[ { "id": 205215, "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-1966", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n165\n\nMalay title dato. As for Mo-lo-cha, an abusive expression for an Indian, I see the Portuguese element mouro, 'a Moor'. The slang term for Indian in Macanese is still moro- the area round Belilios Terrace in Hong Kong was once known as mato moros, 'hill of the Moors' because of the large number of Indians living in the district. This name was transformed by folk-etymology to the good old Christian matamoros ‘kill the Moors'. Santiago (or St. James) is nicknamed 'matamoros' in Spain to this day.\n\nMoreover the Indians in Malaysia are referred to by the Portuguese of Malacca as moros, whether they be Muslims or not. The Muslim Malays are never so named. In the Philippines the non-Christian inhabitants of Mindinao and other southern islands are also known as moros, a name given them by the Spaniards.\n\nThe old pidgin records collected by Leland in the nineteenth century also give moloman as the pidgin English word for Indian, so that there is no more reason to derive mo-lo-cha from Maharajah than to imagine that Hong Kong ever was a fragrant harbour.\n\nUniversity of the West Indies. St. Augustine, Trinidad.\n\nROBERT WALLACE THOMPSON\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Itcheong-U-Lam and Ian-Kuong-lam, Ou-Mun Kei-Leok (Monografia de Macau), Macao, 1950.\n\n2 Chang lu Lin and Yin Kuang Jen, Ao Men Chi Lüeh (Gazetteer of Macao), Canton, c. 1751.\n\nSee also Bawden C. R. \"An eighteenth century Chinese source for the Portuguese dialect of Macao\" in Silver Jubilee Volume of the Sinbun-Kagaku-Kenkyusyo, Kyoto, 1954, and Thompson, Robert Wallace, \"Two synchronic cross-sections in the Portuguese dialect of Macao\", Orbis, tome VIII, No. 1, Louvain, 1959,\n\nA NOTE ON LAND MEASUREMENT AND TENANT RENTALS IN HONG KONG.\n\nLand Measurement\n\nUnder the laws of the Colony of Hong Kong all land is Crown Land, albeit some of it is under lease. The right to resumption of leased lands for a public purpose is retained in all leases. The following notes on local Chinese custom have mostly been acquired during investigations for the purpose of presenting the Crown's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207995, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "18\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nmarks for booty and slaves, along with other places such as Endau on the east coast of Malaya, and Jolo the seat of the sultan of Sulu in the archipelago to the southwest of Mindanao.\n\nNo wonder that 18th and 19th century accounts of Brunei were so uncomplimentary. It was by one account,5 \"a nest of bandits\". Sea captains were warned to keep well away from Brunei:6\n\nThe predatory and treacherous disposition of the inhabitants of the extensive coasts that encircle the great island of Borneo have now discouraged almost every European from venturing to trade there.\n\nthere is no inducement for a ship to touch there or at any other of the bays on the northwest or northeast coasts of Borneo, the natives being inhospitable and perfidious.\n\nAnd the keen observer and writer Spencer B. St. John wrote of Brunei in 1860:7\n\nThe divisions among the nobles themselves prevent them ever uniting to regain an influence over their distant provinces, which one by one are falling from them. There is a poverty among these men which is almost inconceivable in a rich country, as whatever the amount obtained from the neighbouring villages, it can but support the idlers who throng round the chiefs.\n\nBrunei contains at least 25,000 inhabitants, half of whom depend, directly or indirectly, on the nobles, and in their name carry on a system of plunder unintelligible in other countries. If the followers be sent to make a demand on a certain village, they will obtain double the amount for their own shares. If the inhabitants refuse to pay, their children are seized; and if their means are really exhausted, the little ones are carried off into slavery.\n\nI knew a man, named Sirudin, who at one time brought over seventeen children obtained in that way from the people of Tutong, and this occurred during the spring of 1857. The parents laid their complaints before the sultan; but Sirudin had sold them off to the principal nobles, and no redress was to be had. The sultan pretended to be very angry with the man, but put the chief blame on the Pangeran de Gadong, who, he said, was beyond his power. The aborigines have often risen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212387, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "306\n\nthe San Bernadino Strait and searched the east coasts of Samar and Mindanao.