[ { "id": 204250, "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-1961", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205141, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "92\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\ngeneration by generation, they became lavish patrons of Buddhism, both where they lived and when they returned home. Monks from China therefore made fund-raising tours of the overseas Chinese communities, while monasteries in certain parts of China received much of their income from overseas Chinese pilgrims.\n\nMonks traveled not only to raise funds, but to spread the dharma and to visit the holy places of Buddhism. One of the most inveterate travelers of the past century was Hsü-yün. In 1889 he visited the holy places of Tibet, India, Ceylon, and Burma.48 In 1905 he went to spread the dharma in Burma, Malaya, and Taiwan. In Malaya alone 10,000 persons became his disciples after hearing him preach.49 Here and elsewhere, almost all of his audience was overseas Chinese, since he spoke no foreign language—this was not the beginning of a dialogue with the Theravadins. On a tour in 1907, however, he won a foreign disciple no less a person than the King of Siam! Interested to hear that Hsü-yün had been in trance for nine days, the King came to see him, invited him to the royal palace, took the Refuges with him, and gave him a large tract of land, which Hsü-yün allocated to the use of the Chi-le Ssu in Penang.50\n\nSometimes he did not get so royal a welcome. In 1916 he was on his way back from Rangoon, where he had gone to get a Buddha image (another common motive for trips abroad51). When he reached Singapore, he was taken off the boat on the suspicion of being a revolutionary. Along with five other monks, he was hustled to the police station, cross-questioned, bound, beaten with fists, put out in the hot sun, and not allowed to move. \"If we moved, we were beaten. They gave us nothing to eat or drink and would not allow us to go to the latrine. This went on from six in the morning to eight at night.\" Finally, some of his disciples heard of his plight and got him released on bail. The reason for this treatment was said to have been a desire on the part of the Singapore police to please their \"good friend\" Yüan Shih-k'ai.52\n\nHsü-yün was not the only monk who went on pilgrimages and lecture tours overseas. In 1902-1906 Yüeh-hsia visited Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Europe (sic).53 Before 1924 Wan-hui had studied in India and Ceylon.54 Overseas travel became commoner as ships and trains made it more convenient, as Chinese abroad became increasingly able to finance it, and as certain...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205784, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "84 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China \n\na little \n\noff the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. \n\nBy 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that \"a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude\". Their policy was one of conciliation. \"All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations\" the Company declared, \"... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit\". \n\nAs well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as \"slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: \n\n“On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little.\" \n\nTo remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207036, "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-1974", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\nMichael Smithies*\n\nThe second international tour organized by the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, went over the Chinese (Lunar) New Year 1974 to Laos. 41 members and their guests visited Vientiane and Luang Prabang from 23 to 27 January, flying directly between Hong Kong and the Laotian capital. Some persons on the tour went ahead to visit Chiengmai in Thailand or Vat Phu in southern Laos and joined up with the main group later.\n\nThe attractions of the monuments of Vientiane, the administrative capital of the Kingdom of Laos, are slight in comparison to those in the royal capital of Luang Prabang. This is less a reflection of the religious fervour or artistic sensibility of the inhabitants of Vientiane, but a proof of the efficiency of the Siamese sack of the city in 1828 as a reprisal for Chao Anou's attempted attack on Bangkok two years previously and his subsequent alliance with Hué.\n\nVientiane's position in relation to Luang Prabang is ambivalent. Luang Prabang was the original capital of the Kingdom of Lane Xang (a million elephants) which was founded in 1353 by Fa Ngum, the son of a Lao chief who had been in exile in Angkor. King Potisarat moved the capital to Vientiane in 1520 and it was from the more central position of the kingdom, which then included much of the territory now in northeast Thailand, that the most famous Lao monarch, Souligna Vongsa, ruled from 1637-1694. On his death, however, the kingdom split into three, not counting the semi-independent existence of Xieng Khouang in the northeast: Vientiane, in alliance with Burma and a vassal of Annam; Luang Prabang, which at first drew support from China and later Siam; and in the south Champassak, which drew ever closer to Siam. The devastation of Vientiane by the Siamese in 1828 and the elimination of the line of Vientiane left in the centre a power vacuum, which the...\n\nMr. Smithies, at the time of this visit and report, Lecturer in French at the University of Hong Kong, was Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch 1972-73 and Councillor until his departure from the Colony in 1974. He organized and led this visit to Laos.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207791, "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-1976", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "164 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nand gorges in their upper reaches. Yet British and French explorers light-heartedly planned roads and railways through the region, when earth moving and other civil engineering techniques were primitive by modern standards. \n\nPolitical difficulties were equally formidable. In addition to Anglo-French rivalry, there was an involved relationship between Britain, Burma, China, and the Kachin and Shan hill peoples in the borderlands. A further complication, from 1855 to 1873, was the devastation of Yunnan by the Panthay Rebellion, a Moslem uprising almost as destructive as the more famous Taiping Rebellion. \n\nAlthough the Treaty of Yandabo had established Britain in Lower Burma, Upper Burma continued as an independent state, with an ill-defined tributary relationship with China. However, during the sixty years before Britain annexed Upper Burma in 1886, Britain obtained the province of Pegu (1852), and mounted a succession of expeditions to find a practicable trade route from Burma