[ { "id": 204251, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n16\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nChristian centuries of the new states of South-east Asia, formed under Indian influence in Indo-China, Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula.\n\nDuring the Middle Ages the navigation of the Southern Seas was in the hands of the Arabs. But after the rounding of the Cape, direct contact between Europe and the East by sea was restored. It was mainly by the sea-route that India, China, and South-east Asia became known to modern Europe. In this the Portuguese navigators played an all-important part. Passing over the rivalries of the Western nations we come to the days of the East India Company.\n\nIn India the Moghul empire had reached its height, fine examples of its art remaining in the Moghul architecture of Pakistan and North-west India, and Moghul miniature painting. But with the Moghul Moslem law had come to India, and it was soon recognized by the East India Company that the study of Moslem languages was necessary for the government of India. So Islamics now became part of the study of India as of Persia.\n\nIn 1783 Sir William Jones, a brilliant linguist who had mastered Persian and Arabic during his student days in England, was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. In 1784 he proposed the forming of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and became its first President. Becoming aware of the importance of Sanskrit, he became the founder of Sanskrit studies in the West. In accordance with Warren Hastings' decision in 1776 that Indians should be ruled by their own laws, he undertook the immense task of compiling a complete digest of Moslem and Hindu law, a task which he left unfinished at his death eleven years later.\n\nIt was from India that the Western study of Tibet commenced, initiated by Catholic missionaries, of whom the most eminent was Desideri who lived for many years in the great Sera monastery at Lhasa, and wrote the first comprehensive account of Tibet.\n\nMeantime the Jesuit missionaries had proceeded eastwards in the wake of the Portuguese to Malacca, Macau and Japan. It was from Macau that Matthew Ricci entered China in 1580 and in course of time reached Peking, where a beginning was made in the study of the Chinese Classics and Histories, which led to the first real knowledge of Chinese civilization in the West. It was now realized that the 'China' at the end of the sea-route was the same as Marco Polo's 'Cathay'.\n\nAt the beginning of the nineteenth century modern Sinology commenced with Robert Morrison at Canton, and continued with a number of able scholars, too numerous to mention here, of whom James Legge with his translation of the Chinese Classics into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204737, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n29\n\na communication from them in which they state that orders had been transmitted for the return of the cooks, coolies, and compradores to our service. Johnston also states that at noon of the 12th he had ordered up to Chumpee the following vessels, Jane, Ariel, Lady Grant, Ruparell, Mithras and Mermaid with their cargoes for immediate delivery. He says that the mandarins did not give any trouble from too close investigation.\n\n10 p.m. Our compradore came in to see us at 9 and has just gone away, there appears to be a difficulty in returning to the Factories. Bonds are required by the officers which involve them in great responsibility, and he says many will not grant them and consequently will not return to the service of foreigners.\n\nMonday, 15 April, 1839\n\nThere are about 30 sailors, English, American, Malay, and Bengalee in Canton who happened to be here when the communication with the shipping was cut off and consequently could not get down to their ships. Four belong to H.B.M. Sloop Larne, who came up with Captain Elliot. They afford the Chinese a good deal of sport by their antics in the Square every afternoon. Yesterday afternoon one of them climbed up to the top of the American flagstaff, a height of about one hundred feet, much to the astonishment of our guard. In fact it was quite a feat; he had no assistance except from the cleats nailed at long intervals to the mast.\n\n16th April\n\nTwo of our coolies have been with us for two or three days, and we have transferred to them the duties of setting table, washing dishes and plates, sweeping, making beds and so forth which we have been, in common with all foreigners, obliged to submit to for more than three weeks past.\n\n16th April, 1839*\n\nYoung Tom's purser A Heang came in today and reported that he had received a letter from his partner dated at the Bogue which communicated the fact of a boat with 100 chests of opium and a Chinese officer in charge having disappeared. No one knew where she had gone, it was supposed that during bad weather that had been experienced she had foundered.\n\n* The journal contains two separate entries for 16th April.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205782, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "82\n\nKING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN\n\nROBERT BRUCE*\n\nWhen Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning.\n\nThe Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation.\n\nForce had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had\n\n* This article, entitled \"King Mongkut of Siam\", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968.\n\nMr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205784, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "84 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China \n\na little \n\noff the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. \n\nBy 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that \"a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude\". Their policy was one of conciliation. \"All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations\" the Company declared, \"... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit\". \n\nAs well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as \"slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: \n\n“On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little.\" \n\nTo remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205785, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n85\n\nCrawfurd obtained neither better relations nor easier trading conditions. What is more he was received by King Rama II's officials in a most ungenerous manner. Dr. George Finlayson, the Scots medical officer and naturalist on board their ship the John Adam records this impression of the dwelling given to the mission by the Siamese: \"A habitation was provided for the British envoy, a miserable place, an out-house with four small, ill-ventilated rooms, approached through a trap-door from below...\" An official of low rank was sent to them. All he wanted was presents for the King. Finlayson goes on: \"In the urgency to obtain and the frequency of the demands of the Court for the gifts there was a degree of meanness and avidity at once disgusting and disgraceful\". The King seems to have been petty as well as rude. On one occasion the Foreign Minister called on Crawfurd to help retrieve two pairs of \"ordinary glass lamps\" on which the King had set his heart. The lamps had been promised, said the Foreign Minister, to His Majesty and sold by a member of the John Adam's crew to somebody else!\n\nFortunately the Crawfurd mission was not treated in such a mean manner throughout all its four months' stay at Bangkok. Dignity was restored by a Royal audience and there was much friendly talk. But he got no improvement in either trade or diplomacy. Crawfurd also tried to get the Siamese to accept a Consul and to obtain exemption for British merchants and crews from the harsh justice of Siam's law, but in these matters he had no success. He comments in his account of the Mission: \"If the subjects of a free and civilised Government resort to a barbarous and despotic country, there is no remedy but submission to its laws, however absurd or arbitrary\".\n\nFour years later, in 1826, the East India Company sent another mission to Bangkok. By this time the first campaign against the Burmese had been fought and won and there was a new king on the throne of Siam, Mongkut's half brother, Rama III. The mission was led by Captain Henry Burney, a nephew of Fanny Burney and military secretary to the Governor of Penang. He was much more successful than Crawfurd and came away with a treaty which somewhat improved matters. The Burney Treaty did not, however, go very far. It obtained a certain amount of goodwill regarding the frontier and the Malay States but Kedah was still accepted as Siam's vassal. Trade was to be free and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n99\n\nsources the bestness and most curiosity of the new breach-loading cannon invented by Sir William Armstrong I was eagerly desirous of obtaining one small gun for my own enjoyment or play to see the power and curiosity and usefulness etc. thereof.....\"6\n\nHe was too fond of women but he is said to have treated his wives well and to have loved all his enormous nursery of children. If his harem may be regarded as a mark of eastern backwardness in a changing world his social and economic reforms vastly outweighed this defect. Mongkut was the pioneer in the modernisation of Siam. He had vision for the future of his country. Harry Parkes writing on the negotiations records this impression of the man:\n\n\"I was fortunate in securing and maintaining the friendship of the First King who listened to several of my propositions even against the will of his Ministers. He is really an enlightened man.... It is scarcely a matter of surprise that he should be capricious and at times not easily guided but he entered into the treaty well aware of its force and meaning and is determined, I believe, as far as in him lies, to execute faithfully all his engagements which are certainly of the most liberal nature.\"\n\nThe \"force and meaning\" of the Treaty was the opening of Siam to western commerce and ideas, social and economic reform and her continued independence. Balanced between competing empires, Siam accepted reform and western influence and by yielding, averted domination.