[
    {
        "id": 204970,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1965",
        "page_number": 78,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "69\n\nPIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nFor most of recorded history piracy has been a menace to sea-borne trade, and there have been times when it has been difficult to distinguish between pirates and honest or should one say legitimate traders. Nationality has often been the only mark of distinction, as Spanish and English views of Drake, Hawkins, and the like illustrate.\n\nThe Chinese were pioneers in piracy, as in so many other things, and a history of piracy in China would begin many thousands of years ago. The Chinese were probably skilled practitioners of the art before history began to be recorded. The earliest accounts are in the records of the Chou Dynasty in the fourth century B.C., and piracy continued in China long after it had been suppressed in other parts of the world.\n\nWhen the first Europeans arrived in the China Seas in the sixteenth century, many of the pirates on the coast were Japanese. For three centuries after the defeat of Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan in 1281, Japanese pirates mainly from Kyushu were active along the whole coast, from the Liaotung Peninsula in the north to Hainan Island and the Straits of Malacca in the south. The famous Arctic explorer, John Davis, met his death at their hands in 1604. Davis was serving on an East India Company ship which was anchored off the island of Bintang, east of Singapore, when it was attacked by Japanese pirates.\n\nThis was at the end of the Japanese era, which came about as the result of several different factors. One was the establishment of a strong central government in Japan by Iyeyasu, the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns at the beginning of the seventeenth century; and another was the increasing superiority of Chinese over Japanese junks.\n\nThe depredations of these Japanese pirates often extended far inland, and they were accompanied by atrocities reminiscent of the Japanese Rape of Nanking in 1937. Because of this the Ming Emperors banned all intercourse between the two countries, and this afforded the Portuguese the opportunity to act as",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207802,
        "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": 190,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n175\n\nthe Upper Yangtze-eight British, seven American, three Chinese, six French, five Italian, and three Japanese.\n\nPolitical troubles, however, had forced the pioneering Szechwan Steamship Company out of business in 1920. During the previous few years its Shutung and Shuhun had so often been forced to carry troops for the different war lords as to make their operations uneconomic. After 1920 the Chinese flag was flown by the China Merchants Steam Navigation and the Ming Steamship Company, both of whom seemed more able to accommodate themselves to the political changes. Captain Plant, however, was still active on the Upper Yangtze, but in a different capacity. He had left the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company in 1913 to become River Inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs, and his work was one of the factors contributing to the development of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze in the early 1920s.\n\nThere was a period during the brief heyday of the Kuomintang government between 1927 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when shipping on the Upper Yangtze almost settled into a regular pattern. Probably 1928 was the peak year, when there were seventy small steamers in regular service between Ichang and Chungking; the smallest about thirty tons and the largest just over 1,000 tons. The average time between Ichang and Chungking was three days, as against an average of a month by junk. Britain had fifteen ships of 5,357 tons; China twenty-six of 3,672 tons; and America eleven of 2,934 tons.\n\nLosses, however, were heavy. Several of the smaller companies were forced out of business, some selling their ships to the China Navigation Company. In this manner, the latter acquired the famous Loong Mow in 1923, which was renamed Wanliu I, and the Alice Dollar in 1926, which was renamed Wantung. This company also built six ships at Yarrows on the Clyde between 1922 and 1926. These included the Wanhsien, 210 feet long with a loaded draft of eight feet and reciprocating engines of 3,000 indicated horsepower, the most powerful ship on the Upper Yangtze; two turbine steamers of less than half this tonnage, the Kiating and the Kintang, for the low water season; and two small motor ships, the Siushan and Suiting, of 296 gross tons for the Top River above Chungking. British shipping was supreme on the Upper Yangtze for the last few years of the treaty port era, since political troubles hampered",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    }
]