into Yunnan, contemporary with other expeditions up the Yangtze from Shanghai. \n\nBetween Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, and the French priest M. Huc in the 1840s, practically no European had travelled in West China. So little was known of it that while their compatriots in China looked on neighbouring Szechwan as the El Dorado of the East, the British in Burma and India had their eyes on the province of Yunnan. The extravagant and over enthusiastic appraisal of Yunnan's potential wealth gave rise to what became known as the \"Yunnan Myth\". \n\nThe first British attempts to reach Yunnan and West China came from Burma in the late eighteenth century. When Captain Sorrel went to Ava in 1792 to deliver a letter to the King of Burma from Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, some Burmese offered to take him overland to China. Sorrel's reference to this aroused great interest in India. Over a century earlier, Dutch East India traders in Ava and Syriam had given glowing accounts of a flourishing trade between Burma and China, conducted through Chinese merchants in Bhamo. In 1795 when Captain Michael Symes was sent on an official mission to Burma, he was instructed to “find a mart in the south west dominions of China by means of the great river of Ava”. Symes' report was enthusiastic. He said the principal export from Ava was cotton, which went up the Irrawaddy in large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207796, "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-1976", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n169 \n\nto Bhamo that the Irawaddy Flotilla Company doubled its service between Mandalay and Bhamo.* \n\nSimultaneously pressure in Britain from Chambers of Commerce persuaded the government to support the Indian government's plan to resume exploration of the Bhamo-Yunnan overland route, and to request co-operation from China through the British Minister at Peking. The King of Burma was also in favour of resuming trade relations with China, having been advised from Peking that China would like to resume \"the old relationship, and continue the practice of exchanging decennial missions\". \n\nLieutenant Colonel Horace A. Browne, a former Deputy Commissioner in Burma, was chosen as leader of the Burma party, which would go from Mandalay to Bhamo by steamer, and then overland into Yunnan by one of three possible routes. At the same time A.R. Margary of the China Consular Service would start from Hankow—then the limit of steam navigation on the Yangtze—and go by junk to Yochow at the entrance to the Tungting Lake, through the Lake and by the Yuan River to the border of Kweichow, from where he would complete his journey overland. Browne's party arrived at Bhamo on 15th January 1875, and were joined by Margary, who had left Hankow on 4th September 1874, two days later. The latter had had a comparatively uneventful journey, although at some places the population was decidedly hostile. At Yunnanfu, however, the officials were courteous and helpful. All through Yunnan Margary had passed ruined towns and villages, and seen the widespread destruction caused by the recent rebellion. \n\nOn 23rd January the combined party left Bhamo for Yunnan, accompanied by fifteen Sikh guards brought from India by Browne, and an escort of 150 soldiers provided by the King of Burma, who were to go as far as the border. At the last minute Browne decided to go by the Ponlyne instead of by the Sawaddy route, to avoid possible conflict with the Kachin tribesmen on the latter. A few \n\nThe Irawaddy Flotilla Company was formed in 1864 when Todd Findlay & Co. of Glasgow (who had a branch in Rangoon) bought four old river steamers and three 'flats' of the Indian government's Irawaddy Flotilla, which had given good service in the Anglo-Burmese Wars. Hopes of greatly increased trade between Burma and Yunnan were high, and there was keen competition to buy the Flotilla, including an offer from a French company, and one from Mackinnon & Mackenzie, who were then managing agents of the Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company which later became the British India Steam Navigation Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207797, "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-1976", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "170 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\ndays later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon.\n\nMargary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze,\n\nSir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.\n\nMore than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207805, "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-1976", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "178\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nParliamentary Papers — Reports from the British Consuls at the Treaty Ports of China (various dates)\n\nUnpublished Theses for Degree of Master of Arts at London University\n\na) British Interests in Trans-Burma Trade Route to China 1826-76 by MA THAUNG 1956\n\nb) Anglo-Chinese Relations in the Provinces of the West River and the Yangtze River Basin between 1889-1900 by L. R. MARCHANT, 1965\n\nFive Months on the Yangtze T. W. BLAKISTON\n\nThe Royal Navy and the Sino-Japanese Incident M. BRYCE\n\nChina in Turmoil G. H. GOMPERTZ\n\nThe Irrawaddy Flotilla Company M. J. GRUBB and G. L. D. DUCKWORTH\n\nGleanings from Fifty Years in China A. LITTLE\n\nThe Yangtze Gorges A. LITTLE\n\nRiver Road to China\n\nGlimpses of the Yangtze Gorges\n\nTo the Snows of Tibet through China\n\nYangtze Reminiscences\n\nThe Making of Modern Burma D. WOODMAN\n\nSpecial Mission up the Yangtze Kiang R. SWINHOE\n\nM. OSBORNE\n\nC. PLANT\n\nA. E. PRATT\n\nG. R. TORRIBLE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207806, "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-1976", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT MON --PAGAN, PEGU and NAKORN PATHOM\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nThe fourth overseas tour of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and the third led by the author of this article, went to Burma from 26 December 1975 to 2 January 1976. Forty-two members and guests went on the tour, and most stayed on for a two-day extension in Bangkok.\n\nMount Popa, the extinct volcano which is the home of the 37 nat or spirits worshipped by the originally animistic Burmese, can be clearly seen on fine days as the plane comes to land at Nyaung-U. But the short drive from there to Pagan past an incredible number of vast ruined brown brick temples (whitewashed where they are still in use), soon gives an idea of the Kings' and peoples' devotion to Buddhism and the splendid ensemble Pagan must have been at the time of its greatness. This lasted from 1057, the date of the conquest of Thaton by the Burmese king Anawratha, to 1287 when the grandson of Kublai Khan, Prince Ye-su Timur, occupied the city and overthrew the dynasty. Some 5,000 temples still remain in part but virtually no lay buildings, with the exception of the traces of the city wall of Pagan and the Sarabha gate to the old city dating from the 9th century. Both are probably relics of the period of the Pyu, about whom little is known after 832 since they became totally absorbed by the incoming Burmese quite early.