\n\nThe circumstances of Mongkut's death were typical of the King. He predicted an eclipse of the sun in 1868 and made elaborate arrangements to observe the event. He chose a place far to the south, near the Malay States, and invited Sir Harry Ord, Governor of the Straits Settlements, his officials and their ladies to attend. Invitations had gone to Paris to send French scientists. A palace and residences for the distinguished visitors were built, and quantities of European food and wine were brought to this remote spot. The King with his suite of nobles and their wives sailed south for the occasion. Mongkut's prediction was right, and at the last moment the clouds cleared to reveal the eclipse. The foreign visitors were much impressed and Mongkut\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205966, "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-1970", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n41\n\nsioners was introduced for the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and Ceylon Civil Services; and in 1882, a combined examination was instituted, successful candidates being given a choice of colonies, so that the members of these three civil services were now to some extent regarded as interchangeable. In 1896 the examination was joined to that for the Home and Indian Civil Services; and the Federated Malay States, which had retained the nomination system, was also included. This arrangement lasted until 1932, when Sir Ralph Furse, who believed in the policy of selection by interview, finally succeeded in obtaining for his office control over the selection of candidates for Ceylon, Hong Kong and Malaya. However, university men continued to supply the vast majority of the eastern cadetships even after that date; and the Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1939 informs us that 'whilst a university degree is not an absolutely indispensable qualification the candidates selected for Administrative appointments in the last few years have nearly all been in possession of a University Degree, usually with honours. The few exceptions have been in cases where a candidate has had some special qualification'.23\n\nThe Hong Kong cadet scheme underwent several internal changes over time, although the principle of recruitment from England by competitive examination remained unchanged until 1932. The first three recruits, who pioneered the scheme, were given quarters in the Central School House during their probationary period and learned their Chinese, which was Cantonese, from teachers recruited locally by Government. In 1872, Sir Arthur Kennedy established a Board of Examiners, charged with the duty of examining Government officers drawing a Chinese teacher's allowance, and with issuing certificates of proficiency in colloquial Chinese to European and Indian police constables; but before that date cadets had been examined by an ad hoc committee. To save expense, Sir Arthur Kennedy, Governor 1872 - 1877, stopped the recruitment of cadets from England, and in 1875 even suggested dropping the scheme altogether; but this was not accepted by the Colonial Office. The Secretary of State arranged in 1875 for Eastern cadets to remain in England usually for a year and study Chinese at Oxford under Dr. James Legge though, as we have seen above, there were no candidates for Hong Kong at this particular time. This arrangement proved", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205974, "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-1970", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n49\n\nThe staffing situation improved between 1897 and 1901 and 12 more cadets were recruited from England, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States including Reginald Fleming Johnston, Cecil Clementi, A. G. M. Fletcher,50 and Geoffrey Norman Orme. The incorporation of the New Territories into the Colony meant that more recruits would be needed for district administration and as members of the Land Court set up to determine thorny problems of land ownership and tenancy.52 However, 17 cadets were recruited between 1901 and the end of 1914. There were losses of course: notably the gifted Stewart Lockhart who was transferred in 1902 to Wei-hai-wei as H.M.'s Commissioner, and the equally gifted R. F. Johnston who was also transferred to Wei-hai-wei as District Officer in 1904.\n\nA posting in the New Territories provided for some younger cadets an escape-hatch that removed them from office life in the Colonial Secretariat and other departments in the Central District. Service in the New Territories, a mainly agricultural area dotted with small village communities and small market towns, had more in common with colonial service in Africa and South-East Asia, and the cadet was left comparatively free to go his own way, lead an open-air life and exercise judicious authority. The job demanded initiative, stamina, and magisterial skills; and, if one is to believe Mr. Austin Coates,54 a cadet at a much later date, it was a deeply rewarding life which allowed a cadet to become involved in the lives of simple people, farmers and fishermen, small shopkeepers and craftsmen. Certainly, the report of the District Officers for the New Territories, such as those written by Stewart Carne Ross, have a little more colour than the stilted administrative reports presented annually by heads of departments.\n\nBy the 1920s cadets had become entrenched in most government departments and they filled all the senior posts in the Colonial Secretariat, the directing and co-ordinating agency of government. The exceptions were some departments, such as the Medical and Sanitary Services, Public Works, the Royal Observatory, and Marine Department, which necessitated at the top someone with specialist knowledge. The Inspector General of Police (also in charge of the Fire Brigade), the Director of Education, the Postmaster General, and the Superintendent of Imports and Exports, however, were all cadets, but not the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205978, "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-1970", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n53\n\n19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937.\n\n21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health.\n\n22 James Legge \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173.\n\n23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: \"The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”.\n\n24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912.\n\n25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: \"Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings\".\n\n26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5.\n\n27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6,\n\n-55", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205989, "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-1970", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "64\n\nCOLONEL V. R. BURKHARDT\n\nThe main points of Walker's report are that its location was the Happy Valley—now entirely built up—and that the plant on which the insect fed was Buddleia asiatica. Its flight resembled that of one of the Hesperiidae, and that it fed vibrating the wings all the time, with its long tails elevated and quivering. The earliest date he recorded it was on 15th February, 1892, and a fine series was taken on 12th March. In 1893 it was scarce, and did not appear before 2nd April.\n\nNothing is said about the larval stages, or the food plant, but Steven Corbet in his Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula, mentioning an allied species Leptocircus meges, states that its larva has been found in Hong Kong on Illigera cordata: in general appearance it is like a Papilio larva, being dark greenish-brown at first, and then changing to dark apple green. The pupa is attached to the upper surface of a leaf of the food plant.\n\nSince 1950 very few collectors in Hong Kong appear to have captured Lamproptera curius and only two instances have been brought to my notice prior to 1957. Lt. Col. J. Eliot took one female near Sai Kung on 2nd May, 1953, and another was secured by the wife of a member of the University staff.\n\nAll butterflies have their cycles of abundance and scarcity, though their incidence has yet to be determined, and 1957 was evidently a peak year for Lamproptera curius. Two collectors, Messrs. R. A. U. Todd and J. Hackney, on 9th June, found the insect swarming in a gully in the centre of the New Territories. Their description of the flight, like dragonflies, tallies with the observations of Commander Walker. The insects were feeding on wild buddleia, and rested between flights with spread wings on fern. Abundant larvae were also noted, but were not taken as they were thought to belong to one of the commoner Papilionidae. On a later visit on 6th July Mr. Todd brought in seven larvae in various stages, with an ample supply of the food plant. This is Illigera platyandra (Dunn) a tough vine with triple pointed leaves growing at intervals of about four inches. The larvae ranged in length from 9 mm to the full fed at 26 mm, which pupated on the following day.\n\nIn the early stages the larva is black over the thorax narrowing above the prolegs, and broadening out again over the tail. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206074, "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-1970", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n149\n\nalso wear headdresses and tails to resemble dogs and they have a legend about their descent from a dog. This legend, as reproduced in the later Han history, is as follows. An emperor who wished to subjugate a certain chieftain offered his youngest daughter in marriage to anyone who would bring him his head. After this proclamation one of his pet dogs brought a man's head and laid it in front of the throne. It proved to be the head of the enemy. The princess then insisted that she should be married to the dog and the Emperor was forced to comply. The princess was taken by the dog to a stone fortress in a mountain in Hunan. There she changed her mode of living, discarded her Chinese clothes and wore a strange head-dress. She bore six children. They made bark clothes which they dyed with various grass juices. They cut them with a tail behind. They lived in the mountains. Their descendants multiplied and are known as the Man I\n\nMan and I are Chinese terms for barbarians. Man, as we have seen, is applied locally to the Hoklo, but it can represent a barbarian of South China in general. It generally represents Tibetan or western barbarians. When Chao T'o, one of the chiefs of the Canton estuary, made himself independent in the Han dynasty, he called himself \"King of the Man and I\". Since the Yao have the same dog myth as the Man I, there is a likelihood that this people were partly composed of Yao and partly of Indonesian stock.