temple started a movement to provide better medical services for the Chinese community. This resulted in the formation of Tung Wah Hospital. It was opened officially in 1872 across the street from the I-tsz Temple, occupying land that was a part of the old burial ground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207725, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "98\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\nat the main mast of every war ship. . . . It was a pretty sight, very noisy and warlike.”* \n\nThe Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 16, 1881, published the announcement with the Chinese and English placed side by side:\n\nGOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION-No. 131.\n\nHis Majesty the King of HAWAII arrived in Hongkong on Tuesday evening, the 12th instant, and was welcome to the Colony by the Governor, in the name of Her Majesty Queen VICTORIA. His Majesty, the King KALAKAUA, was accompanied by His Excellency W. N. ARMSTRONG, Minister of State, and Colonel JUDD, Chamberlain,\n\nBy His Excellency's Command,\n\nFREDERICK STEWART,\n\nActing Colonial Secretary.\n\nColonial Secretary's Office,\n\nHongkong, 16th April, 1881.\n\n號一十三百一第報憲\n\n署輔政使司史\n\n爲篩論事照得現有\n\n浩德護送前來於本月十二日卽禮拜二晚抵港 夏威儀國大君主加拉嘉華隨帶宰臣士當及司儀長參將\n\n香港總督郎敬用\n\n大英后帝城克多壢阿名迎接登岸爲此特示俾衆週知\n\n一千八百八十一年 四月 十六\n\n示\n\nA tiffin (luncheon) party was given by Mr. Chater, a rich merchant.† Men of all nationalities came to meet the King and his party at this magnificent affair. The King asked Armstrong to take his place and propose a toast to the Governor who later asked Armstrong to write out the speech for transmission to the Home Government in London. Armstrong in his letters back to Foreign Minister Green mentioned, \"I must admit having a glorious time with Sir John Pope Hennessy, as he is a man of immense information, great experience, and liberality. . . . Governor Hennessy will\n\n* The Hawaiian flag was designed by Capt. Alexander Adams, Englishman, in 1810, with eight stripes for the islands and the British Union Jack in the upper left corner.\n\n† See Plate 16.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207726, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n99\n\nkindly put me in communication with the British Minister in Rome so that I can command his good offices. . . . In the matter of decorations. Sir John ranks high among the Colonial Governors of England.\" And a Grand Cross of Kalakaua was later conferred on him.\n\nHong Kong Chinese merchants who traded with the people in Hawaii came to call on the King, and told him that their countrymen in his Kingdom appreciated the opportunities in the islands and were loyal to the Hawaiian government.\n\nAt the last State banquet in Hong Kong, as Armstrong reported, \"the lifeless air and heavy food made the King drowsy. The numerous receptions and late hours had deprived the King of sleep. His eyelids dropped . . . The Governor's wife was seated on the King's right, and I was seated next to her. I feared a nasal explosion if the King's doze should deepen, and devised ways of preventing it. It was a case of emergency. I whispered to the Governor's wife what my fears were, and asked her aid in preventing a loss of royal dignity. The clever wife of the Governor whispered to me, 'Will any special piece of music waken him up?' . . . She quietly called the majordomo, and in a minute the military band in the balcony filled the air with the music of 'Hawai'i Pono'i' (the Hawaiian National Anthem).\" The King woke up and the banquet ended.\n\nPage 100\n\nOn April 21, 1881, the Royal group left Hong Kong on the ship Killarney for Bangkok. Acting Consul General F. Bulkeley Johnson sent his report to W. L. Green, \"His Majesty the King and suite arrived here on the 12th [April] and left on the 21st April for Bangkok on a visit to the King of Siam.\"\n\nAnd the King and his party travelled to Singapore, Penang, Calcutta, Suez, Cairo, Rome, London, Brussels, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Lisbon. King Kalakaua, in his July 12, 1881 letter from London, wrote of his meeting with Queen Victoria, “She came up to me and took my hand and then sat on a sofa asking me to sit down on a chair facing the sofa near her. She said that I was making a very long tour. I answered very fluently asked particularly where I learnt English as my accent was perfect.\" \n\nHomeward bound, the group crossed the Atlantic on the S. S. Celtic to New York. Then to Philadelphia, Washington, where he called on President Chester A. Arthur, and overland to California", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208789, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n219 \n\ngressed gradually. More than 140 cases of disputes between customers and our members were settled through the mediation of our Association. \n\nAt the beginning of the Summer season in 1950, a former senior British colonial official who had served in Africa and at the Colonial Office and his wife visited Hong Kong. On 12 May 1950, he paid a visit to our Association and had asked many searching questions about the history and organisation of our Association and also about the business conditions of our member firms. Extremely satisfied with our answers, he stated that after returning home, he would collate materials and write a book on this topic, so as to promote trade between China and the United Kingdom.* \n\nIn 1941, our Association had a membership of only 19 firms, which number was later increased to 23. On the liberation of Hong Kong in 1945, there were 32 members but in the following year, the number was increased to 37. In 1947, there were 41 members. In 1948, our Association launched a membership drive. By 1949, the number was increased to 80 and afterwards many joined our Association as members. By 1951, our Association had a membership of 102. In spite of the business slump in recent years, our Association still has a membership of 97 at present. \n\nConstruction of a new Association Building \n\nThe old Association Building was built in the 8th year of the reign of Tung Ch'ih (1868). In 1947, it was proposed by Mr. Yung Sai-fong, then Chairman of our Association, that the building should be demolished for reconstruction as it was in danger of collapse on account of its age. The motion was carried at a General Meeting. \n\nShortly afterwards, a notice was received from the Secretary for Chinese Affairs to the effect that Government proposed to resume and put up at public auction the Crown lot on which our Association building stood, and that our Association was to bid for it at the auction. In response, our Association requested Government to grant the lot to us for redevelopment. In 1947, our Association received a reply from the Colonial Office via the Secretary for Chinese Affairs stating that approval had been given for our Association to purchase the lot at a price of $100 per square foot. \n\nreference to Mr. Harold Ingrams, though the date seems wrong as the Ingrams left Hong Kong on 8th May. See Hong Kong (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1952) pp.1,7 and 147.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210157, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "107\n\nsee, had a reputation for civility. The larger farming villages included Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung. The smaller villages and hamlets included Hok Tsui, Chai Wan, To Tei Wan, Tai Tam (at Stanley), Tin Wan (at Aberdeen), Wan Chai, Tai Tam Tuk, Kwan Tai Lo, Wong Ma Kok, So Kon Po, Shek O and Pokfulam, whilst the port villages cum small towns included Chek Chu (Stanley), Shau Kei Wan and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen).” Most of these settlements exist today, albeit greatly changed, although a few have gone.\n\nWhat did these places look like in the 1840s when they first came under British rule? Fortunately, in those days before the camera, one of the officers stationed on the island and entrusted with the first contour survey (1843-1845) entered some useful descriptions in his letters home. This was Lieutenant Thomas Bernard Collinson of the Royal Engineers, a gifted young man who died a major-general at the age of 81 in 1902.\" In a letter he wrote:\n\n\"There is really a great deal more to be seen in Hong Kong than its appearance promises. Besides the town of Chuck Chu [Chek Chu] there are 10 villages and at least 400 acres of well cultivated ground. Some of the villages certainly consist of only 7 or 8 houses, but they are distinct villages with ground attached. The largest is Shapwont as it is printed,\" or “Chuckpyewan\" as it is called by the inhabitants, and “Aberdeen\" as it is called by the Governor. Her Majesty's surveying vessel employed by the Board of Ordinance has been anchored for a fortnight exactly at the figure 6 at Careening island [on the Chart of the anchorage] and begins to know something of Aberdeen and if the old Aberdeen is anything like the new, it must be a straggling village scattered round a small bay, with an ill-paved sort of quay in front and about 50 fishing boats lying about a great rock in the middle, a good supply of shops where bamboo hats, mats, sails, ropes and baskets; rice, fruit, vegetables, tobacco, earthenware and fireworks are all sold together; these being the staple commodities of a Chinese country shop and cakes by the bye, with plenty of pork fat in everything and a thousand of the dirtiest men women and children that ever talked altogether in a singsong:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210184, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "134\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nequally there is no reason to doubt that arrangements similar to those at Stanley and Shau Kei Wan were to be found there.\n\nThis account does not claim to be a comprehensive account of Hong Kong before 1841, but aims to stimulate an interest. If it reaches members of old Hong Kong village families by one reason or another, I hope it will encourage them to dig into their family chests to see if anything remains that will fill out the story.\n\n89\n\nNOTES\n\nThe material for this essay is varied. I am in considerable debt to several good friends; Ian Diamond, Tom Poon, Anthony Siu Kwok-kin, Patrick Hase, and Carl Smith among others. Nineteenth-century writers, including officials, especially those who saw Hong Kong in its early colonial years, are also valued contributors to the story. Correspondence in the possession of the Tang family of Kam Tin figures prominently. I have also been fortunate to have spoken with old persons in their 'seventies' and 'eighties' back in the 1960s. They were able to give valuable information about life in their youth, when the lifestyle and appearance of the Hong Kong villages and boat people's anchorages had changed relatively little since the 1840s, compared with the total obliteration and change all too frequently experienced in the past fifteen years. These interviews took place in a variety of places; in an old tenement in Shaukeiwan, in one of the old hillside villages there, in a resettlement estate, in a Housing Society estate for fishermen's families, on a friend's pleasure craft manned by a boatman whose family had been living on boats in Deep Bay for generations, on a working cargo boat in a typhoon shelter, in a converted stake-net fisherman's hut, in a village house overwhelmed by squatter huts, and so on. Each of these locations testified to how modern Hong Kong was dealing cards to the persons concerned and their families, swept along or thrust to one side in the maelstrom of intensive postwar development and redevelopment. To all the above contributors, I tender thanks and appreciation.\n\n1\n\nC.J.C. in Revd G.N. Wright and Thomas Allom, China Illustrated in a Series of Views (London and Paris, Fisher and Co., 1843), Vol. 1, p. 17 in my set, \"Harbour of Hong Kong”.\n\n2 Harley Farnsworth MacNair, Modern Chinese History Selected Readings (Shanghai, Commercial Press, Second edition, 1927), p. 169.\n\n3 W.L. Bales, Tso Tsungtang, Soldier and Statesman of Old China, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1937), p. 69.\n\n4 The Letters of Queen Victoria, A Selection from Her Majesty's Correspondence between the Years 1837 and 1861, ed A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher, (London, John Murray, 1908), Vol. 1, p. 262.\n\n5 Following G.B. Endacott's History of Hong Kong (Oxford, University Press, 1958), p. 18.\n\n6\n\nSessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) 1884-85, p. 2.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210188, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "138\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n37\n\nCO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864.\n\n38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45.\n\n39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149.\n\n40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308.\n\n41\n\ne.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there.\n\n42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258.\n\n43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151.\n\n44\n\n**科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78.\n\n45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12.\n\n46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132.\n\n47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11).\n\n48\n\nUnpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17.\n\n49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983).\n\n50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3\n\n51\n\n52\n\n53\n\nFriend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith),\n\nIbid.\n\nSee J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10.\n\n54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill.\n\n55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above.\n\n56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843.\n\n57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210688, "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-1986", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "22\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nhis expressions. On one occasion an opponent complained that his truculence in court was quite intolerable and Francis responded by saying of the opponent's speech \"such stuff as that is rubbish\". In 1883 there was criticism of his ungentlemanly behaviour when prosecuting R. Fraser Smith, the Editor of the Hong Kong Telegraph and a frequent sparring partner, for libel. The criticism may well have arisen out of disappointment at Fraser Smith's acquittal. As time went by he tended to assume omniscience and in 1887 an opponent was moved to say of him \"my learned friend appears to think that he is not only an authority on law but on every department in the colony”. Francis was minded to treat that as a statement of the obvious. However Hong Kong was well used to robust and idiosyncratic characters and indeed it had all the flavour of a frontier town. In 1859 the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, said that \"Hong Kong must be protected from the reckless libels which have so long poisoned the very atmosphere of the colony”. Francis was not only outspoken in Court. The Hong Kong Telegraph in its obituary said “his outspoken utterances estranged many persons who would otherwise have employed him professionally. But his talents were so conspicuous, his experience so great and varied, that he was bound to make his way to the front\". The China Mail said of him that “he had a ready temper but bore no malice\". A sort of verdict on him in his lifetime appeared in the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1891 in a series of articles on \"The Local Devil's Own\". It reads \"John Joseph Francis Q.C. is Hong Kong's leading counsel and one of its most prominent citizens. He served with distinction in the army and having acquired a taste for the Bar while serving Her Majesty elected to serve behind it, and by sheer hard work and natural ability succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. It is popularly supposed that to have Francis on your side means winning a case with the special exclusive order of Hong Kong jurymen. He is a warm hearted man in his own fashion and has done a lot of good for a certain class in Hong Kong”. The only deliberate act of discourtesy by him in his professional life that I have found was when the Chief Justice of the day refused to accede to his request not to sit after lunch on a Saturday and he did not attend. Francis said later that he had an engagement he could not get out of. On an occasion when he was twenty minutes late and said he had forgotten he was engaged in court the Chief Justice", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210692, "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-1986", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "26\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nspecially selected to reorganise and run the Registry (there had been some unhappy experiences in the past), \"The worst of it,\" he wrote, \"will be that this appointment of Mr. Ackroyd will constitute a precedent. He will be constantly vibrating between the Bench and the Registrar's Office. Succeeding Registrars will deem themselves entitled to the same chances, and instead of devoting themselves wholly to their work will be constantly on the look-out for acting appointment”. He ended by saying that he had no personal interest in the matter and would decline either office if offered it, and had not the slightest ill-will towards Ackroyd. The Government went ahead and appointed Ackroyd who does not appear to have taken any offence.\n\nIt may be convenient at this point, before turning to his life outside the law, to deal with other aspects of his character and situation. If his public statements and actions are a true guide he was a man of faith: faithful to his church and religion, to his native country and fellow countrymen and to his monarch. He was one of the leading Roman Catholic laymen in Hong Kong and regularly attended church services and functions. In 1878 he wrote to the press in defence of Bishop Raimondi who had been attacked in an editorial. The same year, speaking on a public occasion, he said that Roman Catholics did not expect favours but expected not to meet with prejudice and ignorance. He went on \"If there has been any difficulty, and there sometimes have been difficulties attending Catholics in Hong Kong, it has arisen, I will not say from any want of goodwill, but a certain amount, I do not like to say of prejudice, but of pre-judgment, a certain feeling of hostility to Catholics almost inevitable in English non-Catholics. At the same time I have spoken to missionaries and they all join in saying that nowhere, under no government, are they so free, are they so well treated, are they so perfectly certain that they will not be interfered with in the legitimate exercise of their office than under Her Majesty's Government”. In 1894 after the death of Bishop Raimondi he described him as a dear friend and said \"for the past twenty-five years he has been to me an educator in the path of duty\". In 1891 when his re-marriage was announced (he married a German lady in Colombo in December 1890) he was described as Knight of St. Gregory the Great, but I have not been able to trace his appointment. In 1880 speaking at a St. Patrick's Day Soiree he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210705, "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-1986", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "39\n\none else. The general expectation was that May and Francis would be treated in the same way. However, whereas May was awarded the C.M.G., Francis was merely offered an inkstand. The discrepancy was made all the more apparent by the fact that inkstands were also awarded to a number of junior officials.