\n\nAnawratha brought from Thaton to Pagan thirty elephant loads of sacred texts, many monks, innumerable craftsmen as well as the conquered Mon royal family, and Mon culture was dominant in the early period of Pagan, to the extent that the Burmese adopted and still use the Mon script. Mon buildings were characterised by narrow blocked windows and a certain functional squatness. The materials used were brick, with a true arch, which was covered with stucco into which were sometimes inserted green glazed terracotta plaques. The inside of the buildings was nearly always covered in paintings applied to a dry surface and so not correctly frescoes. The buildings essentially form two different types. The first is the solid stupa, often raised on receding terraces, and the second a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207810, "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-1976", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon--Pagan, Peru & NAKORN PATHOM\n\n183\n\ncentury. The main vestibule of Sulamani faces east and the upper storey is reached by two stairways built into the walls; it is almost the same height as the ground floor. Sulamani used to have good paintings but these have been lost and newer ones dating from the 19th century cover the old ones. The Dhammayangyi is a single-storey building rising in stepped levels and closely resembles the Ananda in structure. The quality of the brickwork is excellent.\n\nLastly, of the many temples to be visited in Pagan, there are two not strictly speaking temples. The Pitakat Taik was built as a library by Anawratha in 1058 to house the Buddhist scriptures he took from the sack of Thaton. It is a modest square building with small Mon windows, but the roof, rather elaborate, already bears the traces of baroque flamboyance of later Burmese styles; it was repaired in 1783 by King Bodawpaya and is currently being repaired again. The Upalithein is a long, low ordination hall of the 13th century with a battlemented roof. Inside are paintings of the 17th or 18th century which are bright and arresting, though without the interest and minute detail of the early paintings to be seen elsewhere in Pagan. Only the two temples near Minnanthu are omitted from this list of the major temples in Pagan; these are Nandamannya, which is a small vaulted chamber with one entrance and paintings of a Mahayanist Tantric nature from the middle of the 13th century, and the triple form of the Payathonzu temple, late 13th century, with paintings of a similar character in the corridors and vaults linking the three main cores. The two are difficult to reach without sturdy transport.\n\nIf this catalogue of temples gives the impression that there is nothing else to see in Pagan, it would be false. There is a cottage lacquer industry, another weaving traditional shoulder bags, and making cheroots; one can take boat trips on the Irrawaddy at sunset and make journeys by pony and trap and see the colourful display of fruit and vegetables in the village's markets. But the setting of these scenes of daily life is subservient to the temples, and the arid landscape, for Pagan is the centre of the dry zone of Burma, in which they are placed, is balanced in some measure by the majesty of the river flowing through. One is left with the impression of scrub, sandy tracks, and marvellous brown brick temples arising on all sides as far as the eye can see.\n\nIn Mandalay, to the north, where the evening cool in winter is even more striking than in Pagan, the two most impressive temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207813, "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-1976", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "186\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nWith Pegu one is back to the culture of the early inhabitants of Burma, the Mons. Their original centre was around Thaton, further east than Pegu and this was certainly in existence by the 5th century AD. It was a Mon monk who had converted the Burmese King Anawrahta in the middle of the 11th century to Buddhism, and the king had requested certain relics and texts from king Manuha, who had refused. The result of the refusal was the destruction of the Mon kingdom but its cultural preeminence was recognised in the religion, architecture and art of early Pagan. After the fall of Pagan the Mons reestablished their kingdom, first at Mataram, and then, from 1369 at Pegu (Hanthawaddy or Hamsavati). They were temporarily ruled by the Burmese from 1539-1550 and again from 1551-1740; but Mon independence was due to be short-lived and the last king Binnya Dala was killed in 1747 by Alaungpaya and the Mons, like the Chams in Vietnam, then became a people without a country, though they still exist in large numbers in lower Burma near Moulmein and also in scattered villages in central Thailand.\n\nPegu is a day trip out of Rangoon, but as much as the present capital now reflects the condition of contemporary Burma, so Pegu is lost in its past. Its most famous sight is the Shwemawdaw pagoda, centred round a stupa with a broad stepped octagonal base and which is still taller than the Shwedagon in Rangoon. It is in many ways the palladium of Mon culture. Its foundation date is not known, but it was already raised in height by the Mon king Thamala in 825. In the twentieth century it suffered three severe earthquakes, and the present spire effectively dates from 1954 when restoration was completed. A number of ancient Buddha images was found when much of the stupa collapsed in the 1930 earthquake. Not very far from the Shwemawdaw is the spot where the two Hamsa birds alighted, one on the other's back, on a shallow spot in what was then the sea. The Hamsa is the symbol of the Mons and is also of course the mount of Brahma. This site is the Hinthagone, which now boasts a rather horrible modern shrine with vulgar paintings of hamsas but with a good view towards the Shwemawdaw. Hardly less vulgar is the reclining Buddha, the Shwethalyaung, reputed to be largest such image and certainly one of the ugliest. It was originally built in 994 but fell into disrepair and was restored in the 15th century. It was neglected again and became overgrown, to be rediscovered by a railway engineer at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207814, "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-1976", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE ANCIENT MON--PAGAN, PERU & NAKORN PATHOM 187\n\nend of the last century. The iron shed that covers it exactly reproduces the architecture of railway stations at the turn of the century, and the quality of the decoration is likewise Burmese Victorian. The clumsiness of the feet, which are iconographically incorrect, does not however apparently disturb the local people in their veneration of the statue. The four-imaged Kyaikpan pagoda is much ruined; the Buddha's back on to a central solid square core. It was originally built by Dhammaceti (Damuazedi), a Mon king of great piety who reigned from 1472-1492. The images, of plaster on brick, have been much restored.