[ { "id": 204360, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n124\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nNote on a Collection of Chinese Books Presented to The Royal Asiatic Society by Sir George Thomas Staunton in 1824.\n\nAs a boy of twelve G. T. Staunton had accompanied his father, Sir George Leonard Staunton, on the Macartney embassy to China in 1793. During the long outward voyage young Staunton had learned some Chinese from two Chinese Catholic priests who were returning to China after studying at Naples. When Lord Macartney was received in audience by the Emperor Ch'ien-lung at Jehol on 14 September, 1793 young Staunton acted as his page. In 1798 he became a writer in the East India Company's Factory at Canton, in 1804 he was appointed a Supercargo, in 1808 promoted to the post of Interpreter, and in 1816 he became Chief of the Factory. In the same year he accompanied the abortive Amherst embassy to Peking. On the return of the embassy he settled in England and became a Member of Parliament. In 1823 he was active in founding the Asiatic Society.\n\nThe following letter was written by Sir G. T. Staunton to the Secretary of the Asiatic Society in 1823.\n\nSir,\n\nHaving in the course of my residence in China formed a considerable Collection of Chinese printed Books, and also of Manuscript Dictionaries, and other works of Europeans, calculated to assist the Student in the acquisition of a knowledge of the language and literature of the Chinese, I feel confident that I cannot more effectually promote the object I had in view making the Collection, namely, the more general acquaintance in this Country with whatever may be found curious or useful among the productions of the Chinese press, than by a respectful offer of the Collection to the Asiatic Society.\n\nMy wish is, that it should be preserved entire, and placed in such a situation as may admit of its being at all times readily accessible to the British and other Students of Chinese Literature, who may frequent this Metropolis, under such regulations as the Asiatic Society may deem it expedient to prescribe.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204474, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n95\n\n2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British\", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin.\n\nIt is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory.\n\nThe market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had \"seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc.\" Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs\". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there \"used to be over two hundred shops trading here\". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204584, "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-1963", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "54\n\nMA MENG\n\ninfluence. After 1919, Western sentence structures and punctuation marks were deliberately adopted, especially by the so-called \"New Literary writers\", such as Hsu Chih-mo and Hsieh Pin-hsin 謝冰心.\n\nSince 1949 new efforts have been made in Mainland China to work out a Chinese grammar on the Western pattern. As a result, the sentence structure of the Chinese language has become still more westernised, as a glance at the People's Daily will suffice to show. There are also signs of a deliberate effort to introduce Western phrases and grammatical patterns into the spoken language; but so far at least these appear chiefly in political or ceremonial speeches.\n\nIt should be noted that Western influence on the Chinese language, since the May 4th Movement, has been primarily English, not only because English has been the most widely used foreign language in China but also because since that time most Chinese translations of foreign literature have been made from English.\n\nThe most remarkable feature in the recent linguistic changes in China has been the rapid growth of vocabulary, which has greatly enriched the language. This growth has been due to the coinage of new terms to describe new situations or to replace old terms, and the use of traditional, colloquial or regional terms used in a new sense.\n\nAs in all languages, new Chinese terms or expressions can have foreign or native sources; but in Chinese the great majority of new terms have come from foreign sources. Mass assimilation of Western knowledge in recent years has created an ever growing demand for new terms to describe objects or situations hitherto unknown in China. However, since, with a few exceptions, the Chinese language is written in monosyllabic characters and lacks a uniform pronunciation, it does not lend itself well to the adoption of foreign terms by transliteration. Transliteration being difficult, new terms have more commonly been introduced into Chinese by translating the foreign term into Chinese characters - a practice that can cost more effort than the coinage of new terms. When Liang Ch'i-ch'ao described his impressions of a visit to the British Parliament, he coined the expression pa-li-men. “Science” and “democracy\" first became known in China as sai-yin-szu or sai-hsien-sheng (\"Mr. Science\")", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204585, "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-1963", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHANGES IN CHINESE LANGUAGE\n\n55\n\nand as te-mo-k'e-la-si #or te hsien-sheng ✯ (Mr. Democracy\"). But now these transliterations have become antiquated and replaced by i-hui for parliament, kê-hsüeh ** for science, and min-chu R± for democracy. But a few good transliterations have survived such as chi-he for geometry, lo-chi for logic, yu-mo ✯✯ for humour, wu-t'o-pang ✯‡₺ Ħ for utopia, sha-wen chu-i ✯✯‡ for chauvinism. Yet even in Hong Kong, where many Chinese use English, transliteration remains the less common method for introducing terms of foreign origin. Some popular transliterations are, however, in use such as pâk-ch'e for parking a car, in-shoh for insurance, sz-toh ✰✰ for store, fei-lam for film and chak K for cheque. The Chinese living in multi-lingual communities like Malaya or Singapore resort more frequently to transliteration; but their tendency to do so has not exerted a significant influence on the language as a whole. Transliteration of Western terms having in general been found to be a clumsy practice, many Chinese translators, especially before the May 4th Movement, have preferred to borrow certain terms from the Japanese.