[
    {
        "id": 204375,
        "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-1962",
        "page_number": 7,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "2\n\nflourished between 1858 and 1948 was more fortunate because it was able to draw on the services of a far wider group of people who came to work in China in the years after travel and residence there was no longer restricted. The present Society is luckier still because, thanks to air travel, we have been able to draw on an extremely wide range of contributors in the first two volumes of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nWhen examining the table of contents of the six volumes of Transactions published in Hong Kong between 1847 and 1859, one sees the titles of several articles which it would be most interesting to read if copies of these volumes were available in Hong Kong. For example, in Volume III Harry Parkes, at that time British Consul in Canton, and later British Minister at Peking, described proceedings in a criminal Court at Canton, while Dr. Bowring contributed an article “On the Character and Writings of Commissioner Lin Tsih-seu”, which at that time (1851) was still very recent history. In Volume VI (1859) Dr. D. J. Macgowan wrote on Chinese opium while the Rev. Krone contributed “A notice of the Sanon district *”. This is of particular interest since the Sanon district included all of what later became the New Territories. The full list of contents of each of these volumes can be found in Bibliotheca Sinica by Henri Cordier, Volume IV, columns 2401-2.\n\n44\n\nBy way of contrast it is interesting to consider the contents of the first two volumes of the Journal of the revived Hong Kong Branch of the R.A.S. published in 1961 and 1962. Perhaps the first point which strikes one is the wider range of subject matter covered by these two volumes. In Volume I, Mr. Hugh Richardson, the last head of the British mission at Lhasa wrote on Tibet as it was, and Professor Drake reviewed the whole field of Western contacts with Asia. In Volume II Mr. Evan Luard's newly published book Britain and China, which covers the story of recent Sino-British relations, is the subject of a review-article by Mrs. Colina Lupton. Another noteworthy point is the number of admirable contributions from Chinese scholars in these two volumes. The six volumes of Transactions published between\n\n* Although I have made extensive enquiries I have been unable to locate copies of the Transactions in Hong Kong. The City Hall Library ought to have a set. (Ed.)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204498,
        "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-1962",
        "page_number": 130,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "115\n\nBRITAIN AND CHINA'\n\nReviewed by COLINA LUPTON, M.A.2\n\nChina is and will probably continue for some time to be the most unpredictable element in world affairs. With the passage of time she becomes more, not less so; her motives grow more obscure, her economic development more problematical, her political life—within the echelons of the Communist Party—more a matter for conjecture. On the face which she turns to the world there is little sign of the stresses and strains which she is undergoing; the information which China publishes about herself is remarkable only for the lack of knowledge it conveys. Unhappily—in view of our ignorance China is likely by sheer weight of numbers to be the dominant influence in the world in perhaps twenty years' time, and how this unleashed dragon will deal then with other nations largely depends on the kind of handling she receives now.\n\nHence any book which sheds light on Chinese thought processes, in particular relating present policies to past treatment, is a valuable one. Mr. Luard has gone one better and conjectured the course of the future. His book sets out a sane and lucid account of relations with China since the first British ships reached her shores in 1637, and describes both what he expects to see and what he would like to see happen in the next few years. In what really amounts to a series of essays on the historical background, on the Kuomintang, the Communists and the Korean war, on missionaries and merchants, Hong Kong and Taiwan—he neatly discusses, without a superfluity of chronological detail, the past, the present, and the future. This method necessitates a little overlapping between the chapters, but it is worth this since it saves a lot of narration inessential to the point of the book. For the author is trying to discuss sentiments and policies as much as facts, and this kind of pattern gives him the scope to do so. This is certainly not to say that he has ignored facts; though the historical background is compressed, the account of Britain's dealings with the Mao Tse-tung regime is very fully treated.\n\nBy Evan Luard. Chatto and Windus, 1962. 25/-.\n\n* The writer was formerly a research assistant in the Far East Department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She has been living in Hong Kong since the end of 1960, and is Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    }
]