[ { "id": 204236, "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": 4, "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\n1\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was originally founded in 1847, but it ceased to exist at the end of 1859. Exactly a century later, on December 28, 1959, it was resuscitated with the approval of the parent society in London - The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society was founded in March 1823 \"for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia\". It received its Charter of Incorporation as a royal society from George IV on August 11, 1824. The Royal Asiatic Society is the oldest and most important Society of its kind in Europe, and its standing as the doyen of Societies promoting the study of Asia has been maintained by the devotion of generations of eminent scholars, explorers and others who have contributed through its Journal, in public addresses and in many other ways, a rich harvest of knowledge, both academic and practical, in the service of Western understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has always been done through its branches and affiliated Societies in the East. Branches were formed at Bombay and at Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878, and the Korean in 1900, etc. etc.\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH grew out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society founded in 1845. This Society, however, in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society; but the movement ended in the establishment of the Asiatic Society with laws drafted by Andrew Shortrede, Editor of the China Mail, framed on the model of those of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sir John F. Davis, the Governor, by reason of his known literary and scientific acquirements rather than his official rank, was asked to be President. He suggested that the Society should seek to be admitted as a Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with which, as a founder member, he was in close touch and with whose active President, the Earl of Auckland, he had discussions on these lines before he left England.\n\nSo in January 1847 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded, and all the members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society who wished to join were admitted without ballot or entrance fee on condition of their Society's apparatus and books being handed over to the new body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204673, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "138\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nto convince the Chinese and their rulers that they represented nations and civilizations which were in no way inferior in dignity, status and achievement to China herself. Macartney's mission, though most carefully planned and equipped, was no more successful than those of his predecessors in concluding any kind of treaty or agreement on the basis of equality and mutual respect.\n\nIn a brief review such as this, one is faced with an “embarras de richesses”, for there are many aspects of this unusual book that would be tempting to follow up. The eighteenth century European's view of an Oriental overlordship; the relationship of trust and friendship that developed between Macartney and his attendant Mandarins, Wang and Chou; the travelogue itself and its curious but obvious omissions; the detailed study of Chinese achievements revealed in the Appendices; all these and many more invite the reviewer's comment. But it is perhaps the nature of the diarist himself that offers the most rewarding study, for here is the unconscious self-portrait of a man typical in many ways of his own age and culture, set against a wholly strange background. Macartney's early career, added to his personal qualities, marked him out for this mission. He was an experienced diplomat, well versed in dealing with oriental peoples and with rulers enjoying despotic power. He had served his country well in India, and as envoy-extraordinary to the Court of Catherine the Great, he had negotiated a commercial treaty with Russia. He was of proven integrity, indeed as Governor of Madras he had refused the perquisites accepted by his predecessors. He was a man of the world, much travelled, of a flexible turn of mind, far from intolerant in matters of politics, religion or race. Accustomed to control, he was schooled in self-control. Moreover he was of known ability in recording his observations of other countries and their peoples, and realised full well that not only the opinions of rulers but everything about a people their manners, customs, history and achievements -were of vital importance to Great Britain in formulating policies in relation to the country concerned.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204732, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "26\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nFriday 12th\n\n1* at\n\nAt nine this morning received a letter from Macao dated the 8th, in answer to mine of the 5th; all quiet there but everyone ready to be off the moment any trouble was at hand. Delano received, enclosed in mine, a chit from Russell Sturgis which contained much news. The Hercules and Austen left for the Bogue on Tuesday last to deliver their opium and were to be followed by the Jane and Aeriel. The Chinese would only let two vessels come up at a time. The Good Success left Macao on the 9th for Madras, with despatches to the British admiral on the India Station, and the Rob Roy was to leave today for Calcutta. The Exchange sailed for Manila on the 8th; the Nar† Naples, Roza and Benuo Successo and Poppy had also sailed for Manila but the letter does not say if they took opium or not.\n\nMr. Inness was on board the Hercules with Alex. Matthews and Chay. Beal36. The Hercules and Austen had in all over 5,000 chests.\n\nGave two bottles of beer to the Se-Ying37 or lieutenants on guard in the second line of boats in front of the Factories. Had a long chat with several of the officers belonging to Name Hoe's guard relative to matters in dispute. They appear exceedingly friendly but take no interest whatever in what is going on,\n\nSaturday, 13, 1839\n\nLast night at 12 o'clock Captain Elliot received a communication from the Commissioner, dated in the morning from the Bogue, in which he requests that the opium ships might be ordered to come up and anchor close to Chinn-up to deliver the opium, instead of Lankeel where there was much inconvenience owing to rough water. He also said that the compradores and cooks were ordered to return but they have not come yet. However it will take some time for the order to be generally promulgated.\n\nMidnight I have just returned from a chat of three hours duration held at the Hoppo House or \"Custom-House Station\" at the water's edge opposite our Factory between two officers, one equal to a captain and the other to a lieutenant, the Custom-House Officer and myself. The Captain, who wore a crystal button, was\n\n*Two words illegible.\n\n† Part of ship's name illegible.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204822, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "105\n\nA RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN AND\n\nLANTAO ISLANDS IN 1794\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG AND A. SHEPHERD\n\nHistorical Background\n\nThe English East India Company started to trade at Canton at the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the last quarter of the century the trade had grown extensively, mainly because of the increasing demand for China tea in England. However, the more trade grew the more the Chinese officials at Canton controlled it through various regulations. Unfortunately many of these regulations were changed frequently, especially those concerning the dues and fees to be paid. The supercargoes of the East India Company were never certain how much money would be demanded of them from one year to another, and their complaints against what they often considered to be arbitrary exactions increased. At last the government of England was forced to take notice of the unsatisfactory relations existing at Canton between the supercargoes of the East India Company and the various Chinese officials. As a result it was decided to send an embassy direct to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung at Peking in the mistaken belief that if the Emperor knew of the grievances of the English merchants at Canton he would rectify them. At the same time the English government decided to use this opportunity to attempt to put the relations between Britain and China on a proper diplomatic footing as understood in the West. The man selected as ambassador was Lord Macartney, a skilled diplomat and administrator, who had been British Ambassador at St. Petersburg and recently Governor of the Presidency of Madras.\n\nIn order to impress the Chinese officials with the advanced state of civilization in Europe, and especially with Britain's skill in scientific inventions and technical achievements, Macartney was given a large suite which included a natural philosopher, an experimental scientist, a draughtsman, a metallurgist, a watch-maker, a mathematical instrument maker and a botanist. This was the first time that an English embassy had been sent to China, and certainly the first time that a group of Englishmen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204854, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "132\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nAny sailor will raise his eyebrows as Chinnery departs for India by ship18 and arrives in Madras by schooner. All mariners will roar in indignation at the caption \"The American Clipper Ship 'Houqua' off New Bedford\".20 To show a ship-portrait of the whale ship \"Houqua\", a lowly \"pig boat\", and to confuse it with the famous Low clipper ship of the same name,22 reaches bathos indeed.\n\nThis book must be taken with frequent grains of salt. The factual, authoritative biography of Chinnery is still to be written.\n\nPeabody Museum\n\nSalem, Massachusetts, U.S.A.\n\nF. B. L.