[ { "id": 204716, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER \n\nengaged in the lucrative trade drew out of the country large amounts of silver. Lin Tse-hsu, Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan wholeheartedly threw his support to those who memorialized the throne requesting stringent measures to prevent the use of opium within the country, and to cure addicts. Moreover, Lin took direct action and seized caches of opium, 12,000 ounces and 5,000 pipes. As a result of his success in combating opium addiction and forceful condemnation of the sale of the drug he was called to Peking by Emperor Tao-kuang and appointed Imperial Commissioner to examine the opium traffic at Canton. He arrived at the provincial capital in early March, 1839. For several years prior to 1839 nearly 30,000 chests had been imported annually there.\n\nFateful events immediately took form. Lin warned the western merchants of dire results if the iniquitous trade did not cease. His threat was followed by the demand that within three days they offer a bond that no opium would be imported. A counter proposal was made to turn over to Commissioner Lin about 1000 chests of the drug which he summarily rejected. On March 22, he demanded that Lancelot Dent, one of the principal importers be given to Chinese officials as a hostage until all opium was given up. The western merchants insisted that Dent could be surrendered only on condition that his personal safety was guaranteed. The Chinese merchants doing business with foreigners were frightened by the action of their own government. Some of them were deprived of their buttons of rank and two appeared in public with chains around their necks. Under these circumstances the Hong (the association of Chinese merchants trading with the western merchants at Canton) pressed the foreign community to comply with the ultimatum of Lin and deliver up Dent.\n\nIn the midst of this seething situation, on March 24, Captain Charles Elliot, British naval officer and Chief Superintendent and Plenipotentiary of the China Commission arrived from Macao. He entered the foreign compound with great difficulty inasmuch as the river had been blockaded and the streets leading to the foreign section had been barricaded. The predicament of approximately 300 western people seemed most serious since food and water were in short supply and a large encampment of Chinese troops was close at hand. Canton was cut off from formal communications from Macao which was nearly sixty miles distant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204838, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "116\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nwhich lies in the mouth of the Pearl River estuary between Macao and Castle Peak on the opposite headland. However, during the south-west monsoons the anchorages of Kapsuimun門 pq 29, and Hong Kong were used because they provided greater protection. The Kapsuimun anchorage was situated south of Ma Wan island and sheltered to the west by the headland of Lantao and to the east by Tsing I island. Because of the smuggling of opium from depot ships at these outer anchorages the capabilities of the anchorages off Lantao island and between Hong Kong island and Kowloon on the mainland became thoroughly known to British merchants and sea captains. In 1835 a former member of the British East India Company published a book in which he advocated the need for Britain to obtain some island from which trade with China could be carried on because of the uncertain conditions of trade at Canton following the ending of the Company's monopoly30. In a review of this book published in the Chinese Repository the reviewer remarks on the fact that the author pressed the idea of Britain acquiring Macao from Portugal, which he considered ill-advised. He wrote\n\nThe want of a good harbour, and its dangerous position in the season of typhoons and strong north or east gales, unfit it for the possession of a commercial nation, as point d'appui. Lantao is better, and this we should prefer of the places named by our author. It is an island, capable of defence, producing abundant supplies of food, with many good harbours, is not so near the provincial city as to render it dangerous for natives to resort to it, for the purpose of commerce.31\n\nThus in 1835 Lantao was still considered eligible as a possible British settlement. In May 1839 the British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, and all British subjects, left Canton as a result of the measures taken by the Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü, and retired to Macao. However, when in mid-August of 1839 the British were forced out of Macao by Chinese pressure it was to the anchorage of Hong Kong that the English ships went. Although Hong Kong was eventually ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Nanking 