[ { "id": 211618, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "8\n\n00\n\n# HONG KONG, 26 JANUARY 1841: HOISTING THE FLAG REVISITED*\n\nK. J. P. Lowe\n\nThis article will attempt to investigate the circumstances surrounding the ceremony of the hoisting of the British flag on Hong Kong Island on 26 January 1841, following the cession of the island in the treaty of 20 January 1841. It will in the process shed light on some of the more immediate British reactions to the acquisition of the island. The first Opium War and the subsequent Chinese expedition of 1840-1 form the immediate background to this event, and these subjects are well covered in the contemporary China-coast English-language press, in quasi-governmental sources and in memoirs by those involved. Negotiations leading to the cession were carried out by Captain Charles Elliot1 for the British, and the Chinese commissioner Ch'i-shan. Yet the hoisting of the flag itself seems largely to have been ignored or played down at this stage, even though Hong Kong was taken by the British as a direct result of successful military action and the ceremony should have been an important gesture of victory. I wish to posit that although Elliot and J. Gordon Bremer, the naval commodore, were proud of the acquisition of Hong Kong (and steamed all round their island at the first opportunity2), most people were not, and considered it of little consequence. The downplaying of the formal possession ceremony in contemporary accounts reflects this, and it was only when the colony started to be a financial success and stable social entity in the 1870s that the ceremony of possession took on a new significance.3\n\n6\n\nReminiscences of the Chinese expedition by officers in the navy and the army are common. Good examples of this type of literature by naval officers are the books by Edward Belcher of HMS Sulphur,4 by John Elliot Bingham who had been first Lieutenant of HMS Modeste,5 and by William Bernard who had been on board the Nemesis. Of these three, unfortunately only Belcher was in Hong Kong on the requisite day to witness the ceremony because Elliot had commandeered the Nemesis to take him to the Second Bar for his meeting with Ch'i-shan (also on 26 January), and Elliot Bingham had fractured a leg during enemy action on 10 January and had been taken to Macao. Belcher\n\n* I should like to thank Jardine Matheson and Co. Ltd. for permission to use their archives, and Eugene McLaughlin for his help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214846, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "228\n\n26 But war is war, as I have said. Captain Henry Keppel, RN, recently arrived at the war, went ashore at Woosung after its capture in June 1842. \"18 June 1842. Waterloo Day. General Sir Hugh Gough landed in my gig, when I witnessed the horrors of war. Mutilated carcasses of men and horses by hundreds. Houses burning, villages deserted, etc. Struck by the prevalent feeling so strong for destruction\". Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor's Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 3 vols., 1899), Vol.I, p.\n\n27\n\nWyndham Baker wrote from Amoy, \"The troops in the city have picked up a considerable quantity of plunder and some quantity of silver, but of course it would not really do for officers to set them an example, though I have seen the most splendid and elegant satin dresses in possession of some of them.\" Blackwood's 1964, p.86.\n\nLaurence Shadwell, Life and Campaigns of Lord Clyde (London, 1881), p.120-1.\n\n29 Shadwell, p. 138.\n\n30 Shadwell, p.132. See also Sir John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of Essays and Notes (London, John Murray, 1865), p.161n.\n\nBingham, Vol.II, p.86.\n\nBelcher, Vol II, pp.213-4. Sir Hugh Gough was particularly angry on this occasion. “You have placed me in a most critical situation,\" he wrote to Elliot, \"My men of all arms are dreadfully harassed, my communications with the rear constantly threatened and escorts attacked. My men must suffer dreadfully from the necessity of continued watchfulness; for however you may put confidence in the Chinese I do not, nor should be justified in relaxing in the least.” Cited in Holt, pp.128-9.\n\n33 Holt, p.112.\n\n34 Holt, p. 108. This step was apparently taken on the advice of the British interpreters to the expedition, who thought it was better to let the town be stripped and deserted than to coerce the civilian population.\n\n35 Ouchterlony, p.225.\n\n36 \"Oh for the Joys of England! Lt Orlando Bridgeman's Letters From China and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]