[
    {
        "id": 206396,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 213,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "# THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n# 187\n\nAs I walked out, after the service, round the wall of the city, I had a singular and pleasing rencontre with a countryman and fellow-townsman of my own. Passing the quarters of the English troops, near the Five-storied Pagoda, a fine-looking fellow of the Engineers came panting up the hill, and addressing me, said, “Are you Mr. Legge of Hongkong?” \"Yes, but I do not know that ever I saw you before.\" \"But you have,\" said he, bursting into the sweet Aberdeenshire Doric; \"I cam oot for the wark here, and we hadna time to land at Hongkong, or I would hae come to see ye. Dinna ye ken the sma toon o' Huntly in Aberdeenshire?\" \"I know Huntly well, and so, I suppose, do you. Are you from Huntly?\" \"Eh! aye. D'ye mind the Piries at the brig-fitt?\" All I could do, I could not bring the Piries to my recollection; but this was one of them, John Pirie; and seeing that he had the Victoria Cross on his breast, I touched it, and said, \"Weel, I see you hae na been disgracing oor sma toon; what did ye get this for?\" \"It was a sma matter, and nae worth speaking about.\" \"But tell me what ye got it for.\" \"Weel, ye see, I was in the Crimea in the attack on the Redan. You ken it was a failure, an' we had to retreat, and many o' oor men were i' the open exposed to the fire o' the Russians. I was wounded mysel', but nae sae sair that I couldna keep the field, and I thought I would try and bring aff some o' these men. An' I did sae, an' they thought it was a brave thing, and gied me this cross for it. But it was a sma matter; I couldna but dee't.”\n\nOn returning from Canton, I started for a short visit to England by way of Calcutta. I reached that city on the day that news came down to it of the taking of Lucknow; and a few weeks after I sailed for home in the same steamer with Sir John Inglis, and many officers of the garrison of Lucknow, and many widows also whose husbands had died there. You may be sure the passage was not tedious with such companions, but I have not time to dwell on my intercourse with them, and many of the thrilling narratives about the siege which I received from their lips.\n\nIn September, 1859, I was back here again, and found that Sir Hercules Robinson had arrived a little before me as our new Governor. The news also greeted me of the violation of the T'ëentsin treaty by the Chinese, and of the defeat of our fleet at",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206774,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1973",
        "page_number": 51,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nIn East Asia: The Modern Transformation, Professor J. K. Fairbank writes, \"This carrying trade on China's waterways was to prove the Westerners' main point of entry into the Chinese economy, for here the introduction of the steamship could alter the inherited technology\" As late as 1880 there was still not a single mile of railway in China, nor a single machine-driven loom or spindle. At that date, however, the three leading steamship companies owned forty-two steamships operating on the various routes on the Canton River, the Lower Yangtse, and between the various treaty ports on the coast. As K. C. Liu points out in his Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-74, the steamship was not only a technological innovation. It was also a business innovation, because it brought with it new methods of capital organisation and management on a scale hitherto unknown in China. Many Chinese of the scholar-official class also recognised the importance of steamships, and of guns, and—by inference—the political system which made these things possible. From the mid 19th century onwards, memorial after memorial to the Throne emphasised this. Sir Charles Snow was not exaggerating so very much when he wrote that the steam engine helped to shape the modern world as much as Adam Smith or Napoleon. Unfortunately for China, officials closer to the Throne discouraged its occupants from pursuing modernisation.\n\nSteam navigation in China began in the south, on the Canton River, and—like so many other aspects of the Western invasion—came by way of India. The first steamship in Asia seems to have been the Nawab of Oude's steam yacht, about which little information has survived. According to Prinsep, this was built at Lucknow in 1819, and equipped with an eight horse-power engine sent out from England, so she must have been very small. She is said to have been capable of seven to eight knots, but when the Nawab tired of her was allowed to go to ruin. Apart from this, the first\n\n* Mr. Blue is well-known to readers of the Journal. An engineer officer of the British Merchant Marine since 1928, he has now contributed five articles on Eastern marine subjects.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    }
]