1842 this had not always been an automatic choice, the possibility of forming a settlement on Formosa, the Bonin Islands, and on Ma Wan and Lantao island had previously been given serious consideration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205017, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "116\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAdditional Note on Article “JOURNAL OF OCCURRENCES AT CANTON IN 1839 BY WILLIAM HUNTER”\n\nReaders of Volume 4 of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society will be grateful to the Editorial Committee for deciding to print the full text of William C. Hunter's manuscript journal preserved in the Boston Athenaeum. It is a happy coincidence that his journal should have been made available in print to scholars of modern Chinese history at the very time when Hunter's manuscript has been drawn on extensively in a recently published account of the causes and events which led to the Opium War. The late Dr. Hsin-pao Chang, in his scholarly book Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Harvard University Press, 1964), relates in some detail the story of the detention of the foreign merchants in their factories from 24th March until 5th May by orders of Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü (pp. 151-159). In describing this episode Dr. Chang has used various sources but has taken most of his details from Hunter's manuscript journal.\n\nAfter reading Dr. Chang's book I have discovered answers to a few problems which puzzled me while writing some of the footnotes to Hunter's journal as published in Volume 4 of this journal. May I, therefore, make a few additions and corrections to the text. Firstly, the sketch map of the Canton estuary on page 59 of Commissioner Lin and the Opium War marks most of the places mentioned by Hunter which were not shown on the sketch map on page 27 of Volume 4 of this journal, or left unidentified in the notes to the text. Thus the positions of Lankeet, Chuenpee, Shakok and Chunhow are clearly shown on the map in Dr. Chang's book. Hunter's use of the name Chinn-up under entry for 13th April is still inexplicable but in fact the opium was being unloaded at that date at Sha-chiao ('Sandy Head') which presumably was the Shakok of Western accounts, lying across the estuary from Lankeet. Secondly, some minor corrections. On p. 16, line 1, the word 'songs' should read 'gongs'; on p. 14, lines 9-10, it would be more accurate to say", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205072, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n23\n\nThis may violate some of the basic principles of the historian's craft. It means going beyond the documents, or at least reading into them interpretations which the documents per se may not warrant. It means reading between the lines. It may even mean attributing significance to the fact that a document does not exist. It means applying the principles of anthropology, sociology, agricultural economics, even psychology to events which occurred many years ago.\n\n....a tricky procedure at best.\n\nBut it may, in the end, bring us closer to what \"really happened\" than has heretofore been the case.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ch'ü Tung-tsu, Local Government under the Ch'ing, Cambridge, 1962.\n\n2 Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960.\n\n3 These are the districts (hsien) of Nan-hai, P'an-yü #, Hsun-teh 顺德, Tung-kuan 东莞, Hsin-an 新安, and Hsiang-shan 香山,\n\n4 Cf. M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, London, 1951; P. C. Kuo, A Critical Study of the Opium War, New York, 1935; H. P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, Cambridge, 1964; etc.\n\n5 For account of this pirate's exploits see C. F. Neumann, History of the Pirates Who Infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, 1831. This is a translation of a Chinese work entitled Ching-hai fen-chih 靖海氛志 by Yuan Yung-lun 阮永纶\n\n6 The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, July, 1821,\n\n7 The Canton Register, July 26, 1828.\n\n8 The Chinese Repository, June, 1834, p. 83.\n\n9 The Canton Register, February 18, 1828,\n\n10 Ibid., October 3, 1829.\n\n11 Ibid., December 12, 1829 and September 6, 1830.\n\n12 The Chinese Repository, June, 1832, p. 80.\n\n13 The Canton Register, March 8, 1828.\n\n14 The Chinese Repository, April, 1836, p. 566.\n\n15 Ibid.\n\n16 Ibid.\n\n17 Kwang-chou fu chih (广州府志), Canton, 1879 ed., chuan 81, p. 286.\n\n18 The Canton Register, June 18, 1829,\n\n19 For details see pertinent issues of The Chinese Repository, The Chinese Courier; The Canton Register; Kwang-chou fu chih, p. 306.