[ { "id": 205197, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n147\n\nThomas Braddell, James Guthrie, A. L. Johnston, W. H. Read and 'Mr. Whampoa' (Hoo Ah Kay) are traced. The setting is that of a British colonial society in its heyday; the viewpoint is rather parochial.\n\nThe author was himself a prominent resident of Singapore for nearly fifty years. He arrived there in 1864, having been told by W. H. Read that it was ‘a fine healthy place for a young man'. He dryly noted that at the time of writing (1902) the English idea that Singapore was somewhere in the centre of India was becoming less generally held.\n\nThe author writes over-modestly that his book 'will interest those only who have some association with Singapore'. It should in fact interest many today for its detailed picture of the years of growth of a great South-east Asian city-state. To take one year — 1848 — at random; we read of Chinese gang robberies, the P. & O. mail, restrictions on firecrackers at Chinese New Year, the price of gambier, the inability of the Government of India to understand the special conditions and needs of the Straits Settlements, the sending of Chinese convicts from Hong Kong to Singapore, the trade depression, interference by the Malay ruler of Johore with the movement of guttapercha to Singapore, the failure of the Balestier sugar plantation, Captain Keppel and the new harbour, the arrival of Mr. James Brooke on his way to Labuan, and Singapore as a naval station. The author remarks, in passing, that the year 1848 had also been a very exciting time all over Europe'.\n\nThe Anecdotal History was well worth re-publishing for its lively if limited treatment of an era in Singapore's history. There is an excellent index, particularly important in a work of this kind. University of Hong Kong.\n\nB. HARRISON\n\nVIA PORTS: FROM HONG KONG TO HONG KONG, Alexander Grantham. Hong Kong University Press, 1965. pp. HK$30.\n\nThe author, Alexander William George Herder Grantham, is better known to the people of Hong Kong as Sir Alexander, Governor from 1947 to 1957. His book traces his own official career from 1922 when he arrived from England as a Government Cadet, to 1957 when he retired as the Governor.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206641, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n183\n\n(E), Pei Chi Sheng Ti (1), the Pen Ming Hsing Chün ($*£*) who is the local earth god, and the provincial city god. All five are connected with the fate of mankind.\n\nIn a Ch'ao Chow temple in Johore Bahru, Tai Sui a youth with a scroll (***) is on the altar of Hung Chün Lao Tsu (#$ *). (Plate 20)\n\nFather Doré says that in one temple outside the South Gate of Jukao, in the Yangtze Valley, Yin Ch'iao (F) is to be seen on the right as you face him, with Marshal Ma () on the left. Both have six arms, stand on clouds, and hold swords, amulets, gourds, bells and banners in their hands. Ma has three eyes and wears a hat, whilst Yin is bare from the waist upward and has his hair in a large upswept tuft on the top of his head. Yin is worshipped here as a member of the Ministry of Thunder.\n\nOther interesting sightings.\n\nIn Lavender Street in Singapore a Cantonese temple has sixty-two T'ai Sui images. About half the images hold scrolls and are, according to the temple keeper, the administrators of the fortune; whereas the others with silken slippers, fans, bells, etc. are those who actually provide the fortune.\n\nOne image of a young man, standing with one slipper on and one bare foot, is to be seen in Bukit Purmei temple in Singapore. He is prayed to for rain, and for good crops. (Plate 21)*\n\nCarver's drawings of Yin Ch'iao\n\nA Fukienese god carver prepared, on request, drawings of many deities. From memory he drew:\n\na. An image of T'ai Sui, seated, robed like a monk, wearing sandals, a band around his hair, and holding an open scroll with Tang Nien T'ai Sui (****).\n\nb. Yin Ch'iao's father, seated astride a large, long-beaked bird, holding a fly whisk in his right hand and a seal in his left hand. He is bearded, with a Taoist top knot and crown. His robes are covered in the Yin and Yang circle pattern.\n\nc. Yin Hung(); a standing young man with a spear in his left hand, and a mirror raised in his right, which is flashing beams towards his enemies.\n\n* Plates 22-24 also relate to representations of T'ai Sui.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206714, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Plate 19. In Taipei in a Fukienese temple General Yin Ch'iao with six arms together with two images of Ch'u Kung Chen Jen, 1970.\n\nPlate 20. T'ai Sui holding a scroll on the altar of Hung Chun Lao Tsu in Johore Bahru. The second daughter of the Jade Superior is the large deity. In a Ch'ao Chou temple, 1969,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208770, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "200 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\ncap, the songkok. His inclusion is quite logical when you consider that the Chinese know that every location has its resident Ti Chu Kung (土地公), the tutelary spirit of the building and its surrounding land. The immigrant Chinese appear to have accepted that the local Ti Chu Kung in a Malay area must be a Malay, and burnt incense and laid offerings before him, and prospered. His image is seen in many rural areas of Malaysia, in the niche within the entrance to local temples or under the main altar, where in Chinese temples in other areas the tablet dedicated to the Chinese Ti Chu Kung usually would be found. \n\nThe usual title of the Malay, Ti Chu Kung, is Na To Kung (拿督公), or Na-tuk, the Cantonese form of the Malay honorific title of Dato. In Fukienese and Ch'aochou communities in Malaysia he is also referred to by the same title, Na T'o, but using the characters 哪卓 and 藍卓. \n\nIn many parts of Malaysia nowadays Na T'o Kung's image, or a rock dedicated to him, stands beside or near an image of the Chinese Earth God. This is not unexpected as in temples