[
    {
        "id": 205785,
        "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": 91,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n85\n\nCrawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: \"A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below...\" An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: \"In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful\". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of \"ordinary glass lamps\" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else!\n\nFortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: \"If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary\".\n\nFour years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205788,
        "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": 94,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "88\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nany case, he argued, trade had dwindled and it was in the interests of the Siamese to accept a new treaty which would expand trade.\n\nThe White Rajah never met the King. He sailed away with nothing but indignation. He had not openly threatened the Siamese with force but had hinted as much. The old King and his Ministers were not impressed but they must have harboured fears of reprisals as there were so many precedents. In October that year Brooke, addressing himself to Lord Palmerston, evoked high principles in the fine Victorian manner in support of his call for force:\n\n\"Justice — compassion — interest — dignity — and a consistent course of policy appear to me to call for decisive measures to be taken without delay.\"\n\nAnd in a letter to a friend:\n\n\"The Siamese must be taught a lesson... our policy should be commanding and our power exerted when necessary. My policy in Sarawak has been high-handed against evil-doers and there, and in England and in Siam, there are bad to be punished as well as good to be cared for.\"\n\nMercifully for Siam, Brooke's gun-boat policy was not accepted in London but he did perceive the solution in spite of his call for force. The old King, Rama III, must soon die and there was good prospect that his half-brother Prince Mongkut would succeed him. In that event, Brooke said, the prospect of a new relation with Britain was bright.\n\nThe Sphinx and the Nemesis had scarcely left the Menam in September, 1850 when an American mission arrived. It was led by a certain Joseph Balestier, a not very successful American merchant of Singapore who came with a letter from his President. If the Brooke mission was a failure, Balestier's was even worse. Bowring comments:\n\n\"Mr. Balestier had not been fortunate in his commercial operations as a merchant at Singapore and it may be doubted whether the nomination of a commercial gentleman whose history was well known to the King and nobles at Bangkok was judicious; it was certainly not deemed complimentary to the proud Siamese authorities.\"4",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205789,
        "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": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n89\n\nBallestier did not meet the King and so never presented the President's letter. He was treated with little respect and left Bangkok in less than a month without a treaty or hope of one. Ballestier reported angrily to Washington that the only way to improve trade with Siam was by the threat or use of force. After he left, fear spread through the city that force might be used. Some teachers who had been instructing American missionaries in the Thai language thought it judicious to leave their employment, but all fear was soon to be removed. The old King died in 1851, and Prince Mongkut ascended the throne.\n\nIt was the beginning of a new era. From a long period of isolation, from suspicion and fear of Western merchants and sailors, Siam, in the fourth reign of the Chakri dynasty, turned to co-operation, free trade, and acceptance of the new civilisation. The change came quickly, almost as soon as the cremation ceremonies of Rama III were completed a year after his death. Emerging from a Buddhist monastery at the age of forty-seven, His Majesty Somdet Pra Paramenda Maha Mongkut, King Rama IV, proceeded to reform his kingdom and open new relations with the West.\n\nIn 1824, when he was twenty, Prince Mongkut had entered the order of monkhood. It was a custom, still sustained today, for all young men to enter the order for three or four months. That might have been the length of Mongkut's service as a monk, but just then, within two weeks of his entering the monastery, his father, King Rama II, died, and his half-brother was chosen for the throne. Mongkut decided to remain a Buddhist monk indefinitely. Out of disappointment? This may have been so, for his claim to the crown was stronger than that of his half-brother, Pra Nangklao. Mongkut was the eldest son of the King by a royal mother, and his half-brother, though seventeen years his senior, was the son of a lesser wife. However, in Siam, the succession is not necessarily according to strict rules of primogeniture, and in this instance, the choice by the Council of Nobles of Pra Nangklao seemed a wise one. He had had many years' experience in matters of state, often assuming duties for his father, who was more interested in poetry than politics. But if Mongkut was disappointed, monastic life suited him, and he remained a monk for the next twenty-seven years.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206892,