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205402, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n157\n\nisland of Hainan). An account of the historical episode mentioned above is given in Yang Lu-yung *, San-fan Chi-shih Pên-mo *, Chüan 3, The entry on the Southern Expedition of the Imperial Army; and in Wan Jui-lin *, Nan-chiang Yi-shih 40#, Chüan 4 (A brief account of the history of the Kwangtung Province), the Prince Yung Ming, Part One (edited by Li Yao 李瑤).\n\nAs the date of construction of this cannon was 26th September, 1650, it must have been cast for the express purpose of fighting the Ch'ing army during the siege of Canton.\n\nFAN, REGIONAL COMMANDER OF GUARDIAN OF THE IMPERIAL HEIR(?) KWANGTUNG\n\nAND\n\nFan's full name was Fan Ch'êng-ên ✯✯&. He was the traitor who conspired with the Ch'ing army during the siege of Canton. He caused the leakage in the embankments so that the Ch'ing army was able to land by stepping on floating logs and eventually took over the forts at Canton. When Shang K'o-hsi entered the city of Canton, Fan went up to surrender to him. See Yang Lu-yung, op. cit. and Wan Jui-lin, op. cit.\n\nWU, SUPERINTENDENT OF INLAND SEAS, CHIEF MILITARY COMMISSIONER, INSTALLED(?) AS TING-HAI GENERAL.\n\nWu may be a mistranscription of hsi, which together with yin Ep, signify the official credentials. In my opinion these titles of Superintendent of Inland Seas, Chief Military Commissioner installed as Ting-hai General do not refer to any particular person but were given to the cannon itself. It was the custom in the Ming dynasty to confer the title of 'ta chiang-chün' (the great general) on a new type of cannon called the fo-lang-chi (Franks) which the Chinese had learnt to manufacture in the sixteenth century. (See Chang Ting-yu 張廷玉, Ming Shih 明史, Chüan 92, military affairs, section 4). This tradition persisted in the Ch'ing dynasty and the fo-lang-chi type of cannon was invariably called 'The great general'. (See Ch'ing Wên-hsien T'ung-kao 清文獻通考, Chüan 194, military affairs, section 16.) This cannon constructed by Tu must have been cast according to the fo-lang-chi type. It is natural therefore that this cannon would have been conferred with the titles mentioned in the inscription.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206506, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "48\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\ntendent of Trade for the Northern Ports and Superintendent of Trade for the Southern Ports would find some material of use in this section of the six-point memorandum. For instance, it states that at Newchwang, the staple trade commodity is soya-bean cakes, but that this trade is not open to foreign ships. Details of the suggested method of collecting and reporting the customs revenues of this port are then given. At Tengchow, the memorialists state, an illicit foreign trade has been going on for a number of years, unbeknown to the Court. Now that it has officially become a treaty port, officials must be appointed to administer foreign trade there. As regards the five original treaty ports of Canton, Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai, no changes in the regulations need be made. As regards the newly opened ports of Ch'iungchow, Swatow, Taiwan, and Tamsui, as well as Chenkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow on the Yangtze, the governors-general and governors in whose jurisdiction these ports lie should jointly memorialize with the imperial commissioner at Shanghai concerning officials to be appointed to take charge of these places. Monthly reports on the volume of foreign trade at these ports are to be sent to the Tsungli Yamen and the Board of Revenue.\n\nSuggestions are also made for arrangements to be made for trade with Russia at the newly opened trading places of Urga, Kashgar, and Kalgan.\n\nAccording to the treaties, twenty percent of the duties on foreign trade are to be held for the payment of the indemnity. A counterfoil will be provided so that the total amount of revenue collected can be checked against the amount withheld.\n\nThe memorialists then return to the point they were making near the beginning of point 3 [as translated above].\n\nThus, the amount of foreign duty collected each year being clearly shown, the officials through whose hands it passes will be unable to enrich themselves through peculation. Not only will they be deprived of the means of living, they will secretly resort to other malpractices. It is further feared that wily clerks, when they see there is no money to be made, may provoke trouble, thus endangering the public interest. If we do not clearly lay down regulations providing them with expenses for transacting official business, we very much fear that unforeseen malpractices will arise. It is therefore proposed to request that an order be given to the superintendent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208928, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "58 \n\nLEWIS M. CHERE \n\nand