\n\nIn Chinese, many words can be used in more than one grammatical function, having either completely different meanings or different connotations of one meaning, depending on their position in the sentence. This peculiarity has sometimes been thought to make for a lack of that precision needed in scientific usage. But this so-called imprecision also makes for elasticity in the creation of new terms. For instance, the character pi # can, depending on its place in a sentence, signify \"writing brush\", \"to write\", \"writing\" or \"handwriting\"; moreover, it can be found in combinations such as kang-pi meaning pen; sui-pi M. sketch or essay; pi-chi . to take notes; ch'in-pi #, one's own handwriting; or finally chu-pi, editor or editorial writer of newspaper. How widely the meaning of a character may vary is best shown by the character su originally meaning \"plain and unadorned\". However, Chinese dictionaries usually list about ten meanings under this character, as well as numerous combinations in which it forms a part, such as su-shih . vegetarian diet; su-miao ✯, sketch; yin-su #, factor; and yüan-su ƒ‡. chemical element all newly coined expressions. Similar combinations in common use are: ke-ming, revolution;\n\n¡", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205139, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "90\n\n1897-1904 ― HOLMES WELCH\n\nChristian missionary to the Jews of Hamburg and Montreal, first as a Presbyterian, then as an Anglican clergyman; finally curate in an English country village.\n\n1904-1906 Odd jobs in London.\n\n1906-1909 Director of a large socio-economic survey of Belgium.\n\n1909-1915 Member of Parliament, speculator in Rumanian oil fields, forger of cheques,\n\n1915 Would-be German spy, who, after escaping from Britain, then escaped from the New York police.\n\n1916-1919 In English prison for forgery.\n\n1919-1922 Plotter in the Kapp Putsch in Berlin; salesman of information about other proto-Facist plots in several European countries; again in jail.\n\n1922 To the Far East.\n\n1922-1924 Advisor to a succession of Chinese warlords (Yang Shen, Wu P'ei-fu, Ch'i Hsi-yüan). Back to Europe, then to the U.S., then to China again, where he resolved to enter a Buddhist monastery.\n\n1925-1926 In Colombo, Ceylon, where he began to dress as a Buddhist monk and lecture on Buddhism; returned to Europe for an unsuccessful attempt to save his son from execution for murder in England.\n\n1927-1928 Buddhist missionary in San Francisco; then back to China.\n\n1928-1931 Whereabouts generally unknown, but sometimes living in Buddhist monasteries in Shanghai and Hangchow. From July 1929 to June 1930 on a tour of Europe, lecturing on Buddhism, dressed in Buddhist robes and signing hotel registers \"Chao-k'ung\".\n\nIn May 1931 he became Chao-k'ung officially when he was ordained at Pao-hua Shan, the most illustrious ordination center in China. The next year he went to Europe to collect disciples and arrived back in Shanghai with them on July 25, 1933.46 There were twelve of these disciples - English, French, Italian, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205183, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n133\n\nNOTES\n\nThe place names are all in Cantonese and can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication The Place Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1960). Where not otherwise stated my authority for information given in the paper comes from the old people mentioned in note 16. The aim of this article is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century.\n\n1. E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, p. 360.\n\n2. The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. The text can be found on pp. 198-199 of the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, i.e., papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\n3. Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong and Kowloon for 1864... presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty in 1865 to be found in Parliamentary Papers, China, 1861-66, p. 16.\n\n4. C.O.129/85 in the Public Record Office, London.\n\n5. The Commissioners sent an abstract of these documents to London. These were as follows:\n\n\"No. 1 | List of Red Deeds Owners not belonging to the Teng Family—contains 91 Deeds, comprising an area of 176 acres value computed at $25,865.32\n\nNo. 2 List of Deeds belonging to the Two Branches of the Teng Family contains 78 Deeds comprising an area of 276 acres value computed at $40,561.52\n\nNo. 3 List of squatters showing the number to be 222—spread over 90 acres value computed at $13,226.16*\n\nThe \"Teng\" family mentioned in Nos. 1 and 2 above is the Tang (*) family of Kam Tin, who are Cantonese and are the oldest, richest and best-known of the New Territories landed families. See SUNG Hok-Pang. \"Legends and Stories of the New Territories\" Parts III-IV, Kam Tin, in The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII.\n\n6. Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860. The population at this time contained a preponderance of men; 3356 to 971 women and 778 children (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 22 February 1862).\n\n7. For instance, the genealogies (##) of the Ng (吳) clan of Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po and the Lam (林) clan of Chuk Yuen and Po Kong show that their settlement dates back to this period.\n\n8. I base this statement on personal knowledge of the fifty or more Hakka villages in the Sai Kung district of the New Territories.\n\n9. Hong Kong Government Blue Book for 1871 p. 148.\n\n10. See G. N. Orme's \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" in Sessional Papers 1912 p. 55 and J. H. Stewart Lockhart in Sessional Papers 1899, p. 189. My second statement is based on conversations with families of Hakka stonecutters at Ngau Tau Kok Village, Kowloon.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205728, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "28 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nNOTES \n\n1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: \"For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty\n\nSee E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349.