\n\nRangoon was at first a Mon village called Dagon centred around the Shwedagon pagoda, the origins of which are lost in time. The shrine is said to cover a number of the Buddha's relics. The Mon king Binnya-U is recorded to have raised the height of the stupa to sixty-six feet in 1362. The present height of 326 feet was reached in 1774. The shape is that common in Burma, of a square base to the main terrace for the pradakshina, then the beginning of the bell after a square base with recessed edges: multiple mouldings, the bud and the hti follow. The whole is gilded where it is not actually covered with gold plates and the hti is gilded and encrusted in stones. Of perhaps greater interest are the innumerable baroque shrines round the bases of the stupa and the vast crowds of pilgrims coming for their devotions. By night the illuminated gold stupa is to be seen from the distance in impressive display.\n\nThere are no other monuments in Rangoon of interest; the Sule pagoda, reputed to be ancient, is a modern jumble. The bargaining in Scott's market or the buying in the diplomatic shop is more representative of the capital today. But the National Museum, consisting almost exclusively of the relics of Thibaw's regalia taken by the British and kept until quite recently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, have now been returned and are well displayed. They have often been described before; the luxury of the jewel-encrusted objects, the ornamental hamsa, and the robes are in complete contrast with the austerity and constraints of present day Burma.\n\nIn Rangoon can be seen a 'cultural show' representing various traditional dance forms. The uncourtly little jumps and hops in the classical dances are as surprising as they are interesting. But the soul of Burmese dance and entertainment is not in this, nor in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208572, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "2\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nThe American sense of guilt was largely attributable to three factors: United States' military defeats in Southeast Asia, the American commitment to the policy of defeating Germany first before concentrating on Japan, and the American failure in delivering the bulk of lend-lease and other war materials promised to China. On the first point, according to Stanley K. Hornbeck who was political adviser to the Department of State, reports from American sources from or through Chungking indicated that the American defeat in the Philippines, together with the rapid collapse of the British position in Southeast Asia, had bred \"a sense of frustration and defeatism” among the Chinese.4 To be fair, however, one must add that China had been vastly more appalled and disillusioned by, and consequently more contemptuous of, the British performance.\n\nOn the second point, it was only natural that China was disappointed and embittered by the American policy of “Germany First”. Support for this order of priority was by no means unanimous within American government circles. Admirals Ernest J. King and William D. Leahy, General Douglas MacArthur (at his new headquarters in Australia), and Stanley Hornbeck, to give some examples, all expressed doubt about it and urged that a greater military effort should be directed against Japan. While President Roosevelt was firm on his decision to stand by the agreement reached at the 'Arcadia” Conference it did not mean that he was entirely free from embarrassment when faced with his Far Eastern ally, Chiang Kai-shek.\n\nM4\n\nOn the third point, immediately after Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt had been generous in promising China war materials, including planes, mainly through lend-lease channels. However, the Americans soon realized that it was easier to make the promise than to implement it. Two difficulties were involved. The first was the problem of transport. After the fall of Burma and the seizure of the southern part of the Burma Road by the Japanese early in 1942, air transport became the only feasible means of getting supplies into China. Until the opening of the well-known Ledo Road (later on re-named Stilwell Road) early in 1945, the bulk of the supplies flown from India to China was transported by the Tenth United States Air Force between April and December 1942, and thereafter by the United States Air Transport Command in what Joseph W. Ballantine, who became director of the Office of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208575, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The U.S. and the Question of Hong Kong 1941-45\n\nwith the United States, \"very little credit accrued to Britain, the assumption in Chungking being that Washington had pressed a reluctant London to agree to rendition.\"19 As opposed to the glamour of Madame Chiang's visit to the United States, Britain's “cordial invitation” to her to visit Britain, issued by the King himself, was decidedly ignored.20 Britain felt that her already difficult relations with China were aggravated by the fact that the “Americans [were] pathological about China, and keenly suspicious of any possible unfriendliness towards her on the part of others”.21 It was naturally feared that anything China demanded would have the sympathetic hearing of the United States, even at Britain's expense.\n\nBritain's future position in Hong Kong became all the more difficult to defend in view of the American wholesale denunciation of Britain's imperial and colonial policies. The American mentality towards the matter has been thus summarized: \"The idea became prevalent in America that the war the United States and the United Nations were fighting was not merely for self-preservation, but for the greater qualities of human rights and decency. There was a growing cry for a ‘Pacific Charter', to be on the lines of the Atlantic Charter, to guarantee freedom after the war to the non-self-governing countries in the Pacific. Or, at least, the Atlantic Charter should be extended to cover the Pacific region.”22 This mentality was shared by the president as well as the general public. It has been asserted that Roosevelt had been an anti-imperialist before the Pacific War, but he began a vigorous attack on colonialism everywhere early in 1943 after his trip to Casablanca, which apparently had a profound effect on his attitude towards colonialism.23\n\nTurning specifically to the American attitude towards Hong Kong, interest in the British colony was evident early in the War. There was clear indication that American public feeling \"would feel itself cheated if the outcome of the victory of the United Nations were to be simply the restoration of the status quo ante in Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma, India and the Netherlands East Indies.