recognized in later periods? As in so many cases of this sort, closer examination of the events leads to the conclusion that it may have been both. \n\nWhat little evidence is available at this distance points to a popular nationalistic outbreak against the French, encouraged by the activities of the Imperial authorities at Canton. There is also reason to believe that the old anti-foreignism so frequently pointed to among the coastal Chinese also had some role in the affair. Some local Chinese leadership groups, like the Tung Wah, may also have tried to make use of the incident to enhance their own position vis-à-vis the colonial administration. \n\nThe troubles of September and October 1884 were set off by two events in other parts of the China Coast. China and France had been very close to an open break over the suzerainty of Annam and the occupation of Tongking since early in 1883. When the Chinese appeared to have violated a May 1884 agreement between Li Hung-chang and Captain Ernest Fournier of the French Navy, France presented China with a series of ultimatums in June and July demanding compensation for French deaths incurred in the incident. Since the Chinese believed that it was the French who had violated the agreement they naturally were not inclined to sub-mit to the French demands.9 \n\nFrance, determined to enforce what she considered her just demands, issued one last ultimatum in August. When Peking refused to give in, the French Asiatic Squadron under Admiral Courbet, which was anchored at Foochow opposite a Chinese fleet and the shipyard, opened fire on August 22. The Chinese Foochow Fleet was utterly destroyed with much loss of life. The Shipyard was severely damaged, and the forts along the Min River were taken and destroyed as the French went back downstream. \n\nIn the competition among the governors and viceroys of the coastal provinces to demonstrate their patriotism in the furor that followed the Foochow incident, Chang Chih-tung, newly appointed Viceroy of the Two Kwangs; Peng Yü-lin, Imperial Commissioner for the Coastal Defenses of Kwangtung; and Ni Wan-yuh, Governor of Kwangtung, issued a proclamation calling on Chinese in Singapore, Penang and Vietnam (interestingly enough they did not mention Hong Kong) to sink French ships, or sell them tainted provisions. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208929, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "HONG KONG RIOTS OF OCTOBER 1884\n\n59\n\nNaturally the British Government protested this incitement to murder in its territories most strenuously. At British insistence an Imperial Decree was issued disavowing the proclamation and censuring the responsible officials for an excess of zeal. The censure did no damage to any of their later careers and amounted to barely concealed backhanded praise. When the British later asked for a re-publication of the decree of censure by Chang Chih-tung in the belief that it would calm Hong Kong, Chang refused. He justified his refusal, and the initial proclamation itself, on the grounds that he had merely been trying to encourage overseas Chinese to go to the areas of combat and help China in her struggle.10 That had, of course, been part of the original proclamation, but his explanation was no more convincing then than it is now. Interestingly, the Daily Press of October 1 pointed out that Commissioner Lin had issued a similar appeal in 1840 during the First Opium War.\n\nSeveral of the Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong published Chang's original proclamation when it was issued. The colonial authorities were so concerned about the potential effect of the proclamation that they brought charges against the newspapers for incitement to murder. Eventually the prosecutions failed in court, but the days following the publication of the proclamation were filled with incidents of Chinese refusing to provide services to the French, either to the ships of the Messageries Maritimes or to French naval vessels calling at Hong Kong for repairs and supplies after the battles with the Min forts. There were also incidents involving clashes between French naval personnel and local Chinese reported from Singapore.11\n\nThere is no question that the reported incidents were not simply anti-foreign, though later that would enter into them. Unlike incidents in other areas of China, only the French were affected. Even in Canton the incidents nearly ceased when it was announced that there were no more French in the city.12 On September 7 when Admiral Lespés, who had bombarded Keelung before the Foochow attack, was ashore in Hong Kong the local authorities were so concerned that some of the large numbers of Cantonese in the city might try to collect the rewards offered for the deaths of French officers that they assigned the admiral an escort of Sikhs.13\n\nWhen the cargo-boatmen were fined for refusing to work the French ships the action triggered a strike against all ships of what-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209277, "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-1981", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "166\n\n39\n\n40\n\nIbid., IV, 26.