[ { "id": 205251, "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-1967", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "6\n\nIn members the Society has hovered between the 400 and 500 mark. The total membership at the end of 1966 was 423, including 64 life members. During the year 50 new members joined, including 5 life members. There was, however, a loss of 63 members most of whom resigned on leaving the Colony. To offset this loss there were two encouraging features. Ten ordinary members, some of whom were leaving the Colony, showed their continuing interest by becoming life members, and it is hoped that more members will follow this excellent example. It is also gratifying to note that in the first three months of this year the Society has already gained 28 new members.\n\n3 April, 1967\n\nJ. R. JONES\n\n10 January\n\nLECTURES 1966\n\nMr. Peter Kam-on Wong\n\n\"Fighting Crickets of South China - a historical review\"\n\nAnnual General Meeting\n\n14 February\n\nMr. Lee Yen\n\n\"Oracle Bones\"\n\n**\n\n28 March\n\n4 April\n\n25 April\n\nMiss Helen Lowenthal\n\n16 May\n\nProfessor John J. Nolde\n\n\"Tumult and Turmoil on the South China Coast in the Early 19th Century\"\n\n\"Trade with the East and Its Influence on 18th Century European Taste\"\n\nProfessor Gerald S. Graham\n\n\"Safeguarding the Route to China\n\nChallenge of the Dutch 1816 - 1847\"\n\n\"Charles Elliot and Hong Kong\"\n\n18 July\n\nMr. Austin Coates\n\n8 August\n\n44\n\n26 September\n\nMajor A. M. MacFarlane\n\n**\n\nThe\n\n\"Birds and Man in Hong Kong - Bird Protection and Conservation\"\n\nMr. Jen Yu-wen\n\n*\n\n\"The travelling Palace of the Southern Sung in Kowloon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205427, "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-1967", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "182\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nWeddell's foray at the Bocca Tigris in 1637 until the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Nanking between Ch'i-ying and Pottinger on the newly ceded island of Hong Kong in June 1843. In this short book of 232 pages the author has mainly confined himself to retelling the part played by British subjects in the growth of foreign trade at Canton and the events which finally led to the cession of Hong Kong. He emphasizes the major role played by Macao in these events but without providing much information of interest not already known. Even the picturesque details of life in Macao which one might expect from Mr. Coates' known ability as a descriptive writer are few and far between.\n\nIn the main this is a simple account of how the British eventually gained Hong Kong, and in telling this story the author has traversed, in a brief space, the same ground that was covered by H. B. Morse in five volumes. The information is so compressed that one wonders whom the author had in mind when writing this book. Two hundred eventful years for which a mass of original documents in Chinese, Portuguese and English exist cannot satisfactorily be cut down to fit such a slim volume. Moreover, the author has resolutely made no concessions to scholarly readers, since the book contains almost no footnotes and no references to support the author's statements and judgments, and no details of the documentary sources from which quotations have been made.\n\nThe style of the writing may give some clue to the public for whom this book was designed; it is one of ‘imaginative reconstruction' based on the author's own sensibility rather than on thorough historical research and evidence supported by exact references. For instance, describing a Chinese official who could speak Portuguese he writes: \"No description of this one survives, yet we see him clearly. He is obviously Chinese, yet his youthful association with foreigners has changed something of his expression.... We cannot help being amused by his subtle understanding of his own people's weaknesses and shortcomings.” (p.9) This method is admirable in an historical novel but is out of place in what purports to be a factual account. At times the style tends to be rather arch, as though the author felt it necessary to sugar-coat his narrative in order to make it acceptable to the weaker students. The following examples show the kind of tricks he employs: \"But Weddell, a weather-beaten sea dog as tough as they come, was not a man to be taken in by a civil service answer\" (p.5). \"Let us", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205429, "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-1967", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "184\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nlung, who was concurrently a Grand Councillor and a Grand Secretary.\n\nThis inadequate chapter on the Macartney mission demonstrates the basic weakness of the whole book, namely the author's failure to use the best primary sources both Chinese and Western. The story of the abortive Macartney mission is a fascinating one because it marks the first cultural confrontation between China and a major Western power, and as such has historical overtones which are relevant to a full understanding of the confrontation which we are witnessing today. But Mr. Coates has failed to bring out this significance mainly, I suspect, because of his unfamiliarity with the primary English and Chinese sources. For instance, there is no indication from his account that he has read Lord Macartney's own journal of his embassy which was published in full in 1962. From the bibliography it appears that this chapter was based almost entirely on the official account of the embassy written by Sir George Leonard Staunton which is dull and florid in comparison with Macartney's own private journal.\n\nIt is only fair to say, however, that the last 50 pages of the book are devoted to the events following the death of Lord Napier in 1834 and leading up to the formal cession of Hong Kong in 1843, and that here the author appears to be on more familiar ground. For instance, he brings out clearly the difficulties which faced Captain Charles Elliot as British Superintendent of Trade and he guides the reader towards a fair and balanced judgment of Elliot as a statesman. It is time that the reputation of Charles Elliot, created mainly by the strictures of Queen Victoria and Palmerston, be reassessed.