\" There had been widespread speculation about the future of Hong Kong, stimulated by the speeches of such high officials of the administration as Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. Critics in the United States frequently raised the question why Britain did not give up Hong Kong and relinquish her extraterritorial rights in China. It seemed almost certain that in the event of China demanding the return of Hong Kong, she could be confident of American sympathy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211671, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "61\n\nTHE KIUKIANG INCIDENT OF 1927\n\nP. H. MUNRO-Faure\n\nThe turgid waters of the Yangtze rolled by to the sea, four hundred and eighty miles away. They swirled past the two hulks, alongside which river steamers came to discharge the cargoes of cotton material, hardware, salt, and those edible sea-products so dear to the heart of the Chinese gourmet; loading in return tea, porcelain, grass-cloth, and camphor.\n\nInshore small wavelets glistened in the wintry sun, and lapped along the edge of the dark mud, which sloped down to the water in front of\n\n* Editor's Note. Paul Hector Munro-Faure was born in 1894 of Swiss/Scottish parentage. Educated in England, he entered the Supplementary Army Reserve in 1912, and volunteered on the outbreak of War, being commissioned in the Sherwood Foresters. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916, and, on his recovery, was attached to the King's African Rifles, with whom he saw action in Tanganyika. By the end of the War he had risen to the rank of Captain. He was Mentioned in a Despatch for distinguished services in the field, and was commended in writing by the Secretary of State for War.\n\nAfter the War, he joined the Asiatic Petroleum Company, and remained in their service until the outbreak of the Second World War, as Manager of one or other of their offices in China. In 1937 he established a Chinese Refugee Safety Centre in Shanghai, and was later decorated for this by the Chinese Government with the Brilliant Star with Ribbon. In 1938 he was connected with the International Relief Committee in Nanking, by whose Chairman he was commended for his work for the displaced. He was also commended at this date by the Secretary of the Admiralty for his work in evacuating from that city civilians at risk.\n\nOn the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned as Major (shortly afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) in the Special Operations Executive. He worked at first in the Bush Warfare School at Maymyo, Burma, which trained Chinese guerillas for behind-the-lines work. (For this school, see \"Prisoners of Hope\", Michael Calvert, (London, 1951), where Lt. Col. Munro-Faure is mentioned at p. 11). He then opened a similar school near the front lines in the Hangchow-Nanking area. For this he was awarded an OBE in 1943. Later still he worked between the front lines on the north-east frontier of Burma, attempting to ensure the continuing support for the British of the native princes of the region, in the face of Japanese, and particularly Chinese, attempts to replace the British as the dominant local power. He was commended for this work by his Commanding Officer. In 1944, he was recalled to England. After the War he was seconded as Oil Attache to the British Embassy in Romania. He retired in 1949, and died in 1956.\n\nLt. Col. Munro-Faure wrote a book of Memoirs in 1944-1945, in 11 chapters, covering his experiences in the Kiu Kiang Incident (1927), and between 1937 and 1944, together with an exposition of his views on the proper role of foreigners in China. The text is in the Imperial War Museum, London,\n\nBecause of the immensely valuable picture these Memoirs paint of the Kiu Kiang Incident (in which the writer was closely involved), of China during the early War years, and of the border areas of Burma during the period when the present troubles in the area were first developing, it is proposed to print them as a series in this and the next several issues of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212607, "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-1991", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "141\n\nThe Mongols conquered Burma in 1287, but the conquest did not last long; and a later invasion was repulsed in 1769. The British came in the nineteenth century to occupy Lower Burma. The French established themselves in Indo-China, whence they intrigued into Upper Burma, producing a situation not unlike that which, ten years later, led to the Fashoda incident on the Nile. The British, who had been having trouble with King Thibaw, decided to forestall French projects, and march on Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed and the Court of Ava sent into exile. The British are not Burma's real problem: they have, as usual, provided stability and security. The danger lies to the West and to the East, where 400 millions in India and 450 millions in China, hem in a small country. It is not as if Burma is densely populated; the density is only 64 to the square mile, as against 295 in India and 145 in China.\n\nBurmese intercourse, facilitated by easy sea communications, has been greater with India than with China. In 1936 the overland trade with China amounted barely to a paltry 1,000,000 rupees. The subsequent increase brought about by the opening of the Burma road was quite artificial, the result of the blockade of the China coast by the Japanese. When the artificial conditions cease, the trade will revert to its normal channels, round by sea, and over the Indo-China railway or up the Yangtze.\n\nOwing to the relative short range of Indian pressure, overwhelming Indian penetration was what the Burmese had to fear most in the past, but signs are not lacking that the psychological effect of the building of the Burma road, and subsequently the behaviour of the Chinese troops, who retreated through Burma in 1942, may have changed the emphasis. Time will show.\n\nAlready in 1941 the most virulent whispering campaigns flourished, aimed at the Chinese, and directed more especially at the alleged graft and incompetence on the Burma road. That the Japanese were behind these campaigns is as probable as the plausibility which these rumours derived from the actual state of affairs on the road. Later, there were mixed feelings, when the Chinese troops entered Burma to take part in the defence; it would not be too strong to say that in many native quarters their entry was viewed with suspicion.