\n\nUNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG: THE FIRST 50 YEARS, 1911-1961: Edited by Brian Harrison. Hong Kong University Press, 1962. pp. xv+247+vi. HK$35.00.\n\nThe Golden Jubilee of the founding of the University of Hong Kong was the occasion for the publication of this commemorative volume. The book has several purposes: to summarize the history of the University; to recall the names and achievements of the University's most noteworthy benefactors, teachers and graduates; to record the Jubilee Honours extended by the University during 1961; and, in the words of the Governor of Hong Kong, to “stimulate interest and sympathy amongst the people of Hong Kong in whose midst the University stands.” Persons of differing interests and capacities wrote the various chapters, with the result that there is unavoidably some disharmony of organization and subject matter and unevenness of quality. Altogether, however, there is a great deal of valuable material on the aims, organization, activities, trials and tribulations, and achievements of the University, which, while not always easy to follow as one reads through the book, is nevertheless accessible with the assistance of the index. The index helpfully includes characters for all Chinese names.\n\n18 Page 18 ship Gilwell.\n\n19 Page 21 - unnamed schooner.\n\n20 Plate 76 top.\n\n21 Built Boston 1819, converted to whaling New Bedford 1831. lost Arctic Ocean 1851,\n\n22 Built New York 1844 as a 16 gun man-of-war for the Chinese Government. Taken over by A. A. Low & Brother. Foundered 1864,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206383, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "174\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Central Market was formed; and on the other side were some foreign Stores, and a tavern or two. Looking up Aberdeen Street, you saw a few indications of building, and a house on the south of Gage Street, forming the headquarters of a Madras Regiment; and looking up Pottinger Street, you could see the Magistracy and Gaol of the day, where the dreaded Major Caine presided, and below them were two or three other buildings. On from Pottinger Street, a few English merchants had established themselves, and the house which long continued to be known as the Commercial Inn was a place of great resort. On the west of D'Aguilar Street, not then so named, building was going on, and just opposite to it, was a small house called the Bird Cage, out of which was hatched the Hongkong Dispensary. All the space between Wyndham Street and Wellington Street was garden ground, with an imposing flat-roofed house in it, built by Mr. Brain, of the firm of Dent & Co. That great firm had its quarters where the Hongkong Hotel is now, and further on was Lindsay & Co.'s house. All else on the north side of the street was blank, on to the Artillery Barracks, which were building. On the south of the street was the Harbour Master's establishment on Pedder's Hill; and as conspicuous as are now Messrs. Heard & Co.'s Offices, which have been manufactured from it, rose the house of Mr. Johnstone, who had been administrator of the island on its first occupancy. On the Parade Ground was a small mat building, which was the Colonial Church, and above it, about where the Cathedral and Government Offices now stand, were the unpretending Government Offices of that early time and the Post-Office. Far up, if I recollect aright, might be seen a range of barracks, out of which have been fashioned the present Albany residences, and beyond the site of the present Government House was a small bungalow where Sir Henry Pottinger and Sir John Davis after him held their court. Crossing the bridge from the Artillery Barracks, there were some poor buildings for military purposes where the Naval Yard now is, and the houses of Gemmell & Co. and Fletcher & Co., the former of which has since been metamorphosed into the Commissariat Offices. On the right was the General's House, looking much as it does now, and below it was the Canton Bazaar, mainly occupied by troops.\n\nFollowing the bend of the road, one met with a few Chinese houses on the bluff opposite the present Military Hospital, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206387, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "178\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nI once witnessed from my house in D'Aguilar Street an engagement between nearly a hundred Chinese coolies on each side, on the ground now occupied by the Club-house. Bamboo on bamboo, and bamboo on skull, resounded pretty equally, until the parties were obliged to give up from exhaustion. I thought that nothing wilder or better-sustained had ever been seen at Donnybrook Fair.\n\nTaking occasion to speak here on the subject of violent crime in the Colony, and affecting it, I would distinguish two eras;— that of violent burglary, and that of piracy. Not that there were not piracies in the earlier time, and burglaries in the later; but the one and the other preponderated in the two eras, and may be considered to characterize them. The former may be said to have continued down to the beginning of 1856, when a daring attack was made on several native shops at East Point. For several years, however, before that, it had been declining, owing mainly to the increasing numbers and greater vigour of the police force.\n\nThese robberies were at first conducted with an astonishing audacity. In January, 1844, to give only one instance, what is now Mr. De Souza's printing office was occupied by Mrs. White, the wife of one of the present members for Brighton, who was himself in Shanghai at the time. He was one of the early notabilities of the Colony, and founded the Friend of China, which was published here and in Shanghai for many years by very different hands. Well on the night of the 23rd January, the bungalow was attacked by an armed band of about 30 individuals. Their object was plunder; and without attempting any violence to Mrs. White or a young lady who was staying with her, they proceeded systematically to accomplish their purpose.\n\nA little down the hill were the head-quarters of a Madras regiment of which I have spoken. The young lady tripped down, and gave the alarm there, and soon a party of sepoys was led up to the scene by an officer; but the brigands stood one discharge of their muskets, and, it was said, did not flee till the ramrods were ringing in the barrels for a second, one of their number being left bleeding to death on the floor.\n\nWhen burglary on this scale could no longer be attempted with success or safety, bands of robbers attempted to carry out their attempts by tunneling from the large drains under the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207015, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "80 \n\nROBIN MCLACHLAN \n\nin this horrid place. I am therefore leading a most regular life. I get up at 6 a.m. and walk for two hours before breakfast. I remain in my room all day during the heat of the sun and walk again in the evening, and go to bed early. I live on fish, fruit and curry and drink but little wine. But I smoke a great deal; in fact it is necessary in India. I cannot get on without it. The whole fleet expect to sail in a few days. They go back to India. This place, which is now a perfect bear garden, will once more be quiet. There is only one spot on the whole island that has a tree on it. It is called Happy Valley, and is certainly a pretty spot. The rest of the island is one barren rock and perfectly devoid of all vegetation, although there are springs innumerable. ... Now I have told you everything about this delightful spot. It is inferior to Sierra Leone from the fact of its being less healthy, less amusing and less near England.\n\n10 \n\nAn important social activity for the infant colony was the rounds of dinner parties held by the senior military and colonial officers. Bridgeman seems to have regarded these events as at least tolerable social functions, but was very critical of the more rowdy partying that went on in the officers' barracks. While writing to his sister, he commented on one such party going on in the next room. This was a farewell party by the Madras Artillery for one of their officers, Captain Balfour. Bridgeman considered it a very noisy party with far too much drinking and feared that it would go on far into the night. \n\nMen of this sort never sit down to a large party without drinking to such an excess that they lose their senses and are put to bed more like beasts than Christians. God forgive me, but I hate them all. Give me women's society! Without it we are beasts.\n\n11 \n\nAnother form of entertainment that attracted Bridgeman's critical comment was the amateur theatre established in Hong Kong in late 1842. The actors were largely drawn from among the soldiers and sailors stationed at Hong Kong. \n\nI regret to say it was a complete failure. The first and only performance was about a week ago. The pieces they chose were stupid and not one of them knew their parts. However, the house was filled; for in a stupid place like this everybody caught willingly at anything in the way of amusement. The house is now being...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209963, "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-1983", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "200\n\nMC, while he was a prisoner of war in Japan. Captain Shigeru was later tried and executed for war crimes.\n\nNot connected with the last war is a mirror on which are painted the colours and battle honours of the regiment and which is set in a carved wooden frame. This mirror was originally the property of the Sergeants' Mess of the third battalion and it was used in the ante room of the mess from 1906 when the battalion served in Hong Kong, Tientsin and Peking, up until its disbandment in 1922.\n\nThere is, finally, a waist-high Chinese vase decorated with blossoms and birds about which little is known.\n\nMy final stop was at the excellent museum of the Royal Engineers, at Chatham, where there are many interesting China-related items.\n\nA whole case contains objects relating to General Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, who was an RE officer. Gorgeous embroidered robes feature dragons, there is a white silk jacket, panels and hangings, a Mandarin's hat with a long pigtail seemingly attached, a silver cup and other items.