\n\nIn conclusion, Prelude to Hong Kong is not in any way an original work of scholarship and contains almost nothing which cannot be read more reliably elsewhere. It may be of some value to those who have recently become aware of Hong Kong's existence and want to read up, in brief summary, the train of events which resulted in its founding. But for those who already know something of the history of Macao and the development of foreign trade at Canton, this modest little book will be a disappointment since the author has failed to draw sufficiently on the richness of the archives of the period and thus the reader is compelled to view the story through the eyes of the author rather than through", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "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": 205981, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "56\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nunder the Captain Superintendent in Hong Kong. The islands, and later, an outlying part of the mainland, were organised separately as the Southern District, with an assistant land officer appointed on 1 January 1905; he became an Assistant District Officer in 191054. G. B. Endacott Government and People in Hong Kong, pp. 134-5, Stewart Lockhart's Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong, 1900, says: \"Since Mr. Lockhart's return to Hong Kong in July (1899) the work of the New Territory has been carried on by Messrs. Messer, Kemp and Hallifax, three cadets who are carrying out their instructions in a most satisfactory manner\". The tradition developed of sending newly passed cadets to be \"blooded\" in the New Territory before they took up more sedentary duties in the Central Government Departments.\n\n54 Austin Coates Myself a Magistrate. London, 1968, p. 13; speaking of his appointment as a Magistrate in the New Territories, Mr. Coates writes: \"It was a job which would demand a complete change of thought and attitude after the Secretariat, occupied as I had been there with the doings of the modern world. Yet in this older world, bypassed by time, might I not find the roots—perhaps even the soul of the people who, met with in the city, held in their hearts something that everlastingly eluded me?”\n\n55 G. B. Endacott Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 169.\n\n56 Ibid., p. 169.\n\n57 A particularly acidulous, but fictional, portrait of an Assistant Colonial Secretary is presented in Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil (London, 1925). This so enraged the then Assistant Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong, A. G. M. Fletcher, that he threatened an action against the publishers, Heinemann. The name Hong Kong was replaced in the second issue of the book by \"Tching Yen\".\n\n58 Richard Symonds The British and Their Successors, London, 1966, p. 16.\n\n59 G. B. Sayer Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, 1937, p.15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213363, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "168\n\n23\n\nNg Lun Ngai-ha, Village Education in Transition, JHKBRAS, vol 22 (1982) pp 252-70. David Faure, Sai Kung. The Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\", Ibid, pp 161-216\n\n26 David Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society. Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1986)\n\n27\n\nThis is most clearly expressed in Faure's latest work, Unity and Diversity Local Cultures and Identities in China, edited by Tao Tao Liu and David Faure, (Hong Kong University Press, 1996)\n\n28\n\nAmong these histories are Nigel Cameron, Power the Story of China Light (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1982), Austin Coates, A Mountain of Light the Story of the Hong Kong Electric Company (London Heinemann, 1977), Robin Hutcheon, Wharf the First Hundred Years (Hong Kong Wharf (Holding, 1986), Katherine Mattock, Hong Kong Practice Dr Anderson and Partners, the First Hundred Years (Hong Kong Dr Anderson and Partners, 1984), and of course Frank HH King's monumental history of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 4 volumes published by the Cambridge University Press\n\n29 It would be useful to examine the policies and thinking behind the establishment and expansion of these bodies but it is beyond the brief of this paper to do so. But the economic power which makes these possible is very obvious\n\n30\n\nFor a brief introduction to its work, see The Heritage of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Antiquities and Monuments Office, Recreation and Culture Branch, 1992), for an account of how the AMO was founded, see Elizabeth Sinn. Modernization without Tears Attempts at Cultural Conservation in Hong Kong, Seminar paper presented at the Symposium on Cultural Heritage and Modernization, Hong Kong Institution of the Promotion of Chinese Culture and Goethe Institute of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 29 September - 2 October, 1987\n\nWhen Mr Lu Yan (real name, Liang Tao, died, the author went to see his collection of materials which literally jammed his small flat, and was impressed by the rarity of some of the items Obviously an avid and passionate collector, his willingness to sacrifice the physical comfort of home for the love of research, is much to be admired\n\n32 Barbara E Ward, Social and Cultural Heritage in the New Territories, p 123\n\n11\n\nJoan Law and Barbara E Ward Festivals in Hong Kong (Hong Kong South China Morning Post, 1982, republished by Hong Kong Guidebook Company Ltd, 1993)\n\n14\n\nHugh DR Baker, Ancestral Images 3 volumes (Hong Kong South China Morning Post 1979-81) and Hong Kong Images. People and Animals (Hong Kong University Press 1990)\n\n15\n\nThese include Chen Qian, A Record of Things Seen and Heard in Hong Kong (in Chinese) (Hong Kong Zhongyuan, 1987); Liu Zesheng, Hong Kong Past and Present (in Chinese) (Guangzhou, 1988). He Hongching (ed) Hong Kong Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (in Chinese) (Beijing, 1994)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 } ]