\n\nAs is known, part of the Chinese troops retreated in 1942 into India, where they were reorganised and trained by American officers, but paid and equipped by the British taxpayer, under reverse lease-lend. It may be news, even to General Stilwell, that the idea of training and equipping\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212627, "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-1991", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "161\n\nwhich could talk sceptical generals into agreeing to his suggestions. Not that the generals were not most co-operative: they usually went out of their way to meet us. In fact, we found it was true here, as it is always true of all wars, that the best elements of the nation were up at the front.\n\nIn May, the party of two Americans and one Englishman, already mentioned as having escaped from Shanghai, came through our camp, and I decided to proceed with them, in the lorry by which our two officer reinforcements had arrived, to the headquarters of the British Military Mission in Hunan. There were so many things of which we were in urgent need, and the replies to our signals were so vague, this seemed the best course. We covered the 1500 kilometres to Hengyang in six days. After a night spent with American missionary friends, we were turned out at dawn by an alert, and we were picking our way in the lorry through the crowds making for the countryside, when I saw an officer in British uniform moving with the crowd. I stopped to speak to him and discovered he was a Russian doctor, who had been recruited in China the year before for work with the British Army in Burma. He had been granted leave to proceed to Eastern China to try and get into touch with his wife to get her out of occupied territory. He was making his own way as best he could, had arrived by train that morning, as the alert sounded, and so found himself moving into the country with the crowd. His hope of reaching Eastern China without adequate credentials was vain. I suggested he should jump into our lorry and go back to Headquarters, to return with me to Chin Ya, as I felt sure his best hope of getting into touch with his wife would be through our guerilla connections. That was a great stroke of luck because one of our most pressing needs was a doctor and medical supplies, and Dr. Petro was to remain with us for half a year and do much very useful work. The Mission had no other doctor they could spare for us.\n\nAt Headquarters there was a good deal of confusion as the British troops were on the move, and then received counterorders. I was disappointed in my hope of receiving any further officer reinforcements, and all that could be spared in the explosive line was mostly ammonal. Ammonal is an explosive with a slower rate of detonation, so that it has more of a pushing or lifting effect. It is used for cratering roads and destroying buildings, and though that type of demolition was not likely to be of much use to us, it was better than nothing. It comes packed in 25 lb tins, about the size of 5-gallon kerosene tins. Two tins of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212768, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "62 \n\n1874 April \n\nJuly October \n\n1874 \n\n1874 December Late 1874 \n\n1875 Summer? 1875 Winter \n\n1877 February \n\nKueichou, but Mesny had already departed \n\nTo Ch'engtu (six month stay] \n\nVisited the temple dedicated to Tu Fu the poet in Ch’engtu Returned by very large houseboat via Sui-fu, Chungking and I-ch'ang to Hankow. Mesny entertained at the palace of General Viscount Pao Chao in K'uei-chou en route on the Yangtze. In Hankow he met Rev. David Hill \n\nPublished 'Tungking' [date in the book itself: Mesny however, claimed later that it was published in 1875] \n\nOfficially married Nien Suey-tsen in Hankow \n\nTravelled overland from Chin-kiang, through Shantung [Chi-nan], en route for Peking. Spent winter in Chi-nan at invitation of Ting Pao-chen, the Governor of Shantung, to whom he claimed he had been an adviser \n\nPeking \n\nReturned to Kueichou via Shanghai [November]. Hankow and Human [1876] Re-appointed Superintendent of the Kueichou Armouries, an appointment he held until March 1877 \n\nMesny entertained two British Protestant missionaries in Kuei-yang \n\nOverland Trek to Western China, through Burma to India and by sea to England \n\n28 May \n\nJune 1878 8 January \n\nNovember \n\n26 December 28 December \n\n1879 February \n\n9 March 4 June \n\nDeparted Kuei-yang for Szechuan [his third visit to the province (en route for England, via Tibet, Burma and India, with Captain Gill)] Arrived Ch'engtu \n\nArrived in England from Calcutta \n\nVisited Channel Islands \n\nReceived telegram from Chinese Minister in London desiring Mesny to accompany the returning Chinese Minister at Berlin to China: departed! Marseilles for Hong Kong aboard the Irrawaddy Arrived Hong Kong from England \n\nDeparted Hong Kong for Canton \n\nVisited Amoy \n\nDeparted Canton for Kueichou, via Kuei-lin (Kuangsi] Arrived Kuei-lin \n\n25 July \n\nArrived Tu-yun Fu \n\n4 August [1880/1881] \n\n1880 February \n\n15 March \n\nAugust \n\n1881 January \n\nFebruary \n\nArrived Kuei-yang \n\nPossibly visited Hanoi? \n\nGovernor of Kueichou province recommended Mesny to the Throne for the bestowal of posthumous honours for three generations [San-tai Erh-p'in Kao-feng] \n\nSet out for Lan-chou via Chungking [where he had remained six months] \n\nMesny spent the night at Ch'ien-hsi Chou, some 90 kms NNW of Kuei-yang, where he was attacked by an armed mob Departed Chungking [after 'delay due to unexpected contretemps\" which Mesny did not clarify] \n\nArrived Lanchou \n\nDeparted Lanchou, crossed Gobi to Ham taking six to seven weeks", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212820, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "114\n\nits population. With the fall of Tengyueh, soon after, the rebellion was finally suppressed. Survivors of Sultan Suleiman's family took refuge with King Mindon at the Court of Ava in Mandalay. Two years later a British consular official, Margary, who had been appointed with the consent of the Chinese government to accompany a British expedition, which was to leave Bhamo to explore a commercial route to Tengyueh - now called Tengchung - was murdered under treacherous circumstances near the latter town. It was thought at the time, but not proven, that a Chinese official, named Li Su Tai, whose mother was Burmese, was implicated: the incident led to negotiations between the Chinese and British governments and was settled by the Chefoo Convention.\n\nAfter the British occupied Mandalay and Upper Burma in 1885 they sought to define the boundary between Burma and China. The question was not found to be easy because the Chinese advanced claims to large sections of territory which had obviously been part of the Kingdom of Ava. However, a considerable length of boundary was agreed upon and marked by enormous stones: they are the size of a small cottage, I suppose to discourage easy removal, and each stone is numbered and its position is marked on the quarter-inch map. The length of border left undefined made for an unsatisfactory situation, not unlike that between the United States and Mexico before that boundary was fixed, or like the situation which now exists on the border between China and Tibet. Various attempts were subsequently made to agree the undelimitated part of the boundary, and by 1942 only a stretch of the frontier from just N.W. of Tengchung up to Tilset remained undemarcated.