\n\n2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was \"educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)\". I find no evidence to support this.\n\n3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government.\n\n4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94.\n\n6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies.\n\n7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140.\n\n8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199.\n\n9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98.\n\n10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, \"Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205794, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "94\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nnecessary for the late King? He would be welcome then, that is in 1852. At the same time he took the initiative in improving trading conditions. Monopolies were partly removed and duties on imports and exports reduced. For a moment it seemed that Siam's foreign relations could be improved without formal treaty and the British Government did not press the matter. But in fact there was much to be done, and with a new British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong it was opportune to resume discussions.\n\nSir John Bowring was a very different diplomat from his three British predecessors, Crawfurd, Burney and Brooke or the American envoys Roberts and Ballestier. He was an intellectual, a radical reformer, a disciple and editor of Jeremy Bentham, a linguist who could prattle in a dozen languages, an ex-Member of Parliament and a writer of hymns, an inveterate talker, a man with limitless energy and a Victorian capacity for pomposity and self-glory. After a career of business, politics, writing and self-appointed diplomacy in the courts of Europe, Bowring, being short of money, accepted public office as Consul at Canton. That was in 1849 when he was fifty-seven. Some five years later he became Governor of Hong Kong, Superintendent of Trade and, most glorious of all, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary responsible for relations with China, Japan, Siam and all countries in the Far East.\n\nBowring's five years' Governorship of the island colony on the coast of China was anything but successful. Some of his senior officials were incompetent and even corrupt, and he was unpopular among the British merchants. Worst of all he precipitated the second Anglo-Chinese war by sending warships to bombard Canton over a quite unworthy incident. But he was completely successful when he sailed to Bangkok in March, 1855, to negotiate a treaty with the Siamese.\n\nMost of the detailed business of the negotiations was done by Bowring's young assistants, his son John C. Bowring, an employee of Jardine, Matheson and Co. in Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, his secretary, who was later to have a distinguished career as Consul at several ports on the China coast, (Mongkut referred to the young men as \"Mr. Parkes and Your Excellency's upspring\".) But it was Bowring and King Mongkut who created the favourable atmosphere which allowed progress to be rapid and the discussions congenial. It was clear from the start that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206054, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "A BRITISH WARTIME CHART SHOWING HONG KONG\n\n129\n\nAs can be seen from the illustration the chart has a somewhat old-fashioned appearance as it has the radiating lines indicating the 32 directions in the same manner as the Mediaeval Portulan Charts. It would appear that these lines indicate true and not compass bearings as one East to West line meets the point indicating 21° 54' N. on both sides of the chart, also a North line to the south of Hong Kong (not shown on the illustration) has a fleur-de-lis emblem on it; this is the usual symbol to indicate true north.\n\nThe scale of the chart is not given, but the sides are graduated at one minute intervals of latitude. These can be taken as Sea Miles in use at that time. The precise length of one degree of latitude was in dispute during the eighteenth century, and lacking other information it is probably safest to assume that the value obtained by Picard in 1669 would have been used. This assumption would give a scale of 1:333,475, with 10 Sea Miles equivalent to 56 mm., 10 kilometres equivalent to 30 mm, and 10 Statute Miles equivalent to 1.9 inches. It should be noted, however, that the Kilometre did not come into use until 1799 and that the Statute Mile was established by an Act of Parliament in 1824.3\n\nThe latitudes of the southern point of Macao on the chart is 22° 12′ N., being 14 minutes too far north. The latitude of Canton, at the position of modern Shameen, is 23° 9′ N., being 3 minutes too far north, while Kowloon City at 22° 21' N. is 1 minute too far north. These latitudes are very accurate for the period, but not surprisingly so, considering the fact that the Portuguese had been in the area for more than 250 years, and that as the positions are within the tropics their latitudes could be deduced from the date of the sun at Zenith with the help of the Solar Declination Tables. The small error for Kowloon City is fortuitous, due to surveying errors.4\n\nRegarding the content of the map it is clear from the title that we are faced with a composite map with at least two and possibly three distinct sources. These are 1. A Portuguese Chart 2. A Chinese Chart 3. Possibly original surveys by Hayter or others. The Portuguese influence can be seen in the names \"Furado\" and \"Porado”. The contents of the \"Chinese Chart of the Macao Pilots\" is not known, but if the maps in the local gazetteer of the Hsin-an Hsien are any indication they are not likely to have been based on accurate surveys.