\n\nA name that crops up in the early history of Hong Kong is John Ouchterlony; he wrote a book \"The Chinese War\" which was published in 1844. The RE museum has his epaulettes, those of the Madras Engineers, on display.\n\nThere is also an executioner's strangling cord, bullets, a fung shui compass, a series of gods from the Summer Palace, a Chinese crossbow, knives and swords. Probably most of these items date from the time of the Second China War, in 1860.\n\nAnyone who can visit Chatham should note that the Royal Engineers library has a large store of information just waiting to be mined. The Engineers left their mark throughout Hong Kong and their projects are well documented and recorded in the reports, journals and other papers held in the library.\n\nI am sure that in each of the establishments mentioned there are other items which I missed; most visits were in and out affairs with a pregnant wife waiting patiently in the car and a not-so-patient two-year-old keeping her company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210600, "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-1985", "page_number": 207, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "188\n\nANTHONY FARRINGTON\n\nan essential preliminary to any such scheme.\"\n\nA reformulated version in 1670 incorporated this suggestion and added Taiwan. Beginning in 1672 three ships a year were to be sent to Japan, one via Tongking and the others via Taiwan. Tongking would supply silk, musk, skins and tutenague for Japan; Taiwan would supply hides and sugar. On the return voyage the three ships would separate: one to Surat, one to Madras, and the third to Taiwan, Tongking and Bantam, to pick up any commodities suitable for Europe.\n\nUnlike the early years before 1623, the East India Company seems to have begun to appreciate that the whole area of South-East and East Asia, from Malaysia to Japan, formed a region-wide commercial unit, criss-crossed by an inter-dependent trade network powered by the monsoons. What the Company was now attempting to do, as the Dutch had already done, was to insert itself into a Chinese dominated system of exchange.\n\nLooking back from the Company's commercial and political strength a century later it is perhaps tempting to see the Japan scheme as a second-best alternative or a prelude to trade with mainland China. However, more than 25 years ago at least one historian argued that the gradual development of trade with China only took place against a background of failure in Japan and difficulties in Tongking, and that it was not until the decade 1674-1684 that interest really shifted from Japan to China. The possibility of direct access to China had agitated Richard Cocks at Hirado in Japan between 1613-1623. But the Company paid little attention to his dreams and the archives covering the new 'East Asian push' of the 1660s and 1670s give China only passing mention. Morse throws Tongking into his confused narrative as a mere extension of China and states that Tongking was the only accessible source for the bulk supply of Chinese silks. The English factory diary, though, makes it quite clear that the silk trade out of the Red River was not a matter of re-export but handled a local product.\n\nIt seems incredible now that the East India Company never considered that they might not be allowed to re-enter Japan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210721, "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-1986", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "55\n\nTHE HONG KONG BOTANICAL GARDENS, A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW\n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU\n\nThe Victorian era in Europe was obsessed by the idea of cultivating exotic plants which had become more readily available as plant hunters explored more distant regions of the world. The culmination of this concept was the establishment of large botanic gardens where both local and exotic plants could be admired (often under unnatural conditions) by an incredulous populace eager to learn more of the distant parts of the Empire. In addition to this botanical zeal in Europe, the idea spread to various other areas of the British Commonwealth and botanical gardens soon sprang up in Rangoon, New Delhi, Madras, and Singapore, where for the first time local people were able to familiarize themselves with plants from their own as well as other regions of the world. In addition to this seemingly cosmetic role, botanical gardens also served other, more pragmatic, interests as the growth characteristics of more economically important plants could be examined for the first time under controlled conditions, enabling them to be exploited by commercial interests with an eye towards export trade.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the idea of establishing a Public Garden was mentioned officially for the first time in 1848, but even prior to that date, on March 27th, 1844, a letter of thanks from the Governor of Hong Kong was sent to the Deputy Governor of Bengal thanking him for a copy of the printed report of the Honorable Company's Botanic Gardens, indicating that the idea of a similar garden in Hong Kong had already been mooted. The first indication that Hong Kong was to be blessed with such a garden was made by Charles Gutzlaff in a statement to the Hong Kong branch of the\n\nAUTHORS' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:\n\nThe authors wish to express their gratitude to the staff of the Library and Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, and the City Hall Public Library, Hong Kong, for their kind assistance.\n\nS.P. Lau wishes to acknowledge with thanks the permission given by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries to pursue a Ph.D. project at the University of Hong Kong, this article being a section of the thesis under preparation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211033, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "69 \n\nlished in 1884 by ex-pupils and prominent members of the Chinese community as a mark of respect for Dr. Frederick Stewart who had resigned as headmaster in 1881 after nearly twenty years service to the school; and various special prizes especially for proficiency in Chinese.\n\n26 \n\nHe was appointed under Colonial Standing Order 3248 of 1884, as from 1st January, 1885, at a salary of $300 per year.\n\n27 The authority for his appointment was CSO2202. His starting salary was $240 per annum.\n\n24 For details of the memorial system and the part played in its genesis in England by Andrew Bell (1753-1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), see John Lawson and Harold Silver, A Social History of Education in England (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 241-246.\n\nIn one of Eitel's reports on the short-lived Normal School in Hong Kong, he refers to the \"Madras-born monitorial scheme of Bell and Lancaster\" being adopted at the Central School by Stewart. In Eitel's opinion, this scheme suffered in comparison with the Normal School because it did not include “the special private tuition and instruction”, presumably, in teaching rationale and methods. (CO129/202, p. 532).\n\nIn his Annual Report for the year 1866, for example, Stewart wrote: \"In my last Report I stated that I entertained the hope of being soon able to overcome many difficulties connected with the school by training Chinese assistants for their work. I then anticipated that I should always be able to retain two of the more advanced boys for a period of at least four years, after which they might, if they chose, find employment elsewhere and be succeeded by the two who stood next to them. The project has all but failed. The demand for the services of the more intelligent of the boys is so great that it is, in the meantime, hopeless to expect them to remain for any length of time. The two in whose case the experiment was tried have both left many months ago, just when they were beginning to be of real value to the school. I shall not, however, abandon the scheme. Out of several, it may be possible to retain some; and, as the knowledge of English becomes more general and situations more difficult to be obtained, the greater will be the probability that these Assistants will remain until, at least, others are qualified to take their place.” (Hong Kong Government Blue Book, 1866, pp. 279-280).\n\n30 The dispute was, in some ways, a continuation of the friction which existed between Frederick Stewart and Eitel after the separation of the duties of Headmaster of the Central School from those of the Inspector of Schools in 1878, first as an expedient measure while Dr. Stewart was on long leave in England and subsequently confirmed on Stewart's return to Hong Kong. Bateson Wright succeeded Stewart as Headmaster of the Central School in 1881. He inherited the bitter relations between the two leading education officers in the Government, but his own, quite positive personality, if anything, exacerbated the situation so much so, that the supervision of the Central School was taken away from the responsibilities of the Inspectorate and a “Dual System\" inaugurated whereby the Central School, renamed successively Victoria College and Queen's College, was administered and reported on by its own Headmaster and eventually examined by an independent Board which did not include the Inspector of Schools. The Dual System was kept in being until the retirement of Bateson Wright in 1909, when the Government's educational system was reunited and renamed the Education Department, headed by a Director of Education in place of the Inspector of Schools.11 Stokes (1962), p. 47.\n\n31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211065, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "THE BRITISH (PROTESTANT) CEMETERY AT SAN PEDRO, MAKATI, MANILA, PHILIPPINES\n\nDAVID W MAHONEY\n\n101\n\nIn the Eternal Lawn section of the Manila Memorial Park at Paranaque, a Southern suburb of the Philippine capital, Manila, in the shade of a Candelnut tree, wafted by the fragrance of a nearby Frangipani, lie all that is left of the British (Protestant) Cemetery of Manila. (See Plates 17 and 18 at rear of this Volume).