\n\nOn 22 May 1895 the Governor wrote to Francis \"By the direction of the Marquess of Ripon I have great pleasure in forwarding to you the accompanying handsome inkstand. You will find engraved on it the following inscription: 'Presented by the Hong Kong Government with the approval of Her Majesty's Government to J.J. Francis Esq., Q.C., Chairman of the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board, in recognition of services rendered during the epidemic of bubonic plague at Hong Kong in 1894'. For those services you have already been thanked by me, and also by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In again expressing my appreciation of the work which you then performed so willingly and so ably it only remains for me now to ask you to accept this inkstand from the Government of Hong Kong as a slight recognition of your disinterested and valuable labours during the epidemic of 1894\". Francis replied in a letter dated 27th May which he made public. After reviewing the work of the Permanent Committee and his part in it he said that the Public Committee felt that a medal or piece of plate, however valuable, was no sufficient acknowledgement for his services and in the circumstances it was impossible for him to accept the inkstand. He was perfectly satisfied with the thanks of the community and the Governor and Secretary of State and would have sufficient memorial of the plague year in the gold medal to be presented by his fellow citizens and in the state of his fee book. He would have been highly gratified if he had been honoured in the same way as May but the gift of an inkstand was so ludicrously inadequate to the services he had rendered that he could only conclude that the Secretary of State was under a false impression as to their nature. It was usual in England, or at least always had been, to award the honours of the campaign to the leader. He had done his work freely and voluntarily and without a thought, at the time, of anything beyond serving the colony but he now had a duty to speak out in justice to the Public Committee.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210707, "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-1986", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "41\n\nwith Mr. Francis. The procedure of the Hong Kong Government towards him seems miserably failing in tact. The Government was contemptible but Mr. Francis has diverted to himself a portion of the criticism that would otherwise have been monopolised by the Government. The whole affair makes an ugly page in the annals of the colony\".\n\nThere was reaction also inside the Government. Ackroyd wrote to the Colonial Office saying \"Mr. Francis is not a general favourite in Hong Kong and therefore the feeling in his favour on this occasion is all the more forcible testimony”. A Government memorandum recorded \"It has been decided not to give Francis the C.M.G. and it is impossible to vary that decision in the light of his letters. It will be seen that in his letter of 29 May he asks for the reason why he has not been honoured to the same extent as May. He should be politely told that the Secretary of State must decline to enter into correspondence on the subject”. The Governor recommended that Francis should be noted for a C.M.G. \"if he is quiet between this and then\" (i.e. the next honours list). According to a memorandum in 1902 Francis was so noted but “it was not finally decided that he should be given the C.M.G.”\n\nAfter the death of Francis, Ackroyd wrote to the Daily Press “He was a most useful citizen. As Chairman of the Plague Recognition Committee I recall he had put aside his professional duties and sacrificed his large practice for some months to help the Colony in her hour of trial\" (in fact he did not entirely abandon his practice). “He did a great and good work and I deeply regretted that these deserving services had not met with their reward but I suppose some official jealousy prevented him receiving that mark of Her Majesty's favour which he surely deserved and which he would greatly have appreciated\". The Colonial Secretary, J.H. Stewart Lochkart, brought this letter to the attention of the Governor writing “Ackroyd was knighted and now draws a handsome pension of more than £1,200 a year. So far as the Hong Kong Government is concerned his supposition of official jealousy is entirely unfounded. The services of Francis were brought to the notice of the Colonial Office by Sir William Robinson, and Mr. May when he was on leave at home also informed the Colonial Office of the good work done by Francis. I believe he would have been decorated but he published an injudicious letter after receiving the historical inkpot", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210830, "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-1986", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "164\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nthe pace tiring but spiritually exhilarating.\n\nA grand valedictory service was held at the Craven Chapel on February 8, 1848. Thirteen missionaries were present ready to sail to China. One of the boys addressed the meeting stating his intention to prepare himself as a preacher and evangelist.\n\nEven Queen Victoria was interested and she expressed a desire to meet the three young men who had become the sensation of the moment. The day after the valedictory service the boys, along with Dr. Legge, were summoned to Buckingham Palace.\n\nFirst there was a private interview with Prince Consort Albert and then with Queen Victoria.\n\nDr. Legge's own account reads: \"Our audience was very pleasant and courteous. He is a fine handsome, gentlemanly-looking man, and she is a sweet, quiet little body. She was dressed simply and unpretendingly. Her eye is fine and rolling, and a frequent smile, showing her two front teeth, makes you half forget you are before Majesty, though there is a very powerful dignity about all her bearing. The boys were much taken by surprise, having been expecting to see a person gorgeously dressed, with a crown and all the other paraphernalia of royalty.\"\n\nWell might the boys have been surprised when no ordinary person might look on the face of their own Emperor in an imperial audience at Peking.\n\nThe three students returned to Hongkong in August 1847, with enhanced status. As theological students they were to have special privileges. In England Dr. Legge had presented their needs and raised funds for their support.\n\nPast experience had shown the temptation of good salaries placed before students with a knowledge of English. To counteract this temptation Dr. Legge felt his theological students should be assured of an adequate income.\n\nHe explains: \"The students will be young men. They will pos-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211117, "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-1987", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "153\n\nclaimed: “We believe that such a creation of an imperium in imperio would produce alarm and dissatisfaction among the Chinese residents here; and by unnecessarily pressing on the Chinese the adoption of such a measure, Her Majesty's Government would be taking the surest course to develop, during times of peace, the worst vices of Chinese rule in a population under British protection; and, on the other hand, in the event of approaching disturbances, or the cessation of friendly relations with Peking, we would be creating in our midst a dangerous centre of rebellion, plots and hostile actions.”\n\nThe basic insecurity of a small group of colonials dwelling in the midst of a large population, whose customs and language were unfamiliar and strange, welled up at the prospect of the approval by Britain for a Chinese consul to assume duties in Hongkong.\n\nPressure from Hongkong and from merchants in Britain interested in the China trade caused the matter to be dropped.\n\nIt was revived in 1875 and again in 1891. It was in the latter year that Ho A-mei spoke out on the matter.\n\nCONSUL NEEDED ‘FOR FAIR TREATMENT\n\nThe suggestion that a Chinese consul be appointed for Hongkong reappeared periodically. The idea was first advanced in 1868.\n\nAt that time the Governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, sent a strong protest to England.\n\nTwo years later the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce expressed its views on the subject.\n\nThe Treaty of Tientsin between Britain and China was signed in 1858. It contained a provision that it should be reviewed after 10 years. These revisions were embodied in the Chefoo Convention.\n\nThe Foreign Office asked the various Chambers of Commerce", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211121, "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-1987", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "157\n\nthat the cruisers might become involved in some incident which would impinge on British sovereignty,\n\nA consul in Hongkong could supervise the collection of duties less expensively and more efficiently, but their request was consistently opposed by the Hongkong Government and foreign merchants.\n\nWHEN A BLOCKADE HITS OPIUM SMUGGLING\n\nIn 1874 a petition signed by eighteen Chinese merchants and the resolutions of a public meeting held by the European community in Hongkong were sent to England.\n\nBoth protested against what was termed \"the blockade of Hongkong.\" They pleaded with Her Majesty's Government to take decisive action to stop what they believed to be the deliberate harassment of Hongkong by China.\n\nThe Chinese petition, drawn up with the assistance of Messrs. Caldwell and Brereton, solicitors, was originally handled in a hush-hush manner. It received no publicity and copies were not given to the press, though it was sent to a few influential residents.\n\nWhen, about a month after the petition had been submitted, the editor of the China Mail saw a copy, he immediately drew the public's attention to it.\n\nHe questioned the secrecy which had surrounded it.\n\nIn that day suspicion was the usual reaction to activities within the Chinese community. The editor laid it down thus: \"Either the Chinese are working with us or they are not. If they are, they must learn that the surest way of bringing their complaints to the notice of the executive is to make them as public as possible.”\n\nThe reason for avoiding publicity may simply have been to prevent the Chinese authorities from learning of it.\n\nIt was later stated that when they did hear, two mandarins were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211122, "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-1987", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "158\n\nsent to Hongkong to inquire into the affair and in consequence the petitioners had gone into hiding.\n\nIn the petition, the Chinese merchants humbly requested Her Majesty to intercede for them with the Chinese Government in the case of the seizure of a junk called the Kum Hop Shing.\n\nIt had been stopped near the Lyemun Pass in January 1874, as it neared Hongkong from Taiwan.\n\nWhen it could not produce a receipt bearing the \"Grand Chop\" for duties paid on its cargo, the junk was taken to Canton where it was sold at auction.\n\nThe Hongkong merchants interested in the affair held that no document with the \"Grand Chop\" was needed for goods coming to Hongkong from Taiwan.\n\nThey first appealed to the British Consul at Canton for redress. He told them the question must be referred to him through the Hongkong Government.\n\nThis then was done, but the final decision of the consul was that the Chinese were within their rights in seizing the vessel. This, of course, from the Hongkong view, was most unsatisfactory.\n\nThe petitioners firmly believed that the consul's decision was wrong and had only been made because he had been \"cajoled by Canton authorities.\"\n\nThey claimed that the promise made by Captain Charles Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary for Trade in China, in a proclamation he issued in June 1841, was not being honoured. The document was entitled (they said) \"An Invitation to Chinese Merchants.\"\n\nThe petitioners of 1874 regarded the 1841 proclamation as the constitutional foundation stone of their position in Hongkong.\n\nCaptain Charles Elliot had stated that \"merchants and traders of Canton and all parts of the Empire... have free permission", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211123, "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-1987", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "159\n\nto resort to and trade at the port of Hongkong, where they will receive full protection from the high officers of the British nation.\" This promise was needed for at the time China and Britain were in conflict over the opium questions.\n\nThe principle of a free port was set forth: \"Neither will there be any charge upon imports and exports to the British Government.\n\nIn the light of the strained relations between the two nations, Charles Elliot threatened China with \"an immediate embargo upon the port of Canton and all the large ports of the Empire if there be the least obstruction to the freedom of Hongkong.\"\n\nConditions had altered considerably from 1841. At that time, any Chinese trading in or with Hongkong would have been traitors to the Chinese Government.\n\nOnly because of China's humiliation on the field of battle was Hongkong ceded to Britain. Time and financial interests had blurred the national pride of the Chinese merchants in Hongkong.\n\nThe signers of the petition may also have been connected with the opium trade. Their names are not given in the published petition. Even the consul at Canton, when he sent a copy of the petition to the British Minister at Peking, did not know the names of the signatories.\n\nThe \"blockade\" had made it increasingly difficult for the opium smugglers to escape the surveillance of the Chinese armed cruisers. The smugglers equipped their own vessels with ever larger armaments that they might emerge victorious in a shoot-out with the cruisers.\n\nThe picture of the situation the merchants painted for Her Majesty was a dark one. The villains in the scene were the Chinese officials.\n\nThe petitioners informed the Queen that, “during the past five years, some of the mandarins in authority at Canton, actuated, as your petitioners believe, by avarice and jealousy, and presuming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211133, "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-1987", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "169\n\npublic. Its conclusions were considered not acceptable and its tone would have aggravated differences between China and Britain.\n\nIn December 1873, the Governor of Hongkong had appointed a three-man commission to investigate the alleged interference by China with the trade of Hongkong. Its members were Phineas Ryrie, a businessman and chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, H. G. Thomsett, the harbour master, and M. S. Tonnochy, his assistant. They submitted their report in April 1874.\n\nThe General Chamber of Commerce requested a copy, but it was told that as the Colonial and Foreign Offices were still considering the report, it could not be released to the public.\n\nThe merchants felt that the Government was deliberately withholding the findings of the commission. To draw attention to their views, which were similar to those expressed by the commission, the merchants encouraged a group of aggrieved Chinese to petition Her Majesty. They then followed this up with their own public meeting.\n\nThe commission had taken the position that the method China was using to enforce its revenue collection was seriously hurting Hongkong trade. The main premise of the report, that China had encroached on Hongkong's sovereignty, was rejected by the representatives of the British Government at Canton and Peking.\n\nAlthough the Foreign Office in London, Sir Thomas Wade, the British Minister in Peking, and Sir Brooke Robertson, Her Majesty's Consul at Canton, were not in complete agreement about the various points raised by the commission, they all agreed that the commission had greatly overstated the case.\n\nIt was conceded that the employment of a low type of foreigner by the Chinese was objectionable, that in the nature of the case there must have been some violation of Hongkong waters when a junk was being chased by cruisers, and that no doubt there had been instances of squeezing.\n\nIn commenting on the report of the commission, Sir Brooke", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211163, "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-1987", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "199\n\nteenth century.\n\nThe initial intention was for the entire community to unite on a proposal for the celebration, but it ended with the Chinese going their way and the foreigners another way.\n\nThe Chinese were able to agree about the manner in which they wished to permanently mark the event. The expatriates were torn by different factions each promoting its own project.\n\nThe manner in which the jubilee plans were handled illustrate the difficulty of uniting a community rigidly adhering to social and racial distinctions.\n\nIn the British Parliament the question was raised as to whether the Government was going to initiate plans for the celebration by the nation. The Government spokesman replied that “all celebrations of this kind will probably possess greater value so far as they arise from the spontaneous action of the public.” The local Government shared this view.\n\nEventually, after the Jubilee Year had opened, an informal meeting was held by a group of citizens and an unofficial committee was organised to discuss plans.\n\nOne of the committee, Mr. Paul Chater, who was also an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, announced that at the next meeting of the council on February 11, 1887, he would put to the Government the question: \"Whether it is the intention of the Government to co-operate with the public in celebrating Her Majesty's Jubilee Year in a manner befitting the occasion.”\n\nThere was criticism that the unofficial committee had heretofore acted in a semi-private manner and had not taken the public into its confidence. There was general approval, however, of Mr. Chater's move, for, as an editor commented, \"his question will effectively set the ball a-rolling, and public action will no doubt follow.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211165, "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-1987", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "201\n\nbrations.