[ { "id": 204996, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "95\n\nGOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841-1962: A CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY\n\nA Review Article by COLINA LUPTON\n\nThe subtitle of this book begs the question. Has Hong Kong really had a constitutional history? And if not, why the book? Mr. Endacott puts this query on the second page of the preface, and his answer is an interesting one. Given the fact that Hong Kong received a Crown Colony form of constitution in 1843 and still retains it in 1965, there must be something which explains its tranquillity in the midst of a continent of upheaval. The stability here contrasts forcibly with the emergent nationalisms which surround the Colony, in Indonesia, Indochina, Malaysia and certainly not least in China itself. Government here must be broadly in sympathy with the desires of the people, or it would not be supported. Even if this is partly due to local realization that the important decisions about the Colony's future are taken in London, Peking and elsewhere, the fact is that the Government provides enough of what the people want for its authority not to be called in question.\n\nIt is certainly true that as the Colony has grown and developed, the Government has done so too. But it might perhaps have been a fairer statement to call this not a constitutional history but an administrative one, for in all justice it is largely in the administration that the changes have been made, and quite a substantial portion of the book does actually deal with these changes. It is sad evidence of the apathy which Mr. Endacott so frequently remarks on as evinced in Hong Kong public life that the publishers have limited the printing of this book to a mere 2,000. In a territory of nearly four million, where at least fifty thousand or so must have a good reading knowledge of English, it seems that such a book on government is not expected to provoke much informed interest.\n\nAnyone who attempts to narrate the whole history of Hong Kong in one volume is confronted by a problem. This is the fact that the Colony's history falls very decisively into two\n\nBy G. B. Endacott, Hong Kong University Press, 1964,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208000, "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-1977", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n23\n\nSpaniards. She worried about the presence of France in Indochina on the opposite side of the South China Sea at mid-century; and later on she suspected imperial Germany of coveting northern Borneo and the Philippines.\n\nThe British sphere was initiated by the private efforts of an English adventurer, James Brooke, a former officer in the Bengal Army. In 1840, he helped bring an end to an insurrection in the Sarawak River, in the southern-most area under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Brunei, and was rewarded by being granted the province. In 1845 Brooke was appointed diplomatic agent to Brunei and supervised the transfer of the island of Labuan to Britain as a colony and a naval station. He also, in 1847, negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan which effectively gave to Britain control over Brunei's foreign relations. The colony of Labuan languished but the quasi-protectorate over Brunei served as the de facto and legal base for Britain's sphere of influence in Borneo. Such a sphere was proclaimed in 1868 as a warning to all European nations to keep out.\n\nThe real carving-up of the carcass of Brunei began in earnest in 1878 with the founding of another private venture, that of a syndicate of City of London businessmen which later became the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company. The syndicate was under the control of Dent Brothers Company. Alfred and Edward Dent were sons of the owner of the former Hong Kong firm of Dent and Company. Raja Brooke had annexed, by treaty with the Sultan, additional chunks of territory before 1878. In 1853 he purchased northward to and including the large district of the Rajang River. And in 1861 he purchased the five so-called “sago rivers” as far north as Kidurong Point. When that point was reached, the Governor of Labuan objected to any further northward encroachment of Sarawak and Labuan's wishes were supported by Britain.\n\nWhen, however, the British North Borneo Company purchased the large area of Sabah, the whole of the island of Borneo to the northward of Brunei Town, with strong support from the Foreign Office, both Raja Brooke and the Colonial Office protested. It is interesting to note that the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office who midwifed the company charter through officialdom in Whitehall was Julian Pauncefote, who was a former attorney-general.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208950, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "80\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\n24 Investigations at Manila concerning trade with Macau. In E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson (eds.). The Philippine Islands 1493-1803. 55 vols. Cleveland, Ohio, 1905. VIII. pp. 174-196.\n\n25 Miguel de Benevides, Bishop of Nueva Segovia to the King. Tulac, 17 May 1599. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. X. p. 193.\n\n26 Memorial to the Council. 26 July 1586. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. VI. p. 169.\n\n27 See Morga, op cit., pp. 136-149, Boxer, Fidalgos, pp. 46-47, Idem, Great Ship, pp. 61-62, Spate, op cit., pp. 163-164.\n\n28 Morga, op cit., p. 341 and Boxer, Great Ship, p. 73.\n\n29 Morga, op cit., pp. 341-342.\n\n30 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 111.\n\n31 D. Fernando de Silva to the King. 30 July 1626. In Boletin de la Sociedade Geografica de Madrid. XII. pp. 142 sqq. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, p. 144. For an account of Fort Zeelandia see F. R. J. Verhoeven, Bijdragen tot de oudere koloniale geschiedenis van het eiland Formosa. The Hague, 1930.\n\n32 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 117.\n\n33 On the Red Seal ships see Boxer. Christian century, pp. 261-267 and N. Peri. Essai sur les rélations du Japon et de l'Indochine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Hanoi, 1923.\n\n34 Antonio Francisco Cardim S.J. Relação der gloriosa morte de quatro embaixadores portuguezes da cidade de Macao com sincoenta e sete Christãos de sua Companhia... a tres de Agosto de 1640. Lisbon, 1643. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, pp. 165-166.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210892, "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "226\n\nto Hawaii.