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206394, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n185\n\nI hurry on to the month of October, 1856, when there occurred the affair of the lorcha Arrow at Canton, which grew out of the practice of granting sailing letters to native craft, adopted, I think in the previous year, by Sir John Bowring, and which was rendered necessary to save the holders of them from capture by the insurgent fleets in the neighbourhood of Whampoa. A more unfortunate occasion of hostilities could not have presented itself; it was almost as bad as the opium complications which brought on our former war. It was felt to be so by Sir Michael Seymour, into whose hands the management of the thing soon passed from those of the Governor, and he tried to shift the quarrel to the old question of throwing open the gates of the city. The sense of many at home was sufficiently declared by the decision of Parliament against going to war about the matter, and under any other prime minister than Lord Palmerston the adverse vote would have been final. He appealed from it, however, to the country, which supported his policy, and Lord Elgin was called to proceed to China, and square up all the accounts between it and Great Britain.\n\nBefore that, however, on the morning of the 15th January, 1857, occurred the diabolical attempt to poison a large number of the inhabitants of the Colony by means of bread supplied from the bakery of A-lum. I was one of those who partook of the poison. I did so twice; early in the morning, and again at breakfast time; soon getting rid, however, of all the noxious matter through violent paroxysms of sickness. Never was such a day of excitement in the Colony; and had A-lum been caught at once, he would have been lynched beyond a doubt; but he had gone off with all his family by the early steamer to Macao. Being pursued thither, and brought back, he was subsequently brought to trial and acquitted, the guilt of the deed being thrown by him on his foreman and another man, who had made their escape. He was subsequently kept in gaol at large for some time, and there I made his acquaintance. He was a tall, imposing-looking man for a Chinese, and had been well educated. The respect and deference shown to him by all the prisoners were wonderful. On the Sundays, when I went to conduct a religious service with them, he quite took me under his patronage, had the books ready, and maintained perfect order among all who attended.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206949, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "14\n\nA. I. DIAMOND\n\nSo much for the sorry image of the archivist. Now what are the realities. What are archives and what do archivists do? Most people, if asked what archives are, will say that they are old documents of historical interest, or the records of some person or institution which have value for research purposes.\n\nThis is true enough as far as it goes. Many archives, of course, are old and historically interesting, but neither of these attributes is necessary for documents to qualify as archives. For example, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament, the original instrument, bearing the seal and sign manual of the Sovereign is undoubtedly an archive, and it is so whether it was passed yesterday or five hundred years ago. Its age has nothing to do with its archival quality. And since, as soon as it receives the Royal assent, copies of it are generally published and distributed in their thousands, one could hardly claim that the original itself was of much interest to the historian. It has value, of course. An authenticated Act of Parliament is the final source of Government's authority for certain of its actions; but it is not this either which makes it an archive.\n\nDocuments acquire archival quality from the manner in which they have been created and kept. The eminent English authority on archives, Sir Hilary Jenkinson, defines them as follows: \"A document which may be said to belong to the class of Archives is one which was drawn up or used in the course of an administrative or executive transaction (whether public or private) of which itself formed a part; and subsequently preserved in their own custody for their own information by the person or persons responsible for that transaction and their legitimate successors”.*\n\nArchives, then, are the totality of the documents produced or received by an office or other agency in the course of its business and which have been retained for action or reference.\n\nIt is sometimes supposed that the term \"archives\" applies specifically, or at any rate more properly, to government records; but this is not the case. The term is equally applicable to the records of banks, insurance houses, churches, clubs and any other forms of association or enterprise. And if it comes to that even families or private individuals may accumulate them. What makes a body of documents archives is not who accumulated it but how it was done.\n\n* Jenkinson, Sir Hilary. \"A Manual of Archive Administration.\" (Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., London), p. 11.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207288, "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-1975", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "INCIDENT BETWEEN HONG MERCHANTS AND THE SUPERCARGOES OF THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY IN CANTON, 1811.\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG*\n\nA detailed account of this incident was recorded by the senior officer on the British side, Captain the Hon. Hugh Lindsay,† the Commodore of the East India Company's fleet at that time. It is in the form of a letter to his sister, Lady Anne Barnard, undated, and was printed in The Lives of the Lindsays by Lord Lindsay, 2 vols., London, 1849. A full copy of this letter, retaining the original punctuation, has been supplied by Mr. Tom Lindsay, a long-time member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is worth printing because of the details it supplies which are missing in the brief account of the same episode in Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834, Vol. III, Oxford 1926, p. 156.\n\nHistorians of early Anglo-Chinese relations, and of the British East India Company's trade with China, have to rely to a great extent for their material on Morse's five substantial volumes. It is worth examining, at this point, how Morse wrote these volumes which are based on a massive collection of hand-written documents.\n\n* Professor Cranmer-Byng belongs to the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He was the first Hon. Editor of this Journal and has contributed to it from time to time.