[ { "id": 204542, "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-1963", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "18\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nDr. Robert Morrison. It is easily found, for if one continues straight on through the terrace from the end of the path one comes upon it amongst a group of altar tombs in the south-east corner of the cemetery. Morrison was a member of the London Missionary Society and was the first Protestant missionary in China, arriving from England via the States in 1807. He was a great Chinese scholar, wrote a Chinese grammar, compiled an English-Cantonese dictionary, and, along with a colleague, translated the whole Bible into Chinese. He became the indispensable interpreter and translator of the Select Committee of the East India Company, was taken by Lord Amherst in that capacity on his embassy to Peking in 1816, and was appointed in 1834 by Lord Napier to his staff when he assumed office in place of the East India Company in China. In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in virtue of his outstanding scholastic achievements, and was also a member of the society under whose auspices we meet tonight — the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nMorrison was buried alongside his wife, and next to her lies their very gifted son, John Robert Morrison, who died just as he was appointed the first Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong. Nearby lies another colleague from the same missionary society, Samuel Dyer, who did much to introduce metallic movable type to replace wooden blocks in the printing of Chinese books and tracts.\n\nAlong the eastern wall are to be found a number of members of East India Company families, and in the second row parallel to this wall is the second most frequently photographed memorial in the cemetery, that of Sir Winston Churchill's great-great-grand uncle, the 4th son of the 5th Duke of Marlborough, Lord Henry John Spencer Churchill, Captain, R.N. Near him lies a group of naval officers—Lieut. John Astell, Lieut. FitzGerald of the H.M.S. Modeste, and Captain Sir Humphrey le Fleming Senhouse, Senior Naval Officer in the China Seas during the attack on Canton in 1841.\n\nThe most conspicuous monument in the whole of the cemetery is a tall column near the north wall. It commemorates the life and death of Captain John Crockett who must have made a fortune when in command for some years of an opium storeship at Lintin. Nearby lies one of America's great ambassadors, Edmund Roberts, who served in the West Indies, South America, Muscat, Zanzibar,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204544, "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-1963", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "20\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nBut the interest of the cemetery is not by any means confined to biographies of those buried there. There are the histories of the ships that brought them there, clippers, men-of-war, whalers and countrymen (ships engaged in the \"country trade\", a term usually applied to the trade which had grown up between India, South East Asia and Canton); there are the interesting professions they followed as merchants, missionaries, military men, beach-combers, diplomats or opium traders; there are the mysteries behind the nameless memorial or the undecipherable or partly decipherable inscription, or the absentees. Of these latter we know of at least two, whose sojourns in our cemetery were but temporary; they are Lord Napier, whose final resting place is amongst his shepherds in Ettrick, Scotland, and Thomas T. Forbes, who is with his family in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, leaving his companion, who was drowned with him in a typhoon, alone in Macao.\n\nMay I conclude my talk this evening by now completing the quotation with which I began?\n\nThere are worse ways of occupying leisure than\n\ntours on foot through noteworthy cemeteries,\n\nso long as one does not overstay one's welcome,\n\nand by praying that I have not detained you too long this evening in the restful peace of the Old Protestant Cemetery of Macao.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204679, "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-1963", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "144\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthese removals, again from long established locations and substantial houses, is also said to have been mainly on fung shui grounds following a long period of decline, reduced births, infant deaths, and other difficulties.\n\nThese removals all took place within the last fifty years, that is, within the period of British rule in the New Territories, and it would be interesting to know if there were similar cases in other districts during this period. It is, of course, extremely likely that these periodic removals were a feature of village life in the past.\n\nJ. W. HAYES.