elsewhere, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, the image of or the tablet dedicated to the Earth God would be beside or certainly separate from the tablet dedicated to the Ti Chu Kung. \n\nOccasionally, Na T'o Kung has a shrine to himself. A very rough but adequate shrine, for example, stands at the edge of a rubber estate near Labis in Johore, Malaysia. There is no image, no keeper nor nearby resident, only a tablet, and an urn filled with the stub ends of consumed incense sticks. \n\nA sketch by a Fukienese god carver in Singapore (plate 1) depicts Na T'o as a seated elderly man dressed in the cap, jacket and robes of the Malay, holding a walking stick in his right hand and a pipe in his left. He has a dark skinned face with a short moustache and is described as the \"Malay Landowner Gentleman”. Some places have him swathed in white “arab” robes, and some images of him depict him clutching a book or writing materials in his left hand instead of a pipe. \n\nThere are several local versions of his origins. One of the more widespread is that he is the spirit of a popular, long dead Malay foreman on a rubber estate, a Haji named Osman. Another claims that he is the spirit of a long dead Arab, the forebear of a major Malay family.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208832, "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "Plate 2. A stone tablet dedicated to Na Ta Kung in a wayside Chinese shrine at the edge of a rubber estate near Kulai in Johore.\n\nPlate 3. An image of Miss Lin on an altar in a Chinese temple in Nakorn Sri Thammarat in Southern Thailand.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214979, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "31\n\nrule over Malaya (known as the Emergency) and unmasking multiple pointless atrocities of the decaying colonial system.\n\nAnd the Rain My Drink, the novel considered the most exhaustive and also the most accurate picture of this particular period of time ever written, was first published in 1957 and it summarizes Han Suyin's experience of Emergency, accumulated during her several years' stay in Johore Bahru, British Malaya, in the double role of wife of Leonard Comber, her English second husband, at that time Assistant Superintendent in the Special Branch (i.e., in the British colonial police), and a doctor running a private medical practice:\n\nThe Emergency. We lived and breathed it; it penetrated our pores, we chewed it with every mouthful of food. Its formless pervasive threat held gaunt shape in my unquiet mind (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors).\n\nAt that time everyone except for the British already seemed to realise that there was absolutely no future for the colonial system either in that region, or in the rest of the world.\n\nThe book describes the great thirst for independence of the two peoples side by side inhabiting Malaya, namely the Muslim Malays and the Chinese national minority, and it emphasises the significant contribution of the Chinese jungle guerillas to liberation of Malaya from white rule:\n\nIt was the Japanese conquest of Malaya in 1942 which spurred national independence. The white man's myth of invincibility was shattered by the Japanese victories (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors).\n\nHan Suyin gives an abundant and informative record on ruthlessness of the British Special Branch in handling the evading situation, on their failed attempts to suppress the upheaval, on numerous penal re-settlings of whole villages of Chinese rubber-tappers from the regions neighbouring with the jungle taken over by the guerillas to the true concentration camps, additionally located in unhealthy marshlands far away from the rubber-tree plantations, and on imprisonments, torturing and blackmailing both active participants to the liberation\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215197, "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": 293, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "257\n\nHan Suyin was the daughter of a Belgian (Dutch/Flemish) mother, Marguerite Denis, and a Chinese father, Chou Yen Tung, (a railway engineer) and one of eight children. She was born in Sinyang, Henan Province. Her parents met whilst her father was studying at university in Belgium. In 1932, she started work as a typist at the Peking Union Medical College to earn money to study. She entered Yenching University in 1933. She transferred to the University of Brussels in 1935 but abandoned her studies in 1938 and returned to China after the Japanese invasion. The same year, she married a Kuomintang officer, Tang Pao Huang, who rose to the rank of general before he was killed during the Civil War in 1947. Tang served for a period as a military attaché in London during World War Two. Before his death, they adopted a daughter, Mei.\n\nHan Suyin, aged three (second from left) with her father behind her\n\nIn 1944, she entered the School of Medicine, University of London and in 1948 graduated M.B., B.S. (Hons.). She took an appointment as a paediatrician at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, in 1949. After Mr. Morrison's death in August 1950, she continued working in Hong Kong and married Leonard (Leon) F. Comber, an English publisher, on 1 February 1952, in Hong Kong. She spent the next 10 years in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, working at an anti-tuberculosis clinic. Mr. Comber was a Special Branch officer (assistant superintendent) in Malaya between 1948 and 1960. It was in Malaysia, also, that she met her current husband, an Indian Army colonel Vincent Rathnaswamy. There is a confusing report that she practiced medicine in China until about 1961.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215359, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Three goddesses on the main altar in a Hainanese temple in Rengam, Johore southern Malaysia. The main deity in the centre is Tianhou Yuanjun, stage left is Shuiwei Shengmu 聖母 and stage right, Xian Tai Furen 先太夫人.