\n\nThe railway from Haiphong, through Indo-China, reached Kun-ming in the early years of this century and so opened the province to French influence; whether, however, owing to strong local conservatism or a lack of enterprise on the part of the French, their influence appears to have left little mark. It was only with the opening of the Burma road in 1939 that Yunnan for the first time felt the full impact of the modern world.\n\nI had had no previous experience of western China. I knew that Lung Yun, the Old Dragon, as the Governor of Yunnan was generally called, had for long been almost independent of the National Government. It was only with the transfer of Government troops to Burma through Yunnan in 1942, and their subsequent retreat to Yunnan, where they remained, that the Chungking government had established a partial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212823, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "117\n\nwithdrew partly into India and partly back into Yunnan. Kokang was left high and dry. Undaunted the Myosa from his own funds purchased what weapons he could from the retreating Chinese troops and the disbanded men of the Burma Rifles, who had been instructed to disperse to their villages with their weapons, which were to be retained for local protection until the British returned. He acquired several hundred rifles, a small stock of ammunition, and a few Bren guns, and organised his own force, the Kokang Defence Force. Fortunately the prowess of the force, which could scarcely have proved high in the face of the battle-trained troops of Japan, was not put to the test. The Japanese advance stopped at the Salween, a convenient barrier on which to consolidate their East Wall in Burma.\n\nThe Myosa, left thus in a most dangerous situation, in the front line, as it were, of the Allied positions, applied to the nearby ally, China, for assistance. The Chinese who were themselves receiving equipment from America for their forces in this part of the world, could spare him no equipment, but undertook to train officers for his force. The quality of the training so provided will grow evident as this story unfolds.\n\nIn 1943 the Myosa made the journey to Kun-ming to apply to the British authorities for assistance and it was at the British Consul General's* house in Kun-ming that I met him. I saw an alert slight figure, young looking and brisk for his 45 years, dressed in a western suit of Palm Beach cloth. He looked Chinese, but I believe there is also an admixture of tribal blood, possibly Shan; there is, of course, a good deal of intermingling throughout all that border country. The prince spoke Burmese and Chinese, but very little English: though his schooling on the border had probably been rough and ready, he possessed in a strong degree that charm, which goes with a courtesy so cultivated that it becomes natural and can conceal the aptitude for decision based on a habit of command. The prince was accompanied by his son, a capable young man in his early twenties, who had been educated at the Princes' School in Taungyi and spoke excellent English. The Myosa explained to us, his son serving as interpreter, the difficulties of his position, the trouble he was having with Chinese troops, a battalion of whom had been stationed in Southern Kokang, and the hope that we might be able to come to his support. We discussed the situation and the nature of the\n\n*Strangely, he had been the Consul at Kiu Kiang in 1927, from whose house we retired to the warships", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212848, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "142\n\nfires and flying away again unable to find them. Inevitably there were some accidents and losses.\n\n―\n\n--\n\nRarely half a dozen 'planes would make a sortie the same night; we would then be busy for days collecting the heavy containers they would weigh up to three hundred pounds and carrying them back to camp. We received reinforcements; officers with long experience in the East; British wireless operators; Chin, Kachin, and Burmese assistants. Our money and our mail also came this way; Bren guns, Stens, Italian carbines, clothing, food and occasionally drink. Sometime later we were visited by two American officers attached to the Nth division; they spent the day with us. We discovered they had a partiality for Bourbon whisky, a thing most difficult to find in Calcutta. However, we thought we would plan a little surprise for them; we asked our friends in Calcutta whether they could not find a couple of bottles and include them in the next sortie. The sortie was made in due course, several containers crashed, and when we anxiously looked over the lists of contents, we sadly found that the precious bottles had \"pranged\" as Stan put it in his airforce jargon.\n\nThe problem of cutting a way through the jungle was ever present in Burma. We decided we would equip one man out of every two with a cutting implement for the purpose. There were many opinions about which implement was the best; each officer had his own idea. We left it to our 'furnishers' to supply what they had, and I have never seen such a collection of deadly looking hacking weapons as the variety sent. It included dahs, the light Burmese single-handed sword, with a blade about two feet long and in my opinion not quite heavy enough for the job; kukris, a choice for the expert; the East African panga, which I like best, but then perhaps I am prejudiced it reminded me of my days with the King's African Rifles during the last war; a short two-edged stabbing sword, obviously borrowed straight from the Roman Legion; and some quite unrecognisable kinds, probably designed by enthusiastic cranks.