\n\nAs the simple granite memorial stone announces \"Here lie the remains of those who were buried in the Protestant Cemetery at San Pedro, Makati between the years 1863-1968”. Well, that's the end of the story, what about the rest?\n\nThe first British contact with the Philippines is said to have been the visit of the “SEAHORSE” to Manila in 1644, but trade could not proceed due to a blockade by the Dutch. The first British people started to come to the islands in the early eighteenth century and established trading links selling textiles (chiefly cotton) and buying silver, pearls, skins, leather, tobacco, sugar and even horses. Trade prospered between the Philippines and Mexico and particularly with China — mostly through English merchants so that the Islands were described as an “Anglo-Chinese Colony flying the Spanish flag\". As many of those involved in trade also had connections with India, it was inevitable that the country which had been ruled by the Spanish since 1565 would come to the attention of the British military. Sure enough in 1762 an expedition under Col. Draper was launched from Madras and captured Manila after a two-week campaign. (Incidentally, Col. Monson, the Second-in-Command is buried in the South Park St. Cemetery in Calcutta.)\n\nAlthough this campaign has been written about extensively, it is still worthy of further investigation. — What happened to the graves of the eight hundred or so who were killed, drowned in the landing during a typhoon or died of disease? No physical evidence\n\nDavid W. Mahoney is a Chartered Surveyor working for Swire Properties Ltd., and has lived in Hong Kong since 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211623, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\nThe first was a Muslim who had been with the British army, and who may have been one of those who deserted in large numbers after the founding of the colony and who later formed the basis of an Indian community in Kowloon,\" The China Mail of 28 March 1878 printed: 'The man, known by the name of Mohammed Arab, died here yesterday. We understand that his residence in the Colony dates with the cession of the Island to Her Majesty, and it was he who planted the British standard on the Island, being with the expeditionary Force. He was a very charitably disposed person, and always stretched a helping hand to the needy and poor irrespective of nationality. He was well-known to many of the foreign community, and held in no little estimation for his uprightness and charities. His funeral, which took place yesterday, was largely attended by persons of various nationalities'.\n\n43\n\n44\n\nIf indeed Mohammed Arab had been in the British army, he must have been in either the Bengal Volunteers or the Madras 37th Native Infantry which were two of the regiments serving in the Chinese expedition.\" Both of these regiments contained Muslims and so Mohammed Arab could have been in either of them. The first Bengal Volunteers were raised in 1799 and in time the Volunteers became the 36th, 37th, 38th and 39th regiments of the Bengal Native Infantry.42 The usual sepoys of the Bengal army were mainly high-caste Hindus who because of dietary restrictions could not travel overseas, and so the Bengal Volunteers raised in the spring of 1840 were low-caste Hindus and Muslims lured from regular regiments by the promise of extra money. As for the Madras Native Infantry, it is known that some Muslim Lascars from Madras deserted during or after the Chinese expedition.\" This war was the first in which Indian troops were deployed in a non-Indian operation.\" Unfortunately the only members of the Bengal Volunteers named in official records of the Chinese expedition are firstly those who died, and secondly the officers,\" and no more information is yet forthcoming about the members of the Madras Native Infantry. The question whether Mohammed Arab may or may not have hoisted the flag on Hong Kong on 26 January 1841 hinges on whether a contingent of the Bengal Volunteers or of the Madras Native Infantry was landed for the ceremony - the only regiment which was definitely ashore at the time was that of the Marines and on which rank would have been called upon to perform the task. The senior native officer in the regiment was the Subadar-Major upon whom the duty could have devolved (in January 1841 this position in the Bengal Volunteers was held by Shaick Hedait Alie) but it would have been more likely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211626, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "16 \n\nthe Narrative of an Eventful Six Months in China (London, 1875).\n\n20 A. Cunynghame, The Opium War, being Recollections of Service in China (London, 1844).\n\n21 A. Murray, Doings in China: being the Personal Narrative of an Officer Engaged in the late Chinese Expedition (London, 1843).\n\n27 \n\nThe United Service Journal, 1841, part 2 (July 1841), p. 307.\n\n23 C. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1985), p. ix.\n\n24 Chinese Repository, 10 February 1841, p. 119.\n\n25 Ibid., 11 November 1842, p. 579.\n\n26 \n\nThe Canton Press of Saturday, 30 January 1841.\n\n27 Ibid., 13 February 1841.\n\n28 \n\nThe Canton Register of 16 February 1841.\n\n* \n\nFor general information on the Sassoons, see C. Roth, The Sassoon Dynasty (London, 1941) and S. Jackson, The Sassoons (London, 1968).\n\n30 \n\nK. N. Vaid, The Overseas Indian Community in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1972), p. 15.\n\n31 For further information, see the centenary volume by [J. Steuart], Jardine Matheson and Co., 1832-1932 (Hong Kong, 1934) and M. Keswick ed., The Thistle and the Jade: a Celebration of 150 years of Jardine, Matheson and Co. (London, 1982).\n\n32 JMA, C5/6, 65.\n\n31 \n\nSee J. Y. Wong, 'The Cession of Hong Kong: a Chapter of Imperial History'. The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, 11 (1976), 52-3 and ibid., Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1839-1860 (Oxford, 1985), p. 51.\n\nH. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire 1 (London, 1910), p. 624.\n\n35 Wong, Anglo-Chinese relations, p. 52.\n\nJ6 JMA, C5/6, 51.\n\n37 \n\nSee the report by the missionaries in The Canton Press of 27 February 1841, reprinted from one in the Canton Register of 18 February.\n\n38 C. Smith, Chinese Christians, op. cit. p. 173.\n\n39 \n\n40 \n\nVaid, The Overseas Indian Community, op. cit. p. 22.\n\nFor further information on the Madras Native Infantry, see J. B. R. Nicholas, 'Madras Native Infantry, c. 1845', Tradition, 42 and 43.\n\n42 \n\nSee The Canton Press of 16 January 1841.\n\nSee B. Mollo, The Indian Army (Poole, 1981), pp. 64-5. For further information on the Bengal Native Infantry, see F. G. Cardew, A Sketch of the Services of the Bengal Native Infantry to the year 1895 (Calcutta, 1903) and A. Bharat, The Bengal Native Infantry, 1796-1852 (Calcutta, 1962).\n\n43 P. Fay, The Opium War, 1840-2 (Chapel Hill, 1975), p. 208.\n\n44 \n\nVaid, The Overseas Indian Community, op. cit. p. 22.\n\n45 Mollo, The Indian Army, op. cit. p. 50.\n\n46 \n\nIndia Office Library and Records, London, China Medal 1842 and Bengal Army Lists.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212165, "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-1990", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "84\n\nprotective deities, small portable images of the deity himself are kept in the shrine and loaned to devotees to take home for private reverence when the devotee has a personal problem requiring spiritual assistance.\n\nIn a temple in Madras Street in Singapore images of a Mr Ch'en and his wife, again without personal names, are revered by elderly ladies for boons and protection. No one within the temple has any idea who the Ch'ens are or where the images now on a side altar came from.\n\nIn a second temple in Singapore yet another image of a Mr Ch'en stands on a side altar. This time we know his personal names, Yueh-k'un, and that his image was donated in the 1960s by an unidentified old lady, thought to be his widow, who left a sum of money to maintain regular offerings before it. Its history and identification died with her. The image, of a stylised general, is prayed to by devotees who believe him to be a protective deity.\n\nLiang Chin-chung was killed by lightning in Singapore, in a kampong in Tanglin, in 1946 at the age of seventeen. Shortly after the incident ladies in the kampong in which Liang had lived attributed remarkable events to his spirit and whenever they prayed before his tablet their wishes were fulfilled. A cult quickly developed and devotees came from all around. An attap hut already dedicated in the kampong to a Hainanese fertility goddess was altered to make room for a small altar dedicated to Liang, on which a rough portrait image of the boy was placed. The cult disappeared when the kampong was razed for building development in the seventies.\n\nAn image of a Miss Liu stood on a folk religion temple side altar next door to the big Buddhist temple in Kim Keat, Singapore. In 1962 she was known as 'Liu-hsiu Ku-niang', though this full name disappeared within the next ten years. Her image, swathed in silken yellow robes, always had incense sticks smouldering before it. She had no festival and no special identifying features. She did, however, have the occasional packet of face powder placed before her by girls who believed that she could make them more physically attractive. Also slung around her arm were two or three very small handbags or purses. According to an elderly nun, Miss Liu was a vegetarian who had lived in the nunnery, and when she died her old...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212325, "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-1990", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "244\n\nParsees. At one time, with a German Chairman and an American Deputy Chairman, the Board had no British members. The financial failure of Dent, in 1867, had the effect of freeing the Bank from dependence on any one enterprise and brought about more independent management control. Within months of setting up its headquarters in Hong Kong a branch was opened in London, and further branches were established in San Francisco (1875), New York (1880), Lyons (1881) and Hamburg (1889). By the 1880s The Hong Kong Bank had become banker to the Hong Kong Government, and to this day it is, in effect, the Central Bank of the Territory.