\n\nIt was the editor's opinion that, \"the matter is far too important to be left to any self-constituted or semi-private committee.”\n\nHe had his own suggestion as to who should assume leadership:\n\n\"While not wishing to question the good intentions and public spirit of the gentlemen, we would venture to suggest that there are certain members of the community whose position naturally indicates them as the proper parties to take a lead on an occasion of this kind.\n\nHe proposed that the Acting Government, the Chief Justice, or the senior unofficial member of the Legislative Council, or perhaps all three of them, call a public meeting.\n\nIf these gentlemen took the lead, it need not mean that those who had already been discussing the matter would be crowded out, for they \"could doubtless find a place on the committee.” As such they would be in a much better position, “having been regularly appointed and instructed, they would be able to act much more effectively.\"\n\nBut even a committee properly appointed and instructed was no guarantee that things would run smoothly.\n\nSuch an important project should engage the whole community, \"for unless the demonstration be of a thoroughly popular character, heartily joined in by Her Majesty's subjects of every rank and station, it would be better to have no demonstrations at all.\"\n\nHerein was the danger posed by the self-constituted committee: \"We need hardly say that nothing could be more calculated to render the affair unpopular than for a small clique to assume the direction of affairs without any authority from the community at large.\"\n\nHongkong in the nineteenth century was very sensitive about cliques. Their all-pervasive presence disrupted community har-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211166, "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-1987", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "202\n\nmony. Class and racial distinctions were sharply drawn.\n\nSelf-interest and a desire for public recognition caused many to push themselves forward as self-appointed community leaders. These unpleasant features of life in Hongkong became evident as the plans for the jubilee were discussed.\n\nThe press suggested what it considered appropriate official events for the celebration: a special session of the Legislative Council to adopt a congratulatory address with all the pomp and ceremony local conditions would permit, a reception at Government House to give an opportunity to pay respects to Her Majesty's representative, a general parade of troops with ships in the harbour dressed, and a royal salute both afloat and ashore.\n\nSuggestions for the festivities of the community included a general illumination for one night, a fete and fireworks at the Botanical Gardens on another, and for a third festive evening the British community might invite their friends of other nationalities to an entertainment at the City Hall with the Amateur Dramatic Club performing or the Musical Club might present an evening's entertainment of vocal and instrumental music.\n\nThe Sketching Club could also contribute by holding an exhibition of its members' works. Drama, music and art could thus each make its contribution.\n\nAs an alternative, a banquet was suggested. This, however, because of limitation of space, would have meant making decisions about who should receive invitations and who would have to be excluded. Obviously a situation to be avoided if at all possible.\n\nAnother objection to a banquet was that it would automatically exclude the women, as in that day they did not attend public banquets.\n\nAs it turned out, there was not much difficulty in deciding on a satisfactory programme to celebrate the event. The difficulty came over deciding on a permanent memorial.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211167, "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-1987", "page_number": 228, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "203\n\nThe Daily Press publicly launched the discussion of this prickly topic by suggesting that Hongkong make a contribution to the Imperial and Colonial Institute to be set up in London.\n\nHis Highness the Prince of Wales had intimated that Her Majesty, his mother, looked with favour on this project as an expression of her subjects' gratitude and loyalty.\n\nIt was felt that there ought to be a local memorial. Especially, as the paper reminded its readers, \"Hongkong was the first colony acquired by the British Crown after Her Majesty's ascension though Natal runs it rather close and the whole of its history is included in that of Her Majesty's reign, and it seems only reasonable that the present generation of colonists should transmit to their successors some permanent memorial of the jubilee of a sovereign who has endeared herself to her subjects in all parts of the world and in whose reign the Colony was settled and has grown to the state of prosperity it at present enjoys.”\n\nThe paper then anticipated the suggestion Mr. Chater was to make to the Government, that of a public park.\n\nSeveral years earlier Governor Bowen had turned the sod for a park in Wongneichong Valley. It was intended to bear his name.\n\nBut as far as the paper was concerned there was little likelihood of the Government carrying out the scheme for a quarter of a century.\n\nHence, the paper suggested that \"the community might take the matter in hand and change the name to Queen's Park.\" The public was assured that “there would be no discourtesy to Sir George Bowen in changing the name under the circumstances, seeing he was unable to carry out his intention of having the park made during his government and that the work is practically uncommenced.\"\n\nAnother suggestion put forth was that inasmuch as Hongkong had done little to provide education for girls it \"establish and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211168, "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-1987", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "204\n\nendow a high class school and call it the Victoria Female College.\" And lastly, the possibility of a statue was advanced.\n\nAlready seeds were sown for divided opinions and each little group pushing its own project. Out of the resulting confusion, the Chinese emerged with their own scheme, a hall for a Chinese Chamber of Commerce.\n\nJUBILEE PLANS COMPETE WITH RACING\n\nThe manner in which Hongkong should observe the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was publicly launched when Mr. C. P. Chater raised the question at a Legislative Council meeting on February 11, 1887.\n\nHis preliminary remarks reflected the sentiments prevalent among colonials in a period when the British Empire was in its unchallenged glory. They were proud of the widespread dominion of their native country.\n\nMr. Chater began thus: \"Sir, the question I am about to ask, though neither of state importance, nor materially affecting the interests of the Colony, touches upon a subject which at the moment is appealing to the loyal feelings of millions of Her Majesty's subjects all over the world.\n\n\"This year Her Most Gracious Majesty celebrates the 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne of that great empire, the Government of which she has so ably administered; and throughout her vast dominions rejoicings are to be the order of the day.\n\n\"And her subjects, of whatever race they may be, are anxious to celebrate the occasion in a manner befitting its exceptional and gratifying nature.”\n\nHongkong, said Mr. Chater, was eager to participate in the general rejoicings.\n\n\"This Colony does not wish to be behind in anything, more especially in a matter of this sort.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211170, "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-1987", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "206\n\nMr. Chater proceeded to introduce a project he felt worthy of the occasion.\n\nWhat stimulated his imagination were the possibilities for “our picturesque little valley of Wongneichong, so admirably adapted by nature for a park.”\n\nHe knew the valley well, for he was perhaps Hongkong's most enthusiastic and successful racehorse owner. Between his first appearance at the Happy Valley track in 1865 until his death in 1925, he never missed a meeting.\n\nAs for the park, it was true that the Government had appropriated $25,000 for the construction of a park to be named Bowen Park several years earlier, but little had been done.\n\nMr. Chater asked: “Do you not think this is a fitting opportunity for pushing on this much needed park and of naming it after Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria Park?”\n\nHe was sure that it would be a project of which the good Queen would approve as it would be \"so beneficial to all the residents of her densely populated little Colony of Hongkong.”\n\nAfter this long introduction, Mr. Chater put the question: “As there is a general desire on the part of the community of Hongkong to celebrate Her Majesty's jubilee year in a fit and appropriate manner, I wish to ask whether the Government would co-operate in any movement made by the public for the purpose?”\n\nThe presiding officer Sir George Phillippo, the Chief Justice, replied on behalf of the Acting Governor who was ill and not able to attend the meeting of the council: \"In answer to the question, I am requested by His Excellency the Acting Governor... to say that the Government is prepared to co-operate with the public of Hongkong in celebrating Her Majesty's jubilee year in a manner befitting the occasion, and is ready to take into consideration any definite proposal on the subject that may be made to it in accordance with the wishes of the community.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211171, "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-1987", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "207\n\nHere lay the difficulty, however, to get the community to agree on a definite proposal.\n\nThe presiding officer volleyed the ball back into the court of the community. He explained that there had been no move by the Government to propose definite plans because \"His Excellency considers that any steps that may be taken with this object would no doubt be more fully appreciated by Her Most Gracious Majesty if they were the spontaneous act of the loyal community of Hongkong,\" though he definitely wished to reassure the public that the Government was ready to co-operate.\n\nHidden in the phrase \"spontaneous act\" was the seed of the muddle Hongkong got itself into over the jubilee plans.\n\nBehind the scenes there had been planning strategy to promote a particular scheme. The plan for the park had the backing of influential people. Many, however, considered it inappropriate and wished to promote their own proposals.\n\nThere was some delay in holding a public meeting after the Government announced that it would wait for the public to make suggestions.\n\nMr. Chater had raised the question in the Legislative Council on February 11, 1887. At the time Hongkong was caught up in racing fever.\n\nIn those days the annual race meeting was restricted to three ordinary days and one off day during the last week of February. The days preceding were busy ones for owners, riders and punters. Many felt it obligatory to attend the early morning practice runs at the track.\n\nMany of the leading figures of the community were absorbed in these preparations and had little spare time for arranging a public meeting.\n\nMr. Chater had one of the largest stables in association with his partner, Mr. Hormusjee Mody.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211172, "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-1987", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "208 \n\nThere was only time in those busy days for a committee to meet on February 17 to pass a resolution that read: “A public meeting should be convened upon Wednesday, March 2 at 4.30 pm, and the Chief Justice shall be asked to preside. All members of the community are invited to attend. The meeting will be held at the City Hall.\" \n\nAfter Mr. Chater's question and the Government's reply, \"Brownie,\" the writer of the regular China Mail column “Fragrant Waters Murmur,” expressed the hope that \"some scheme for celebrating Her Majesty's jubilee will be harmoniously arrived at, and that it will reflect credit upon the community of Hongkong as well as be a permanent good to the Colony and a worthy record to our Queen.\" \n\nUnfortunately, it produced discord rather than harmony. It resulted in the Chinese holding their own meeting on March 28, when harmony did reign. That meeting decided to raise funds for a building for a Chinese Chamber of Commerce. \n\nWHEN EXPATS WAXED OVER GLORIES OF SOVEREIGN \n\nOn March 2, 1887, a public meeting was convened at the City Hall to pass resolutions concerning Hongkong's celebration of the Golden Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. \n\nFive resolutions were passed and several amendments were proposed. The proposer of each resolution gave a speech as did its seconder. It was an occasion upon which Hongkong's would-be Demosthenes could display their oratorical skill. \n\nThe anticipated celebration was one in which national pride could luxuriate. In that day loyal Britons took pride in the worldwide Dominion of the Empire. The occasion was an opportunity for the expatriates in Hongkong, an outpost of that Empire, to express their patriotic sentiments, \n\nIn the nineteenth century imperialists did not question the right of \"civilised nations\" to impose their rule over what were considered the less advanced peoples of the world. The \"white man's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211173, "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-1987", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "209\n\nburden\" to bring enlightenment and civilisation to the dark and backward corners of the world was a serious obligation.\n\nBehind the justifying idealistic philosophy for imperialism were hard economic facts. Expanding industrial production demanded larger markets. The world must be opened up both as a source of raw materials and as an outlet for the manufactured product. If this meant subjection of weaker powers, so be it. It was all in the high cause of progress and civilisation.\n\nToday we are critical of these attitudes and practices of Western powers toward African and Asian peoples. In that day British imperialism was in its heyday. Britannia ruled the waves; the sun never set on the Union Jack. The triumphant posturing of the British lion was acclaimed with enthusiasm.\n\nThese attitudes lay behind the words of the speakers at the public meeting.\n\nIn his introductory remarks the chairman, the Chief Justice Sir George Phillippo, spoke of the high regard in which Her Majesty Queen Victoria was held by the whole world.\n\nIn making his remarks he followed a well-known practice of speakers, to state it is unnecessary to say what they then proceed to elaborate on at length. So he begins: “It is unnecessary for me to dilate at length upon the many virtues Her Majesty possesses, and that she has shown both in her public and private life.”\n\nHe then proceeded to speak of her worldwide reputation as a virtuous woman and sovereign: \"They are well known to you as they are to every member of the British community and to nearly every member of the civilised world (applause).”\n\nOther matters he said he would not mention, but proceeded to do so, were, \"that during the whole of these 50 years during which Great Britain has advanced in the most remarkable way, Her Majesty has been at the heart of affairs, and that during the whole of that time she has shown herself from girlhood upwards to be one whose virtue we must all admire, as a loving daughter, as a most\n\n: \n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211174, "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-1987", "page_number": 235, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "210\n\nloving wife, as a devoted mother, and as an excellent grandmother to her children's children.\n\nHer Majesty's life was a model for all, for \"in her private life she has been almost irreproachable and her conduct has been such as to draw forth the admiration of nearly the whole world (applause).\"\n\nThe meeting began with sentiments no loyal son of the Empire could deny. After the chairman's stirring tribute there was no doubt that the meeting would be of one mind on the resolution he proposed: “That the Jubilee of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen should be celebrated by her loyal subjects in Hongkong.”\n\nAbout halfway through the meeting the Acting Attorney-General, Mr. E. J. Ackroyd, again expounded patriotic reasons for the proposed celebrations. He extended the sentiments expressed in the chairman's introductory speech.\n\nThough he had arisen to second a resolution made by Mr. Chater that the permanent memorial in Hongkong to the celebration be in the form of a park in the Wongneichong Valley, he seized the occasion for a bit of oratory which was only indirectly related to the resolution.\n\nHe began: \"This is a special occasion which ought to call forth the loyal sentiments of all Her Majesty's subjects, for on June 20 next we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the throne of the British Empire.\"\n\nIt was an occasion for reflection on the achievements of a glorious half century of Britain's history: \"If we look back on the years that have passed since that event, I think we must do so with feelings of great pride in view of the immense progress made on all sides during this period.\"\n\nThe speaker then enumerated various areas in which progress was particularly notable: \"If we consider the expansion of the empire itself, we shall find it has been wonderful, both as regards the extent of territory and of population. During these years trade", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211175, "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-1987", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "211\n\nand commerce have increased with unprecedented bounds, and the wealth of the nation has also grown in a measure totally unknown before in any similar period of our history.”\n\nWith the present labour unrest in Britain, inflation, high taxes and an uncertain economic future, we are sharply reminded that the sentiments of the speaker expressed conditions of what in retrospect seem to be a golden period; that is, if we view it from an imperial standpoint which largely ignores the exploitation and racial condescension upon which the structure of Empire stood.\n\nWith the extension of power to remote corners of the globe and the gathering of the profits of trade, there was also progress to be noted within the nation: \"The arts and sciences also have progressed in a manner that could have been thought impossible when Her Majesty ascended the throne. Discoveries and inventions have taken place which have added most materially to the prosperity, happiness, and comfort of all classes of Her Majesty's subjects. Nor has the progress been confined to material objects. Much has been done to raise and elevate the people, the advance in education has been surprising, and especially the efforts which have been expected.