\n\nWEI PEH-T'I\n\nHsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 16.\n\n41 WCT - TK 1/11. Copy of memorial from Juan Yuan, Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, dated TK 1/11/19 (1821/12/31).\n\n42 Ibid.\n\n43 Ibid.\n\n**Ti-tzu chi, 5:23b.\n\n46\n\nIbid. Imperial rescript to memorial from Juan Yuan.\n\nFigures compiled at Canton, November, 1828. \"Report from Committee on China Trade, East India Company\", Parliamentary Papers. 30:173.\n\n47\n\nIbid.\n\n48 Appendix to report from the Select Committee on China Trade, VII, Paragraph 5174.\n\n49 Testimony of William Jardine to Committee on China Trade, Parliamentary Papers 30:514.\n\n60 Gerald S. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978). The quotations are taken from p. 17 and n.28.\n\n51 Morse, Chronicles, IV, 44 and 93. There is no indication whether opium had been clandestinely removed from these ships.\n\n52 This date was given in Juan Yuan's memorial in Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:39. The villagers were killed on the next day, 15 December. English sources did not indicate that the incident took place on two successive days, Morse, Chronicles, IV, 28.\n\n53\n\nMorse, Chronicles, IV, 28.\n\n54 Ibid., IV, 29.\n\n55\n\nA brother of the victim, Huang I-ming, went to Peking to petition the Emperor charging inaction on the part of the local officials. He also claimed that the British had stolen tens of thousands of taels of silver from the house of the deceased. The Emperor referred the case to Juan Yuan, who decided against the petitioner, asking, \"How could a peasant who made his living by growing potatoes on Lintin Island accumulate so much wealth?\" Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:39b.\n\n56 Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang, 1:11b.\n\n57 Ibid., 1:19.\n\n59\n\nIbid., 1:19b.\n\n60\n\nTi-tzu chi, 5:10b-11.\n\n61 Ti-tzu chi 5:26.\n\n62 Wai-chiao shih-liao, Tao-kuang 1:15 a-b.\n\n63\n\n1 2\n\n46\n\nIbid., 1:32, memorial from Juan Yuan, TK 2/9/20 (1822/11/3).\n\nIbid., 1:36 a-b. Court letter to Juan Yuan, TK 2/11/3 (1822/12/25).\n\nIbid., 1:37. Imperial edict, TK 2/12/12 (1823/1/23).\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212802, "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-1992", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "96\n\nCh'in-ch'ai Ta-ch'en ✯✯E : Imperial High Commissioner, a very senior appointment.\n\nEver Victorious Army ET: A European-officered Chinese force of the Imperial Army raised by the American, Ward, which ultimately, under the command of Colonel Gordon, assisted in putting an end to the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nExpectant... (Ho-ju) ✩A : A prefix indicating that an official was qualified and certified to take up duty in the post named.\n\nFan-t'ai #: A provincial treasurer known to foreigners as the Commissioner of Finance; charged with the fiscal or financial administration of a province.\n\nFormosa: The Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan.\n\nHakkas [Ko-chia] ** : One of the southern Chinese ethnic groups said to have migrated from northern China during the Mongol dynasty, ca the thirteenth century AD.\n\nHan-lin Yuan #: The Chinese National Academy, admission to which was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar.\n\nHo-shang : Buddhist monk or priest.\n\nHongkew : Site of the American Settlement in Shanghai, where Mesny later lived.\n\nHsien : Administrative district.\n\nHuang Ma-kua : The Yellow Riding Jacket. A high award from the emperor to his senior officials.\n\nImperial Maritime Customs: Chinese customs service with a foreign inspectorate largely able to control the collection of duties and taxes without the usual Chinese squeeze [q.v.]. Robert Hart became Inspector General in 1863.\n\nJingal (gingal): The Chinese blunderbuss. It was generally fired from a swivel fixed on a wall or wooden post, but sometimes it was fired with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214542, "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": 400, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "369\n\nANOTHER DILEMMA FOR TODAY'S YOUTH IN\n\nCHINA\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch\n\nDuring a recent RAS [HK BR] tour of the Museum of the Humen People's Resistance against the British in the Opium War [1840-1842] at Humen [Bocca Tigris], a small town about sixty miles south-east of Canton on the east coast of the Pearl River, we entered the old temple dedicated to the Northern Emperor [Bei Di] in the grounds of the Museum.