[
    {
        "id": 216425,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "134\n\nPre-war there were a large number of local Chinese in Russian employment in Manchuria. A typical throw-away line in a correspondent's lengthy report was the description of the unexpected naval assault on the Russian Far Eastern Fleet in Port Arthur in February 1904 which precipitated the war. \"The town was in confusion after this sudden and unexpected attack on the town initiating the conflict. Food prices soared as Chinese traders sold up and fled. Throughout the bombardment the Chinese streamed out to the hills wailing with fear. Clerks at one of the banks disappeared with large sums of money. Meanwhile, Chinese who were forbidden to travel by train during the mass exodus had converged on the harbour hoping to find places aboard foreign ships. Sampan men made a small fortune ferrying refugees out to the ships. Social organisation fell apart as Chinese servants and shop keepers fled leaving their employers and customers, the Russians, to fend for themselves.\"\n\nIn August 1904 the Japanese entered the Treaty Port of Newchwang (Niuzhuang, now known as Yingkou), the Russians having pulled out without fighting. The Japanese were surprised the Chinese there did not welcome them as deliverers, regretted the departure of Russian friends, and charged the Japanese two dollars where they only charged the Russians one. During the interval between the departure of the Russians and the arrival of the Japanese, Chinese refugees poured into the settlement in a ceaseless stream, carrying their goods and chattels. This was an all too familiar pattern ahead of the advancing armies.\n\nA correspondent's description of life in Mukden ahead of the approach of the Japanese as winter set in 1904 included his impressions of the daily scene with 'Manchus and Chinese, the men almost indistinguishable from one another, the Manchu women differing in their free stride from the mincing tread of their Chinese sisters. Cossacks and Chinese had soon established quite friendly relations. At every step you can see soldiers bargaining with inflexible Chinese for a bottle of vodka, or a handful of nuts or a pair of socks. Sometimes you see a soldier eating an apple in a fruit-seller's stall. This soldier was supposed to discharge the duties of a policeman, and the apple represents bribery and corruption.'\n\nAlthough there were many reports of Chinese and Manchu peasants taking sides and fighting for one or other of the belligerents for what",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
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    {
        "id": 216432,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 191,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "141\n\nOne such snippet dated 12 May, 1904, described how 'when the Russians withdrew from Wafangtien, contemporaneously with the Japanese advance, bands of Hunhuses throughout Manchuria began to show great activity, especially in the region of Yantai, a station between Mukden and Liaoyang, thus adding enormously to the dangers and preoccupations of the Russians. There were reports that these bands were led by Japanese, which were not improbable, since the Japanese had a perfect right to make use of their hostility to the Russians of the population of Manchuria. At the same time, in all directions, attacks on the railway began, under the direction of officers of the Japanese General Staff. Two such officers had been captured by General Kuropatkin in April and, as there was no doubt as to their mission since they had upon them a large quantity of dynamite, fuses and tools for destroying the line, they were promptly executed.' On the page facing this snippet is a photograph of the decapitation of several Hong Huzi with the caption 'How Russians deal with the Hunhuses who destroy the railway.'\n\nAlthough it does not in any way help clarify the employment of Chinese bandits as irregular troops by the Russians, a British observer writing on the horsemanship of the Cossacks, noted that ‘after a comparatively small force of Japanese cavalry at Sha-ho had acted as a sufficient counter-check to the larger masses of Russian horsemen, the Cossack was deficient in courage and staying power, but was well mounted. There was a long and exposed line of the Manchurian Railway for them to guard, and the Russian cavalry had the Hunhutses [sic] always with them, but these marauders on their diminutive horses should not have been able to ride round the horsemen of the steppes in the manner they seem persistently to have done.'\n\nAlthough captions on photographs of captured Chinese claim they were being executed for espionage, mainly spying for the Japanese, it tended to have been more a matter of individual banditry and any resultant monetary reward rather than prisoners having been 'resistance fighters.'\n\nThere is also a photograph of \"The Head Chief of the Hunhuses.' It shows four Chinese and one Japanese (said to have been an Intelligence Officer, who worked in Newchwang [Niuzhuang] during the Russian occupation as a shoemaker). The central figure is described as 'the chief named Chin, said to be in Japanese employ who is a well-",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216436,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 195,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "145\n\ncigarette, or a drink of water to the thirsting horses the men rode. The Chinese looked on with as much indifference as the foreigners showed.\n\nThis would appear to have been a rare display of bias against the Japanese.\n\nThe vexed question of neutrality\n\nBoth the Japanese and Russians accused each other of breaching the neutrality of China. China's neutrality was hard to sustain. Problems were mainly caused by trade being maintained as usual by neutral powers at and through Treaty Ports with both belligerents.