\n\nIt is only possible to take such broad distinctions as the Chinese historians allow. There were in ancient South China two types. One the \"dragon myth\" peoples, primarily in Fukien, using boats with eyes painted on the bows, and designated by many names Min Man Tan and so on with the radical for serpent or dragon. The other a mountain people with a \"dog myth\" stretched from the confines of Tibet to South China and included the Yao. The former may be of Indonesian and the latter of Tibetan stock.\n\nOne problem must still be mentioned. The presence of a very early Negrito population in South China is suspected. Negrito dwarfs are still found in Cochin China, the Malay States, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa and in the history of the Liang dynasty occurs the following text:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206295, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "106\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nStill another son of the Rev. Ho Fuk Tong, Ho Shan Yow (ii) was a student of law. In 1897 he was a member of the ambassadorial staff of his brother-in-law, Wu Ting Fang, and became Consul-General in San Francisco, where he promoted the organization of the Chinese American Commercial Company capitalized at a million dollars.\n\nThe eldest daughter of Ho Fuk Tong, Ho Mui Ling, married Ng Choy (1) alias Wu Ting Fang (14), a young graduate of St. Paul's College. Ng Choy's father was a business man who spent some years at Singapore where he became a Christian and married a Malay woman. He returned to Canton where he put his two eldest sons, Afat and Akwong, into the Boarding School of the Presbyterian Mission. In 1851, when the California gold-fever was rampant in Kwang Tung, Ng Afat was the ringleader in stirring up the students of the school to rebel against the hold the school had over them due to bonds their parents had signed guaranteeing that their sons would stay in the school until their education was completed. The students resented being held to this agreement as they wished to try their fortune in the gold-fields. The school authorities found it necessary to dismiss Afat. He came to Hong Kong and was employed as clerk in the Police Magistracy. His brother Akwong was a more tractable student and successfully completed his course of studies. After leaving school, he too came to Hong Kong and was for a short time an Interpreter in the Harbour Master's Office, but then about 1864 became the General Manager of the Chinese edition (Chung Ngoi San Po) of The Daily Press. The Wu family was interested in promoting Chinese journalism. The obituary notice of Mr. Chiu Yu Tsun, (The Daily Press, 12 June 1908), the editor of the Chung Ngoi San Po, states that when he joined the staff of the paper in 1873 it was \"under the management of the present Chinese Minister to Washington H. E. Wu Ting Fang and his brother the late Mr. Ng Chan\". When Ng Chan died about 1890, Mr. Chiu succeeded as sub-lessee and General Manager.\n\nWu Ting Fang was only four when the family returned from Singapore. In time he became a student of St. Paul's College in Hong Kong, where he was baptized. Upon graduation he followed the pattern set by his brothers and entered Government service as chief clerk and shroff in the Court of Summary Jurisdiction.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206369, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "170\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nsupplied as Commandant.56 This trend intensified in the period after 1893. Indeed, in general terms, the 1893 Ordinance marks the transition from a private army to a public body subject to full military discipline and supervision and official financial scrutiny. This did not mean that public funds were to be spent lavishly on the Volunteer Corps. In the 1930s the Year Books speak rather wistfully of the fact that the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps was not treated so generously by its Government as were the Volunteers of the Colonial Governments of the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, and did not have 'a fairy godmother' such as the Shanghai Volunteer Corps possessed in their Municipal Council57 (though in fairness it should be stated that their economies were more prosperous than Hong Kong's at this time). For instance, the need for a new Headquarters was pressing at this period and negotiations with Government were slow but had by February 1936 reached the stage when, as R. S. M. Parkinson observed sardonically at the Sergeants' Mess Annual Dinner 'they could confidently expect the building up within the next decade'.58 Like other departments of the public service, the Volunteers had to present their case for funds and take their turn in the queue.\n\nThis account is no more than an introduction to the subject, which is large and important enough to deserve a full-length study similar to those of regular regiments of the British Army by professional military historians such as C. T. Atkinson, S. H. F. Johnston, and Marcus Cunliffe. However, even a short article demonstrates that Hong Kong Volunteers have a long and interesting history which in its military, community and social aspects is so much interwoven with the development of the Colony at large.\n\nFinally, Volunteering is required to generate its own momentum. In the pages of the pre-war Year Books, the post-war Volunteer Magazine and the letters and reminiscences of former Volunteers, there is abundant evidence of the spirit which has\n\n56 Endacott, p. 209.\n\n57 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 7 and 1938, p. 8.\n\n58 Y.B., 1938, p. 35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206487, "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-1972", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK: AN ANOMALY IN THE 19TH CENTURY BRITISH COLONIAL SCENE\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT*\n\n(The text of a lecture given to the Branch on 18th January 1972)\n\nTo the reading public a hundred years ago the name of Raja James Brooke and his oriental kingdom of Sarawak, then a medium-sized principality on the northwest coast of Borneo, conjured up visions of dark impenetrable jungles; tropical rivers and mangrove coasts infested with the fiercest and most barbaric of pirates; and a pagan headhunting primitive people, ruled over by a Malay sultan and a court of Malay chiefs who had over long years of decline and corruption been reduced to only slightly more respectable status than the pirates. Brooke was usually presented in a highly romantic light—the best type of British export, the humanitarian colonial who helped penetrate the barbaric darkness of remote Borneo and who was holding the thin precarious line of civilization. Joseph Conrad and later, Somerset Maugham, added to the romance and colour surrounding the Borneo and Malay world of which Brooke was an important part.\n\nMuch that went to make up this mental picture of Borneo in the English reading world was fact. There were pirates aplenty. The Sultanate of Brunei had declined to a low state of impotence and corruption, Brunei was by the nineteenth century one of those decaying Moslem states of the Malay world about which the historian Lennox Mills wrote,\n\n+\n\nThe rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave, they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes. The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects.\n\n+\n\nMany of the Dayaks were indeed the fierce headhunters that were depicted in the nineteenth century accounts. And James Brooke\n\n* Dr. Wright is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Origins of British Borneo, Hong Kong University Press, 1970.\n\n1 L. A. Mills, British Malaya 1824-67, (Singapore 1925), p. 284.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206667, "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-1972", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n209 \n\nat Castle Douglas. It was a very large building as befitted the size and importance of the Press, and can be seen on the old photographs on view in the entrance corridor at University Hall. \n\nAn account by the Rev. Fr. Leon Trivière states: \n\nThe press used 67,899 matrices, which shows how much work was carried on at this house. Thousands of examples of catechisms, prayer-books, works on dogma and morality, spirituality and meditation, the pastorate, canon law, sermons, catechesis, liturgy were brought out. These books were published in 28 languages: Chinese, Annamite, Latin, French, English, Chamorro, Tibetan, Laotian, Malay, Tho (Cao-Bang), Cambodian, Japanese, Thai (Chau-Laos), Banhnar, Portuguese, Kanaka, Lolo, Tagalog, Yap, German, Italian, Siamese, Kanao, Korean, Dioi, Palau, Spanish and Ainu. Notable among the publications of Nazareth Press was an amazing collection of dictionaries printed in twelve languages. A certain number of them were honoured by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, and sought after by great Universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc. ...or by famous Libraries specialising in Oriental Languages. Numerous works by missionaries attached to the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, the Académie Stanislaus and other bodies engaged in scientific research, were printed at Nazareth \n\nNazareth House. Considerable building alterations and additions were made to Castle Douglas by the Mission, including, some years after its occupation, an extensive reconstruction of the original building which was in danger of collapsing. The additions included dormitory accommodation, a chapel, a library and the printing house. The new House was first used in May 1896 and the chapel was blessed in October of that year. A life of prayer and work on editing, translating, printing and proof-reading was inaugurated at the former Castle Douglas, and was to continue until the Japanese Occupation in 1941-1945. The house continued to be used by the Fathers in those years, but printing stopped. Work began again after the war; but with the establishment of the People's Government at Peking in 1949, continental China was soon closed to foreign missionary effort, and in 1953 the Central Council in Paris decided to give up Nazareth House. It was bought by the University of Hong Kong in 1954, to be used as a Hall of Residence for students.