\n\nThe main altars of the temple were not in any way unusual in that it had the central altar with the image of the Northern Emperor, Bei Di, and two flanking side altars, one dedicated to Lü Dongbin, the doctor in the group of the Eight Immortals and the second dedicated to Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. However, there were two further glass cabinets, identical with the form of the main altar, one on either side wall. Against the wall, stage left, was an image of Lin Zexu,\n\nthe Imperial Commissioner despatched by the Emperor to Guangdong province in 1839 with instructions to stamp out the opium trade. His destruction of the stocks of opium held by British, American and other foreign traders led to the so-called Opium War [in British parlance, the First China War].\n\nThe cabinet against the temple wall, stage right, contained three images of Chinese officials involved in the War. They were Admiral Guan; The Governor of the Two Guangs and a General Chen who, captured by the British, is now remembered as the prisoner taken by his captives, together with his loyal horse, to Hong Kong where he died. Before both side cabinets, which had baldachin and silken hangings in front of the altar tables bearing honorifics as do temple altars virtually everywhere, were altar tables with red spirit tablets bearing their honorific titles, as well as offerings of fruit, bottles of wine and incense pots.\n\nWhat proved so interesting was the indecision manifest amongst Chinese visitors who, having not hesitated to bow and offer incense before the images of the three main deities, Bei Di, Lü Dongbin and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214959, "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": 55, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "10\n\nLin Zexu and the Conflict\n\nLin Zexu is not the subject of this paper. However, since he is the central figure of the Symposium, it seems appropriate to devote some little space to this extraordinary man, who no doubt cast a giant shadow on Anglo-Chinese relations.\n\nEmperor Qianlong, great emperor though he was, apart from issuing prohibitive edicts seems to have done little to stop the opium trade. Jiaqing (1796-1820) who followed was equally ineffectual. His successor Daoguang (1821-1850), however, was a man of a different mettle. In 1836, Imperial edicts having failed to check the opium trade, the problem was hotly debated in Beijing. There was one faction that favoured legalizing opium importation and so turning it to public profit. To this Emperor Daoguang replied: 'It is true, I cannot prevent the introduction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people,\" noble words by a great monarch. In 1839, deciding to take forceful action, the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as his Commissioner charged with total eradication of the infamous trade. Commissioner Lin journeyed to Guangzhou and immediately ordered all commerce in opium to be stopped. He further demanded that merchants should surrender all stocks and sign a bond to cease importing, in effect laying the factories to siege. This much is well documented as well as the ensuing course of events which led to the 1st Opium War.\n\nLin Zexu presents an interesting character study of contrasting portraits. For many years the British sources had portrayed him as 'fierce, unscrupulous, and fanatical.'\" Most of the known paintings of him show a fierce, pugnacious countenance. It is, therefore, gratifying to include in this paper a reproduction of a rare painting depicting him as a handsome man with a dignified yet kind expression on his face.** Gradually the picture has changed and Lin is being recognized as an intelligent and learned man, a capable and resolute official, a competent administrator, and a fair and just dispenser of the law; most importantly, he was incorruptible. A modern, progressive man, he observed, however, all the Chinese ceremonies, made sacrifices at temples, and made offerings to the spirits of his ancestors. He liked poetry, which he practised for his own leisure. A man who, at the height of the opium", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216038, "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": 337, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "271\n\nother smaller temples, some well known, others hardly known at all. These include the conspicuous red-walled Dicang Wang Temple not far from the south-west corner of the city wall; the Doutian Miao and the Xiu Wang Miao, both referred to earlier. All were destroyed during the Taiping occupation, though many were rebuilt during subsequent years only to fall into disuse during the Japanese occupation as well as since 1949. The Jin Shan Temple and the Ganlu Temple today are the premier tourist sites in Zhenjiang, with the Dinghui monastery, though less easily accessible, being a good third.