\n\nIt was claimed that contraband included arms, coal, rice, flour and eggs. Traders in China furnished supplies with impartiality to both sides, but China feared that any breaches of neutrality could lead to retaliation against them. The brunt of maintaining a sort of neutrality fell upon the Chinese Maritime Customs.\n\nRussia was the first to bring categorical charges of breaches of neutrality against China. In late 1904 they raised the following seven points in their note to the Western Powers:\n\n(1) The use by Japan of the (Chinese) Miao Islands as a naval base\n\n(2) The transport of Japanese military material, stores, etc., by the Shanhai Kuan - Newchwang (Niuzhuang) Railway\n\n(3) The supply of material to the Japanese from the Hongkew Ironworks,\n\n(4) The enrolment of Chinese soldiers in the Japanese Army.\n\n(5) The engagement of Japanese officers for the purpose of drilling Chinese on the frontier.\n\n(6) The organising of Hunhutses to fight against Russia.\n\n(7) The seizure by the Japanese of the destroyer Rechitelni at Chefoo.\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216440,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 199,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "149\n\nNewchwang (Niuzhuang) and elsewhere - that might extenuate, but could not justify, Japan's action at Chefoo. The Japanese issued a statement, which ran as follows:\n\nThe status of China in the present struggle is unique. Nearly all the military operations are carried on within her borders, but she is not a party to the conflict. Nevertheless, her territories are in part belligerent and in part neutral. That condition of things is, as regards International Law, an anomaly and a contradiction, and in this case it was made the object of a special understanding ... and it seemed that any such occupation or use of neutral Chinese territory or ports by the Russian force would give effect to the proviso in the Japanese engagement which would justify her in considering ports so occupied or used as belligerent. From Port Arthur Russia sought in Chefoo an asylum from attack, which her home port had ceased to afford her. In taking that step, Russia was guilty of a breach of the neutrality of China... and with the termination of the incident the neutrality of the port was revived.\n\nChina augmented its force in the Shanghai river with a modern cruiser, with orders to arrest Russian vessels which had sought sanctuary at Wusong. They registered all the names, ages and official titles of the Russian naval personnel on the vessels at Wusong, and the list checked from time to time to ensure that none were missing. Russian warships which escaped from Port Arthur before its capture also took refuge in Chefoo where they were disarmed. These and other Chinese acts revealed their new-found courage and were, almost certainly, due to Japanese successes in the field.\n\nChinese reports of Russian violations and intrusions on neutral (Chinese) territory were frequent, notably in Kashgaria and other parts of Chinese Eastern Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang). They also frequently violated various parts of Mongolia and Manchuria west of the Liao River in direct contravention of the international agreement made at the commencement of the war by both belligerent powers.\n\nAt the end of January 1905 Russian forces suddenly appeared before Kashgar (Kashi), expelled the Chinese garrison, consisting of a Chinese major and some 200 locally-born Chinese soldiers in the old town, and the Tidu or Provincial Commander-in-Chief and five",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216444,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 203,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "153\n\nrecruit Chinese labour for the South African mines had been discussed and taken before the outbreak of the war).\n\nNOTES\n\ni The Russian's naval port at Port Arthur was built beside the small Chinese town of Qingniwa now part of greater Dalian (called Dalny by the Russians). The Chinese town was known to the Russians as either the Chinese town or the Old Town.\n\nii Mukden was Fengtian in Qing times; also Shengjing.\n\nThis consisted of revolutionary agitation, with strikes, riots and mutinies in the army and navy - including the mutiny on the Potemkin in Odessa in June 1905.\n\niv The IG In Peking: Vol. II: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1971: Hart's Letter 1319 of 28 February 1904\n\n* Ernest Brindle: With Russian, Japanese and the Chunchuse - The Experiences of an Englishman during the Russo-Japanese War: John Murray: London: 1905 (A number of observations provided by Brindle have also been quoted within this article)\n\nv Sakuya Takahashi: International Law Applied to the Russo-Japanese War: Stevens and Sons, Ltd: London: 1908 - Chapter IV: Section I\n\nvii Newchwang [(Niuzhuang) is a town some 30 miles inland and connected by the River Liao with its port, formerly Port Newchwang, and known to the Chinese as Yingkou. Newchwang had been a Treaty Port with Western resident businessmen and missionaries since 1861.\n\nviii Some four months after the outbreak of the war foreign newspaper correspondents were complaining that neither the Russians nor the Japanese allowed them to see much of what was going on. Both belligerents claimed that war was too serious an affair to let plans be spoiled by correspondents. Japanese reports were considered more reliable and Russian accounts were not taken seriously.\n\nix [C]hun[c]huse was probably the Russian romanisation for Hong Huzi.\n\nx Shao Yuchun: Minzu Lao Yingxiong - Wang Delin: (Wang Delin, Old Hero): in Tan Yi [ed] Dongbei Kangri Yiyongjun Renwuzhi: Vol 2: 1981\n\nxi Mancall and Jidkoff: Les Honghuzi de la Chine du Nord-Est: 1970\n\nxii War in the East: Virtue and Co.: London: Volume VI\n\nxiii International Law Applied to the Russo-Japanese War: Chapter IV: Section II\n\nxiv Illustration in Japan's Fight for Freedom H.W. Wilson: The Amalgamated Press: London: 1905 - Volumes I and II.\n\nxv * Hart's letter No. 1387 dated 29 October 1905",
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