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206991, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "56\n\nH. I. LETHBRIDGE\n\n41 In 1838 Charles Mirfin was killed in a duel on Wimbledon Common. The principal escaped abroad but the seconds were found guilty, sentenced to death, but later reprieved. In 1841 the Earl of Cardigan wounded Captain Tuckett in a duel and was accused of 'assault with intent to murder'. In 1852 a group of Frenchmen were indicted for duelling on English soil, sent for trial, and imprisoned. It must have been well known to both Mayréna and Morès that duelling was a criminal offence under English law and that the guilty could not escape easily from a term of imprisonment, even in Hong Kong. In 1872 the Spanish Consul in Hong Kong and the Peruvian Consul in Macao fought a duel at Chinese Kowloon. The Peruvian Consul was wounded by a pistol shot. They were each fined $200 at the Supreme Court in Hong Kong, although the duel had not taken place on Hong Kong soil!\n\n42 ...the duel is a leisure-time institution... In civilised communities it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an hereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that class' (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, 1934, p. 239.)\n\n43 Alfred Capus (1858-1922) was a well-known journalist and man-about-town.\n\n44 Maurice Mac-Nab (1856-1890) was a chansonnier, poet and notorious noctambule. The Rat Mort was a well-known café-chantant in Montmartre, the haunt of decadents, harlots and pleasure-seekers. The composer Charles de Sivry (1848-1900) was for a long time accompanist at the Cabaret du Chat-noir. He was the brother-in-law of Arthur Rimbaud.\n\n45 At table, for example, the courtiers were expected to wait until the King introduced a topic of conversation.\n\n46 John Fortescue Owen, born in 1869, entered the Federated Malay States Civil Service in 1889 and was appointed Junior Officer and Magistrate, Pahang, in that year.\n\n47 See W. Lineham, 'A History of Pahang', Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 14, Part 2, 1936, p. 135.\n\n48 Sir Hugh Clifford, 'The King of the Sedangs', Asia, July-Dec., 1926, p. 920.\n\n49 Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) wrote a famous book, La France Juive, (1886), in which he attempted to demonstrate that France was controlled from behind the scenes by a pack of Jews.\n\n50 R. H. Sherard gives an account of a personal interview with Morès in the Santé prison in The Real Oscar Wilde, London, n.d., pp. 401-2.\n\n51 Morès did not mean to kill Mayer: Mayer impaled himself by running upon Morès's foil.\n\n52 The Marquise offered a large reward for the capture of the assassins. There is a story that she tried to hire a number of cowboys to effect the rescue. She died in 1921 and in her will—a copy of which is in Somerset House, London—she left a sum of money for the erection of a monument at Mechiguig. In 1928 a large granite cross was placed on the spot where Morès fell. Lesley Blanch in her book The Wilder Shores of Love (London, 1954) claims that the Arab-loving Isabelle Eberhardt went in pursuit of Morès' assassins, but I have found no confirmation of the story.\n\n53 Times, 20 July, 1896.\n\n54 Soldiering was also an aristocratic sport, better than the chase. Many people volunteered to fight in wars which did not concern them; see, for example, the career of St. Leger Grenfell, who fought with John Hunt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207736, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN SEARCH OF THE CHINESE NAME FOR “LI SUN”\n\n109\n\nlocate a photograph of Chan Lai-sun. It is not very surprising that there is none from his College days, as photography was not yet widely adopted in the 1840's. And no photographs were usually taken of honorary degree recipients in the late nineteenth century. As to the reference in the 1872 letter to Professor North, the family photographs are not in the correspondence file. They were evidently separated out when the alumni correspondence files were established. I have searched the miscellaneous North papers, but with no success. There is an old trunk of North memorabilia which I will also search as soon as time permits. . .\n\nChan's letters to Professor North from October 28, 1872 to September 10, 1873 and selections from Hamilton College Literary Monthly, July 1869 to February 1887, made possible a tentative biographical sketch. Also very helpful were Carl T. Smith's two articles in the Chung Chi Bulletin of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nChan Laisun (hereafter this name will be used just as he used it in his signature) was born 1829 in Singapore, the son of a poor gardener. Chan attended the Chinese day and boarding schools conducted by the American Board missionaries. His mother tongue was Malay, although his father was from the Ch'aochow prefecture of Kwangtung Province. His parents died leaving him an orphan.\n\nThe Reverend Joseph S. Travelli of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and his wife served as missionaries of the American Board. Soon after their arrival in Singapore, their attention was attracted by a Chinese boy waiting on the table of the American Consul, and they took him into the school which they established for Chinese children for English and Chinese studies.\n\nWhen the school was disbanded in 1842, Chan was taken to the United States and put into Mr. Randall's School in East Bloomfield, New Jersey until 1846. Then the Reverend Samuel Wells Williams of the American Board arranged for him to receive free instruction at Hamilton College. His college term ended in June 1848, and he returned to China with Reverend Williams as an assistant with the American Board mission in Canton until 1853. He had lost almost all knowledge of the Chinese he had known and had to engage a language tutor to relearn Chinese. In July 1850, he married Ruth Ati (1827-1917), one of two girls Miss", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207999, "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-1977", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "22\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\ntongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.\n\nWhen the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes.\n\nBrunei was by the 19th century then one of those decaying Malay-Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia about which the historian Lennox Mills noted,12\n\nThe rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes ... The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects...\n\nIII\n\nThe political map of Southeast Asia was determined largely by imperialist interests and considerations of the last century. In most instances boundaries and demarkations were the results of international rivalries involving two or more European powers, with only now and then a consideration of the interests of indigenous states. In Borneo this principle does not apply entirely. The boundaries of the states of Eastern Malaysia, formerly British Borneo (Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak), are the result not so much of international rivalry as of the rivalry between Englishmen. This rivalry was centered in commercial circles in Borneo and England and involved the Foreign and Colonial ministries in Whitehall.\n\nBy the 19th century Britain's chief interest in the area was strategic: to protect her commercial routes to China.13 She was concerned firstly, with the location of a suitable naval station along the eastern flank of the South China Sea, and secondly, with the assumption of political control over the northwestern coast of Borneo so as to prevent those areas falling to a European rival. Britain was not worried about the relatively weak Dutch and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208002, "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-1977", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n25\n\nacquisition of Limbang cut right across the middle of Brunei territory. It was only later discovered after the Foreign Office was able to obtain accurate maps of the region. Hence Brunei is bifurcated and each part almost surrounded by Sarawak territory.\n\nThat Brunei was not completely annihilated is perhaps due to the late and strenuous objections of the rajas themselves, as well as to some feeling of conscience on the part of officials in the colonial and foreign offices. Some in Whitehall thought it a good thing and a great convenience for the future to allow Sarawak and North Borneo to divide up the carcass. Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary in 1888, noted that Sarawak and North Borneo were \"rapidly crushing out\" Brunei between them. He noted,16\n\nI think we had better let them finish it, and make no agreement with the Sultan of Brunei which would stand in the way of a consummation which is inevitable, and, on the whole, desirable.\n\nNevertheless a protectorate was agreed to in 1888. Sarawak and North Borneo also became protected states. But very little change occurred in Brunei. Except for being saved from extinction the new status merely formalised a situation that had prevailed since 1847—the sultan and rajas continued their misrule while Britain retained control of foreign relations.\n\nIV\n\nTwo further events contributed to the salvation of Brunei and its resuscitation. In 1906 Britain finally agreed to appoint a resident advisor to help the sultan manage his affairs.17 And in 1929 oil was discovered in commercial quantities in the southern part of the state at Seria in the Belait district.\n\nModern Brunei is oil rich and not unlike in that respect some of those other Muslim sultanates, in the Persian Gulf. Its 2,226 square miles is inhabited by 144,000 people, with two largish urban concentrations at Bandar Seri Begawan, the new name for Brunei Town, still on the sluggish Brunei River in its old location, and Kuala Belait-Seria some 80 miles to the south, surrounding the oil fields. The urbanites are largely Malay and Chinese with numbers of Ibans working the oil fields. The remainder of the indigenous peoples are Kedayan, Dusun and Murut, mostly living along small streams in the interior. The high per-capita income and wealth created by steady oil revenues have created the stability so lacking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208003, "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-1977", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "26\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nin the last century. Modern highways and new buildings, and a jumbo-size airport are the most obvious indications of the 20th century windfall from oil. But all may not be well in Brunei's economic future. One observer writing some time ago suggested that the current well-being has an \"air of impermanence\" about it.19\n\nEveryone knows that the supply of oil which provides Brunei's wealth will not last forever. There seems little attempt at a serious answer to the question, 'What then?'