\n\nThere used to be an interesting group of memorial temples on the Ganlu headland [Consular Bluff], a favourite resort for native Chinese picnic parties. One of these shrines was dedicated to Zhu Xi, a Southern Song dynasty neo-Confucian philosopher, born in Anhui in AD 1130, and probably best remembered for his commentary on Confucian classics, with his 'Rituals for Family Life' being influential throughout China as the standard authority consulted by high and low alike. He was the Confucian scholar who, whilst prefect at Zhangzhou in Fujian in 1190, attacked Buddhist and Daoist practices and issued orders laying down punishments for those who disobeyed the rules. Despite this he wrote commentaries on the sacred books of Daoism. He retired in 1196 and after his death four years later was posthumously appointed Chief of the Imperial Tutors with the rank of Lord. He has long been deified, with a portrait installed in a temple in Jiangxi province at an early stage during the twelfth century to encourage sacrifices to him by local scholars and gentlemen.14 He was revered in Confucian temples from about 1250, and during the reign of Kang Xi he was elevated to a position just under the 'Ten Noted Men' [The Ten Disciples of Confucius].\n\n[1824-1890],\n\nAnother shrine was dedicated to Peng Yulin the Chinese admiral in charge of the Yangzi Fleet which operated with success against the Taiping rebels. Peng was remembered by foreigners for his incorruptibility as well as his inability to understand the westerners. During the short French war with China in 1884-5, when in Guangzhou as the Imperial Naval Commissioner sent to organise its defences he proposed sending emissaries to Singapore to poison any French officers who might have been enjoying British hospitality there. Beijing frowned on his plan and he was unable to see why. He was also violently opposed to the introduction of iron-clads into the Chinese navy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216069, "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": 368, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "302\n\nso that I may die childless, as I am now old and not likely to have any more children. I had never met or seen Mason before he presented himself to me as being the United States Consular Marshal at Hankou, which was a lie, he being actually a Custom House Officer at Zhenjiang.'\n\nLet us try to unravel the sorry story of Mason and Mesny. It is involved and still has aspects which are difficult to fathom. We have a number of versions or parts of it available to us but will confine ourselves to three: Mason's own story, briefly described below, written some 30 odd years later after he had roamed the world as a vagrant worker; the letters from the Inspector General of the Imperial Customs, Sir Robert Hart; and Mesny's bitter accusation. Mason, according to Mesny, practically ruined him and certainly caused Mesny great personal problems as he explained in great detail in his Miscellany. It is difficult to fit these three pieces of jigsaw together as there are few elements in common; however, the basic story is there. Mason bought a large quantity of foreign arms, ammunition, and explosives with which to arm a rising against the Imperial government, and having been arrested in Shanghai, was tried, sentenced, gaoled, and finally deported. Mesny was called as a witness but was accused to his face by the Chinese Premier, Li Hongzhang, of being the chief or very senior in the anti-Imperialist bandit body, the Elder Brother Society. This led to Mesny being ostracised by Chinese officialdom and, as his be-all and end-all as a business go-between was his contacts with Chinese officials, his life quietly slipped downhill thereafter.\n\nAccording to records — ‘Charles Welsh Mason, a young Englishman, had joined the Imperial Maritime Customs in December 1887 and was sent to Zhenjiang, an important post but a minor port on the Yangzi, as 4th assistant B, where he joined the Gelao Hui and became involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government. In July of 1891, he took two months' leave and went to Hong Kong, where he purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition for the Society and arranged for it to be shipped to Shanghai and from there on to Zhenjiang. He also recruited men for the Society and bought a quantity of dynamite, which he carried with him to Shanghai, where he requested Commissioner Bredon of the Imperial Maritime Customs to allow it to be shipped on to Zhenjiang so that he, Mason, could uncover more of the Chinese rebels' plans. Bredon refused the \"sting\" and instructed Mason to report to Hart in Beijing. Instead, Mason took a river steamer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]