\n\nAN OLD FORT AT TUNG CHUNG ON LANTAO ISLAND\n\nIf you take a ferry-boat from Hong Kong to Lantao and land at the bay of Tung Chung it is worth while looking at the old fort which still exists near the hamlet of Lung Ching Tau. The walls are still in good preservation and inside there is a broad gun-platform with six cannon in position, one of which has an inscription on it showing that it dates from the middle of Chia-Ch'ing's reign.\n\nIt is known that a fort and garrison was maintained at Tung Chung during most of Chia-Ch'ing's reign (1796-1821) when a large and successful fleet of junks manned by Chinese pirates terrorized the coasts of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. There is documentary evidence that a fort was constructed at Tung Chung in the twenty-second year of Chia-Ch'ing's reign (1817).1\n\nIn 1834, during the few months when Lord Napier was Superintendent of British Trade at Canton and relations between the two countries were very strained, the fort at Tung Chung was again mentioned in Chinese documents. The Governor-General of the two Kwangs at that time, Lu K'un, in a 'memorandum' to the throne submitted at the beginning of\n\n1 See Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chinese text (Institute of Chinese Culture, Hong Kong, 1959) footnote on p. 236. An English translation of this book published under this title in May 1963 omits the footnotes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204837, "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-1964", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n115\n\nAs it happened, the north end of Lantao remained almost untouched for 150 years. It was leased to Britain in 1898 for 99 years, but little development was undertaken until 1960, when large schemes of reclamation and resettlement were prepared. The slumbering rural character of the island is now beginning to change rapidly.\n\nWhy was Ma Wan chosen for survey? Nearness to Macao? Access to the Pearl River and Canton? Ships occasionally came down the China coast from the east, and took a short cut to Canton through the Kap Sui Mun Channels, but Parish's report seems to suggest that this was regarded as a hazardous piece of sailing. These ships, however, would all have to pass Ma Wan, and so the island was at that time the best-known in Hong Kong waters. Also, the approach in a square-rigged sailing vessel to the then uncharted coast gave a confusing variety of small islands, promontories, and near-islands. The approach from the west was probably better known, and was easier to find. But it is to be regretted that Parish was forced by his orders and the bad weather to waste so much energy on such an unsuitable site.\n\nCONCLUSIONS\n\nWhen the East India Company's trading monopoly to China came to an end in April 1834 the position of English merchants at Canton changed. Lord Napier was sent out as Superintendent of Trade, though the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, tended to regard him as a representative of the King. Napier soon came into conflict with the officials at Canton over what may be called matters of national prestige, and relations between England and China began to deteriorate. More especially relations were embittered over the increasingly large amount of opium being brought to China from India in British-owned ships. It was illegal to import opium into China by Chinese law, and as a result a swarm of Chinese middlemen co-operated with the foreign merchants in smuggling opium along the coast, especially in the province of Kwangtung. However, in 1821 the Kwangtung authorities were much stricter in enforcing the anti-opium smuggling regulations and as a result the foreign merchants could no longer bring it up to Canton, but instead took it to the \"outer anchorages\" where permanent receiving ships were stationed during the trading season (approximately October until April). The main base for opium smuggling was the island of Lintin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204841, "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-1964", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n119\n\nIn 1897, two years before the lease of the New Territories by China to Britain, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs set up a small customs house on Ma Wan in order to supervise trade between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. The building used still stands. See photograph on p. 28 Ma Wan and a very small hamlet called Tin Liu. The total population of Ma Wan island at the 1911 census was 473. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (H.K. Government Printer, 1911) p. 103 (36).\n\n29 Morse, op. cit., I, 178. The name Kapsingmun appears to have been used by foreigners as an alternative for Kapsuimun which should be preferred.\n\n30 Joseph Thomson, Review of Considerations Respecting the Trade with China (London, 1835). At this period both Lord Napier and after him Captain Charles Elliot spoke of obtaining an island and raising the flag somewhere.\n\n31 The Chinese Repository, IV (1835-6), 548.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205429, "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-1967", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "184\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nlung, who was concurrently a Grand Councillor and a Grand Secretary.