.\n\nIn form, society exists in much the same way as in ancient times. The persistence of traditional ways and social ranks is marked. Following the establishment of the British residency in 1906, some re-articulation of ruling practices took place. A more centralized system with a growing bureaucracy in Brunei Town emerged, away from the traditional rights of individual district chiefs and rajas. Nevertheless, the traditional despotic nature of government persists. A British High Commissioner replaced the resident as the leading British official of the protectorate in 1959 when internal self-government was proclaimed. Much of the old power of the Sultan, which was taken over and \"modernized\" by residents between 1906 and 1959, now reverted to the Sultan. He directs government through a council of appointed ministers led by the traditional Mentri Besar.\n\nA minority of members of a legislative council, which has primarily advisory powers, were elected under the reforms of 1959. But in December 1962, an insurrection occurred led by Sheikh A.M. Azahari, and when it was suppressed, the 1959 constitution was set aside and replaced by emergency powers.\n\nAll important posts in this Sultan's government are appointive and held at the pleasure of the Sultan. \"The Sultan has sponsored studies and measures to revive the traditional political system\" to a greater degree than has existed in the recent past.20 And although the legislative council and the elective principle have re-emerged, official positions remain the monopoly of the Malay aristocracy in Brunei.\n\nAs in the Malay states, in Brunei too, the decline and extinction of the political power of the traditional Malay elite was aborted by the establishment of a British residency and by the continuing patronage of the Malay aristocrat by colonial policy. But unlike", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208209, "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-1977", "page_number": 248, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "232\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nREPTILES NEW TO HONG KONG\n\nThe purpose of these notes is to record the occurrence of one species of gecko (Reptilia: Sauria: Gekkonidae) and three species of snakes (Reptilia: Serpentes: Colubridae) not hitherto known as part of the fauna of Hong Kong.\n\nHemidactylus brookii Gray\n\nDuring the first six months of 1978 three live adult specimens of these geckos were sent to me by Father Anthony Bogadek for identification. All three had been caught in the same locality in the Sai Ying Pun district on Hong Kong Island. The first two, both males, had been found outdoors behind a piece of building material lying against a brick wall, one in late September or early October 1977 and the other on 1 March 1978. The third specimen, a female, was found inside a school on 3 June 1978. There is no doubt that at least a localized population of Hemidactylus brookii is now established in Hong Kong.\n\nThe known geographical range of this species includes ‘India' [and therefore Pakistan and probably Bangladesh], Sri Lanka, and parts of Burma, extending southeastward into the East Indian Archipelago and Singapore; it is also widely distributed in the northern half of Africa, and has been introduced into the West Indies (Smith, 1935, p.91). Its occurrence in Thailand and the Malay Peninsula is not clear as, while Boulenger (1912, p.43) records it from the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago', Smith (loc. cit.) states that it is: ‘not yet known from Siam, French Indo-China, or the Malay Peninsula except Singapore. . . .’ As regards its occurrence in China, Smith (loc. cit.) remarks:\n\nthere are two specimens in the British Museum said to have come from China, both were obtained more than 80 years ago.... Recently (Anon., 1977), this gecko has been listed for Fukien and Chekiang provinces, but without other details.\n\nIn its habits, Hemidactylus brookii is equally at home inside buildings as it is out of doors. It is due to their close association with man that the geographical ranges of several species of house-geckos have been artificially extended very widely in warmer parts of the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210204, "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-1984", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "154\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ninstructions were sent to Hong Kong so long as the Conservatives remained in power. However, as soon as the minority Labour government of 1929 came into office, various pressure groups, such as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene and the National Council of Women of Great Britain, set to work, writing to the Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Passfield (formerly the Fabian Society reformer Sidney Webb), demanding that Hong Kong should follow Singapore's example and suppress all its brothels. There were also more parliamentary questions from Lady Astor and other sympathetic M.P.s.32 In 1930, there was a change of Governor in Hong Kong: Sir Cecil Clementi left to govern the Straits Settlements, and Sir William Peel from the Federated Malay States was promoted to Hong Kong. Clementi had never shown himself very receptive to policy suggestions from London, and his transfer gave the Colonial Office an opportunity to initiate a change of policy. Before taking up his appointment, Peel saw Lord Passfield in London and was informed that it was the policy of the Labour government that all brothels should be suppressed, but that he should first look into the question and submit a report to London.\n\nPeel sent his views to the Colonial Office in August 1930, three months after his arrival.34 He stressed that the abolition of licensed prostitution and tolerated houses was opposed by the military and naval authorities, senior government officials, and the leading members of the Chinese community who sat on the District Watch Committee. Abolition would probably lead to an increase in the number of sly brothels and streetwalkers, and a greater incidence of venereal disease. It would also make it impossible to deal effectively with the international traffic in women: in Singapore, some measure of control could be exercised at the point of entry where immigrants arrived in a few large vessels, but this was out of the question in Hong Kong, where thousands arrived daily in river steamers, junks, and by land; so the licensing and interrogation of intending prostitutes at the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs was the only way of checking that they were entering the profession of their own free will. The Governor finally suggested that if the Secretary of State was determined upon the suppression of brothels, a start could be made by refusing to register any new prostitutes; but he would prefer to await full details of the results", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211022, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "59\n\n30\n\nPope Hennessy. This was the Normal School, which was opened in Queen's Road East, Wanchai, on 12th September, 1881, under the headmastership of A.J. May, previously Acting Third Master at the Central School. Partly because Hennessy had not taken the precaution of gaining the prior approval of the Colonial Office in London, and partly because several members of the Education Commission then sitting to consider the elevation of the Central School to collegiate status were unconvinced of the necessity for separate provision of teacher education, the scheme failed. On the recommendation of Dr. George Bateson Wright, the Acting Inspector of Schools who, as Headmaster of the Central School, was normally in a state of dispute with the substantive Inspector, E.J. Eitel, the Wanchai Normal School was closed in October 1883. A.J. May returned to his ordinary teaching duties at the Central School, at first as merely an “extra-master” and, according to Gwenneth Stokes, “always very much on his dignity.”\n\n31\n\nAnd of the original 1881 intake of ten students, only two eventually became teachers. Meanwhile, the failure of the Normal School project led to a resumption of the pupil teacher scheme at the Central School. To avoid the problems faced earlier, first by Stewart and then by May, the revised pupil-teacher scheme gained additional stability by the requirement that each pupil-teacher articled had to deposit $100 with the Government Treasury. Further progress in the field of teacher education in Hong Kong was slow, the next major step being the establishment of “evening extension courses” in 1906, the formalization of these under the aegis of the newly established Technical Institute in 1907, the running of teacher education courses as a part of the Arts Faculty curriculum at the University of Hong Kong from 1916 onwards, and, finally, the establishment of the first permanent training college for teachers in Hong Kong in 1939.\n\n32\n\nAlthough the Normal School was shortlived and made only a minimal contribution to the teaching supply of Hong Kong schools, it was an interesting experiment. Comparable British colonies in Asia, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States launched no such experiment to supply teachers capable of using English as the medium of instruction. Instead, for these colonies, a Select Committee of 1870 recommended reliance on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212274, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "19.3\n\nDuring the two years of theological training, James was directed to take initial Chinese lessons at the University of London under the recently returned missionary from Malacca, Samuel Kidd.1 The lessons made the new student aware of the difficulties of the language, of the unrefined nature of some of the tools, and of the unusual context (Malacca rather than China, among expatriated Chinese) within which they were prepared.