\n\n84", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215781, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "NOTES\n\nAbbreviations:\n\nColonial Office - CO\n\nJIA - Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\n\nJMBRAS - Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society\n\nJSEAH - Journal of Southeast Asian History\n\nSFP - Singapore Free Press\n\nSSR - Straits Settlements Records\n\nThe Government of the Straits Settlement Act, 1866. 29 & 30 Vicc 115 - An Act to provide for the Government of the Straits Settlements.\n\nTurnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. (1972) Oxford University Press, p 379\n\nAmong the various historians on Malayan history, Mary C Turnbull's comments on the Straits Settlements prior to the Transfer in 1867 are, by far, the most balanced and comprehensive, and her views on this area are invaluable. While the following facts were gathered from several historians' works, I have been influenced strongly by Turnbull's analysis. I have attempted to summarize in the following 3 sections Turnbull's views based closely on her Introduction to The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony.\n\ncf. Treaty of 6 February 1819 (Johore 1819) (Treaties with Native States Part III)\n\nTreaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC and the Sultan of Johore in 1824, cf. Treaties with Native States p 16 Part III\n\ncf. Article 10 of the treaty\n\nTurnbull, The Straits Settlements 1826-67 Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Introduction p 3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215786, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "18\n\nHowever, there were also cases where the British did intervene in the Malay states during the period 1824-73. It is evident that, to a certain extent, the British were inconsistent with their policy of non-intervention, but compared to the period after 1874, when the policy was reversed, these interventions were limited and they only occurred where unavoidable (Ibid. p 179). In this respect, I would argue that the merchants had valid grounds for their petition of complaint to the House of Commons.\n\nThe EIC's non-intervention policy reflected realism and flexibility. They took the stance of non-intervention wherever their commercial interests and political prestige were not threatened, but their policy changed according to the dictates of time, thus in reality, causing them to play dual roles of non-activity and intervention in accordance with the change of times. Whilst the period 1824-73 was not marked by any 'spectacular action or further territorial advances', it can neither be described as being inactive, because as Tan observes, '[c]ases of intervention were...more in evidence than cases of non-intervention' (Tan D E, supra, p 120), and I will highlight some of the more important and interesting ones. From its footholds in the Straits Settlements, the EIC gradually extended its influence over the independent Malay States chiefly through trade and treaties. (Thio E, British Policy in The Malay Peninsular 1880-1910 Vol 1 - Introduction pg xvi-xvii)\n\nThe following examples could be used as evidence to challenge the truth of the merchants' statement of complaint, although in the final analysis, their complaint was a bona fide one.\n\nCases of Intervention\n\nAfter 1826 the Malay states tended to look to the EIC as the arbiter of local politics to whom they reported the ascension of new rulers, and appealed for help in settling internal disputes and quarrels with their neighbours. (Thio, Ibid. p xvi-xvii) For example, the proximity of thriving Singapore to Johore led the British to intervene in the affairs of Johore. When Sultan Hussein died in 1835, Governor Murchison refused to acknowledge Hussein's son, Ali, as the Sultan. It was only in 1852 that Acting-Governor Blundell persuaded the Supreme Government to recognise Ali as the rightful Sultan. Later, compromise was reached when Ali accepted an empty title of Sultan and Temenggong Ibrahim retained control over Johore in 1855. Thus, a new royal dynasty was established in Johore, with British intervention. This case clearly illustrates a deviation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215791, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "23\n\n86 they were considered a bad influence by Sir Richard MacCulloch, Recorder of Singapore 1856-66, and merchants and Grand Juries made \"vague accusations from time to time\" (Turnbull, supra (on convicts), p 99)\n\n*for example, between 1830 and 1850, more than 1500 Thugs were sent to Singapore and Penang, and they played a prominent part in the Dusserah and Muharram festivals, turning them into the rowdy display of hooliganism they became by the middle of the century.' (Turnbull, supra (on convicts), p 100)\n\n88 for example, transportation of convicts to the Straits Settlements were put to an end in 1860 (Annual retrospect for 1860 in SFP 10 Jan 1861)\n\n89 for example, Governor Cavenagh took a personal interest in the convict administration, the health of the convicts improved, death rates fell with more attention paid to their diet; better supervision, incentive bonuses enhanced their efficiency\n\n90 1857 riots\n\n\"1 albeit that their fears were groundless in most instances\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nPrimary Sources:\n\nHansard Parliamentary Debates 3rd ser, cxlix, (986 - 996) Parliamentary Papers, 1862, xl (House of Commons) The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce Singapore Free Press\n\nCO273 series (Straits Settlements, Original Correspondence) Straits Settlements Records (Microfilm 139, 141, 142, 184)\n\nTreaties:\n\nTreaty of 6 February 1819 (Johore 1819) (Treaties with Native States, Part III) Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the EIC and the Sultan of Johore (1824) (Treaties with Native States Part III)\n\nTreaty of Peace, Friendship and Alliance of 1800 (Treaties with Native States, Part I)\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]