\"\n\nThere had also been advances in humanitarianism and liberalism: “Legislation has not been behindhand. Beneficent laws have been passed to mitigate the severity and harshness of former enactments, and other measures have been passed abolishing unnecessary restrictions and privileges and opening careers to many thousands of Her Majesty's subjects.”\n\nThe speaker prudently did not refer to the furore created among the expatriates of Hongkong when a few years earlier Governor Hennessy had introduced measures to make more humane the punishment meted out to Chinese criminals.\n\nNor did he speak of the strong objections raised to Governor Hennessy's efforts to introduce more equal status for the Chinese, such as the appointment of Mr. Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang) as the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council and the Governor's wish to abolish class legislation such as the light and pass", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211176, "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-1987", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "212\n\nrequirements for Chinese.\n\nOf course, we could not have expected him to paint dark colours on his oratorical canvas. It was all light, joy and good feeling.\n\nThe subjects of a most beneficent monarch could rejoice that, \"on all sides progress has been the watchword. Statesmen, philanthropists and men of science have done all they could to increase the prosperity of the nation and promote the welfare of all the classes of Her Majesty's subjects.\"\n\nAnd who had set the example for all the progress of the half century?\n\nAll loyal subjects turned towards their venerable and beloved sovereign, for \"above all these (the statesmen, etc.) towers the central figure to which our thoughts now turn and which commands our admiration, respect, and esteem for the bright example Her Majesty has shown. During the long fifty years she has occupied the throne of this great empire she shed lustre upon it and shown a bright example in all capacities, whether as Queen, wife or mother.\n\nThe speaker then came to the point of all his rhetoric, the seconding of Mr. Chater's resolution regarding a permanent memorial: \"It is a great event we are called on to celebrate and I think in desiring to celebrate it worthily we ought to seek for some object which will add to the enjoyment of all. The memorial should not be designed to promote the happiness of one class of the community only, but we should strive to erect something to commemorate Her Majesty's virtues which will be a boon to one and all (applause).\"\n\nMr. Ackroyd was seconding a proposal for a park in the Wongneichong valley, but already it had come under attack because it was felt by some that it would be of little benefit to the Chinese section of the community.\n\nThe adoption of the park scheme by the meeting resulted in the Chinese holding another meeting to plan for their own memorial,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211178, "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-1987", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "214\n\nIts purpose as stated in its Charter of Incorporation was \"to provide for the scientific and technical investigation of raw materials, more particularly those produced within the Empire; with a view to their commercial utilisation, and to supply information respecting the production, commercial employment and value of such materials.”\n\nThe Institute was promoted by the Prince of Wales with the express approval of his mother the Queen. The interest of the Prince and the Queen had been well-publicised throughout the Empire.\n\nThere were those in Hongkong who felt Hongkong could best express its appreciation of the achievements of the fifty years of Her Majesty's reign by making a contribution to a project she had personally endorsed. Others were more reluctant, pointing out that Hongkong had little to benefit from such an institution as it had no valuable natural resources and few industries.\n\nIn view of a general lack of enthusiasm for the Institute, the chairman of the public meeting, in mentioning a subscription to it as a possible way in which Hongkong might commemorate the jubilee, was careful to point out that the residents need not feel under pressure to support the scheme.\n\nHe pointed out that \"Her Majesty with that graciousness which has always characterised her does not wish to force any measure down the throats of any community who are opposed to it, and she is quite willing, as I understand it, to sanction an institution of any kind which will be of service to her peoples in the different colonies.\"\n\nWith these remarks he more or less dismissed the scheme. But the idea was not to be put aside so easily.\n\nIt had a strong advocate in Mr. John Joseph Francis, Queen's Counsel. He seized the opportunity to amend a motion made by Mr. A.P. MacEwen to put the idea before the meeting again.\n\nMr. MacEwen's resolution was twofold: \"That the form of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211179, "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-1987", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "215\n\ncelebration take the form of a permanent institution of some description to be called by Her Majesty's name, and of a fete and general rejoicing.\n\nMr. Francis wished to amend this by striking out the first clause concerning a permanent institution and substitute for it: \"A liberal subscription to the institute for the United Kingdom, India and the Colonies which is now being formed in London.\"\n\nHe then gave his arguments in support of his amendment. He was fearful that Hongkong would not be able to raise enough money to establish by itself an institution worthy of the occasion.\n\nHe pointed out that a very large sum would be needed to purchase ground, put up buildings and provide a proper endowment for an institution in Hongkong. He believed: \"If we are not to put up something worthy of the Colony, we had better do nothing of the sort.\"\n\nHe suggested that the expenses for the fete and rejoicings be paid out of a Jubilee subscription fund and that the balance be sent as a contribution to the proposed institute in London.\n\nThe chairman then had a hurried consultation with Mr. Francis: After it Mr. Francis stated that he had been asked to change his amendment as his designation of a particular project was premature.\n\nA definite proposal for a permanent memorial was to be placed before the meeting in a later resolution.\n\nIn deference to the chairman's opinion, Mr. Francis rephrased his amendment to read: \"That the celebration take the form of a fete and general rejoicing and a liberal subscription to some public purpose.\"\n\nMr. Francis could then, if he wished, propose an amendment to the resolution naming a permanent memorial when it was put. In the amendment he could name the project he favoured.\n\nPage 240\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211180, "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-1987", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "216\n\nThe Honourable Phineas Ryrie, a long-time resident and senior member of the Legislative Council, spoke against the amendment of Mr. Francis. He opposed sending to England any funds raised in Hongkong.\n\nHe admitted that a few years before he had not opposed sending a substantial contribution to help Irish famine sufferers, but the present object was of a different nature.\n\nThroughout his many years in Hongkong he had contributed liberally to many subscriptions. He had great faith in Hongkong's ability to raise funds for causes that had a popular appeal.\n\nHe was sure that: \"We are good enough in this Colony to subscribe for a memorial to Her Majesty the Queen, and we should do so.\n\nAt this point the chairman interrupted. He informed Mr. Ryrie that his remarks were out of order. He had been speaking to a specific proposal, while Mr. Francis' amendment, after he had rephrased it, was general.\n\nThe amendment proposed by Mr. Francis was then put before the meeting. It was rejected. Mr. Francis did not raise the question again.\n\nThe fourth resolution was that of Mr. Chater proposing that the permanent memorial of the jubilee year be a park in the Wongneichong Valley to be called Victoria Park. After some other suggestions were discussed, the park scheme was approved by a small majority. Many at the meeting, however, abstained from voting.\n\nThis did not settle the matter however. After the public meeting there was continued opposition to the decision. Demands were made that it be rescinded.\n\nThe Chinese went off and held their own meeting and adopted a plan more to their desires. Amid all the confusion new proposals were advanced and old ones revived.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211187, "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-1987", "page_number": 248, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "223\n\nnity; at least he was the only Chinese to speak at length at the meeting.\n\nHe proposed to amend Mr. Chater's resolution by striking out the reference to a park and in its place substitute the words “a charitable institution of some kind be established and named after Her Majesty, the exact nature of such institution to be left to the decision of Her Majesty herself.\"\n\nHe hoped this would block a decision on a park, and open the way for a project that might have the support of the Chinese. He stated his objections to the park, giving three reasons why it was not acceptable.\n\nHis first objection was that the Government had already stated its intention of creating such a park. It had been on the agenda of the Legislative Council several times, and as he pointed out, \"the money has been voted for it and revoted.”\n\nIf the Government was going to do it, let it carry it through. It was not appropriate that, \"when the Government undertakes to do a certain work for the community to come in and take credit for it and say 'We have done this.'\n\nIntroducing a bit of irony into his remarks, Dr. Ho Kai said: “If it is the general desire of this community to adopt as a memorial to Her Majesty's Jubilee any work which has been undertaken by the Government, then I say, let us dedicate to her our grandest and costliest and greatest one, and that is the Tytam Water Works.” (Applause).\n\nNo, it would not do to foist off a second-hand project as a memorial from the public. As Dr. Ho told his audience: \"What we want, gentlemen, is something quite new, something which the community will carry out without the assistance of Government and something more in harmony with the occasion.\"\n\nThe next objection was of a delicate personal nature. It concerned the late Governor's connection with the proposed park. Two years previous at an official ceremony Sir George Bowen had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211188, "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-1987", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "224\n\nturned the soil in the Wongneichong Valley for a park. The incipient park already bore his name.\n\nGovernor Bowen was one of Hongkong's unpopular administrators. He was regarded as pompous with an over-developed sense of his own importance.\n\nThis antagonism towards him may possibly have been one reason why the park had received support as a memorial gesture. It would be an indirect expression of the public's disapproval of its late administrator if he were deprived of having his name perpetuated in Hongkong by a public amenity.\n\nDr. Ho Kai reminded the meeting that if looked at in another way the change of the name from Bowen to Victoria was not entirely complimentary to Her Majesty. It was rather like, as he expressed it, offering her \"cast off shoes.\" This remark was greeted with loud applause.\n\nDr. Ho Kai reserved his most serious objection last. It was he said \"a class objection.\" The park would not be welcomed by the Chinese.\n\nThough he did not say so openly, it meant that the community could not expect the Chinese to assist in this aspect of the plans for the jubilee.\n\nThe park would be too far from the centre of town. Not only the Chinese but other less affluent sections of the population would find it too remote.\n\nDr. Ho Kai admitted that for residents near the park and those who liked to take long walks the park would meet a need, but, on the other hand, for the great majority of people living in the town the park would be quite useless, at least for some time to come.\n\nThere were suggestions that circumstances might change. “We speak of having tramways, of the Praya extension, and of connecting east and west, but in regard to this I may use the words of Mr. Chater and say that Government does not undertake these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211189, "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-1987", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "225\n\nthings very promptly.”\n\nThere was general agreement that the park would not be of immediate benefit to the Chinese, but some thought that was no reason why it should not be a suitable project for the Jubilee. Given time the Chinese would realise its value.\n\nIn seconding Mr. Chater's resolution, the Honourable A. J. Ackroyd looked into the future. In spite of the objections that the park would not be used much by the Chinese, he said: “I think it would be of great advantage to them, if not at the present, in the future, because there can be no doubt that in the future — at least I hope it will be so — the Chinese youth from the public schools will freely mix in our games and amusements.’\n\nMr. Ackroyd spoke about another objection that had been raised. A properly landscaped park would interfere with the viewing of the races. Indeed, he too “would disapprove of the valley being turned into a garden and shrubbery.”\n\nHe envisaged a sports field, because \"where there is so little level land in the Colony, we should utilise it to the best advantage.\n\nIt could also be used advantageously by the military, for “the troops can occasionally assemble to go through their exercises and the crews of Her Majesty's vessels can be brought on shore and put through their drill.”\n\nEditorial comment on the park proposal was not entirely favourable. One editor made the point that the name Happy Valley was firmly linked to the oval where the horses ran, and it was doubtful whether the public would be weaned away from it. Not only that, but it was said future generations would associate the name \"Victoria” with the City of Victoria, “rather than our much beloved and never-to-be-too-much-respected Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria.”\n\nWith only a bare flat open space and little chance of its users adopting or properly understanding the name \"Victoria Park,\" the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211191, "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-1987", "page_number": 252, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "227\n\nThe chairman of the public meeting had attempted to avoid these difficulties. He sensed that the community was about to launch itself into a stormy sea if it decided too quickly on a project.\n\nHe suggested that they might like to have more time to consider the matter. If so, he said he would be quite willing to entertain a motion for the meeting to be postponed until there was sufficient time for mature reflection. Or, as an alternative, if there was no wish for another meeting, the official committee which was to be named could be instructed to ascertain the views and wishes of the whole community.\n\nThese suggestions were wise, and much discord would have been avoided if they had been heeded.\n\nFollowing the meeting, one writer listed all the schemes which had come to his notice. He had heard of \"the enlargement of the already too large City Hall, of the removal of the Clock Tower to another site, of transporting the Dent Fountain to Wongneichong (to be buried there, perhaps) and of its replacement by a statue of the Queen in front of the City Hall, the addition of a ballroom to Government House, of a statue of the Queen anywhere or everywhere, of a subscription to the Indian and Colonial Institute, of the balance of subscriptions for a fete and rejoicings being handed over to the local charities, of a high school for girls, a home for the Protection of Young Girls, and (most wonderful of all) of a Poor House.\"\n\nTo put his own stamp of foolishness on the affair, the writer said: \"It has likewise been breathed softly, but not yet openly proposed, that a Home for Decayed British Merchants who have subscribed regularly for charities for say twenty years back might be suitable, as it seems likely to be a necessary mode of celebrating the historical event of Her Majesty's jubilee.\"\n\nA few of the proposals are of special interest because they reflect some of the social problems of the period. Two of them were concerned about the needs of girls in Hongkong.\n\nThe proposal for a middle school for girls would satisfy an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211196, "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-1987", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "232\n\nnature and not well suited to act as an aggressive leader. He seldom expressed an opinion at Legislative Council meetings.\n\nHe had spent most of his life in Hongkong. For a few years in the 1840s he had studied as a youth in the United States and had returned there in the middle 1870s as a supervisor of the Chinese Educational Mission. He had been a student of the Morrison Education Society when it moved from Macau to Hongkong in 1842. Through the years he had identified himself with the future of Hongkong.\n\nHe reminded his audience: \"The Chinese were for the present subjects, and he trusted loyal subjects, of Her Majesty, and he thought they also (as well as the Europeans) should take part in the celebration of the jubilee.\"\n\nMr. Ho A-mei then arose and endorsed the chairman's remarks concerning the appropriateness of a Chinese expression of loyalty. He reminded the meeting that in 1869 on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Chinese had taken a prominent part in the celebrations. It was no more fitting now that, “as traders and merchants in the Colony, they ought to take some steps to show their gratitude for the protection afforded them.\"\n\nThe Chinese, he said, while residing in the Colony, were treated as British subjects, and “it behoved them to give some evidence of their loyalty and gratitude.” Especially, as \"in no other country in the world were aliens so well treated as they were on British soil.”\n\nIn the flow of good feeling, he seems to have forgotten the criticisms he had brought against British rule in his struggle to have the Light and Pass Ordinance rescinded.\n\nThe long-standing problem of dual identity was expressed in Ho A-mei's statement that \"they were treated as British subjects here in Hongkong, and although in reality they were not, they might consider themselves as such.