\n\nWorld War I proved a difficult period, and its German directors resigned shortly after hostilities commenced. The Bank resumed its leading position in China and the Far East in the 1920s and 30s. Like the Chartered Bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank's branch in Shanghai operated without interruption all through the Cultural Revolution.\n\nToday 'Wardley' is the name of an investment company associated with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In 1864, Wardley House (demolished in 1882 when its new bank building was completed) was the first premises of the Bank. William Henry Wardley was a staff member of Gibb Livingston. He started his own firm about 1850. Although the company was taken over by F.B. Johnson and James Bowman the name was retained. It stopped trading about 1861, before the Bank was established. But the name, Wardley, has been perpetuated.\n\nThe Mercantile Bank\n\nThe old Mercantile Bank can be traced back to October 1853, with the founding of the Mercantile Bank of Bombay. Within two months it had become the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, a co-partnership of four Indian proprietors and four British. An office was opened in London almost immediately, and other offices, in 1854, in Madras, Colombo and Kandy. In 1855 branches started at Calcutta, Singapore, Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Comparing these dates with the Chartered Bank, Mercantile got off to a quicker start, although both banks were established in the same year. Mercantile had a branch in Hong Kong, for example, four years before Chartered.\n\nSkipping a century, in 1958 the name was shortened to ‘Mercantile", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213317, "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-1994", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "120\n\nThe First China War was the culmination of many years of irksome restraint. The British, as did other nations, objected strongly to being treated and listed with Burma, Vietnam and Korea as tribute bearers. The immediate cause was the destruction of all the opium in Canton brought in by foreigners and in 1840 the Chinese fleet attacked a British warship, followed by, amongst other incidents, Canton being bombarded by the British, and the war was on. Palmerston was Prime Minister in Britain during this, the First China War, now possibly better known as the first of the two Opium Wars. It began with a desultory naval engagement and little further happened until Major General Sir Hugh Gough arrived from Madras in March of 1841. The British plan was, first, to capture Chusan island off the coast of Chekiang to use as a pawn in the demand for Chinese agreements to British demands. This proved to be a futile gesture and during 1841 and 1842 British forces, with the continued aim of pressuring the Chinese into legitimising foreign trade within China, proceeded to attack several ports one after the other up the China coast, creeping ever further north towards the capital of Peking, causing the Chinese greater apprehension about the future. The campaign eventually ended with the imminent attack on Nanking, the former capital situated on the Yangtze in central China, avoided last minute by the agreement by the Chinese finally to the terms of a treaty signed in August 1842. One of the attacks on the China coast was on the then city of Chapu, which was to be followed up with an attack on Hangchou.\n\nChapu had a tolerable harbour, with a great rise and fall of tide, so much so that the smaller junks were left high and dry at low water. Together with its suburbs the town, perhaps five miles in circuit built in a square and intersected by numerous canals, lay about half a mile from the coast. The Reverend Gutzlaff in his third voyage up the China coast in January 1833 arrived in Chapu and described the surrounding countryside as the Chinese Arcadia with nothing able to exceed its beautiful and picturesque appearance. He further described the canals, neat roads, plantations and conspicuous buildings, adding that the whole country (of China) from the Yellow River south was flat until one came to the high lands which formed the harbour of Chapu city. The sea, he added, was receding from the land and flats had formed along the shore, visible at low water and constituting a barrier to the whole coast. Gutzlaff found nowhere so much openness and kindness, the (residents') intelligent questions respecting Britain were endless with them never seeming to be satiated with (British) company.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213319, "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-1994", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "122\n\nthe 49th Regiment (Hertfordshire Regiment consisting of 25 officers and 426 men) and a Sapper unit. The Force commander, Sir Hugh Gough accompanied the Left Column.\n\nThe Centre Column under Lieutenant Colonel Montgomerie consisted of detachments of Royal Artillery and Madras Artillery, a Sapper unit and a rifle company of the 35th Madras Native Infantry.\n\nThe Right Column, under Colonel Schoedde, consisted of the 26th Regiment (The Cameronians) under Lieutenant Colonel Pratt, the 55th Regiment (Westmorland Regiment) and a unit of Sappers.\n\n6\n\nThe British plan required the 2,200 troops to be landed on the right flank, on the west face of the line of low-lying hills some two miles to the east of Chapu Bay. From there the three battalions would separate, one, the Centre Column, to hold the base, one, the Right Column, to pass round the base of Huang-p'an Shan to cut off the Chinese retreat and the third, the Point or Left Column, to storm the heights of Kuan Yin Shan. On 16 May the Nemesis and the Phlegethon reconnoitred the northern coast of the Bay of Hangchou and on the 18th they landed in a bay some two miles east of the city without opposition, with the Left Column advancing along the heights parallel to the coast, whilst the rest moved inland to the rear of the heights on which the enemy was posted. Elements of the British Naval Brigade, consisting of some 700 men, landed within a quarter of a mile of the harbour and advanced straight for the harbour battery and then on to the town itself. Only about one in ten of the Chinese force had firearms, the rest being armed with bows and spears. The British plan so took the Chinese by surprise that they fell back in disorder, throwing away their arms and fleeing in every direction. The Chinese having made their nominal stand in the hills had left their rear wide open allowing Chapu to be taken without any major problems. After a battle lasting more than four hours, Chapu was taken by the Right Column and the Naval Brigade with the British casualties of nine killed and fifty-five wounded. Of these, in addition to Colonel Tomlinson, the loss to the Royal Irish were one serjeant and three other ranks killed, and Lieutenants E. Jodrell and A. Murray, one serjeant, one drummer and twenty-seven other ranks wounded. Major Jeremiah Cowper was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the day following the battle, in succession to Colonel Tomlinson. The Chinese defenders fled to the west, towards Hangchou leaving the British with the town which was promptly looted by the native Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213323, "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-1994", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "126\n\nsite of the battery of old guns covering the harbour, was a small renovated folk religion temple. Finally one elderly man explained that a newly rebuilt temple stood some two miles up the coast overlooking the sea. It had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. When eventually we found it we were lucky enough to be guided by another elderly man who we had encountered on the approach track. Before we had time to discuss anything whatsoever he asked who we were and on hearing that we were English he immediately volunteered the fact that the English had been to that spot before, to that very temple, which they had attacked. He added that the English 'general' had been killed during the battle and had been buried on the hillside and he pointed out roughly where the grave had been. He explained that it had been plainly visible until 1949 when the Communists had taken over and had had the hillside planted with young trees which had obliterated the grave.\n\nExtremely interesting though this piece of folk memory was, it did not tie in with the sketch map provided by an officer, Lieutenant Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers, who was present in Chapu during the landings and the subsequent battle. The Left Column and the Right Column both had landed in the bay at the point where the present rebuilt temple stands, and therefore our informant was right to claim that the English had been there. However, whoever had been buried on the hillside at that spot was certainly not Colonel Tomlinson who fell at the joss house marked on Ouchterlony's map much nearer to Chapu. The site of the Joss house marked on the map, where Tomlinson fell, is within a very short distance from the harbour where the battery of old guns now stands and where the local inhabitants were quite certain that no temple had been there within living memory.\n\nThe fallibility of folk memory is well known and it is not too difficult to understand how over the century and a half since the battle took place the scene of the attack on the temple had been transferred to the other temple where a grave, presumably of a foreigner, was accepted as that of the British senior officer who fell that day.\n\nPlates and photographs accompanying this article will be published in a future edition of the Journal - Editor]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213634, "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-1995", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "205\n\nEXPERIENCES AS A WAR CRIMES PROSECUTOR IN HONG KONG\n\nPETER VINE\n\nFifty years ago I caught my first glimpse of Hong Kong through the perspex window of a DC3. I was in transit from Singapore to take up the post of War Crimes Prosecutor in Hong Kong. I was 24 and a Major in the Royal Marines in which I had served for the previous five years.