\n\nBy the 24th December the Sphinx had arrived in Davao and made preparations for an eastward search through the Caroline Islands. Following fruitless enquiries in Palau from the local chieftains, the Sphinx churned her way further east through the myriad islets and atolls.\n\nBy the time HMS Sphinx had reached the Enderby atolls, Cmdr Brown had begun to lose hope of finding the Norna survivors. One last possibility lay ahead of him. Truk (now known as Chuuk), was the group of islands closest to St Augustine on the intended route of the Norna's castaways. In the early morning of the 3rd March 1862, HMS Sphinx eased her way through Truk's 100 mile circular coral fringe.\n\nNo sooner had they entered the lagoon than they saw an European style boat being rowed frantically towards them. The four lascar occupants scrambled up to the Sphinx's deck and explained they were from the shipwrecked barque Norna. They also told Brown that the rest of the crew were being held captive as slaves on various other islands in the group; they themselves had managed to escape.\n\nAfter a minor skirmish with the natives, HMS Sphinx rescued all the castaways from the Norna save for one who had died a few months earlier from the treatment meted out by the Trukese. It had been all but a year since the Norna was wrecked on the reefs of Oroluk Lagoon.\n\nOn the 19th March 1862, HMS Sphinx set course for Guam where they arrived six days later. After 10 days of rest and recreation, Brown set the Sphinx on course for Hong Kong and came to anchor close by the guardship, HMS Princess Charlotte, which was anchored not far from today's Kellet Island.\n\nHMS Sphinx had more than successfully acquitted herself in her endeavours. She had sailed and steamed nearly 6,000 miles through the little known waters of the Western Pacific in search of a crew who might or might not have survived. However, the naval authorities in Hong Kong firmly believed there was more than a fair chance of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215774, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "their petition. Even before 1826, the Spanish silver dollar and local copper cent had been used widely by the Straits merchants in their trade and commerce, (even though in theory, in 1835, the rupee was the currency of account for official purposes until 1867).\n\nThe directors of the EIC, considering only the Indian Empire's interests,29 established a uniform rupee currency throughout its territories, which of course included the Straits Settlements. In 1854, a bill was introduced to the Indian legislative council 'to improve the law relating to the copper currency in the Straits,' which provided for a copper currency based on fractions of the rupee.30 According to the Currency Act, the Indian pice was to be made legal tender instead of the copper cent and the rupee was to be enforced as legal tender.31\n\nThis Act was fiercely objected to by the Straits merchants, and in response to the opposition, the directors ordered the act to be repealed in 1857. Mr Ballie (Secretary of the Board of Control of the EIC) argues that 'it was very natural that the governor-general should desire to establish a uniform currency throughout the whole of the territories subject to his authority'32 and that after the complaints made at Singapore, this grievance was redressed, and that therefore the petitioners did not have a right to complain.**\n\nPage 36\n\n33\n\n35\n\nThe 1867 Act legalised a currency which was already assured,” and by the time the transfer to the Colonial Office took place, the currency issue was virtually resolved. However, as it was a problem that could have been prevented instead of cured, I would accord little credit to the Indian government's role in this issue.\n\nPiracy and western laws\n\nThis was another arguable \"problem\" that was cited in the petition, and used as an example of the Indian government's inefficiency. Piracy was widespread in the Straits until the mid-19th century, and was a threat to the property and commerce of the merchants. The pirates that predominated in the 1830s and 1840s were pirates of the Sulu archipelago, Illanun pirates from Mindanao and Dyaks from North Borneo. Complaints were that 'no systematic measures of protection have ever been adopted or carried out by the EIC, who have been content to leave the service to be performed by the Royal Navy.”37", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]