\" Pride in the Chinese heritage pulled in one direction, identification with the community in which they lived pulled in another.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211197, "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-1987", "page_number": 258, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "233\n\nThe speaker believed that the meeting was with him in a desire to express appreciation “of the kindness of Her Majesty.” He set before them the means of doing so. He proposed the Chinese put up a building for a Chamber of Commerce.\n\nSuch an institution, he maintained, was not only much needed, but indispensable, because \"Hongkong was the entrepôt for the commerce of Asia; and yet the Chinese had no place where they could discuss matters relating to commerce and trade in particular, and also hold public meetings.\"\n\nBesides a hall the building would contain a free library and a reading room where both Chinese and English books and periodicals would be available. The library would be named after the Queen,\n\nWhile the Portuguese and even the Japanese had a meeting place, the Chinese had none. To them it was a disgrace that there was no hall where they could hold official receptions and celebrate public events.\n\nThey were holding their meeting in the Tung Wah Hospital. The Chinese had used it as a meeting place since it was opened, but it was only out of necessity. They did so \"because they had subscribed to it, and had no other place to go, but it was really a Chinese hospital and not a place for meetings to be held.\"\n\nIt would take time to build a suitable hall. As a temporary measure it was proposed to use a building next to the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road.\n\nIn presenting the plan, Ho A-mei reviewed some of the past history of a search for a site for a meeting hall. During the administration of Governor Hennessy the grant of a space in the Chinese Recreation Ground was sanctioned, but it was cancelled by his successor, Governor Bowen.\n\nAt the time, the Registrar General had told them that if they really wanted the site they could probably get it if they pressed for it. But this did not seem advisable as the site was far from ideal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211206, "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-1987", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "242\n\nMr. John Francis, a barrister who always seemed to have an opinion about correct procedure and was quick to voice it, spoke up: \"It seems to me, sir, with great respect, we are having at present simply suggestions. If anyone has anything to put forward let it be put in a formal shape in writing and get it finally proposed and seconded.”\n\nHe then spoke about his own pet scheme, the Colonial Institute in London. He admitted that it was practically a lost cause, but this did not deter him. As he had not been able before the meeting to secure a seconder, he asked: \"Will any gentleman do me the favour to second it.\" None did.\n\nInstead Mr. Fraser-Smith, the editor of the Hongkong Telegraph, asked the chairman to instruct the meeting as to whether the resolutions passed at the previous meeting, with the exception of the one for the park, were still in force. After a lengthy discussion, it was decided the proper procedure was to start with an entirely clean slate.\n\nThe first resolution of the previous meeting was proposed, seconded and adopted expeditiously. The Honourable A. P. MacEwen proposed the second resolution: \"That the celebration take the form of a permanent institution of some description to be called by Her Majesty's name, and of a fete and general rejoicings.\" Before it could be seconded, Mr. J. Macgregor asked if the memorial was confined to the Colony.\n\nThe chairman immediately replied that it was. Then when he proceeded to read the resolution, he realised it was not, and exclaimed, “Well, it does not say so.\" The admission provoked a peal of laughter. To redeem himself, the chairman commented: \"But that was the intention.”\n\nMr. Francis objected that it might have been the intention of the last meeting to confine the memorial to the colony, in as much as when they had passed the resolution they had had the park scheme in mind, but now, if they were starting with no preconceptions, the whole thing was open.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211209, "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-1987", "page_number": 270, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "TEMPERS FRAY AND WILLS CLASH AT \n\nJUBILEE MEETING \n\n245 \n\nIt takes some ability to properly manage a meeting where temper are short and wills clash. The chairman of the public meeting held on April 12, 1887, to make plans for the Jubilee of Queen Victoria was singularly inept in steering the course of the meeting.\n\nThe meeting was split over a decision as to what permanent memorial should mark the event in Hongkong. Three ideas were put before the meeting, a sanitarium at the Peak proposed by Dr. Patrick Manson, a library and reading room suggested by Mr. W. E. Crow, and a contribution to the Colonial Institute in London advocated by Mr. J. J. Francis.\n\nThe institute scheme received little support. Mr. Francis, therefore, threw his support behind the sanitarium. There was a general opinion that the meeting did not have sufficient information to decide on any proposal, therefore Mr. Francis suggested that a committee of five be appointed \"to confer with Dr. Manson, communicate with Government, and prepare and submit for approval at a subsequent meeting a detailed scheme for a convalescent home at the Peak to be named after Her Majesty.”\n\nTo Mr. Fraser-Smith this seemed to be tackling the problem the wrong way. He asked: “If it would not be well to get the feeling of the meeting to whether they approve of Dr. Manson's proposal.\"\n\nThe chairman assured him that they would be doing so if they voted on Mr. Francis's resolution to appoint a committee. Mr. Fraser-Smith burst in to contradict him: “I beg pardon, you are not. You are getting substantive resolution of quite different character.\"\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211215, "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-1987", "page_number": 276, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "251\n\nbring to fruition. Inquiries by a committee and reports to future meetings would take months. This leisurely pace would be acceptable if Her Majesty were to live for a hundred years. They all hoped she would, he piously added, but the implication of his remark was that this was too much to expect even from so good and gracious a personage and therefore they had better get the matter done with while she was still on the throne.\n\nHe pleaded for immediate action: “Why should we go on adjourning the meeting and waiting for special reports? Why cannot we settle it at once?” His method to achieve this end was “to scrape together what money we can get and have a general illumination.” By this he meant the decoration of buildings with gas lights and Chinese lanterns.\n\nAfter a great deal of discussion it was decided to vote on whether the meeting should decide at that time on the form of the celebration. The vote was 19 for an immediate decision and 11 against.\n\nTo decide that a decision should be made at once was much simpler than doing it. Each scheme was to be voted on. The illumination idea received only four votes. The party in favour of a library mustered nine. The meeting seemed headed towards acceptance of the sanitarium. But in the Jubilee affair it was destined that nothing should proceed as expected. The vote for it was 19 for and 18 against.\n\nRemembering the criticism levied against the chairman for ignoring a disputed vote on the same proposal at the last meeting, the secretary deemed it wise to have a second count. This time the vote had shifted with 20 for and 21 against. In the face of such uncertainty, it was necessary to have a third vote. This was a tie.\n\nThe chairman felt he need not now worry about false counts, and with some satisfaction declared: “I have the casting vote.” Mr. Ackroyd challenged this. He was supported by Mr. McClymont who said the chairman had no casting vote unless it was especially conferred on him. The chairman replied: “Then we are at a deadlock.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211301, "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-1988", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "We have also considered the bilingual approach to our work. Obviously, this is desirable in regard to tours and visits, and is more easily applied to them than to talks. This would require back-up services, including skilled staff and equipment that, even by occasional hire and through booking suitable premises, would be beyond our financial means. However, the Ad Hoc Committee will continue to review the situation.\n\nAs for the future composition and nature of our Society, it may be that it can do more for Hong Kong after 1997 by staying a predominantly English language institution. This would match Hong Kong's continuing role as a financial and commercial centre for the region, and therefore a place that will continue to attract many expatriates (including many English-speaking Chinese). Our Society can assist them all to a better understanding of the place, and provide means of meeting local people outside their workplace, as it does today.\n\nOur Patron\n\nHer Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales are the Patron and Vice-Patron of the parent body: and since the re-establishment of the Hong Kong Branch in 1959-60, it has been honoured by the patronage of successive Governors of Hong Kong. The present Governor, Sir David Wilson, is an extremely busy man, and we cannot expect to see much of him in the ordinary way. It is therefore with great pleasure that I can announce that he and Lady Wilson have agreed in principle to attend our next Annual Dinner. The date will be fixed later, to fit in with his busy schedule.\n\nFinally, a special word of thanks and appreciation to Anita Wilson who has again made the arrangements for this year's Dinner, and also to Rosemary Lee through whose good offices we are enabled to use this very comfortable Club, with its high catering standards. On this happy and expectant note, I now close this year's report.\n\nHong Kong, 17 March 1989\n\nJames Hayes\n\nxvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211399, "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-1988", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "91\n\nbefore leaving Kwangtung or on his arrival in Peking is uncertain, and there are many private records that state that he did not die a natural death, having taken poison by his own hand, as a protest to the throne. Roughly translated Wong's address said, in part: \"Although your Majesty has not thrown me away but instead given me this post, I am an officer of no use, most of the government affairs that I want to do having failed, and my abilities being inadequate for the position. Now I have received information from Peking that the ministers of the Board have reported badly of me, and having the Imperial degree dismissing me, I may die at any moment. It is hopeless for me to return to the capital while I am alive. But as I have been in this appointment for two years already, I understand quite well Kwangtung affairs. Your Majesty wants to have the affairs kept better and better, and as I have a clear knowledge of things and can be sure of future happenings, if I keep my mouth shut when I am about to die, I surely carry my sin to the grave. Therefore I cannot help putting it to your Majesty that the boundary be removed as soon as possible. Kwangtung faces the water and is backed by the hills, and the level land is not wide. Twice have the people living near the water been moved inland. Several hundred thousand people are now homeless, large troops of soldiers are kept in the places whence they were removed, in order to watch the boundary, and government builds beacons, railings, etc., which have to be repaired. None of this is paid for out of government funds; the people are taxed in order to pay it. ... I therefore beg that the boundary be abolished and the people allowed to return to their own villages to farm and evaporate salt. ... The above-mentioned affairs are forbidden, and all high officers dare not mention them, but as I am on the point of death, I pour out my blood to write this suggestion as my will before my death. Though I have done nothing for my country, since I can have this matter put before you, I can die without regret.\"\n\nAt first, this letter had no result, but eventually, a party of officials were sent from Peking to inspect the boundary in the company of Chau Yau Tak (**周佑德**), the Viceroy. The latter, seeing the wretched condition of the removed people, at once urged the Emperor to let them go home. \"Do not wait till the inspection is over,\" he said, \"It is urgent to let the people prepare seeds and develop the land to be ready for farming next spring.\" Thus, at last, in the 8th year of Hong Hei, 1669, an Imperial decree was issued abolishing the boundary. It is said that when the people", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211621, "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-1989", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "1} \n\nAmerican missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'.\n\n› 28\n\nThe two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211623, "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-1989", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\nThe first was a Muslim who had been with the British army, and who may have been one of those who deserted in large numbers after the founding of the colony and who later formed the basis of an Indian community in Kowloon,\" The China Mail of 28 March 1878 printed: 'The man, known by the name of Mohammed Arab, died here yesterday. We understand that his residence in the Colony dates with the cession of the Island to Her Majesty, and it was he who planted the British standard on the Island, being with the expeditionary Force. He was a very charitably disposed person, and always stretched a helping hand to the needy and poor irrespective of nationality. He was well-known to many of the foreign community, and held in no little estimation for his uprightness and charities. His funeral, which took place yesterday, was largely attended by persons of various nationalities'.\n\n43\n\n44\n\nIf indeed Mohammed Arab had been in the British army, he must have been in either the Bengal Volunteers or the Madras 37th Native Infantry which were two of the regiments serving in the Chinese expedition.\" Both of these regiments contained Muslims and so Mohammed Arab could have been in either of them. The first Bengal Volunteers were raised in 1799 and in time the Volunteers became the 36th, 37th, 38th and 39th regiments of the Bengal Native Infantry.42 The usual sepoys of the Bengal army were mainly high-caste Hindus who because of dietary restrictions could not travel overseas, and so the Bengal Volunteers raised in the spring of 1840 were low-caste Hindus and Muslims lured from regular regiments by the promise of extra money. As for the Madras Native Infantry, it is known that some Muslim Lascars from Madras deserted during or after the Chinese expedition.\" This war was the first in which Indian troops were deployed in a non-Indian operation.\" Unfortunately the only members of the Bengal Volunteers named in official records of the Chinese expedition are firstly those who died, and secondly the officers,\" and no more information is yet forthcoming about the members of the Madras Native Infantry. The question whether Mohammed Arab may or may not have hoisted the flag on Hong Kong on 26 January 1841 hinges on whether a contingent of the Bengal Volunteers or of the Madras Native Infantry was landed for the ceremony - the only regiment which was definitely ashore at the time was that of the Marines and on which rank would have been called upon to perform the task. The senior native officer in the regiment was the Subadar-Major upon whom the duty could have devolved (in January 1841 this position in the Bengal Volunteers was held by Shaick Hedait Alie) but it would have been more likely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211673, "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-1989", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "63\n\nsinister-looking spherical objects used as buoys, lengths of rope, wooden spars, kegs of nails, bolts of canvas, and paint cans, required by the River Department of the Chinese Maritime Customs to maintain the charting and marking of the neighbouring reaches of the erratic Yangize.\n\nThere was a daring gentleman who, in Victorian days when it was against the rules, introduced a lady to the Club after midnight to play a game of billiards. The original of the letter subsequently sent him by an irate secretary, demanding an explanation of his extraordinary conduct, could be seen in the Club files, as also of the contumacious answer received in reply. It is on record that the offending person was suspended from membership, sine die, for his reprehensible conduct, and that this arbitrary penalty led to an acrimonious state of opinion wherein one half of the residents would no longer speak to the other half.\n\nWhen I myself was first appointed to Kiu Kiang (in 1924) the story was old, and the dissensions of that time had long since disappeared. But even so I found there was a local tradition of competition for precedence between the lady who was the wife of His Britannic Majesty's Consul, and the lady who had married the Commissioner of Customs. The newcomer was eagerly canvassed by the more active supporters of either party and must needs tread warily, if he wished to remain at his ease amongst all sections of the community.\n\nSometime later I foolishly allowed myself to be cajoled into performing the duties of honorary secretary to the Club. The Victorian days were now over, and ladies were admitted to the Club card room, though admittedly on a footing which with some of the older club members smacked more of sufferance than of welcome. A period of unusual affluence in the Club finances happening to intervene, it had been decided to colour-wash the walls, and in my capacity as secretary the choice of colours was left to me. It was that pleasant peaceful time in the heat of summer when the female of the species retires to the coolness of the nearby mountain resort. Only one elegant specimen had stayed behind. I thought it would be a good idea to ask this lady for her advice; after all, colour schemes are outside the scope of the average male. We held a conference, the colours were decided upon, and then I too left for the mountains.\n\nOn first re-entering the Club after my return in the autumn, I was faced by a crowd of indignant women, who demanded to know what", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211729, "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-1989", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "119\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ch'ü, Ta-chün, Kuang-tang hsin-yü [New Tales from Kuang-tung], Hong Kong: Chung-hua ch'u-pan-shê, 1974, reprinted from 1700 edition, p. 677.