\n\nMy last war-time appointment was as Gunnery Officer aboard a landing craft which mounted a 104 millimetre gun. We had made the journey from Plymouth, England to join up with other units of the Support Squadron assembled in Madras. Lord Mountbatten had planned \"Operation Zipper\" to reconquer Malaya down to the last detail when the announcement came through of Emperor Hirohito's broadcast surrender following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since it was not then clear that the Japanese military would respond to this call, Operation Zipper went ahead as planned, and this brought me to Singapore. My landing-craft never sailed again, and I was appointed to the staff of the Flag Officer Malayan area. I had free time at my disposal and I sent for the text-books and arranged with the English Law Society to have the Solicitors Final papers sent to H.M.S Sultan, Singapore where I sat the exam in March 1946. The announcement that I had satisfied the examiners came through in June, and a report appeared in the \"Straits Times\". I then received a telephone call asking me whether I would be willing to undertake War Crimes prosecution. I agreed readily as it offered me an opportunity to get in some legal work before demobilization, and I was appointed Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General. I cut my teeth as prosecutor on a case which arose out of atrocities in the Andaman Islands, and which ended with a death sentence, and several terms of imprisonment.\n\nLists had been prepared of major criminals in Germany and Japan to be charged (mainly) with plotting aggressive war, and these major trials took place in Nuremberg and Tokyo. At the 1945 Potsdam Conference the procedure for all war crimes trials was worked out in detail. A modified military law would be followed procedurally allowing some flexibility for the introduction of affidavit evidence. For the major", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213641, "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-1995", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "212\n\nTarlar\n\nGarrison\n\n+\n\nMILITARY SKETCH\n\nof the Attack on the Chinese Position before\n\nCHAPOO.\n\non the 13 May 1842.\n\nDrawn by Lieutts Randall & Johnston\n\nof the Madras Engineers.\n\nCITY of CHAPOO\n\nChinese Forces entrenched.\n\nBritish Troops.\n\nNaval Brigade\n\n4. Inshorego\n\nPlan of Attack", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214113, "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-1997", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "150\n\neve of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In recent years visits have also been paid to such destinations as Taiwan, Vietnam and various parts of China.\n\nBefore looking in greater detail at what the Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) does, let us review briefly the history of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS 1979).\n\nHistory\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in London in 1823, and it received its Charter of Incorporation as a Royal Society the following year. It is the oldest and most important learned society of its kind in Europe, and it is the doyen of societies promoting the study of Asia. Its membership has included generations of eminent scholars and explorers with a deep understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has, however, always been carried out through its branches and affiliated societies. Branches were formed in such places as Bombay and Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878 and the Korean in 1900 (RAS1979: 15). Such countries as Japan and Korea were never, of course, part of the British Empire, and, in any case, British territory today is reduced to a few small pink dots on the map; such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. Thus the RAS can now be thought of, very much, as an international organisation rather than as being purely British.\n\nAlthough the Hong Kong Branch was first established in 1847, it ran into difficulties and, consequently, ceased to exist after the end of 1859. It was, nevertheless, resuscitated a century later (Hayes 1997: 129).\n\nAchievements\n\nGoing back to the middle of the last century, although the Branch was comparatively short-lived, it was nonetheless productive. With its emphasis on practical projects one of the most conspicuous notches in its belt must have been the proposal that a piece of land be requested", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214423, "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-1998", "page_number": 281, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "247\n\nTHE STORY OF STANLEY FORT\n\nBrief History\n\nR.G. HORSNELL\n\nThere seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village), Tytam Bay. The English name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3 field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of fever within the Hong Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate 20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable, nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures which formerly had been used in the very early days.\n\nThe present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings:\n\n1 Barrack Block\n\n1 Sergeant's Mess\n\n1 Dining Room and Cookhouse\n\n1 Bath House\n\n1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214562, "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-1998", "page_number": 420, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "389\n\nI append a copy of the inscriptions on the two monuments in question with a list of the other headstones in the same locality which may possibly prove useful for future reference.\n\nAppended to the report was a copy of a list of gravestones within the British cemetery in Dinghai also recorded during the visit of the individual who wrote the report. It came as somewhat of a surprise to us to note the number of graves of wives and children of British soldiers as we had assumed that during the two short assaults on Zhoushan in 1842 and 1857, and the several years of occupation British soldiers were without their dependants, because of the remoteness of China from the more permanent British bases.\n\nList of Monuments in British Graveyard\n\nat Chusan\n\n1. Monument to 55th Regt.\n\n2. Captain Colin Campbell\n\n3. Commander Harmer, H.M.S. Driver\n\n4. Eliza Woods and infant son wife of Sergeant Woods.\n\n5. Captain Hopton Steward of\n\nix Regt. Madras Native Infantry.\n\n6. Wife of Quarter Master Perl Royal Irish Regiment.\n\n7. Corporal M. Gleeson 98th Regt.\n\n8. Sergt. Blake, 98th Regt.\n\n9. Infant daughter of Sergt. Cobden\n\n10. Mrs. Gregory, wife of Lieut Colonel Gregory 98th Regt.\n\nPage 420\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214832, "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "214\n\nForce conceded that there were reasons for beginning hostilities against China, whilst others were openly critical of a war opened on behalf of opium traders, badly treated or not.\n\nAn anonymous military writer in Colburn's United Service Magazine observed bitterly at the time that \"the poor Chinese - with their painted paste-board boats - must submit to be poisoned, or must be massacred by the thousand, for supporting their own laws in their own land.\" Another military officer, Lieutenant John Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers in his history of the War, conceded: \"That the quarrel was an unhappy one and for many reasons to be deeply deplored, does not admit of a doubt.\"\n\nAt the same time, Ouchterlony introduced a wider consideration for his readers. However plausible the view taken in England by those opposed to a war which, as they thought, was being undertaken to enforce the opium traffic, it was, he said, “on our part just and unavoidable\" due to the \"vindictiveness and insufferable arrogance of the Chinese government\" during the past half-century. \"The opium question,\" to his mind, was to be \"regarded merely as a spark blown into a mine, and no more to be considered the primary cause of the war than the match which ignites the train...\" This was a view shared by another young officer, Lieut. Wyndham Charles Baker of the Madras Engineers, as we see from one of his published home letters.\n\nNot all their brother officers were convinced. The naval surgeon Edward Cree, was more concerned with the results of the War. Noting in his journal for Monday 29th [August] 1842 that \"the articles of the treaty [were] signed this day,\" he commented:\n\n“So ends the Chinese War. About the justice and policy of it I leave to more competent judges, but one thing I dislike in connection with it is the opium question. It has cost the lives of many thousands of human beings, and great destruction of property and misery and sorrow to many.\n\nWaging War in European Style\n\n11\n\nIn official circles in Britain, China's Court and Government were blamed for bringing on the War. Perhaps because of this, the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214842, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "224\n\nseemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that \"all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns.\"\n\n50\n\nThere was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few.\"5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China \"this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that \"it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world.\"54\n\n53\n\nNone of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies\" for their opponents,55 and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,\"56 but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows,\" \"Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians\" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as \"the Chinese\" or \"Chinamen.\" Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.\n\nIn short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57\n\nThese facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215042, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "94\n\nWei, and saw active service in the Third China War, \"The Boxer Rising\" [10 June-31 December 1900]. In 1901 he was posted to South Africa to serve with the mounted infantry, taking part in operations in Cape Colony and the Transvaal [December] and the Orange Free State (January to May 1902]. From 1904 to 1908 he was appointed as Inspector of Chinese Labour in the Transvaal. He was the Military Secretary to the Governor of Madras in 1907, and in May 1914 he transferred to the Reserve of Officers with the rank of Major, but was recalled in August 1914 serving again with the DLI before being transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and then transferring back again to the infantry, commanding 17th Battalion of the King's [Liverpool] Regiment [Pals] before being severely wounded and gassed at Trones Wood in July 1916, being invalided home in early August 1916 aboard the Asturias. He was again gassed, after returning to France on the night of the 29th July 1917 at Guillemont. He established the HQ for the CLC at Noyelles in 1917, staying at the villa, with an unusual name of “Daisy Cottage\", serving as GHQ Adviser Chinese Labour, from 1917 to 1919. During World War II he was a Zone Commander for the Yorkshire Home Guard and died on 24 January 1950 at the age of 76.\n\n4 pai is a section and tou is a head or boss.\n\nDecauville was a French company that manufactured a portable light railway system much used by the military. It was almost a full-size [but narrow gauge] railway system which could be laid down and picked up like the old model toy train sets.\n\n• The difference between Male and Female tanks was based on the type of weapons they carried. Male tanks, like \"Fan-tan,” carried a pair of 57mm cannon, one on each side, together with two or three auxiliary machine-guns. Female tanks only carried machine-guns, two each side and one at the front which, in First World War terms made them more dangerous than their male counterparts. [The female being deadlier than the male!]\n\nNumbers after names or in the text refer to the man's service number.\n\n* Demeestrere, Matthieu : article in a French magazine\n\nth Mellor, Norman: With the Chinese Labour Corps - France 1918\n\n10 The CWGC, in a written reply to the author, stated that the fifth phrase used on CLC headstones is translated as \"True till death\", but the characters used would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215387, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "TERAKR Bar: A XXS NAVAR\n\n2001 * 12 9 14ÜIADAVKUGAN\n\nCharles Pinker RL.\n\nDavid Blur (Anne) A A\n\nAlexandra Blair' AL\n\nAndrew Blau\n\n113\n\nThe descendants of Sir Frederick Lugard, the Pinker and Blair families, have generously agreed to present The Tribute on permanent loan to the University of Hong Kong. Members of the family attending the presentation ceremony on Friday December 14, 2001, and representing Major Richard Pinker, include (with their relationship to Sir Frederick Lugard):\n\nMr Charles Pinker (great great nephew)\n\nMrs David Blair (Anne) (great great niece)\n\nMiss Alexandra Blair' (great great great niece)\n\nMr Andrew Blair (great great great nephew)\n\n盧押在香港\n\nLugard in Hong Kong\n\n1858 年 1 月 22 日\n\n(Fort St George, Madras)\n\n教士,他出任香港總督一職前,擔任英國\n\nRoyal Niger Company 工作的經歷,使他在 1900 年至 1906 年間出任尼日利亞高級專員。\n\n## 1902 年 Flora Shaw 與 Lugard 結婚\n\n...\n\n旅行家、作家,曾擔任倫敦《泰晤士報》殖民地編輯。\n\n由於 Flora 的健康問題,盧押辭去尼日利亞高級專員的工作,離開當地,並於 1907 年後接受任命為香港總督。\n\n盧押在香港的工作及功績並不屬於本文介紹的範圍。但值得一提的是九廣鐵路通車和香港大學的成立,是他任內發生的重要事件。\n\nFrederick John Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger, was born of missionary parents on January 22, 1858 at Fort St George, Madras, India.\n\nBy the time he arrived as Governor of Hong Kong, his work and exploits in Africa on behalf of the British Army, the British East Africa Company, the Royal Niger Company and the Colonial Office were legendary. He was High Commissioner of Nigeria from 1900 to 1906. In 1902, he married Flora Shaw, herself a great traveller and writer and Colonial Editor of The Times of London until the end of the 19th century.\n\nBecause of Flora's health and her inability to be with him in his colonial posting, Lugard resigned his post and left Nigeria. However, he accepted the Governorship of Hong Kong in 1907.\n\nLugard as perceived by the cartoonist \"Spy\" in Vanity Fair's \"Men of the Day\" series, December 19, 1895\n\nThe events which followed and Lugard's role and achievements in the life of the Colony are mostly beyond the scope of this introduction to The Tribute. They would, however, include the opening of the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the foundation of The University of Hong Kong.\n\nMiss Blair, who is the assistant foreign editor of The Times of London, continues a family association with the newspaper begun by Flora Lugard.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215736, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "around the world where full sets of our Journal are available to scholars.\n\nMembers will have seen, in the Newsletter, a growing amount of information about the activities of a number of these other Societies, information reaching us as a direct result of the improved communications we have been seeking. I am glad to say that we have been able to get into improved communication in particular with three of the Branch Societies in India, that is, those in Madras (the Madras Literary Society), Bombay (the Asiatic Society of Bombay), and Calcutta (the Asiatic Society of Bengal), and with those in Colombo (The Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch), Kuala Lumpur (the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society), and Seoul (the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch). All these Societies have agreed to welcome our Members to any of the events they mount, and we in turn have been very happy to offer Members of these Societies temporarily visiting Hong Kong access to our activities on the same terms as our own Members. We have also improved our contacts with the Siam Society, in Bangkok, and, again, we are now offering their Members access to our events on the same terms as our own Members. We have also been in regular communication with the Parent Society in London. We have not been able to contact the Branch Society in Tokyo as yet, and any Member able to help us in this respect should contact me.\n\nAs part of our drive to improve relationships with these other Branch and Associated Societies we have agreed to donate sets of our Journal to the Madras, Bombay, and Bangkok Societies, in return for sets of their Journals, which will be placed in our Library. Exchange arrangements with the Parent Branch in London, and with the Korea, Calcutta, Malaysia, and Ceylon Branches are also in place. We have also recently agreed an exchange arrangement with the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, Sweden.\n\nFollowing the agreement of Members at the Extraordinary General Meeting of the Society on 4 October 2002, that the Society should have a new category of Member, that is Honorary Institutional Member, we have agreed in the subsequent months to make the Shanghai Library; the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives; the Zhong-ying Street Historical Museum, Sha Tau Kok (Shenzhen); the National Library, Bhutan; the British Empire Museum, Bristol, England; and the Instituto Cultural of Macau Honorary Institutional Members of the Society. In\n\nxxvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215793, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "25\n\n225\n\nCady, John F, 1964, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development, McGraw Hill, New York\n\nCameron, J. (1865) 1965, Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India, Kuala Lumpur\n\nCampbell, Persia Cranford, 1923, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries within the British Empire, PS King & Son, London\n\nCavenagh, O, 1844, Reminiscences of an Indian Official, London\n\nCavenagh, O, 1867, Report on the Progress of the Straits Settlements from 1859 - 60 to 1866 - 67, Singapore\n\nChan, Helena H M, 1986, An Introduction to the Singapore Legal System, Malayan Law Journal Pte Ltd, Singapore\n\nChiang Hai Ding, 1966, 'The Origins of the Malayan Currency System', JMBRAS, xxxix, no 1, 1-18\n\nCollis, Maurice, 1966, Raffles, Faber and Faber, London\n\nComber, Leon, 1961, The Traditional Mysteries of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, Eastern Universities Press, Singapore\n\nCoupland, Sir Reginald, 1946, Raffles of Singapore, Collins, London\n\nCowan, 1950, 'Early Penang and the Rise of Singapore 1805 - 1832', JMBRAS, xxiii\n\nCoyajee, JC, 1930, The Indian Currency System, Madras\n\nCrawfurd, J, 1967, History of the Indian Archipelago, Cass, London\n\nDavidson, G F, 1846, Trade and Travel in the Far East, London\n\nDesai, Tripta, 1984, The East India Company, A Brief Survey from 1599 to 1857, Kanak Publications, New Delhi\n\nDe Vere Allen, J, 1968, \"The Colonial Office and the Malay States, 1867 - 73', JMBRAS, xxxvi, no 1, 1 – 36", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216128, "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": 427, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "361\n\nTHE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nJ. L.Y. CHAN\n\nIn the early days of Empire, when western institutions permeated around the world as a result of colonisation in the nineteenth century, libraries were among the first community organisations established wherever foreign settlements developed. Some of the libraries began as informal shared collections of reading materials, but a few developed a specialty of publications providing sources of information about the host country and its culture. This paper traces the development of the Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, its progress and growth since inception, and addresses some of the concerns faced by the Library.