\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nIn calling for support of the proposal, Ho A-mei reflected that when he was a boy there was little business in Hongkong, but after emigration started better times came. Further, while the Governor called the proposed Hawaiian emigrants contract labourers, A-mei suggested that most of the members present came out to Hongkong on contract.\n\nTo this observation there was a hearty \"Hear, hear!” from the taipan \"contract labourers\" present. The resolution was passed by the meeting.\n\nThere was still another matter Ho A-mei wished to present to the meeting. He proposed: \"That the manufacture of salt be allowed to be carried on in Hongkong.\"\n\nThe reason for this proposal was the Government's rejection of an application for the grant of a large waste tract along the shore near Stanley. The applicants planned to convert it into salt pans for the production of salt by evaporation of sea water.\n\nHo A-mei did not understand why the request had been refused, as he felt it would in no way interfere with China's salt monopoly and would give employment to about 300 workers. He mentioned that Hongkong was importing salt from Indochina, but he did not refer to the large quantities of salt which were smuggled from Hongkong into China. He assured the members that the venture would be of great benefit to the Colony. Furthermore, it was the duty of the chamber to encourage all kinds of manufacture.\n\n—\n\nThe chairman of the meeting, William Keswick, head of Jardine, Matheson and Co and a member of the Legislative Council and, as such, privy to certain Government decisions assured Ho A-mei that there was no more need to get sanction for the manufacture of salt than, say, for sugar. He suggested that perhaps the refusal of the land was not because of the purpose for which it was to be used.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211333, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "25\n\ncommon as were allied reprisals. The city itself was at a standstill. Large numbers of Chinese had evacuated and the British traders had long since departed.\n\nConsidering the size of the allied force it is amazing they felt they were able to hold the city at all. In mid August the British had only four to five thousand troops in Canton and the French somewhere between 400 and a thousand. The French numbers were especially limited due to preparations, then under way, for an expedition to Indochina. Moreover, the thirty to forty ships of the British overshadowed the mere three ships available to the French members of the occupying force.\n\n5.3\n\nBaron Gros, responsible for the city's occupation, warned Paris that the situation was especially grave and that he had word that the authorities, although aware that a peace treaty had been signed, were nevertheless pressuring the Chinese to continue their opposition to the occupation. To Gros' additional frustration the attacks continued throughout early August and the heat, which was apparently unbearable, made sorties against the braves impossible. Some sections of the city had simply been abandoned. Things were so tense that Po-Kuei, the Chinese Governor, who had been willing the previous winter to co-operate with the allies, tried several times that summer to abandon his post. Apparently the French had to literally force him to return and co-operate.\n\n50\n\nHappily, though, as news of the treaties signed to the north spread more widely, the resistance subsided. By early September the population had begun to return to the city and the allies, feeling more at ease, again allowed junk traffic near the city walls. Although it would be quite some time before things returned to a reasonable semblance of calm, they had, it now seemed, survived the long hot summer of 1858.\n\nThe Occupation and the Coolie Trade\n\nAlthough tensions in the immediate environs of Canton did not again reach the levels of the first summer of the occupation, there nevertheless remained issues which threatened to provoke even worse resistance to allied control. Chief among these concerns were those aroused by the kidnapping of locals by coolie merchants.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214793, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "173\n\nThe experiences of migration, exile, refugees and diasporic communities all suggest that nostalgia can be employed as a strategic resource to re-appropriate and forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place. 'Exile is the nursery of nationality', as Anderson (1994) quotes Acton as saying. In this context, David Parkin (1998) points out that anthropologists 'can no longer assume that the people they study see themselves as attached to a particular, bounded locality', as in colonial ethnography which tended to depict territorially distinct peoples in homogeneous locations clearly bounded one from another in a way which facilitated ease of administration (the 'simplifications' of the state talked of by Scott, 1998). Yet real life has never actually been like this, as Parkin (1998) notes; there have almost never been autonomous communities perfectly isolable from one another, there has always been movement of peoples across boundaries and borders, and globalisation too has a long pre-capitalist, imperial history, as Friedman (1999) also notes. Nor in my opinion is the experience of the imaginative reconstitution of place so clearly linked either with the modern or post-modern, although it is often assumed to be.21 We have always constructed 'simulated worlds', admits Iain Chambers (1994); what is really new is the awareness of taking part in a global network of other and similar peoples. The experience of deterritorialisation is however a dislocation of place, and what we find here, for the Hmong as for many other dispersed or fragmented communities, is the use of nostalgia to reconstruct the past - and the nostalgic construction of place.\n\nLouisa Schein (1998) and myself (1996) have both documented the returns of overseas Hmong, settled after the conflicts of Indochina as refugees in Western countries like France, the US, or Australia, to revisit their immediate homelands in South East Asia, and the imaginary homelands of their ancestors in Southwest China. A Hmong friend of mine in Chiangmai, who has lived all his life in an urban environment, makes a point of bringing his children every year to visit his wife's parents in their rural village, so that they should remember where the Hmong came from and what it is to be really Hmong. It is for similar reasons that some of those who are able to afford to do so return with their families for extraordinary, emotional homecomings which I have witnessed in Hmong homes in Laos and in Thailand, and the same happens, although on a smaller and less public scale, in Vietnam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]