\n\nHon. Hugh Lindsay was a younger brother of Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres and 23rd Earl of Crawford. A note at the bottom of page 400 of Vol. II of Lives of the Lindsays states:\n\nMr. Hugh Lindsay was for many years Member of Parliament for the burghs of Forfar, Perth, Dundee, Cupar and St. Andrews, and Marshal of the Admiralty.\n\nIn the text on the same page it is stated that he was also a Director and Chairman of the East India Company. He died in April 1844 in his eightieth year. The biographical note goes on:\n\nHugh Hamilton Lindsay Esq., his only son, and long a resident in China, is the author of the extremely interesting 'Voyage of the Amherst, — along two thousand miles of the coast of China,- published in 8vo. by a speculating bookseller, from his report to the East India Co., which was printed by order of Parliament.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207724, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n97\n\nPeking. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company had been doing business with Hawaii. Their two steamers, the Ho-Chung ** and Mei-Foo, ✯✯ were used to transport Chinese laborers to Hawaii in 1879 and 1880.*\n\nIn Tientsin, King Kalakaua was received by Viceroy Li Hung-chang ✶ who asked penetrating questions about Hawaii: \"How many islands are there in your Kingdom? Do you have a Parliament? You have many Chinese in your country. Do you treat them well?\" The secretary and interpreter for the Viceroy was Li Sun (Tsang Lai-sun, a graduate of Hamilton College in New York.)\n\nThe King wrote back on April 6, 1881 to William L. Green, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, that he went to North China to see Li Hung-chang \"for the purposes I had in view: First, of stopping, if possible, further immigration of Chinese to the Islands [who came alone] without carrying their wives, and Secondly:--to secure for our government the same privileges as granted to the United States Government, the right at any time to restrict, return, or remove, the large influx of Chinese to our islands. On these two subjects our mission has been successful.”\n\nThe Royal party returned to Shanghai and embarked on the S. S. Thibet for Hong Kong, arriving on April 12, 1881. Already Hong Kong officials had been informed of the King's coming and were ready to extend a royal welcome. Owing to the considerable commerce between Hong Kong and Hawaii, the King was represented as Consul General by a British merchant of high standing William Keswick of Jardine, Matheson and Co. The twelve-oared barge of Sir John Pope Hennessy, the Colonial Governor, also appeared alongside with an invitation asking the King, in the name of Queen Victoria, to be his guest. The Hawaiian King had to adjust his schedule to accept the Governor's invitation for a royal reception at the Government House. As Armstrong recorded in his book, \"While we were taking coffee, the next morning, the forts, with seven warships, fired the usual salute of twenty-one guns. From the balcony of the Government House, high above the city, we looked down on a dense mass of smoke, rolling away to the mainland, pierced with the flashing of the guns, the Hawaiian flag", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208044, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n67\n\n12 Lockhart lists 255 villages occupied by Hakkas, with a total population of 36,070 in the Tung Lo in 1898. Assuming a population of 250,000 for the total district in 1900, Hsin-An probably had a Hakka population of around 90,000.\n\n13 Rawski's bibliography in Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China offers the most complete listing of works bearing on perpetual tenancy.\n\np. 64.\n\n14 CSO280/04 Extension. See note 4, Essay 2.\n\n15 Hsu T'ien-tai, Fu Chien Wen Hua (福建文化), Vol. 1, No. 1, (1941),\n\n16 Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China, March 1898-September 1900. \"Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong,\" (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November 1900) p. 19.\n\n17 The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u (世鑑堂家譜), a collection of genealogies from Kam Tin, gives the following settlements of lineal descendants in Tung Kuan: Chuh Yuan (竹園), Yen Tien (燕田), Fu Lung (福龍), Huai Te (懷德), Shih Ching (石井), Tu Kao (土高), and Ping Hu (平湖).\n\n18 \"These clans gain their local influence, not through numbers alone, but owing to the fact that certain of their numbers have official rank, gained through competitive examinations, or obtained by purchase, which keeps them in touch with the Magistrate and even higher officials.\" Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China ibid., p. 20. The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u records that, from Cheng Hua (Ming Dynasty) to Tao Kwang (Ch'ing Dynasty)—that is, from roughly 1470-1820—fourteen Kam Tin Tangs passed the state examination. Several of these became office holders. Another indicator of gentry connections with officialdom was the construction, in Kam Tin, of a temple (祠堂) dedicated to the two officials (Chou Yu-te (周有德) and Wang Lai-jen (王來任)) who petitioned the Emperor, on behalf of the inhabitants of the coastal areas, to allow resettlement.\n\n19 Introduction to the Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u (南陽堂世族譜), compiled by the Ping Shan Tangs.\n\n20 Sung Hok-P'ang, in his articles on the Kam Tin Tangs in the Hong Kong Naturalist, claims to have seen references to Tang lands on Hong Kong in the Land Register (土地冊) of Tung Kuan. \"One may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the first year of Maan Lik, AD 1525, (sic) as after that the San On District was formed” (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 and 4).\n\n21 HKTCSMTC, \"Details of Cultivated Land” (耕地詳情).\n\n22 ibid.\n\n23 The landlord clans were often referred to by the British as \"first cultivators.\" See, for instance, CSO3172/1915 cited in the essay on tax-lordism.\n\n24 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p. 16.\n\n25 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8.\n\n26 In this regard, note the high degree of correlation among the different \"tax-burdens\" in Table II. One is tempted to speculate that a native formula for the conversion of rent rates from tax-rates existed.