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society\n\nThe establishment of the Asiatic Society dates back to 1784 when a group of interested traders, missionaries, diplomats and administrators founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. This provided the impetus for the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society in London (now known as the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland) in March 1823 which again gave rise to the founding of other branches, in Bombay and Madras in 1838, in Ceylon in 1845, in Japan in 1875, in Malaya in 1878, and in Korea in 1900. In China, two branches were established, the Hong Kong Branch (formerly named the China Branch) started in 1847 followed by the North China Branch in Shanghai in 1857/58. The aim of the Royal Asiatic Society and its branches is \"... investigation of the subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia.\" As such, they serve as fora for discussion and greater understanding of Asian culture.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had actually grown out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society which was founded in 1845, initially constituted as the China Branch in January 1847 with the effort of Sir John F. Davis, the then Governor, himself a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Due to dissent and feuds within the trading community in Hong Kong, the China Branch collapsed in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216348, "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-2003", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "56\n\n80 Macartney's Journal, January 1794. See (editor) Cranmer-Byng, J.L.(1962). An Embassy to China, Being the Journal kept by Lord Macartney during his Embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung 1793-1794. London, Longmans, p.215.\n\n#1\n\nOuchterlony, Lieutenant John (1844). The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London, Saunders and Otley, p.37. Wyndham Baker of the Madras Engineers wrote home: \"I have read every work I can get hold of concerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress\". Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from (1964) An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842, Blackwood's, p. 80.\n\n$2 Levien, Michael Levien. (Edited and with an Introduction by). The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856. Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981, p.117.\n\n* This section should be read in conjunction with my article (1999-2000). \"That Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country': Opinions on China, the Chinese, and the ‘Opium War' among British Naval and Military Officers who Served During Hostilities There, in JHKBRAS Vol.39, pp.211-233.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216407, "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-2003", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "116\n\nJapanese cruiser YAHAGI11 was due to arrive at 2200 hours that evening.\n\nIn the interim the freighter MADRAS MARU2 arrived. She attempted a rescue operation but this was not successful. Indeed the seas were so high that it was not even possible to contemplate sending the nine survivors across to her for repatriation to Japan.\n\nSince all these Japanese flag ships had appeared or were due to appear at the scene of the grounding Captain Mackinnon informed NASHI that he would sail for Hong Kong that afternoon, and take with him the nine men. Later he was to write:\n\n'Many friendly and complimentary flag signals were exchanged with all ships present, including the wreck. At 1700 I proceeded to Hong Kong leaving the Japanese destroyer NASHI in charge of the situation.'\n\nOn Saturday 7 November HERMES returned to her buoy at Hong Kong and a short while later the nine rescued seamen were landed ashore.\n\nIt is pleasant to be able to record that in due course official thanks were rendered by the Japanese minister of foreign affairs, Baron Kijuro Shidehara. His letter was addressed to the British ambassador to Tokyo, H.E. Sir Francis Oswald Lindley who forwarded these thanks to the Foreign Office in London from where, in turn, they were passed to the Secretary to the Admiralty.\n\nA year later, on 6th December 1932 at Hong Kong, the C. in C. came onboard our ship to present Lloyds Silver Medals to the three officers, and Bronze Medals to the six ratings who had taken part in the rescue. Also a bronze shield, mounted on a wooden base, was presented to the ship by the Committee of Lloyds.\n\nIn December 1931 an epidemic of diphtheria struck Hong Kong. Amongst those taken ill was Captain Mackinnon. Commander Baxter temporarily assumed command until the arrival of the ship's new commanding officer, Captain W.B. Mackenzie, on 25th February 1932.\n\nCaptain Mackinnon duly returned home and on 21 January 1933", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216477, "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-2003", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "186\n\nalthough for the first few years after their wedding, the family home remained in Suffolk while he went to sea. It was in the village of Hoxne that their eldest son Robert Benjamin was born in 1860 to be followed by Emily Ada in 1864. Young Samuel came along in 1866 after the family had moved to Framlingham and was given the second name Cornell. It would appear from an entry in Harriet Plant's New Ladies' Memorandum Book 1829 in which she recorded important family events, that Cornell was a family name, possibly the maiden name of her mother or Samuel's mother. One entry records a visit to Chedburgh, a village in Suffolk, by a Mr and Mrs TH Cornell. Whatever the origin, Cornell was the name by which he was known throughout his life both inside and outside the family. Cornell's younger brother Charles Henry was born in 1870 and it was not long after that time that the family moved to London and into a house in Tottenham. Perhaps this move away from the country into the big city came about as a result of Samuel Plant's promotion to becoming a ship's master.\n\nIn 1881 he was in command of the Iron Ship Reigate, made of iron but powered by sail, for the trade with India. It so happened that the 1881 Census took place on the very day that Reigate was in Middlesbrough when, in addition to Captain and crew, those on board included Harriet Plant, the Master's wife, with Cornell and Charles, the Master's sons, all shown as passengers. But in truth, none of them were passengers - the 14-year-old Cornell had joined the ship for his first voyage while his mother and brother were there to see him off.\n\nThe start of a life at sea\n\nThe Reigate set sail from Middlesborough in early May, 1881 for the long passage round the Cape of Good Hope to Madras with no stops along the way. This was young Cornell's introduction to a life at sea and being a dutiful son, he spent some time every Sunday writing a few paragraphs of a voyage letter to his mother in strong, well-formed copper plate writing. It is a remarkably well written letter for a fourteen-year-old young man that now forms part of the Plant Archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Although the letter is in good condition, the writing on one side of the paper occasionally obscures the writing on the other side but it is still clear enough to make a full transcription. The letter is almost 2,000 words long but the following extracts give some idea of the young man who wrote them and the dramatic events that he experienced.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216479, "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-2003", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "188\n\nnight instead of walking the poop wet through with it blowing and raining hard. This week I began to learn to steer the ship. This week too we crossed the line.\n\nJuly 10th. My Dear Mother, You will have heard this sad, sad news long before my letter reaches you. I am very much afraid dear Mother that it has nearly killed you. It was a terrible blow for me, much more so for you. On Saturday morning July 2nd when I came on deck dear Father was looking quite well and walking the poop as usual. At II o'clock he was at the wheel and suddenly took ill and he fell down the companion ladder and hit his head. The 2nd Mate and David were there as soon as he fell and David came running forward and told the Mate what had happened. The Mate and I immediately ran aft and found my dear Father at the bottom of the ladder with blood coming from his head. The Mate immediately stopped the blood and got him into bed, bathed his head with cold water and poured a teaspoonful of brandy down his throat and did everything a man could to bring him to. But dear Father did not come to. His heart beat violently. He laboured very much in breathing and he shook violently, I had one of his hands in mine to keep it warm. After being in bed a while he grew warm and we thought he was better but he never opened his eyes or spoke and his breath became shorter and he laboured more. At a quarter past one our dear poor Father died without the slightest expression of pain quite calm. He never spoke or opened his eyes once the whole time. Anything that could be done was done to save him but God took him away from us. He had a very calm and peaceful expression on his face and I kissed him once for each of us and cut a lock of his hair from his head which I enclose in the letter for you dear mother.\n\nThe Mate, David and myself were by his bed when he died and when the 2nd Mate, carpenter, steward and sailmaker called in to see him everybody cried. The men forward were deeply touched. Something with me tells me that dear father has gone to heaven and is in a far better place.\n\nThe Reigate arrived at Madras some five weeks later on Sunday 7th August and Captain Samuel Plant's body was taken ashore in the afternoon and buried at six o'clock the following morning in the cemetery behind the Sailor's Home. Cornell Plant's letter goes on to describe these events and his feelings about them including his determination to continue his life at sea. Harriet Plant put the lock of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]