        "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-1973",
        "page_number": 169,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nVISIT TO THE SUKHOTHAI SITES IN THAILAND\n\n163\n\nThe first overseas tour of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society went to Thailand from 1-6 February 1973. Twenty members took part.\n\nThe purpose of the tour was to visit the historical sites of Sukhothai, Srisachanalai and Kampengpetch in the centre of the country; these are the abandoned cities of the Sukhothai kingdom which asserted its independence from the Khmers about 1220, reached its apogée under Ramkamheng (r. ± 1275—1317), and declined after the foundation in 1350 of Ayuthia, which subjugated the northerly kingdom in 1378, when the Sukhothai king, Mahadharamaraja II, transferred the capital to Pitsanuloke to reign as a vassal of Ayuthia. The Sukhothai kingdom is famous for its export celadons which in recent years have found their merited place in world porcelain collections for their originality and texture.\n\nHowever, the tour first stayed in Bangkok and, using a converted rice barge, saw some old temple paintings in Dhonburi and Nonthaburi.\n\nWat Chalermprakiad on the Chao Phrya River is a picturesque and half-ruined temple built by King Rama III in memory of his mother. The temple is surrounded by a double wall, the inner one having square towers with circular openings showing the strong Chinese artistic and architectural influences in Siam during that king's reign (1824-1851). The building to the right of the central edifice is in a state of total ruin, but still has its original doors and windows with their lacquer and mother-of-pearl exteriors and their lotus-painted red and blue interiors. Those of the main building, which is in a far better state of preservation, are predominantly red and green. There is excellent stucco work over the doors and windows and broken porcelain is used for characteristic decoration on the roof lines. The rustic setting of the temple, with its teak kuti or monks' houses surrounded by rain trees and breadfruit trees dominated by the tapering white chedi in the centre, left a strong impression of dignified serenity.\n\nWat Po Bang O, off Klong Bangkrouay, is a small old temple also in rural surroundings which has interesting examples of original 18th century paintings with some 19th century overlay showing",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211833,
        "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": 248,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "223\n\nharmonium by D.H. ENGEL\n\n17. \"Eupeidee\" (German student song and chorus) Th: Olympic Theatre (H)\n\nR: An advertisement only was published in the Herald of 29.10.1864. From it we learn that tickets could be obtained at the premises of Hiram Fogg & Co (ship chandlers, general store and auctioneers; one of the oldest foreign firms in Shanghai, located at the southern end of the Bund); Hall & Holtz (see 29.6.1864); A.A. Hayes Jr (Olyphant & Co, Nanking Road, ex Park Lane); and Herbert Cope (Geo Barnet & Co, Kiangsi Road (ex Church Street) and Hankow Road (ex Custom House Road)). It also becomes clear that there were at that moment at least two theatres in the Settlement: the Lyceum and the Olympic. The programme is interesting for the number of composers which have now been forgotten (Silcher, Kücken, Becker, Werner, etc.) and the piano arrangements of well-known opera arias.\n\n12.11-18.11.1864\n\nW. BROUGH: “Conrad and Medora” (1856)\n\nT: Burlesque pantomime (1 act)\n\nJ.B. BUCKSTONE: “Married Life\" (1834)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nJ.W. MARSTON: \"A Hard Struggle\" (1858)\n\nT: Domestic drama (1 act)\n\nW. SHAKESPEARE: “King John”, prison scene (Act IV, scene III)\n\nFurthermore:\n\n“Cinderella”, possibly by H.J. BYRON (1860) or T. TAYLOR (1845).\n\n\"Wonder\"; no contemporary pieces are listed in HED; only: Mrs. S. CENTLIVRE: “The Wonder. A woman keeps a secret” (1714) and H. CAREY: \"A Wonder or an honest Yorkshireman\" (1735).\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTh: N.N. (E)\n\nR: The Lewis company continued to draw large houses and ventured even to put a Shakespeare scene on the programme, from King John. It proved to be \"the hit of the week\". In it starred Miss Julia EDouin and Mr. Henry BIRCH: \"The acting was perfect. Miss Julia EDouin doing the fullest justice to the character of Prince Arthur and indeed taking the house by storm!\" (NCH 19.11.1864).\n\n19.11.1864 Sat\n\nH.J. BYRON: “Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTH: N.N. (U)\n\nN: Benefit of Miss Tilly Earl who played the role of Aladdin\n\nR: NCH 26.11.1864\n\n23.11.1864 (Wedn)\n\nR.B. SHERIDAN: \"The Rivals\" (1775)\n\nT: Comedy (5 acts)\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTH: N.N. (P)\n\nN: Benefit of Mrs. Gill who played the role of Mrs. Malaprop.\n\nR: NCH 26.11.1864\n\n26.11.1864 (Sat)\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]