\n\nThis inadequate chapter on the Macartney mission demonstrates the basic weakness of the whole book, namely the author's failure to use the best primary sources both Chinese and Western. The story of the abortive Macartney mission is a fascinating one because it marks the first cultural confrontation between China and a major Western power, and as such has historical overtones which are relevant to a full understanding of the confrontation which we are witnessing today. But Mr. Coates has failed to bring out this significance mainly, I suspect, because of his unfamiliarity with the primary English and Chinese sources. For instance, there is no indication from his account that he has read Lord Macartney's own journal of his embassy which was published in full in 1962. From the bibliography it appears that this chapter was based almost entirely on the official account of the embassy written by Sir George Leonard Staunton which is dull and florid in comparison with Macartney's own private journal.\n\nIt is only fair to say, however, that the last 50 pages of the book are devoted to the events following the death of Lord Napier in 1834 and leading up to the formal cession of Hong Kong in 1843, and that here the author appears to be on more familiar ground. For instance, he brings out clearly the difficulties which faced Captain Charles Elliot as British Superintendent of Trade and he guides the reader towards a fair and balanced judgment of Elliot as a statesman. It is time that the reputation of Charles Elliot, created mainly by the strictures of Queen Victoria and Palmerston, be reassessed.\n\nIn conclusion, Prelude to Hong Kong is not in any way an original work of scholarship and contains almost nothing which cannot be read more reliably elsewhere. It may be of some value to those who have recently become aware of Hong Kong's existence and want to read up, in brief summary, the train of events which resulted in its founding. But for those who already know something of the history of Macao and the development of foreign trade at Canton, this modest little book will be a disappointment since the author has failed to draw sufficiently on the richness of the archives of the period and thus the reader is compelled to view the story through the eyes of the author rather than through", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214957, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "8 \n\nposed as to whether the Chinese as a whole were \"anti-commercial\" or whether it was only the government. Greenberg believes that \"trade in the long run mattered little to the Chinese economy.\"2 A further factor contributing to distrust of foreigners and the consequent restriction in contacts and trade was fear of European expansionist policy apparent to the Chinese in Tibet, the East Indies, the Philippines, Burma, and Nepal. \n\nBy the 1830s British demand for tea had become enormous; tea worth twenty million pounds sterling was imported into Britain annually. It was paid for from huge profits made on the sale of smuggled opium. Many foreign firms in Guangzhou, other than British, had engaged in the lucrative trade, with two notable exceptions,13 Britain accounting for more than 80% of the trade. Dissatisfied with the capricious nature of its trade in Guangzhou, Britain made three high-level attempts to form full diplomatic relations with Beijing, sending embassies under Macartney in 1793, Amherst in 1816, and Napier in 1834; all failed. The last two reached no further than Guangzhou before being unceremoniously sent back. But it may be of interest to deal in some length with Macartney's Mission because it seemed to succeed; that it failed was the most significant disaster in relations between the two nations, eventually leading to war. \n\nAfter a long journey, Macartney's Embassy embarked on Chinese boats to proceed up Baihe (Peiho) River on the 9th of August 1793. The following day they reached Tianjin (Tientsin) where they met the Emperor's envoy at a formal ceremony, which, however, lasted a mere 20 minutes. After staying in Beijing for some two weeks, they set out for Chengde (Jehol) where, on the 30th of September, they met Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). Lord Macartney was graciously permitted to dispense with kowtow; it was agreed that the salutation was to be made on the right knee. According to Macartney, the Emperor was polite, and the conversation, conducted through interpreters, was lively and interesting. Moreover, the various scientific instruments, which were brought as gifts, were examined with obvious interest. The Embassy was told that they should depart on the 7th of October. Three days' grace was promised but immediately withdrawn, ostensibly because the Emperor was concerned that an early onset of cold weather would inconvenience the Ambassador. To reach their ships at Zhoushan (Chusan) Island, the Embassy had to travel across China, partly overland and partly by rivers - a journey that took nearly two months. It has", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]