\n\n2 ibid, pp. 674-676.\n\n3 Yung-yen, “Hong Kong ti ming k'ao” [The Origin of Place Names in Hong Kong], in: Li Chun-wei (ed.) Hong Kong pai nien [Centenary History of Hong Kong], (Hong Kong: Nan chung pien yi ch'u-pan-shê, 1948), p. 68.\n\n4 Hong Kong Daily Press, February 5, 1873.\n\n5 Siu, A.K.K., “The Hong Kong Region Before and After the Coastal Evacuation in the Early Ch'ing Dynasty”, in: Faure, David, James Hayes and Birch (eds.), From Village to City, (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984), p. 2; Fêng K'ê-pin (ed.), Hsiang chien [Notes on Incense], in: Kuang pai ch'uan hsüeh hai (1), 1998. (Taipei: Hsin-hsing shu-chü, reprinted in 1970).\n\n6 Balfour, S.F., “Hong Kong Before the British”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 10, 1979, p. 176.\n\n7 Ch'ü, p. 677.\n\n8 Chang, Y.N., \"Hong Kong Ts'un (Hong Kong Village) and the Cultivation and Exportation of Incense from Kowloon and the New Territories”, in: Lo, Hsiang Lin (ed.), Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842, (Hong Kong: Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963), p. 114.\n\n9 Tung-kuan Hsien-chih [Tung-kuan Gazetteer], compiled by Ch'ên Pai-tao, (Tung-kuan yang-hêng yin-wu-chü, 1910), Section 14, p. 13; Dunn, Stephen Troyte and William James Tutcher, Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1912), p. 9.\n\n10 Iu, K.C., \"The Cultivation of the Incense Tree (Aquilaria sinensis)”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, 1983, pp. 247-249.\n\n11 “Imports for the Year 1846”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1846, p. 200, 204, 207.\n\n12 “Imports for the Year 1847”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1847, pp. 200-212.\n\n13 “Imports for the Year 1848”, Hong Kong Blue Book 1848, pp. 251-254.\n\n14 Hsü, Kuang-ch'i (ed.), Nung chêng ch'üan shu [Encyclopedia on Agricultural Techniques], (1847), Section 18, pp. 13-15.\n\n15 Yung-yen, p. 68.\n\n16 Lockhart, S. \"Extracts from A Report by Mr Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong on October 8, 1898”, Sessional Papers concerning the Acquisition of the New Territories 1899, p. 190.\n\n17 Nathan, cited by J.W. Hayes. \"Notes and Queries: Sandalwood Mills at Tsun Wan\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 16, 1976, pp. 282-283.\n\n18 'Report on the New Territories for the year 1925; B. Southern District\", Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1925, p. J13.\n\n19 'Report on the New Territories for the Year 1931; B. Southern District\" Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1931, p. J18.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211730, "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-1989", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "120\n\n77\n\n*Reports on the New Territories for the Year 1932; B. Southern District”, Hong Kong Administrative Reports 1932, p. J22.\n\n# Nathan, p. 282-283.\n\n\"Imports for the Year 1855\", Hong Kong Blue Book 1855, p. 323,\n\n\"Imports for the Year 1857\". Hong Kong Blue Book 1857, p. 183.\n\n26 Hennessy, J.P., \"Address of Governor Sir John Pope Hennessy, KCMG, on the Census Returns and the Progress of Hong Kong\", Hong Kong Administrative Reports, 1880-1881.\n\nדי\n\nHong Kong Annual Report 1946, p. 42.\n\n+\n\nHong Kong Chinese Chamber of Commerce +*** \"Business Conditions\", in: Report for the Year 1949 Hong Kong Chinese Chamber of Commerce).\n\nE‡‡ƒ), (Hong Kong:\n\n29 Ingrams, H., \"Industry”, in: Hong Kong, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1952), p. 139.\n\nFieldwork, 1987.\n\n31 Registrar of Trade Unions, Annual Departmental Reports, 1960-1969.\n\n+2\n\nCensus and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Trade Statistics. 1968-1978.\n\nSee Plate 15.\n\nSee Plate 16.\n\n15\n\nSee Plate 17.\n\nSee Plates 18 and 19.\n\n17 Osgood. Cornelius, The Chinese, a Study of a Hong Kong Community, Volume 2. (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1975), p. 769.\n\n18 **Returns of the Manufactures, Mines and Fisheries\", Hong Kong Blue Book 1911. P. V3.\n\n39 Returns of the Manufactures, Mines and Fisheries\", Hong Kong Blue Book 1903-1906, p. V4.\n\n40 \"Returns of the Manufactures, Mines and Fisheries\", Hong Kong Blue Book 1946,\n\np. V3.\n\n\"Returns of the Manufactures, Mines and Fisheries\", Hong Kong Blue Book 1920-1925, p. VI. See Appendix 1 for a table of Locations of Joss Stick Factories, 1902-1930.\n\n+ Leeming, Frank, Streets Studies in Hong Kong: Localities in a Chinese City. (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 105.\n\n4.1\n\n+\n\nibid, p. 109. See Appendix II for plans of a Number of Factories.\n\nSee Appendix III for a Map showing the 1987 distribution of Joss Stick Factories.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211808, "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-1989", "page_number": 223, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "198\n\nT: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs\n\nF: Music\n\nTh: D\n\nR: This was the last theatrical entertainment organised by Horatio BUSKIN and he could look back on a successful \"career\" as manager. Only the music had flagged of late (tonight \"a buzz in a box near the proscenium represented the music — we were ten feet away from it and it was therefore lost upon us\" the days of \"Sir George Smart and Messrs Thalberg\" and \"Koenig\" were over).\n\n—\n\nTo make up for these shortcomings \"Mr. CLAY as Honeybun (in the Infanticidal Farce) was, as he always is, first rate\". In Slasher and Crasher the public witnessed the debut of \"Miss Polly DEXTER as Rosa, affording hope of a new evening star of the first magnitude\" (NCH 23.2.1856).\n\n14.8.1856 (Thur)\n\nN.N.: The Nigger Doctor and his Patient Patient or the First Lesson in Surgery\n\nT: Negro farce\n\nC: Travelling American Company (Messrs Baker, Woodward and Montgomery) Th: Old Theatre (C)\n\nN: The whole evening was announced as a \"Grand Ethiopian Musical Soirée\"\n\nR: An advertisement only was published in the NCH of August 9. In it the above mentioned gentlemen (formerly of the New York Serenaders) praised their performances as having been \"the theme of universal admiration during the past four years throughout the East Indies as well as the Australian Colonies\". In addition to the farce, the programme consisted of \"Negro songs, interspersed with willy saying and doings peculiar to the African race in America\".\n\n19.9.1856 (Fri)\n\nConcert by Ali Ben Sou Alle and some local amateurs.\n\nInstruments: Turkophone, \"Turkophonini\", clarinet, piano.\n\nProgramme:\n\nG. ROSSINI: Two overtures. V. BELLINI: Selections from \"La Sonnambula\". F. MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY: \"The Fairest Flower\" (song). Some German songs, The \"Shanghai Redowa Walse\", Medley of English, Scottish and Irish airs. Th: N.N. (C)\n\nR: Tonight was the occasion of the first real concert in the Settlement's history. It was given by Mr. ALI BEN SOU ALLE, a Turk who, after a study at the Conservatoire de Paris, had been appointed Directeur de Musique de Marine in Senegal (which had been French since 1871) in 1844. In 1847 he returned to Paris to enter the orchestra of the Opéra Comique, but the following year he went to London where he found employment in the orchestra of Her Majesty's Theatre at the Haymarket. He learned to play some instruments that had been invented by Adolphe Sax, the Belgian musician (1814-1894) and thereafter he made an extensive tour to Australia, Java, Singapore, Manila and China (CM 16, 10, 1856). In Hong Kong and even Canton he had appeared in August and October 1856 (CM 7.8. 14.8. 21.8. 16.10.1856). In between he gave two recitals in the Yangtze port. In the Survey it has already been stated that the soloist entertained the public with performances on several instruments that had been rechristened Turkophone and Turkophonini: in reality they were the Saxophone and (probably) the soprano saxophone. Well may we ask how these instruments, which were only of recent origin (1840s), were received by an audience completely unused to their sound. The artist interpreted a selection from Bellini's \"La Sonnambula\" on the \"Turkophone\" and the critic wrote that \"the compass of the instrument is very great but we confess to some disappointment as regards its quality of tone, and correctness of tone also, in some few notes, and altogether we think it an imperfect instrument", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211812, "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-1989", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "202\n\nByeplay showed that, although his first appearance here, it is by no means his first attempt at acting\". But another anti-French jibe was added when he wrote: \"Mrs. NESBIT and Miss DEXTER play indifferently and we are rather proud of it — for as they only profess to play English female characters it was no wonder that they did not feel at home\". These acid comments drew forth a letter from \"Another Man on the Bund\" in the Herald of May 2 in which a counterweight was offered: \"Are we to take the opinion of this would-be orator in preference to the unanimous opinion of the rest of the community? What meant those thunders of applause repeated again and again in a manner that has never been heard in Shanghai and the repeated calls at the fall of the curtain; are we to believe that a piece that has had an almost unprecedented run in both England and America and in the former country was played by the express command of Her Majesty at her own palace is worthless or so bad because condemned by 'The Man on the Bund?' (...) My own and the general opinion outside is that The Man on the Bund at the time of writing the above was either labouring under a severe attack of bile or intensely disgusted that the acknowledged best performance ever given here should have been given without the assistance of himself or his darling Peter Proteus\". After, at any rate his disappointment about Still Waters, in A Capital Match Mr. BRUSHWOOD restored \"The Man on the Bund\" to his comfort and equanimity, nay more, utterly overturned our critical gravity and made us laugh like the veriest schoolboy at a favourite pantomime\". Mr. Beverly NEWCOME made his debut and he appeared to be quite at home in the naval character and we admired his style almost as much as the widow did. And the widow; none other than Mrs. NESBIT. It was also the occasion on which the critic showed his disapproval of the new interior of the theatre: \"'On entering the Thespian temple, I observed that there had been a change in the decoration of it - I cannot add improvements. The same taste which had furnished me with a posting bill streaked all over with lightning threatened to overwhelm me with a fall of flowers and garlands from the roof and treat me as if I were a prima donna or the boeuf gras of a Parisian festival\". Yet, thinking about Mrs. Nesbit, he continued ironically: \"What will a man not undergo when a woman is on the tapis! So, in imminent danger of being garlanded, like the Ass of Silenus [attendant of Bacchus usually represented as riding on an ass, drunken and crowned with flowers — JH] in a classic fresco, I took my seat and, unfolding my portentous play bill, began to scan it over at my leisure\". (NCH 25.4.1857).\n\n8.10.1857 (Thur)\n\nM. BARNETT: \"The Serious Family\" (1849)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nB.N. WEBSTER: \"The Golden Farmer\" (1832)\n\nT: Domestic drama (2 acts)\n\nJ.S. COYNE: \"Binks the Bagman\" (1843)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: The \"Union Theatrical Company of the U.S.S. San Jacinto\"\n\nTh: On board ship\n\nN: More entertainment had been given by the crew of this ship, but this is the only one which has been recorded.\n\nR: Specially noticed was the prison scene in The Golden Farmer wherein the robber \"takes a tender farewell of his beloved wife and infant daughter Louisa. It brought moisture to the eyes of many\". Could it be of laughter, bearing in mind the ruling travesties? (NCH 10.10.1857). The San Jacinto was a U.S. warsteamer with a crew of 218.\n\n29.12.1857 (Tue)\n\nEntertainment by Mr. George Henri, a conjurer and ventriloquist. Th: Theatre Royal (C)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211858, "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-1989", "page_number": 273, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "248\n\n39 NCH 14.3.1863.\n\n40 NCH 2.5.1863.\n\n41 NCH 17.6.1865, 24.6.1865.\n\n42 NCH 28.3.1863.\n\n43 For minstrel shows see: Engle; Toll.\n\n44 NCH 13.2.1864.\n\n43\n\n46 NCH 7.5.1864. cf Dictionary of National Biography, Suppl. 2, Vol. I, p. 545. Here it is mentioned that the touring group was disbanded in 1863, but this is obviously incorrect.\n\n47 NCH 15.2.1862. Could it be that the originator of this Company was the same as \"G.B.W. Lewis\", who built the Astley Amphitheatre in Melbourne in 1854? Cf MacGuire, p. 97, n. 1.\n\n43 NCH 19.11.1864.\n\n49 Smith, p. 243.\n\n50 SCR 5.5.1865.\n\n51 NCH 14.1.1865.\n\n52 SCR 25.1.1865. Probably they first tried their luck in Macao, but there the public interest was very small on February 11 and the next day the performance had even to be cancelled (BGM 13.2.1865).\n\n53 of Appleton, p. 54; about the decline of the benefit system see Troubridge, p. 87ff. 34 Performance 24.3.1852. NCH 27.3.1852.\n\n53\n\n36 NCH 26.1.1856. NCH 28.2.1861. Letter to the \"Daily Shipping & Commercial News\" 27.12.1861; see also NCH 9.10.1858.\n\n47 Carse, p. 70; this was in the 1851-1852 season. Biographical data are given in Fétis, Vol. VII, p. 229; Born in Bordeaux, 11.5.1815; he was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, 25.10.1830, where he became a pupil of the famous flautist Jean Louis Tulou. In 1832 he won the first prize in a competition for his qualités précieuses: beau son, reticulation brilliante dans les traits et belle manière de phraser. He spent part of his life in Britain, where he was engaged as the first flautist of the \"Théâtre de la Reine\". This should not read Queen's Theatre (as it is translated by Riemann and others), but Her Majesty's Theatre at the Haymarket. In Fétis it is stated that the theatre closed in 1853; in fact it closed for the season 1852-1853 (Howard, P. 111). Rémusat subsequently returned to France to become a member of the Théâtre Lyrique orchestra (Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique?). Pougin, in the Supplement (Vol. II, p. 403) however doubts this: \"Je ne sais si le fait est exact; en tout cas Rémusat n'aurait pas tardé à retourner en Angleterre, car en 1856 j'ai connu cet excellent artiste à Londres où il occupait une brilliante situation\". He died in Shanghai 1.9.1880. Besides being a soloist he composed a number of concertinos, fantasias, etc for his own instrument.\n\n58 Supplement to Fétis by Pougin, Vol. II, p. 403. of note 57.\n\n59 BGM 4.6.1866, 18.6.1866.\n\n60 Lang, p. 51.\n\n61 A concert of the Philharmonic Society on 26.2.1867 is mentioned in NCH 23.3.1867.\n\n42 NCH 26.2.1859.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212178, "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-1990", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "97\n\nmade a very good shewing, which drew the admiration of all neutral observers. The Japanese soon brought reinforcements and extended their front down towards the Yangtze in an attempt to dislodge the Chinese from their grip on the suburb of Chapei; but despite the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese equipment, especially in the air, the Chinese stuck to their ground all through August and September, until well into October, when they began to crack, and were finally dislodged by a successful landing on the flank in Hangchow Bay,\n\nThese operations at first led to a complete breakdown in communications between Nanking and Shanghai. Towards the end of August, however, it was found that cars could cover the 200 miles to Shanghai by turning off the main road at Soochow, and passing through Kashing to the Hangchow road, which entered Shanghai from the south. As I was badly in need of instructions I decided to motor down. On arrival in Shanghai I was astonished at the state in which I found popular foreign opinion. There appeared to be no adequate appreciation of the meaning of these new Japanese encroachments in China, or of the Japanese threat to the \"open door\" system of trading the Far East, the traditional British policy expressed in Lord Palmerston's instructions to Admiral Elliot in 1840, when he said \"You will bear in mind that Her Majesty's Government do not desire to obtain for British subjects any exclusive privileges of trade which should not be equally extended to the subjects of every other power\".\n\nShanghai had for some years been the object of much factious interference and petty vexation on the part of Chinese officials in their campaign to recover their \"lost privileges\". The municipal council of the International Settlement found itself continuously involved in arguments, mostly sterile, over all sorts of questions of local interest, such as roads, police, taxes, jurisdiction, and so on, providing occasions where the Chinese aptitude for obstruction had full play. The consequence was to alienate the sympathies of many of the leading foreigners in the main stronghold of foreign interests in China. (According to Professor Remer, an American economist who made a study of foreign investments in China in 1931, British business investments were distributed as follows:\n\nIn Shanghai £130,000,000\n\nIn Hongkong £36,000,000\n\nIn the rest of China £30,000,000\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212301, "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-1990", "page_number": 243, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "220\n\nand business in Hong Kong has been neglected. Nonetheless, over the past decade some hongs have commissioned researchers and authors to compile company histories. A number of these are listed in the bibliography.\n\nEarlier Days\n\nHistorically, overseas businessmen have been permitted only limited contact with locals in China. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Westerners were only authorised to reside in Canton during the trading season, from October to May. Emperors confined all foreign trade there, as far from Peking as possible, keeping 'unpleasant things at a distance.' Foreigners were forced to maintain their base in the Portuguese city of Macau (established 1557).\n\nThese restrictions caused great inconvenience to merchants. Captain Charles Elliot wrote, on April 6th 1839:\n\n\"There can be neither safety nor honour for either government until Her Majesty's flag flies on these coasts in a secure position.\"\n\nIt was considered necessary to have a colony with a fine harbour, where Europeans could live, work and trade in peace and security. The Union Jack was raised at Possession Point, on Hong Kong Island, on January 26, 1841.\n\nHong Kong was established specifically to facilitate trade. Not surprisingly, therefore, the authorities depended a great deal upon the support of business houses in the early days of the colony. Some of these early trading houses are still trading here today.