\n\n27 In the 1934 edition of the Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-chi Nien-chien (中國經濟年鑑), chapter 7 (Chinese Tenancy Systems), contains the following description of the Fen Chih Chih (分種制) system, a form of perpetual lease found in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture: \"This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208060, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n83\n\ninto Tung or Divisions. Each council of a Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section, which is practically that portion of the district of San On contained in the map attached to the Convention. This general council is styled the Tung Ping Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its council chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section.\n\nIf the decision of the council of the Tung or of the General Council is not regarded as satisfactory, an appeal lies to the magistrate of the district.\" (pp. 55-56, Extension Papers.).\n\n32 Extension Papers, p. 34.\n\n33 Ibid., p. 174.\n\n34 K'ang Nan-hai Kuan-chih I (***T**), pp. 15-16.\n\n35 Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China, pp. 91-92.\n\n36 K'ang Nan-hai, op. cit., p. 15.\n\n37 Other evidence which supports this hypothesis is drawn from the fact that the production and distribution of agricultural produce within the tung tends to be regulated by specific and unique processes. Hence, the tau chung (#), or local measures for payment of rent in kind, differs from tung to tung. Lockhart, in his Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November, 1900), relates the problems encountered in rationalizing land tenure: \"But even this tau varies in different localities. The Kun Tau, or Chinese official standard measure of 10 shing, is adopted at Tai Po, in the Sheung Yu District, and at Shat'aukok. The Ts'ong Tau, or grain measure of 11 shing, is used throughout the Un Long District. The Ts'in Tau of 8 shing is employed in the Ts'un Wan (ed. previously Kowloon District) and some other Districts. (p. 6). Moreover, the schedules of periodic markets within tung tend to complement each other, while they often clash with the schedules of markets in a neighboring tung.\n\n38 See petition from Tung Wo Kuk (\"i.e., the Committee appointed to deal with the affairs of the Shataukok Division\"). pp. 318-320.\n\n39 In a rough translation of a pamphlet obtained by the German missionary Schaub in Tung-Kuan, local gentry propose a strategy for obtaining funds for fighting the British: \"It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together as we hear. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is not right that the various confederations should pay the costs.... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together and ask our Government for help. Will the soldiers not come to help us, then let us ask the Mandarin for the present not to collect the field tax, that we can use the money to meet the barbarians. This would not be rebellious. Afterwards in peaceful times, we could pay our duties to the Government. (Extension Papers, p. 347.) See also, K'ang Nan-hai, op cit., p. 15.\n\n40 CSO433 in 1899,\n\n41 The British often experienced great difficulty in distinguishing landlords from taxlords, especially since members of large, gentry clans like the Tangs were one and the same. In a memorandum on the work of the Land Court, Lockhart writes: \"The most serious matter of all, however, is the stand taken by the farmers against the clans, their former landlords.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209206, "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-1981", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920'S 95\n\ndiscussion as to whether the mui tsai system was a form of slavery.\n\nThe case awakened the conscience of several expatriates. Among these were Colonel John Ward and Lieutenant Commander Haselwood and his wife. Col. Ward on his return to England was elected a Member of Parliament. He used his position to bring the question before the House of Commons. The matter roused the interest of liberal groups in England. Not satisfied with the answer given by the Government spokesman that there was no slavery in Hong Kong, the question continued to be raised in 1920 and 1921.\n\nParliamentary Questions and Answers\n\nIn November 1920, Sir Alfred Yeo and Mr. Myers raised the question in the House of Commons. In reply, Col. Amery, the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies stated,\n\nSlavery does not exist in Hong Kong. The Colony's law does not recognise the custom whereby girls are transferred on payment from parents and guardians to another household, usually for purposes of domestic service, as conferring any right or title on the employer against the girl. There was evidence that girls were frequently ill-treated, in which event, they would be protected by the law in the same way as children living with their parents.\n\nHe said he thought it best to aim at gradual reform in cooperation with enlightened Chinese. It was suggested that the Hong Kong Governor \"should persuade prominent Chinese to form a Society for the protection and improvement of the condition of these girl domestics\". This was considered a much better way to deal with the problem than introducing a system of compulsory registration. The Hong Kong Government had advised the Colonial Office that it regarded registration as impracticable.2\n\nIn January 1921 a question was again raised regarding \"this nefarious traffic in human beings\". The questioner was referred to the answer given in the previous discussion in November that \"there is no slavery in Hong Kong\". Another Member then asked, \"Is the honourable Government aware that answer given on November 4th was very unsatisfactory to those people who have information on this matter, and would he make inquiry into the allegation that slavery is carried on under British rule?”\n\nThe Under Secretary was adamant, \"I have made full inquiry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209207, "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-1981", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "96\n\nThere is no slavery carried on.