\n\nHaving completed seminary training in 1838, he was delegated by the London Missionary Society to replace Samuel Kidd in Malacca. Legge was presented with the task of being a teacher, and then, mostly because of the limited personnel, made the administrator-principal of the Anglo-Chinese College (#18) which the pioneer Protestant missionaries, Robert Morrison and William Milne, had established in Malacca in the second decade of the 19th century. Legge interpreted Morrison's and Milne's original intentions as including plans to remove the school to China whenever the opportunity arose. This attitude threatened others in the institution, but in the end the Society supported a move to Hong Kong when it became possible in 1843.40\n\nIn spite of the fact that the administrative task was not much to his liking, Legge achieved rapid progress in language studies and so was considered worthy of the new position. (In fact, the strain on his health during the first ten months of intense language preparation brought him to the edge of a physical breakdown.) His first major literary task was editing the translation of a long novel, but his concern for teaching was fulfilled in the production of his Lexicogus, which rendered for College students sentences in parallel English, Malay, written Mandarin, spoken Hoklo, and demotic Cantonese.1 It was apparently for these efforts that the twenty-five-year-old Legge gained enough of a reputation to be awarded in absentia an honorary Doctorate from New York University in the United States on July 13, 1841.\n\nHaving demonstrated his competence even further after he arrived in Hong Kong in 1843, Dr. Legge was designated the President of the London Missionary Society's Theological Seminary. This further promotion into an authoritative position occurred after an extended sick leave in Scotland (1846-1847), during which the thirty-one-year-old seminary president designate gave serious thought to his future.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214195, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "In the past the Pole, one frequently found, was the butt of many jokes in the United States. In England it was often the Irish, in Hawaii the Portuguese, and for the French the Belgian. Likewise, in Guangdong Province there is, some people will tell you, a pecking order of sorts for a few of the counties. Again, in Singapore, inter-racial and inter-sub-ethnic group humour is by no means uncommon, although much is given and accepted in good heart.\n\nLee Kuan Yew, senior statesman of Singapore, is purported to have said: \"I understand the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to the Welshman and the Scotsman. Deep here, I am a Chinaman. Yes, an uprooted Chinaman, transformed into a Singaporean\" (spoken in the Singaporean Parliament, 23 February 1977) (Minchin, 1986:254). One can detect, not surprisingly, a strain of western, self-mockery and sardonic wit in Lee's remark (Minchin, 1986:257). It comes out again in a speech by Lee in the Singaporean Parliament on 23 February 1977:\n\n\"I do not believe in telling university researchers where they go wrong. They write all kinds of spurious silly articles or books. They get MAs and PhDs for them... I laugh away. But I never tell them why they are wrong. Because I am an Asian. I am not a Westerner. This is an Asian situation and do not be clever. Be modest. Just keep quiet. If they want to be wrong-headed, wish them luck\" (Minchin, 1986:XV).\n\nThe overseas Chinese living in Malaysia for several generations have absorbed Malay culture making their customs different from Hong Kong Chinese. As a Malay-Chinese friend of the author explained, the Singaporeans have obviously not absorbed Malay customs to the same extent. But Singapore is very much a melting pot and cosmopolitan, and it has jettisoned only a certain amount of its inherited Chinese 'baggage' so that it remains trim, but it has become sufficiently westernised to become, some would say, more 'rational' - judging by western standards.\n\nThe Cantonese living in a more simple habitat, over in Guangdong Province in China, prefer more direct, less complex humour than their Hong Kong cousins who are still, in most cases, at heart, very Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214992, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "44\n\nIt was considered that more rapid progress could be made with the utilisation of the Chinese [British] officers as they had technical knowledge and could speak the language. At a meeting at which the CO of the 78th Labour Group, Lt Col. Cline, together with all the Chinese Company officers, it was decided that 2Lt Carter be attached to the Works Office staff to administer the Chinese Labour with one Chinese Company officer attached to each section to supervise the Chinese labour. They were responsible, amongst other duties, for bringing to the notice of Section Commanders any coolies for trade training. This scheme produced better results in that the Chinese were continually supervised and also that they appreciated someone looking after their interests.\n\nIn March, 1918, a total of 248 Chinese were skilled at varying jobs from fitters, riveters, carpenters and strikers amongst others. Squads were formed for performing particular jobs such as detracking and changing engines.\n\nBetween January and March, under 2Lt Burgess, the Chinese were extensively used for the construction of the new workshop at Teneur. Under Captain Jackson, all cement foundations were laid, together with the Decauville Lines system and sleeper roads. At Teneur the Chinese performed similar tasks as previously, first on the repair of Mark IV tanks and then on the conversion and subsequent repair of male and female Mark V tanks. [see photograph no. G]\n\nAs a result of heavy demands in the Engine Shop during September and October, 1918, the Chinese skilled labour was increased, with a result that 24 big-end bedders were employed. These men considered themselves the highest grade and refused to work on any other job.\n\nThe Camouflage Section responsible for the painting of all tanks and the repair and manufacture of all camouflage material consisted of about 70 Chinese.\n\nAccording to Sir Albert Stern, a Malay donor, Mr Eu Tong-sen, who was a member of the Federal Council of the Malay States, offered a sum of £6,000 towards a tank, the average price at that time being between £4,000 and £5,000, but whether from his personal resources or as a gift of the Federal Council is not clear. A Mark IV male tank", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215297, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "22\n\n22. The requirement of an empire content of 25 per cent to qualify for preference was set in consultation with the Board of Trade, which pointed out that some British manufacturers using foreign sources of raw material would not qualify for preference if the empire content was set at 50 per cent. CO323/1192/11.\n\n23. L.M. Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–1939 (London, 1972), 92; Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Industrial Development of the Colonial Empire, Colonial Office Confidential Print 445, CO885/40.\n\n24. Secretary of State to all colonies and protectorates, 4 Feb. 1932, DO35/242/4, PRO.\n\n25. Minutes of a conference at the Colonial Office, 27 June 1932, CO323/1193/2.\n\n26. The texts of the agreements are in Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa Cmd4175 (London, 1932), 19–76.\n\n27. Canada agreed to extend to the colonies and protectorates the preferences accorded to Britain, but in practice raised objections when requested to do so by the British government. See for example CO323/1099/16, CO852/51/9 and CO852/251/10. Cunliffe-Lister minute, 22 Oct 1933, CO323/1232/8, 'Canada has done less than nothing to implement the most essential part of the Ottawa accords.'\n\n28. See the comments in paragraphs 18 and 30 of the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee.\n\n29. Confidential Circular Despatch, 29 Sept. 1932, CO854/174. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister is better known by his later title, Viscount Swinton.\n\n30. Secretary of State to Governor of Ceylon, 27 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to High Commissioner, Federated Malay States, 30 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to Barbados, 24 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Jamaica, 10 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Windward Islands, 24 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. A clause was drafted for inclusion in the 1933 Finance Bill to allow Britain to withdraw preferences from any colony if it did not grant the Ottawa preferences to empire products, CO323/1230/3.\n\n31. Officer Administering Government, Leeward Islands to Secretary of State, 19 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n32. Governor Barbados to Secretary of State, 17 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n33. Governor Windward Islands to Secretary of State, 21 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5.\n\n34. Stevens to Cunliffe-Lister, 17 Nov. 1932, CO323/1193/11.\n\n35. Cunliffe-Lister to Stevens, 8 Dec. 1932, CO323/1193/11.\n\n36. Hong Kong Trade Returns show exports of rubber shoes to the British West Indies as follows: 1932 - HK$4,894; 1933 - 116,670; 1934 - 643,337; 1935 - 574,376; 1936 - 1,071,932; 1937 - 1,427,634.\n\n37. High Commissioner for Canada to Cunliffe-Lister, 15 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n38. Cunliffe-Lister to High Commissioner, 27 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Canada later succeeded in excluding Singapore shoes by setting a fictitious high rate of exchange for the Singapore dollar. See minute by Calder, 8 June 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n39. Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, 13 Nov. 1933, CO323/1231/16.\n\n40. Minute by Vernon, 21 Dec. 1933, CO323/1231/16. R.V. Vernon was an Assistant Secretary who joined the Colonial Office in 1900. He had previously expressed his disapproval when Cunliffe-Lister refused to approach India and South Africa to ask for imperial preference for Hong Kong's rubber shoes: 'The Secretary of State is placed practically in the position of a trustee who is bound to act with the sole regard to the interests of the colonies and is not at liberty to abstain from any claim on the account of the interests of U.K. industry or the susceptibilities of dominion industrial interests.' Minute, 9 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/3. The attitude of Cunliffe-Lister may be contrasted with that of Alan Lennox-Boyd (Colonial Secretary 1954-59) who threatened to resign if Hong Kong was forced to accept a limitation on its textile exports to Britain. Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1954–1959 (London, 1971), 739-43.\n\n41. CO323/1294/3.\n\n42. Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, 1933, 1934.\n\n43. Minute by Cunliffe-Lister, 7 June 1933, CO323/1232/8.\n\n44. Edgcumbe (Department of Overseas Trade) to Eastwood (Colonial Office), 18 April 1936, CO323/1298/10.