\n\nBy the end of 1843 there were 12 large British firms in Hong Kong, ten British merchants trading on a smaller scale, and about six Indian companies. The following year there were said to be about 100 foreign firms doing business, half of which were British and about one-quarter Indian or Parsee. Russells, an American firm, had six partners and eight griffins (assistants). Dent and Company (British) five partners and eight assistants, and D. and M. Rustomjee (Parsee) fifteen partners. Jardine Matheson employed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213280, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "82\n\nThe site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns.\n\nBut whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east.\n\nIn the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable.\n\nNevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213338, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "142\n\nThe Society's archive, which is currently held under Mr. David Gilkes' arrangements in the Main Library of The Chinese University and comprises papers on the formation of the Branch together with most of our Council Minutes over the years, is another source of information for our historian. Venues can be ascertained from these papers.\n\nIf Ian Diamond, Hong Kong's first Government Archivist and our former Hon. Secretary and Vice-President, will forgive me for mentioning it here, the venue that I best remember was the small room in the Public Records Office used for our Council meetings in the early 1980s (when Ian was on overseas leave we went to the \"Bull and Bear\" across the road!). A portrait of Her Majesty the Queen hung, as a scroll painting, on the wall; but as the years went on, the scroll became considerably the worse for wear, browning and curling in at the sides. We used to comment on this quietly periodically, but nothing happened. Finally, at one Council meeting, from the chair, and meaning no disrespect to Her Majesty, I took the bull by the horns and in a loud voice asked Ian when he was going to \"remount the Queen\"; whereupon the meeting became somewhat disorderly.\n\nThe Future: Post 1997\n\nTurning from past to future, at the time of writing, our Society is just as active and energetic as in the past; but with 1997 just around the corner, it is only natural for us to wonder what will happen thereafter. I remain of the view that we have a valuable role to play; but as in other Asian countries - and despite the hoped-for continued participation of a small nucleus of local Chinese who will remain dedicated to the work and ideals of the RAS - it is likely that it will, as hitherto, continue mainly to be set among and directed at Hong Kong's expatriate community. There will be a difference here, too: for as has already been happening in recent years, this will more and more be composed of transients, with far fewer long-term non-Chinese residents than in the long post-war period. There will, correspondingly, be an even greater need for the RAS to provide more \"cultural bridges\" to the local community. Thus, the study of Asia - and of Hong Kong and China with it - will surely continue to be (in Professor Drake's words) the Society's main \"Heritage and Task\".\n\nHowever, the likely change in expatriate membership may cause problems in recruiting some of the leadership and expertise upon which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213439, "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-1995", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The New Territories were leased from China for 99 years from 1st July 1898. Then followed the New Territories Order in Council of 20th October 1898, by clause 1 of which those territories were declared to be\n\n\"part and parcel of the Colony of Hong Kong in like manner and for all intents and purposes as if they had originally formed part of the said Colony.\n\nBy Clause 3 of the same Order-in-Council it was ordered that, from a date to be fixed by the Proclamation of the Governor, all laws and Ordinances which should on that date be in force in the Colony should take effect also in the New Territories. The laws in force in the Colony of Hong Kong at that date were such of the laws of England as existed on the 5th April 1843,\n\n\"except so far as the said laws are inapplicable to the local circumstances of the Colony or of its inhabitants.\n\n718\n\nand local Ordinances modifying the laws of England in force on 5th April 1843.\" The Secretary of State instructed the Governor in a despatch dated 6th January 1899-\n\n\"On the principle that the new territory shall be taken to be and so far as possible be treated as an integral part of the Colony, it is desirable that as many of the existing laws of Hongkong as are applicable to its circumstances should be at once applied, the administration of the laws being carried out with tact, discretion, and sympathy with native custom and prejudice\n\n+++\n\nA week before the British flag was hoisted at Taipo and the territories were taken over from the Chinese authorities the Governor, Sir Henry A. Blake, issued a Proclamation which included this passage:-\n\n\"I would also impress upon you that this territory having been leased by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China to Her Britannic Majesty the Queen, as subjects of Her Majesty's Empire, your commercial and landed interests will be safeguarded, and that your usages and good customs will not in any way be interfered with.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213658, "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-1996", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1996-97 PRESENTED AT THE 37th ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING HELD ON TUESDAY 25 MARCH 1997\n\nIt is my pleasure to report on the activities of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society from 30 March 1996 to 25 March 1997. During the year, David Gilkes served as President for the first seven months and I acted for the remaining five months.\n\nThe first thing I must report is about the years of service and the retirement of David Gilkes. David arrived in Hong Kong in January 1967, in what has euphemistically been dubbed the \"Year of the Disturbances.\" There was a vacancy on the Council for a Treasurer. Young David volunteered. Someone wrote, somewhere:\n\nMany will be shocked to find\n\nWhen the day of judgement nears,\n\nThat there is a special place in heaven\n\nSet aside for volunteers.\n\nAnon.\n\nDavid filled the post of Honorary Treasurer right up until 1987, the same year he was elevated to Vice-President. He took over as President from Dr James Hayes in 1990, and stepped down at a Council meeting followed by a Branch dinner held in his honour on 28 October 1996. Approaching 30 years of service as an office bearer is a memorable achievement. During this period the Territory changed rapidly. The increased tempo affected our Society. Activities increased. No doubt when David Gilkes was awarded the MBE in 1994 by Her Majesty the Queen, his sterling service in the Royal Asiatic Society and his other community work carried substantial weight. We are extremely grateful to David for all he did, over a period of almost three decades, for our Branch.\n\nPast President James Hayes said, in a newspaper interview in 1996: \"The Royal Asiatic Society is the joy of my life.\" He returns to Hong Kong at intervals. We were pleased to welcome Ian Diamond, a past", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213940, "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-1997", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "A. Trevor Clark, C.B.E., L.V.O., M.A., F.S.A.Scot., served in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service in Nigeria, and then in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1977, being seconded to the Western Pacific for constitutional duties from 1972. Since retirement to Britain he has been an elected local government councillor, and a member of non-departmental public bodies and trusts, especially museums, and has contributed book reviews on Hong Kong affairs to various publications.\n\nDan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time Member of Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (HKSARBRAS) and became President in 1997, having acted since the year before. He has written prolifically on the history and culture of the HKSAR.\n\nKeith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history generally, and has written prolifically on these subjects.\n\nJennifer W. Welch, M.A. now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests are varied and include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history.\n\nKwok-shing CHAN is a post-graduate student at the Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.\n\nThomas Kvan, M.A., M.Arch., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong.\n\nJustyna Karakiewicz, A.A. Dipl., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong and an urban designer who has designed towns and landscapes in Malta, France and England, amongst others.\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213968, "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-1997", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "2\n\nCouncillors (of whom 20 would be elected from both Chinese and expatriate jurors, or property-holders of a certain value with residential qualifications), and potentially extendible functions. However Young's successor, Sir Alexander Grantham, soon had second thoughts which were warmly shared by his Executive Council (Exco) advisers, and the plans were put into cold storage, to be quietly forgotten. They had seemed to reduce the wholly centralised powers of the Governor-in-Council, besides being of apparently little interest to a mobile and volatile Cantonese population, passing by customary right freely to and fro across the international border, and more concerned with rebuilding their lives after the war's privations. Besides, the Communist victory over the Chiang Kai-shek Nationalists, and the declaration of the People's Republic in 1949, created a new set of problems. It became common parlance that Hong Kong was \"different.\" Unlike African, Caribbean, Asian and Pacific colonies, it could not be built into a Nation.\n\nIn facing such a novel threat there were cultural divisions within Hong Kong's administration in the 1950s and 60s that commentators have often overlooked. The most obvious was that between those prisoners-of-war or internees during the Japanese occupation who had been judged physically fit to return to post-war duties, and their colleagues who either had fought throughout (in China or in other theatres) or had been recruited subsequently but had served in no other territory. They might differ in their views of what threatened stability, but were in agreement that nothing should, in the cant phrase of the time, \"rock the boat.\" All tended to accept what is now dubbed the economic 'trickle-down' theory, that what was good for the businessmen who dominated the Colony's appointed Councils was good for their employees - and equally for a large proportion of the population that had voted with its feet by flooding into Hong Kong to escape Communism, and also to find employment until it might seem safe to exercise their right to cross the border again and go home. But it seemed to some observers that those who claimed to understand and to love the Colony best had least faith in its unsinkability.\n\nA smaller but growing subset consisted of those colonial servants who had been transferred to Hong Kong within Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS) from other territories, usually upon the grant of independence, or who had accepted fixed renewable contracts as mature entrants (\"retreads\"). Such officers might well have learnt in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214115, "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-1997", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "152\n\nOn the publishing side a bimonthly newsletter as well as a reputable annual journal, which is highly thought of in academic circles, are produced. Other publications like occasional papers consisting of such topics as write-ups of symposia, and books like Hong Kong Going and Gone (1980) and Beyond the Metropolis (1995), have been, and are being published. A number of Branch members have also published on their own account and others have been decorated by Her Majesty the Queen for heritage related work and community service. In Her 1997 Official Birthday Honours' List, four RASHKB members were awarded the MBE and another the Queen's Police Medal.\n\nIn addition to several members serving in their own capacities on Government committees, such as the Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB), a number of RASHKB volunteers have assisted the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) with the grading of buildings. Also, the AMO and the RASHKB banded together to mount a four-month long exhibition, entitled Hong Kong Going and Gone, in 1995-96. The Branch has also helped the AMO by providing speakers as well as leaders of tour groups.\n\nPersonalities\n\nObviously the RAS, like most organisations, depends on people. When the Branch was first formed the then Governor, Sir John Davis (1844-48), frequently took the chair as a scholar of both literary and scientific achievement. He retired from Hong Kong a year after the Branch was established. On leaving the Colony Sir John resumed his China studies, founded a chair at Oxford University and died academically revered at 92 showing, yet again, that those interested in heritage are often a long-lived breed (Spurr 1995: 35).\n\nHe was followed by Governor Sir Samuel Bonham (1848-54) who believed the study of Chinese addled the brain, although he did allocate a room in the Supreme Court solely for the use of the RASHKB. But his successor, Governor Sir John Bowring (1854-59), when he chaired RAS meetings, always insisted on being addressed as Dr Bowring and not as \"Your Excellency\". Bowring was fluent in, or had a working knowledge or a book knowledge of upwards of 14 languages (Chambers 1969: 162). He had also spent five years as British Consul in Canton where he learned Chinese. One of his accomplishments was translating", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214293, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "114\n\nMarines and it was not until an action at Amoy on 26th August 1841 that the British Army (Her Majesty's 55th Regiment of Foot) used them in anger.\n\nApart from the musket itself, the soldier was also equipped with a bayonet which extended the musket into a thrusting weapon equivalent to a short pike. It had an overall length of about six feet, and time and again proved itself to be a formidable weapon. This was used both defensively, as in a formed square fending off cavalry, and offensively as in the charge. Its offensive use was considered by some commanders to be more effective than firing the muskets, and it was common to describe the number of troops by the number of bayonets.29 Officers would carry a sword and perhaps one or two single shot pistols. Swords (cutlasses) and pistols were also the weapons of marines when boarding opposing ships, and some may have been carried by those operating on land; however, they were more likely to have been equipped with muskets.\n\nOn the Chinese side, there were a wider variety of arms. Lord Jocelyn describes a display put on by the Manchu Tartars, who were the elite of the troops in China, where the: \"Tartars were dressed in white cotton garb and black cap, and their weapons were swords and matchlocks, or bow and arrows.\"30 Ouchterlony31 illustrates a Chinese swordsman brandishing a sword, but also holding in his left hand a matchlock and with a powder horn slung from his waist. Hence, it can be seen that the projectile arms were matchlocks and bow and arrows. The matchlock musket uses a form of ignition even earlier than a flintlock. It derives its name from the match, which is a hemp cord impregnated with saltpetre and spirits of wine such that it burns steadily without going out. The mechanism is simple in that the match is held in an arm which, on pressing the trigger, descends onto the priming charge and, hence, ignites the main charge. At this time, it was archaic, and it was also a danger to its user, as the burning match could set fire to clothes or, more seriously, to the powder pouch which the user carried round his waist. Also, when wounded, the danger was compounded, and there are reports of troops being burned to death after falling with otherwise non-lethal wounds.32 Perhaps this had helped to preserve the use of the bow, although it continued in use well beyond the adoption of more modern firearms. Photographs33 of the Taku forts taken after their fall in 1860 show crossbows34 amongst the debris. Also Arch-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214334, "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "156\n\nfor what lustre could our arms acquire in a contest wherein it seemed evident that all the superiority of warlike science, discipline, and equipment would be on our side and all the slaughter on the side of the Chinese?\n\nIt is represented by The Illustrated London News that there had been a concern, similar to that frequently expressed at a later period, relative to twentieth-century interventions of western powers in a variety of countries: a concern as to \"how far our demands could be enforced without shattering to atoms the machinery of the Imperial [Chinese] Government.\"\n\nThe same article praises Elgin for \"having in a few months pushed his way through this crowd of uncertainties, obtained all he went out for, and returned to England without having lost an army, without having sustained a serious check, without having been overreached by mandarin duplicity, without having inflicted any large amount of suffering upon the Chinese population, and without having shaken the Manchu dynasty from the imperial throne.\n\nIt commends Elgin because \"There was nothing vainglorious, extravagant, vindictive, nor gratuitously humiliating in the terms he set out with insisting upon from the Emperor.... Lord Elgin knew when to forbear, and when to insist - when to show patience, and when promptitude. He could wait when it seemed expedient, and he could advance with boldness and rapidity when it was necessary. The very vengeance he inflicted was levelled at property rather than at persons, and was designed to punish the Emperor and his Court rather than the [Chinese people].”61\n\nReaders' Response\n\nReaders' response to this coverage must have been mixed. Several at least would have felt unease when reading of \"Looty, a small Chinese dog, belonging to Her Majesty\" - a diminutive dog found at the loot of the Summer Palace, brought back to England and presented to Queen Victoria. \"It is supposed to have belonged to the Empress or to one of the ladies of the Imperial family. By what name it was known to its small-footed62 mistress will in all probability remain a mystery. It has, however, appropriately enough, been renamed Looty....Her Majesty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214598, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Membership\n\nAs at 16 March 2000, our Branch's membership stood at 607. This was made up of 487 local members and 120 overseas members. In fact, since the Council meeting held on 27 January 1999, to 16 March 2000, 147 new members have been recruited. As I have pointed out in previous presidential reports, one thing that has changed in recent years is the composition of membership. Among expatriates, Hong Kong is not so 'British' as it used to be and the turnover of people is more rapid. This has resulted in a more cosmopolitan Branch which makes for variety. This is no bad thing.