\"\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nIn commenting on the questions raised in Parliament the editor of the South China Morning Post said there could not be much harm in the traditional Chinese custom when throughout the eighty years of the Colony's history no steps had been taken to abolish it. The children in domestic service had the full protection of the law and there was no evidence that they were frequently ill-treated. What few cases are brought before the courts are sharply dealt with. He did admit that some reform might be needed, \"to guarantee the child's rights and those of its parents\", but any changes should only be introduced gradually and with the co-operation of the leading Chinese, \"whose services have never been withheld in any case having for its aim the uplifting and enlightenment of the people\".3\n\nReaction in Hong Kong -- Mass Meeting at Tai Ping Theatre – July 1921\n\nThe Chinese elite \"establishment\" in Hong Kong was disturbed by the discussion in Britain of one of their long established customs. They and the Hong Kong Government were also annoyed by a letter published in the correspondence column of all four English newspapers written by Mrs. Haselwood, the wife of a Commander in the Naval Dockyard. Her husband was officially warned that unless he stopped his wife from airing the question, he would be superseded and sent home. He refused to submit and was shortly sent home where he retired on half-pay. The Haselwoods, however, continued their campaign in Britain. When the Hong Kong Government was asked to explain Commander Haselwood's early termination of service in Hong Kong, it replied that the activities of his wife were \"causing annoyance to the Chinese community\".\n\nThe leadership of the Chinese community was sufficiently aroused by the statements being made in the English press concerning the practice that it called a mass meeting to be held at the Tai Ping Theatre in July, 1921. The meeting was convened by the two Chinese representatives on the Legislative Council, the Hon. Ho Fook, brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung and one-time compradore of Jardine, Matheson and Co., and the Hon. Mr. Lau Chu-pak, compradore of Messrs. A. S. Watson and Co. Also particularly mentioned were S. W. Tso, a solicitor, Chow Shou-son, a Hong Kong-born former official of the Chinese Government who had extensive business interests in Hong Kong, and Chau Siu-ki, shipping and insurance magnate.\n\nThe theatre was crowded with about three hundred including a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209214, "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-1981", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920's 103\n\nto England had continued the campaign to bring the Hong Kong situation to the attention of the British public. The Haselwoods and other interested people had enlisted the support of the Anti-Slavery and the Aborigine Protection Society, the Industrial Committee of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, the Women's Committee of the Fabian Society, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the League of Nations Union, as well as Members of Parliament.\n\nIn Hong Kong a team of volunteer lecturers had spoken in churches, schools, the YMCA, the YWCA, and labour unions. One of the members had paid for the services of a professional lecturer to address passengers on boats travelling between Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nLiterature was produced both in English and Chinese. All the Parliamentary questions and answers were translated and sent to the Chinese press, along with original articles and correspondence with Members of Parliament, philanthropists and societies abroad. Locally, a literary competition had been held. The winning entry, a ballad, had been published and distributed both in Hong Kong and throughout China. The cost was underwritten by two wealthy contractors, Mr. Li Ping (probably a Roman Catholic) and Mr. Lam Woo (1869–1932) a founding member of St. Paul's Anglican Church and an Executive Committee member of the Society. A magazine of some 400 pages published by the Society contained articles treating the question in various literary forms.\n\nAt the time of the meeting 1,370 members had enrolled in the Society.\n\nOn instructions from the Colonial Office the Governor of Hong Kong issued a proclamation on April 14, 1922 stating:\n\nSlavery is not allowed to exist in the British Empire, and therefore it must be understood that mui tsai are not the property of their employers. Those of them who wish to leave their employers and who have reached the age of discretion must be allowed to apply to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs who will consider their cases.\n\nGirls are warned that they must not leave their present employment until they have some employment to go to for fear they should fall into the hands of procuresses.\n\nMasters and mistresses are specially warned against any attempt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209402, "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-1982", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "37\n\nLater, in 1861, it was again stated that \"this Municipal institution (is) founded upon the consent and concurrence of the whole community (...)\" There were even reminiscences of a contract theory à la Locke in a very elaborate article by the editor of the North China Herald on \"Led Horses\" (which at the time were forming quite a nuisance): \"That Britannia rules the waves' is the firm belief of all her sons, and they feel too that her onward march to almost universal dominion as it would seem, is to be traced solely to their obedience to her laws. All men are equal by virtue of their birth and under this conviction the only law that prevailed in the beginning was Club law. The administration of this Code, however, proved to be so fatally inconvenient that men in self-defence met together and voluntarily surrendered a very considerable portion of their birthright to secure that 'comfort, order and convenience' which they so signally failed to obtain under the equality system. Hence the origins of assemblies or 'meeting of wisemen', from Parliament to Parish vestries. Under this system tyrants have come to grief, and legally constituted authorities have grown up like trees by the waterside and have become the polished corners of the temple in our social system. (..)