[
    {
        "id": 205783,
        "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": 89,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210978,
        "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-1987",
        "page_number": 40,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "15\n\nhistory. His famous essay, 'The Century of Louis the Fourteenth', concludes — and this was a logical step — not with an assessment of the state of French affairs, but with a chapter which had apparently nothing to do with France, a chapter entirely devoted to the Manchu Emperor Kangxi, whose reign almost exactly corresponds in China to the equally long years of Louis XIV in France. Long before UNESCO, Voltaire compiled under the misleading title Essai sur les Moeurs — an essay on human manners and ways\n\na long and detailed comparative history of the world as it was known to him, making a point of keeping a proper balance between the chapters dealing with Europe, the Arab civilisations, India and of course China.\n\nChina had enabled the French Philosophe to approach the problems of mankind at the highest possible level, and in most general terms. China had indeed been the occasion of a major intellectual advance, but probably at the expense of China itself. One should wonder whether the Westerner ever gave up this attitude, namely dealing with China as an abstraction, almost as Utopia. The French eighteenth-century intellectuals may well have a responsibility for this major incapacity of ours, even today, to face China as a more complex and more concrete reality, not an abstract construction.\n\n8\n\nFor French intellectuals, China was indeed a philosophical abstraction. But it was also a cultural fashion, almost a cultural gadget. Chinoiseries were very popular, through tapestries, lacquers and silks, porcelains and ceramics. Pagodas were built in many aristocratic gardens and parks. China was a popular theme for aquatint engravings. The success of the rococo style in architecture and decoration had a distinct Chinese flavour, the shady and gracefully vanishing colours and shapes of Watteau's landscapes displayed a remote but definite Chinese influence. China was everywhere, even on the stage with a play by Voltaire, L'Orphelin de la Chine. The monarchy itself had engaged in the Chinese fashions. The ageing Louis XIV celebrated the first New Year of the eighteenth century with refined, if fake, Chinese-style festivities. Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress and a declared supporter of Voltaire and Diderot, was keen to give the Chinese touch to her banquets, feasts and dances à la chinoise. This Chinese",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215235,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 12,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nFRIENDS OF THE HKBRAS (UK) REPORT\n\nHON. AUDITOR'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nARTICLES\n\npage\n\nxiv\n\nxxix\n\nxxxii\n\nxlii\n\nNorman Miners - Industrial Development in the Colonial Empire and the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa 1932...\n\n1\n\nGöran Aijmer - Earth God Wine and the Meeting of the Fluttering Butterflies: Local Customs of Early Spring in Late Imperial Central China...\n\n25\n\nKeith Stevens - The Popular Religion Gods of the Hainanese ...........\n\n43\n\nValery Garrett - Chinese Baby Carriers: A Hong Kong Tradition Now Gone\n\n95\n\nAnthony Hedley and Alfred Lin - The Lugard Tribute...............\n\n109\n\nCésar Guillén-Nuñez - The Façade of St. Paul's, Macao: A Retable-Façade?\n\nRobert Nield - Bhutan - Why Not?\n\n131\n\n189\n\nKo Tim-keung - A Review of Development of Cemeteries in Hong: 1841-1950........\n\n241\n\nLouis Ha and Dan Waters - Hong Kong's Lighthouses and the Men Who Manned Them\n\n281\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKeith Stevens - A Tale of Sour Grapes: Messrs. Little and Mesny and the First Steamship Through the Yangzi Gorges\n\n321\n\nix",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215724,
        "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": 23,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nGliding: How Louis de San beat the Asian duration and altitude records in Chungking, China, in 1940, from the Belgian journal Aviation, Volume 2, Number 14, March 1946, translation by Paul Bolding\n\n345\n\nPaul Bolding - More on Louis de San\n\n357\n\nArnold Graham's Shanghai Christmas card, 1905\n\nJulia Chan - The Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society\n\n361\n\n373\n\nJames Hayes - Afterthoughts on South China Village Culture, Oxford University Press, 2001\n\n385\n\n393\n\nbecame Kalekie drzewo\n\nPeter Hansell - The colourful Douglas Lapraik (1818-1869)\n\nPaul Harrison - Introducing the Conservation Section of the Hong Kong Government\n\nPeter Halliday - Adventures in publishing: How The Crippled Tree\n\n377\n\n381\n\n...\n\nRobert Horsnell - A note on the Japanese gun emplacement at Tathong Point, Tung Lung Chau.........\n\n399\n\nDavid Mahoney - More on THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921: A new discovery\n\n....\n\n405\n\nDavid Mahoney - Yet more on THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921 ....\n\n411\n\nMartin Merz - Yet more on TEA AND OPIUM\n\n413\n\nFebruary 2002...\n\nRobert Nield - Photographs from the HKBRAS' visit to Bhutan,\n\nKeith Stevens - The wrestling princes\n\n417\n\n431\n\nxiv",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]