\n\nThe Italian carbines had been captured in Africa and were believed useful for our type of work; they only weighed four pounds, were short and handy but they had a very high muzzle velocity and kicked like an anti-tank rifle, without the rubber padding with which that rifle is fitted. They had fixed sights; on the little thirty yards range, which Stan had built in a fold of the mountain, we found they threw at least a foot off the bull; but they appeared to be fairly accurate at somewhere around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214840, "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": 255, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "222 \n\nA Bold Approach to War \n\nI have referred to the indomitable spirit that animated the British troops and sailors of the War. This was something one cannot fail to notice in the various accounts of the War. As in the First Burma War, there was a boldness that must have taken the Chinese aback whenever it was demonstrated. Being practically universal, one minor example may serve to illustrate the rest. It comes from J.D. Vaughan, later a magistrate in the Straits Settlements, who had served as a midshipman on the Honourable East India Company's steam frigate Tenasserim in 1842, and is recounted here largely in his own words.46 \n\nA few days after the capture of the Yangtse city of Chin-kiang-foo, his captain took two of the ship's boats with twenty or thirty men each, with a brass three-pounder at the bow, and went to a town on a canal flowing into the great river. The writer was in one of these boats. The ship's Chinese carpenter, a Southern Chinese picked up at Singapore, could write but could not speak the Mandarin language of the area. Armed with a slate, and a truly astonishing degree of sang-froid, he made the captain's wishes to purchase provisions known to a large throng of citizens and soldiers who had assembled on the banks. Negotiating with a mandarin, they got all that they wanted, and during their brief stay were treated with the greatest civility and kindness. “A table and chairs were brought, and the elders of the city had a most interesting conversation with us through the invaluable carpenter. It was a curious sight to see the skipper sitting as cool as a cucumber smoking his cigar surrounded by our foes.\" \n\n“Few men,” Vaughan says, “would have ventured so fearlessly into the very clutches of an armed foe within a few miles of a captured city with war raging all around; and strange to say we came away un-harmed and not an angry face was to be seen amongst the crowds of men who flocked out of the gate of the town to see us.” \n\nMany other instances can be found in the books on the War, and indeed it was the norm. This verve derived from military and naval discipline and tradition, and from the leadership shown by, and expected of, British officers of the day. Only when that leadership failed, as in the contemporary disasters at Kabul in the First Afghan War, when a British army was annihilated through hesitation and mismanagement, \n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215804, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "36\n\nafter Britain lost Hong Kong, the closest Allied power to the territory was its original owner China. Then there was Hong Kong's status as a port. Any mainland port that touched the Pacific attracted the attention of the USN, because it was in its interest that China continued to keep the bulk of the Japanese Army occupied on the continent while the U.S. seized Japan's possessions in the Pacific. Hence, Allied commanders like Admiral Ernest King, the USN's highest-ranking officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), thought that the U.S. had a major responsibility to help keep China in the war,\n\nIn 1943, China was tying down 20 per cent of the Japanese Army. No major fighting had occurred there for a while, but the Allies knew that this relative calm might not last. The fear that Japan would resume her efforts to knock China out of the war was real, and Allied planners wanted to prevent this by keeping the Chinese Army (of the Nationalist government) battle-worthy. To do this, they had to establish and maintain secure lines of communication (LoC) into China. As Japan had already occupied China's ports and the lone road into China from Burma (the Burma Road), the sole means of supplying China was through a risky, costly, and feeble air route over the Himalayas (the Hump).\n\nThe best method of supplying China was to recapture a port on the China Coast and establishing LoC to the interior of China. Initially, the Chinese Army was allotted the bulk of this task - if it could be strengthened by deliveries over the Hump and (if the Allies could retake it) the Burma Road. But by 1943, supplies over the Hump remained minuscule, the Burma Road was not reopened, and the Chinese (Nationalists, Communists, and third-party elements) preferred to fight among themselves rather than against the Japanese. With the Allied drives in the Pacific gathering momentum, the main responsibility for a campaign to recapture a port on the China Coast eventually fell to the U.S.\n\nHong Kong and Shanghai have long been the two best ports on the China Coast, with each possessing excellent harbour facilities. But Hong Kong rated ahead of Shanghai as the initial port to be opened up in China because of the strong Japanese presence around Shanghai. In the Hong Kong-Canton area during 1943, the Japanese still occupied only a beachhead. As long as Hong Kong remained a beachhead, and the Chinese forces ringing it maintained a measure of resolve, Japanese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215826, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "58\n\n1.\n\n1 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: the U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), p.14.\n\n2 Miller, p.21-22, 24.\n\n3 Miller, p.33-36.\n\n(1) Steven T. Ross (ed.), American War Plans, 1919-1941, vol.2 (New York: Garland Publishers, 1992), p.125-126. (2) Miller, p.4-5, 31-32.\n\n• Ernest J. King & Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, A Naval Record (New York: WW Norton & Co., Inc., 1952), p.432. The JCS was the military committee that directed the war on the American side.\n\n6 Charles F. Romanus & Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, 1956 of U.S. Army in World War II: the China-Burma-India Theater, (pt. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1976), p.10.\n\n7 Christopher M. Bell, \"Our Most Exposed Outpost: Hong Kong and British Far Eastern Strategy, 1921-1941,\" The Journal of Military History, 60 (January 1996), p.65.\n\n• Colonel Lindsay T. Ride, \"Memorandum on the Liberation of Prisoners-of-War, Hong Kong,\" 30 Sep 43, p.11-13; Series 2/33, BAAG (British Army Aid Group) Correspondence Concerning Operations, September 1942-November 1943; Personal Papers of Sir Lindsay Tasman Ride (microform); Canberra, ACT: Australian War Memorial, 2001 (hereinafter known as the Ride Papers).\n\n* Unless otherwise noted, information for this section was collected from Weather Information Branch, HQ, USAAF, R&A Report #71087, \"Climate of Hong Kong (China),\" October 1943; Intelligence Reports (\"Regular Series\"), 1941-1945; Research and Analysis Branch Division; Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), RG226; National Archives (NA), Washington, DC.\n\n10 Later, it was reported that an all-weather road ran from Hong Kong to Canton, and the Japanese had improved other roads nearby to the same capacity. See \"G-2 Estimates of the Following Places: Haiphong-Liuchow Peninsula-Hainan Island-Hong Kong-Swatow-Amoy-Foochow-Santuao-Wenchow-Hangchow Bay Region-Laoyao-Chingtao-and the Tip of the Shantung Peninsula to Include Wei Hai Wei,\" 17 Feb 45, p.5; Ch.7-Intelligence, Correspondence, 1945, Folder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]