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215769, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1\n\nARTICLES\n\nTHE TRANSFER OF THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: A REVISIONIST APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL LAW AND ADMINISTRATION\n\nANDREW ABRAHAM\n\n[Hon. Ed. - The Straits Settlements was a former British crown colony on the Strait of Malacca, comprising four trade centres, Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, established or taken over by the British East India Company. The British settlement at Penang was founded in 1786, at Singapore in 1819; Malacca, occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, was transferred to the East India Company in 1824. The three territories were established as a crown colony in 1867. Labuan, which became part of Singapore Settlement in 1907, was constituted a fourth separate settlement in 1912.\n\nThe Straits colony, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, was broken up in 1946, when Singapore became a separate crown colony. Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, became a part of Malaysia in 1963, and became an independent republic in 1965. Labuan was incorporated in North Borneo (later Sabah) in 1946, which in turn became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Penang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union in 1945, the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and Malaysia in 1963.]\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe Straits Settlements were transferred in 18671 to the Colonial Office's administration due to the dissatisfaction of the European merchants with the Indian government's rule. Their grievances were cited in a petition in 1857, the most contentious of which cover complaints of the East India Company's (EIC) attempts to introduce measures damaging to trade, problems with piracy and convicts, and failure of the Indian government to build up an influence in the Malay peninsula.\n\nHowever, a study of the history of the Straits Settlements shows evidence of a booming economy, many cases of intervention by the EIC in the affairs of the Malay states, and issues such as those concerning piracy, convicts and currency more or less resolved. Furthermore,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215772, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "In Calcutta's eyes, the main duties of the governor of the Straits Settlements were to 'balance his budget and to insulate the settlements from complications in the hinterland.' This policy, as Turnbull puts it, was doomed to fail;15 instead it provided the background causes for the agitation of the European merchant community for the transfer of the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office in London.\n\nFor example, as the settlements prospered, the European merchants demanded more expensive and sophisticated administration, an efficient judicial system, defence, and security for their property and trade.1 However, due to Raffles' free trade policy, which was extended to all three settlements, and the failure of land and agriculture, there was insufficient revenue to fund these demands.\n\nThe activities of ambitious pioneers, mainly Chinese migrant workers, who were 'lured by the wealth of the interior [of the Malay states],' made it impossible for the Straits government to cut the settlements off from the affairs of the Malay states. Calcutta maintained its policy of non-intervention to the end, but in practice, every would-be final settlement the government of India authorized merely provided the basis for further involvement.18\n\nThe petition of 1857, wherein the grievances of the Straits merchants were cited\n\nIn 1857, the Straits merchants sent a petition to the House of Commons,19 explaining their grievances with regard to the administration of the Straits Settlements under the EIC, and requesting a transfer of control (by means of an Act of Parliament) from the EIC to the Colonial Office. However, some of the issues raised to the House of Commons appear to be questionable (that is, not all the issues were as serious as they were made out to be). This calls for an examination of the validity of these hazy 'problems,'20 in order to assess the necessity of the transfer.\n\nIn the process, I will also highlight the way in which constitutional and legal changes were introduced in the Straits Settlements. Legal changes emerged in response to the demands of the Straits society; that is, such changes were governed by a variety of factors. Hence, I will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215776, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "The EIC and relations with the Malay states\n\nIn the merchants' own words, 'The Supreme Government of India had uniformly discouraged the local Government at Singapore from interfering with matters beyond the limits of the Island. The cultivation of friendly relations with Native States and Chiefs has been neglected.'44 In this section, I will examine the merchants' reasons for this complaint, and also assess the accuracy of their claim. Rupert Emerson, a historian, calls the period during the Indian government's administration of the Straits Settlements 'a half-century of inactivity.' This is arguably the truth but not the whole truth, because DGE Hall, another historian, tends to disagree with Emerson's assertion. He says that 'one only has to glance through the many volumes of records relating to the period to realise that even if there was little or no spectacular achievement there was plenty of activity.' 'Even if by inactivity is meant the pursuit of non-intervention policy in native affairs, the term is misleading.\n\nPage 48\n\nThe Calcutta administration, wherever possible, adhered to a policy of strict non-intervention in the affairs of the Malay States. This policy had its roots in Pitt's India Act of 1784,49 which stipulated that the EIC's aim was peace, not interference in local politics or extension of the company's territories.50 The main reason for this policy was to avoid any form of entanglement in the internal troubles or wars of the Peninsula which could incur unnecessary expenses for the EIC,51 As it was, the EIC had lost its monopoly over the China trade in 1833 and, with this, the Straits Settlements ceased to be a source of direct profits, and were maintained at an annual loss.52\n\nPage 51\n\nYet despite the law on non-intervention, there was evidence that in some cases concerning threats to British interests, whether commercial, political or involving prestige, local administrators often found it necessary to intervene. In such cases, the actions were often condoned by the Supreme Government. Thus, there was a violation of Pitt's India Act (which eventually did lead to the change in British policy of non-intervention to intervention in 1874),54\n\nPage 53\n\nThio summarises the politico-legal scenario thus:\n\n...when responsibility for the Straits was transferred from the Government of India to the Colonial Office in 1867, the British were already bound by treaties with four of the five states south of Kedah, two of whom they\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215777, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "were pledged to protect and three over whose external relations they had a right of control.\"55 Hall strongly claims that, 'the Malay States were in a state of chronic unrest, external and internal,56 and had become completely incapable of putting their house in order. Intervention, therefore, could not be avoided. There was indeed constant intervention, notwithstanding all the rules to the contrary and all the thunders of Calcutta and the East India House, '57\n\nHowever, in spite of Thio's and Hall's assertions, the truth of the merchants' complaint is not invalidated, because between 1824 and 1873, British rule in Malaya was indeed ‘inactive,258 as their official policy was still in accordance with Pitt's India Act. In several cases, the actions of the Straits Settlements government implied some form of intervention, or at least limited interference in the affairs of the Malay States, when they violated the policy of non-intervention; but even then, nothing more elaborate was undertaken than the occasional punitive expedition, which was not enough, in 'the interests of British commerce.'60 Insofar as this was concerned, it would appear that the Straits merchants did have a legitimate complaint to the House of Lords, because their statement would appear to have been bona fide and to hold a substantial amount of evidential truth. The influence of Pitt's India Act (that is, EIC non-intervention) remained until 1874, when a new law was passed, and the British took on an active, intervening role in the Malay states.\n\n59\n\nJudicial system!\n\nThe main complaints of the merchants were that the Law was administered by unprofessional persons, that is, the administration of justice was in the hands of local officers of government, civil or military servants of the EIC, and the 'impractical schemes [that] were propounded' (for example, the Currency Act, port dues and stamp duties). LA Mills renders a counter attack to this point; he argues that 'although there were delays in dealing with problems which caused the Straits Settlements to suffer at times, on the whole the results were not serious. Of the problems which arose between 1826 and 1867, very few were of importance, so that injury caused in the delay in settling them was not great. The population was small and generally law-abiding. The Straits Settlements had practically no foreign relations (the main task of the government was to watch Siam and Holland,\n\n63\n\n262", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215784, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "16\n\nXIX, Belgian Treaty Art. XLIV; Spanish Treaty Art. XVI; Italian Treaty Art. XIX, quoted from Fox, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates 1832-1869\n\n4 Turnbull, supra, p 255\n\n4 Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore pg 756; The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce, 13 Oct 1857\n\n\"Emerson Rupert, Malaysia - A Study in Direct and Indirect Rule, Chap 2. p 91\n\n46 Hall DGE, A History of South East Asia, p 511\n\n47 Ibid, p 511\n\n* Mills LA, British Malaya 1824 – 1867\n\n49 Act 24th George III Cap 25;\n\n174\n\nNB: This act was retained until 1858, when England assumed full control of India. However, the policy of non-intervention in the Malay States still continued until 1874.