\n\nIt must be emphasised that it is not just council members, among the membership, who play active parts in ensuring Branch functions run smoothly. Non-council members who sit on the Activities Committee, for example, have an important role to play as do our Volunteers who assist the Antiquities and Monuments Office. But even outside these bodies several RAS members play active roles. These vary from helping to recruit new members to leading outings. We are grateful for their assistance although there are too many willing helpers to name everyone individually.\n\nIt gives me great pleasure to record that, in November 1999, our Honorary Vice President, the Reverend Carl T Smith, prominent historian and keen supporter of archival research, was awarded honorary membership of the International Council on Archives East Asian Regional Branch. Congratulations Carl!\n\nWe are also pleased to report that one of our newly recruited overseas members, Dr Edward Cecil Harris FSA, was recently awarded the MBE in the 2000 New Year's Honours List by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Although Dr Harris lives in Bermuda he is no stranger to Hong Kong. He has been here on a number of occasions attending conferences and on speaking engagements. Congratulations Dr Harris!\n\nI am also pleased to report that our Past President, Dr James Hayes, together with his wife Mabel, returned to Hong Kong over the period 17 November to 13 December, 1999. Although some nine flying hours away, and living in Sydney, we are pleased that James still considers\n\nXII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214845, "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "227\n\nChinese, except as regards the use of Opium, are exceedingly temperate in their habits and we cannot account for the immense distilleries which have been discovered here.\"\n\n19 Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970, Vol.II, p.152.\n\nWyndham Baker, p.156. Commenting, he had added, \"The British common soldier in fact is a strange compound, for they are very kind to their prisoners when once the excitement ceases.\"\n\n21 Beeching, p.136.\n\n22\n\n24 Beeching, p.152. Another British placard recorded by Chu warned that there was to be no more commandeering of goods without payment: ibid. However, despite good intentions, according to another Chinese diary, this time from Shanghai in 1842, rape and looting did occur there, and impressment of civilians for forced labour for such heavy work as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder [ibid., p.149]. Wyndham Baker, when landing his guns before Chin Kiang Foo, refers to \"about 100 helpless natives to assist in carrying the shot boxes.\" Baker, in Blackwood's 1964, pp.161-2.\n\nBeeching, p.139.\n\nThe British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, had agreed, minuting: “The worst proposal I have seen from Mr. Pottinger....It ought not to pass unnoticed\": Beeching, pp.139-140. But Pottinger deserves credit for preserving the famed Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking from British soldiers and sailors who, armed with chisels and hatchets, were intent on obtaining souvenirs by stripping tiles from the tower. \"Sir Henry Pottinger was very indignant at this gratuitous vandalism; a guard was stationed to keep off intruders, and no one was thenceforth allowed to visit the tower without a permit from the Admiral or Commander-in-Chief.\" Parkes wrote, \"Such an act as this is shameful and a disgrace to the British name.\" From Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901), p.32. Alas, the Porcelain Pagoda was destroyed by the Taipings not long after, in 1856.\n\n25 Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), p.139.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214850, "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": 265, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "232\n\nRoutledge, New Edition, 1859)\n\nGeorge Henry Mason, The Costume of the Chinese (London, William Miller, 1804)\n\nLieutenant John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London, Saunders and Otley, 1844)\n\n\"An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842,\" Blackwood's, 1964.\n\nThe Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R. N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981)\n\nJack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975)\n\nCaptain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970)\n\nStanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901)\n\nEdgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964)\n\nSir Henry Keppel, A Sailor's Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 3 vols., 1899)\n\n1881)\n\nLaurence Shadwell, Life and Campaigns of Lord Clyde (London, 1881)\n\n\"Oh for the Joys of England! Lt Rolando Bridgman's Letters From China and Hong Kong, 1842-1843\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Vol.14 (1974)\n\nSir John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215169, "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-2000", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "225\n\nA Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\nOld people recall the past gladly and shrink characteristically from contemplating the future. But obviously things are going to continue to change, just as some of us in the 1970s could visualise that an organisation similar to the Vocational Training Council (VTC) was not so far away. But just as in the colonial 1950s and '60s 1997 was seldom mentioned, looking into the crystal ball today to decide what technical education will look like half a century from now has to be another story.\n\nThank you again for inviting me to share this very special day with you.\n\nAbout the Speaker\n\nDr D D Waters, who was born in 1920, sailed from England for Hong Kong in 1954. It has been his home ever since. He taught building at the old Technical College (now the Polytechnic University) becoming Head of the Building Department in 1963. In 1968 he was appointed Principal, more than one year in advance of the opening of Hong Kong's first Technical Institute at Morrison Hill.\n\nIn 1972, he was transferred to the Education Department Headquarters to oversee the setting up of additional Institutes. He later became the Assistant Director (Technical Education) and responsible to the Director of Education for Hong Kong's technical education system.\n\nDr Waters served as a Justice of the Peace in the 1970s and was made a Companion of the Imperial Service Order by Her Majesty the Queen in 1981, largely for his work in technical education. In 1998 he was awarded a Bronze Bauhinia Star, by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, for his work in heritage conservation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215577, "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-2001", "page_number": 354, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "304\n\ncharge of the government gunpowder depot), coupled with community service, Thirlwell was awarded an MBE in 1971 by Her Majesty the Queen. Towards the end of his government service he was awarded a merit trip to England. But, Louis Thomas recalled, after about five days he requested permission to return to Hong Kong. We are talking of a Hong Kong before the MTR and the like and Thirlwell was having difficulty in adjusting. Britain was quite different then to Hong Kong and especially to being stationed out at Waglan.\n\nBut although lighthouse keepers during most of British colonial times by tradition were mainly Hong Kong Eurasians, in November 1956 three Chinese joined the lighthouse service as keepers at Waglan. In the run up to automation and as localisation took effect, by the 1980s all such posts were filled by Chinese. How does Lai Tak-wah, who still serves in the Marine Department, who had been at sea as a radio operator before joining the civil service, look back on his ten years spent at Waglan?\n\n146\n\n'It was all right for someone who enjoyed a peaceful existence. But separated from one's family out at Waglan, life was boring,' Lai told the author.\n\n'A week at a stretch was too long.'\n\nHow would he have felt pre-World War Two, when keepers did a one-month tour of duty in one stretch, one wonders? But he said that for three to four years of his time spent on Waglan he studied for his City and Guilds of London Institute telecommunications examinations.47\n\nThese sentiments, regarding boredom, were echoed by Lai Kwok-keung, another Chinese employed at Waglan. On being interviewed by a reporter when the island's lighthouse was changing over to automation, he said, as he lowered the Union Jack for the last time: 'I'm not sad to leave' (Hong Kong Standard; 1989).\n\nSuperintendent of Aids to Navigation Tam Cheong-wai (now retired), a Chinese (previously this post, as mentioned before, was held by a European and later by a Eurasian), who spent one week's induction training at Waglan when he first joined the Marine Department, agreed. 'It was boring,' he said. Not everyone shared his views. There are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "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 }, { "id": 216053, "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": 352, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "286\n\nParker might pitch it into the nearest ditch as far as he cared, but it was as much as his place was worth for him to touch it. The Municipal Council issued notices and offered compensation, and meanwhile every day during their walks and rides they had to go round the obstructive eyesore. The Daotai had second thoughts and issued a proclamation saying that he had expostulated with Parker and in his reverent affection for human bones told him that he would have to wait for the agnatic descendants to come forward. This put Parker in a very uncomfortable position and he determined to go the Daotai one better. He therefore issued a proclamation explaining that no one had greater affection for human bones than he but pointed out that the coffin ran the risk of desecration, and that even distant members of the family were authorised to take it away at once. He then gave a broad hint to the Municipal Council that if distant members of the family turned up at dead of night with pick and shovel, no questions would be asked. It blew hard that evening and the air was filled with sleet. When he went out for his early walk the coffin had disappeared. The dealers in donkey-skins had taken four municipal policemen, dug a hole in the next field and then, after transferring the coffin, had slunk away. Nothing happened!\n\nParker explained how Chinese and Tartar soldiers made a nuisance of themselves not only trouble making but also simply by strolling through the foreign settlement in order to steal a look at foreign devils. When he was Consul there, certain Europeans used to connive at gaming-houses, and take shares in native theatres; not to mention pawnshops, drinking houses and other places ever less orthodox, all flourishing under the sacred nose of Her Majesty's Consul. He found Zhenjiang a very rowdy place both from a foreign and native point of view. Consequently the municipal police had plenty of work. One strolling warrior was arrested for \"committing a nuisance\" and promptly punched the policeman's head. He was at last overpowered by others, and temporarily lodged in the consular gaol, the keeper of which was a one-eyed old soldier named Joshua Nunn, who boasted several medals, and had served his country bravely and well in the wars. Some more Chinese soldiers soon gathered round, and began to threaten a rescue, and even burn down the Consulate. Parker gave orders to plucky old Nunn to lock the man up in his strongest cell whilst he sent a pencil message round by the tingchai to each of three sturdy Britishers: \"Please step round with your gun: I expect a row\". In less than five minutes they were there, and with Parker sat before the entrance with their guns.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216068, "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": 367, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "301\n\ngaol on Amoy Road, at the end of the Kueichou Road, and he probably occupied a cell that had previously been prepared to receive me.\n\nMesny was commanded to appear before Her Britannic Majesty's Supreme Court for China and Japan in Shanghai on the 8th day of October 1891 to give material evidence and testify what he knew concerning the charge that Charles Henry Allen Welch Mason of Shanghai on or about the 13th inst. did have in his possession or under his control five pounds or thereabouts of an explosive substance under circumstances that gave reasonable suspicion that he did not have it in his possession for a lawful purpose. He attended as requested with the result that Mason got nine months imprisonment, at Shanghai and to be deported from China for ever thereafter or something like that. Thus it happened, added Mesny, 'that this biter was bitten.'\n\nMesny added that he had suffered ever since from the evil effects of this monstrous attempt to involve him in a treasonable plot. 'I have never been able to obtain employment from the Chinese Government since those days and many of my Chinese friends have cut me dead under the impression that I must have been guilty of some collusion with Mason in some inexplicable manner.\n\nThus in 1892 when I called on Earl Li Hongzhang at Tianjin he accused me of being the head centre of all the Gelao Hui men in China.\n\n'Last winter [noted as 1892 but printed a number years later] I was in Nanjing and in a fair way of getting a good command when Zai Jun, the Daotai of Shanghai, I believe, telegraphed to the Viceroy to beware of me as I was a dangerous character, the friend of Mason, the plotter. My own wife has told me hundreds of times that she is in dread of the awful fate that awaits me on this account and has begged me to grant her a letter of divorce and let her take the children away, she has worried the life out of me during the past few months with this clamour for a divorce and I believe that she is being incited thereto by designing people who take advantage of her weakness of mind to thus annoy me, and when they have got my wife away from me by divorce she ceases to be British [i.e. post-1898], then will they do to her what they do not dare to do now, and probably kill my children.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216091, "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": 390, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "324\n\nold Colonial Office in Great Smith Street. Sir Christopher Cox, who headed the interview panel, said: 'Waters, you would be more suitable teaching building subjects in Hong Kong than in Trinidad. Go away and think about it!'\n\nRose, Rose I Love You was the first song originating in the People's Republic of China to become popular in Britain. Yet the composers never received royalties. They could not afford to be seen drawing money from a capitalist country. And as I listened to the refrain in Merry England, it all tied in. Serving in the Colonial Service in Hong Kong seemed terribly exciting and romantic. It made me think of Camp Coffee, Zam Buk ointment and other similar branded goods with scenes of Empire on bottles and tins which I grew up with as a child.\n\n'You're not going to the Far East?!' an acquaintance exclaimed. 'The Communists have just acquired half Korea. There's fighting in Vietnam and Malaya. Hong Kong will be the next to fall!”\n\nIn spite of adverse comments I accepted the offer from the Colonial Office which was shortly to become Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service. After all a considerable amount of a map of the world was still coloured red. Hadn't Winston Churchill proclaimed: 'I have not become the King's first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire'? At the time I could have been posted to any one of something like 55 different colonies or dependent territories within the British Commonwealth. For me, 'Go East young man!' was the watchword. Nevertheless, some said that the Hong Kong Royal Naval Dockyard was shortly to be closed down.\n\nSo, in spite of discouraging remarks, I \"burned my boats,” sold the family business as a going concern, and went shopping. I spotted cabin trunks made of sheet metal. 'Oh no,\" the shop assistant exclaimed, 'you only need those, Sir, if you are going to some humid place like Hong Kong!' 'I'll have two!' I replied.\n\nShipboard\n\nIn the early 1950s, if one flew to Hong Kong, one normally went by seaplane, landed on water and slept the night in a hotel. The journey took five days. But up until 1959 most of us travelled by sea. The\n\nPage 390\n\nPage 391", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216346, "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-2003", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "54 \n\nChina Coast Pidgin English in JHKBRAS, Vol.35, pp.113-141. See also note 75 below.\n\n56 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, p.75.\n\n57 cited in Parkinson, op.cit., p.341.\n\n58 See pp.179-180 of my The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside. Hampden, Conn., 1977.\n\n59 Chinese text at No.28 in Vol. 1 of the three volume set of Hong Kong's Historical Inscriptions published by the Hong Kong Urban Council in 1986.\n\n60 Inscribed tablet dated 11th lunar month of the 6th year of Daoguang (1826) at the \"New Temple\" near the Barrier gate at Macau, which refers back to an earlier tablet on the subject dated in early Jiaqing.\n\n61 China No.4 (1864) Commercial Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls in China for 1862, p.62.\n\n62 Ibid, p.39.\n\n63 Ibid., p.67.\n\n64 See Bodde, Derk, and Morris, Clarence (1967). Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases. University of Pennsylvania Press.\n\n65 Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.263-9\n\n66 Ibid., Vol.IV, pp.281-3.\n\n67 The journal kept during his imprisonment was later published. See 'Edited by a Barrister', Journals kept by Mr. Gully and Capt. Denham during a captivity in China in the Year 1842. London, Chapman and Hall, 1844. This episode, and the much worse one involving the nearly 300 passengers and crew of a military transport from India, the Nerbudda, are also mentioned by Ouchterlony, pp. 499-509).\n\n68 Journals, op.cit., pp. 3-4.\n\n69 Gutzlaff, Sketch of Chinese History, op.cit., p.42.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]