\n\n50 Philips, The East India Company 1784 - 1834, Chap 2, p 32\n\nsi Purcell, Malaya, Outline of a Colony, Chap 6 p 70; Jones, Public Administration in Malaya, Chap I p 8\n\n52 Mills, supra, p 174\n\nTan DE, A Portrait of Malaysia and Singapore, Chap 9 p 119\n\n54 However, it should be made clear that in the pre-1874 era, the nature of intervention was limited. Though there were cases of British intervention in the Malay States, their actions were “inactive” or passive. The governors were often reminded of the official non-intervention policy, and this policy remained unchanged until 1874, when a new law (the Pangkor Engagement) was observed.\n\nCases of non-intervention\n\nThe EIC's non-intervention policy started from the earliest years of British rule", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215785, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "in the Straits, for example in negotiation for the settlement of Penang Island in 1786 where the Supreme Government remained steadfast in refusing to promise military aid to the Sultan of Kedah. Thus, in a Siamese invasion in 1821, the Penang Government did not offer military aid to the Sultan, but only political asylum and mediation. Indeed the whole history of Anglo-Siamese relations in the Malay Peninsular shows evidence that the non-intervention policy was adhered to as much as possible, (cf. Mills, supra, Chap 8 (Anglo-Siamese relations)) For the obvious political and economic reasons the British did not want to antagonise the Siamese (cf. Tarling, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Malay World, 1760-1824) by interfering in the affairs of the Malay States (such as Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu) which were within the Siamese sphere of influence.\n\nSevere censures were passed upon Captain Low for his treaty with Perak in 1826; and the treaty between James Low and Perak and Selangor in 1826, received strong criticism from the Supreme Government and resulted in Low's being suspended from his duties. (Tan DE, Supra, p 119) The Indian Government only relented when Governor Fullerton managed to convince it of the necessity of protecting British interests, a clear instance of the Indian Government's unwillingness to intervene in any of the Malay States. This was further proven when appeals of Perak and Trengannu for defensive purposes were likewise rejected. In the Naning War of 1831-2, Governor Ibbetson was told that the extension of territory was not desired. (Ibid. p 119)\n\nAn even more striking instance occurred in 1833, when the boundary between the Malacca Territory and the tiny state of Johol was debated over. Between the two lay a debatable piece of land which had formerly been claimed by both states, containing rich mines of tin and gold. Governor Ibbetson regarded the frontier delimitation as an excellent opportunity for showing that accessions of territory and encroachments upon their rights is the furthest from our views and intentions' (Mills, supra, p 177), thus resigning any claims that the British might have to it, and even included it within the area of Johol.\n\nThrough the above examples, I would say that the British were pursuing a policy of non-intervention in the Malay States between 1824-73. They upheld this policy whenever possible, though in some cases intervention was unavoidable. And it is significant that sometimes even in instances where British merchants' interests were threatened (for example in Negri Sembilan), the policy of non-intervention was still observed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215786, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "18\n\nHowever, there were also cases where the British did intervene in the Malay states during the period 1824-73. It is evident that, to a certain extent, the British were inconsistent with their policy of non-intervention, but compared to the period after 1874, when the policy was reversed, these interventions were limited and they only occurred where unavoidable (Ibid. p 179). In this respect, I would argue that the merchants had valid grounds for their petition of complaint to the House of Commons.\n\nThe EIC's non-intervention policy reflected realism and flexibility. They took the stance of non-intervention wherever their commercial interests and political prestige were not threatened, but their policy changed according to the dictates of time, thus in reality, causing them to play dual roles of non-activity and intervention in accordance with the change of times. Whilst the period 1824-73 was not marked by any 'spectacular action or further territorial advances', it can neither be described as being inactive, because as Tan observes, '[c]ases of intervention were...more in evidence than cases of non-intervention' (Tan D E, supra, p 120), and I will highlight some of the more important and interesting ones. From its footholds in the Straits Settlements, the EIC gradually extended its influence over the independent Malay States chiefly through trade and treaties. (Thio E, British Policy in The Malay Peninsular 1880-1910 Vol 1 - Introduction pg xvi-xvii)\n\nThe following examples could be used as evidence to challenge the truth of the merchants' statement of complaint, although in the final analysis, their complaint was a bona fide one.\n\nCases of Intervention\n\nAfter 1826 the Malay states tended to look to the EIC as the arbiter of local politics to whom they reported the ascension of new rulers, and appealed for help in settling internal disputes and quarrels with their neighbours. (Thio, Ibid. p xvi-xvii) For example, the proximity of thriving Singapore to Johore led the British to intervene in the affairs of Johore. When Sultan Hussein died in 1835, Governor Murchison refused to acknowledge Hussein's son, Ali, as the Sultan. It was only in 1852 that Acting-Governor Blundell persuaded the Supreme Government to recognise Ali as the rightful Sultan. Later, compromise was reached when Ali accepted an empty title of Sultan and Temenggong Ibrahim retained control over Johore in 1855. Thus, a new royal dynasty was established in Johore, with British intervention. This case clearly illustrates a deviation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215787, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "19\n\nfrom Pitt's India Act. The EIC accordingly found itself guaranteeing some states protection from attacks, or pledging to uphold boundary settlements. (Thio, supra, p xvi-xvii)\n\nThere were cases of intervention for example, in Kedah, Perak and Selangor, brought about by Robert Fullerton, Burney, Anderson and James Low:\n\nWhen Robert Fullerton was governor of the Straits Settlements in 1824, he completely reversed the earlier British attitude of giving in to the claims of Siam, thus embarking on protection and expansion of British interests in the Malay Peninsula by checking Siamese attempts at extending their influence over the northern Malay states. Thus, when Ligor prepared to invade Perak and Selangor in 1825, he sent a Penang squadron to patrol the river mouths to prevent any attacks. (Mills L A, British Malaya 1824-1867, Chap 8 p 141; other examples of intervention included the following: Burney's Preliminary Treaty with Ligor in 1825. (Mills, Ibid, Chap 8 p 143-146); the Anderson Treaty (involving Selangor and Perak) in 1825. (Mills, Ibid, Chap 8, p 145-146; Purcell, supra, Chap 6, p 70)\n\nThe Burney Treaty of 1826 saw British attempts to secure independence for Selangor and Perak (Newbold, British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca Vol. 2 p 26); and later, the Low Treaty of 1826 promised British assistance in maintaining Perak's independence. These two treaties had more effect on the Malay States than any other treaties, the greatest consequence being a marked ending of Siamese southward ambitions, and thus securing the British position in expanding further into the Malay States at a later stage. However, signing these treaties showed non-compliance with Pitt's India Act. Thus, where Low's Treaty was concerned, the Supreme Government continued for some time to condemn it as unauthorised and never really ratified it. In effect, the intervention in the Malay States was still somewhat restricted by the Government's policy. (Mills, Op Cit. Chap 8 p 162) Other examples include Fullerton's challenge of Ligor's claim to the Kurau District in 1826, and the Burney Treaty of 1826 after which the British ceased to intervene in Kedah. (Mills, Ibid. Chap 8 pp 160-161)\n\nOther examples of intervention included those in Naning and Sungei Ujong: The British fought the Naning War in 1831-2 to establish British right to collection of revenue in Naning. In Sungei Ujong, the British squadron was called in 1857 to destroy the village of Pengkalan Kempas, in order to punish the chiefs who had been extorting British subjects. And again in 1860, Governor Cavenagh", "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": 215795, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "27\n\nHooker, MB, 1969, \"The East India Company and the Crown 1773 - 1858', Ma-laya Law Review 11\n\nHui-Chen Wang Li, 1959, The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules, J J Augustin Publisher, New York\n\nHunter, Guy, 1966, Southeast Asia: Race, Culture and Nation, Institute of Race Relations, London Open University Press\n\nJackson, JC, 1968, Planters and Speculators: Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya 1786 - 1821, Oxford University Press, London, New York\n\nJones, S W, 1953, Public Administration in Malaya, London and New York\n\nKaye, John William, 1853, The Administration of the East India Company, A History of Indian Progress, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, Delhi\n\nKeay John, 1993, The Honourable Company, A History of the English East India Company, Harper Collins Publishers, London\n\nKhoo Kay Kim, 1966, 'The Origins of British Rule in Malaya', IMBRAS, xxxix, no 1, 52-91\n\nKhoo, Kay Kim, (1972) 1975, The Western Malay States 1850 - 1873. The Effects of Commercial Development on Malay Politics, Oxford University Press, Bangunan Loke Yew, Kuala Lumpur\n\nMak, Lau Fong, 1981, The Sociology of Secret Societies, A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, Oxford University Press, East Asian Social Science Monographs\n\nMaxwell, Sir George, (c 1943 Mimeograph) Problems of Administration in British Malaya, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York\n\nMaxwell, P B, 1859, 'The Law of England in Penang, Malacca and Singapore', JA, ns iii, 26 - 55\n\nMills, LA, 1966, British Malaya 1824 - 67, Kuala Lumpur\n\nMills LA, 1942, British Rule In Eastern Asia, Oxford University Press, London", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]