\"15\n\nNow, whether all these statements about the origin and functioning of representative bodies were correct or not, apparently they were believed in by at least part of the foreign community. At times it was very evident that there was no consensus at all about several questions, and that assertions of such a consensus were no more than a polite fiction, but these beliefs in the existence of and need for, consensus were the basis of the willingness of ratepayers to defend local self-government as an essential part of life. In practical terms this meant that the Public Meeting was considered as the local parliament1 and as such the body which had to approve any measures taken by the Municipal Council.\n\nIt seems therefore appropriate to give an outline of the Public Meeting's procedures and practice, as well as the voting qualifications, before turning to its executive organ, the Municipal Council.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209423, "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-1982", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "58\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\nSeventy years later it was complained that \"official business in this important municipality is conducted in secret. Members of the Municipal Council are bound not to disclose matters discussed in meetings and no reporter of a local newspaper has ever attended a meeting of the Council. The Council does issue a so-called Municipal Gazette, probably the dullest official journal in the world, which contains brief reports usually starting out \"Notice is hereby given\" or \"I have the honour to convey\n\netc.\"\n100\n\nNow it is, of course, true that in Western countries with a parliamentary government, meetings of the cabinet or other governing bodies were (and are) not open to the public. But there the rulers were responsible to representatives of the people, be it in parliament or its local equivalent. Nothing of the kind happened in Shanghai, which apart from the other structural and institutional regulations which halted democracy as understood elsewhere, made the whole administrative system come to be looked upon as oligarchic.\n\nSummary\n\nSummarizing this article we might say that the Settlement government rested on a base which became increasingly outmoded in Western countries where democracy allowed ever more people to participate in politics. Franchise according to tax paid was gradually abolished in the West, but in the International Settlement at Shanghai it remained till the last day of its existence. In the beginning, consent of all residents was claimed to be the foundation of municipal government, but as time progressed the administration degenerated into an oligarchy with or without the negative implications which the term suggests. Political interest was low and nobody really tried to change the system. Though Justice Feetham published a massive report about the situation in the Settlement and offered valuable advice in 1931, nothing was done. Only in the heyday of Chinese nationalism were some minor facelifts agreed, without altering any of the fundamentals.\n\nIt was only after the return of the Settlement to China in 1943 and especially after the communist takeover in 1949 that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210193, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "143\n\n# STATE REGULATION OF PROSTITUTION IN HONG KONG, 1857 TO 1941\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\nFrom its earliest days the male population of Hong Kong greatly outnumbered the females. Chinese men came to find work leaving their families in Kwangtung and the European community was also predominantly male because of the presence of the army garrison, the ships of the Royal Navy and the crews of merchant ships unloading their goods in the harbour. In 1872, when the first proper census was carried out, there were 3,264 European men compared to 669 European women, a ratio of practically 5:1, and the Chinese men outnumbered women by 78,484 to 22,837, a ratio of 7:2.1 This imbalance continued to exist, though to a diminishing extent, for the next 70 years: in 1931 Chinese men outnumbered women 4:3, but the European ratio was still only 7:2.2 Naturally, in order to satisfy the needs of this predominantly male community, prostitutes quickly moved in to ply their trade, numerous brothels were established and by the 1850s Hong Kong was already notorious for the prevalence of venereal disease.\n\nIn 1857, at the urgent request of the naval officer in command of the China station the Hong Kong government instituted a system for the registration and inspection of brothels, the compulsory medical examination of their inmates, the punishment of prostitutes who communicated venereal disease to their clients and their detention in the Lock Hospital until cured.3 This measure was approved by the Secretary of State primarily because it appeared that a system of licensed brothels and government inspection might provide a means of protecting the inmates from ill-treatment and virtual enslavement to their brothel-keepers.4 Ten years later the Hong Kong government was instructed by the Secretary of State to replace the ordinance of 1857 with a new one modelled on the Contagious Diseases Act which had just been passed by the British parliament. This had set up a system of controlled brothels and compulsory medical examination of prostitutes in twelve garrison towns in England. The new 1867 ordinance, though more comprehensive, made few changes in the system already in force, except that the police were given much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210195, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "145\n\nfree of disease. Thus the control system achieved its main objective, which was not the protection of women from exploitation, but, as it was commonly expressed in Hong Kong, 'the provision of clean Chinese women for the use of the British soldiers and the sailors of the Royal Navy'.\n\nIn Britain during the 1870s and 1880s the system set up by the Contagious Diseases Act came under attack by various moral reformers who considered that the licensing of brothels by the state implied official condonation of immoral behaviour. They also objected to the discrimination by which the women were compelled to submit to a demeaning medical examination. As a result of a long campaign the system was brought to an end and the Contagious Diseases Act was repealed by Parliament in 1886. In itself this had no effect on the colonial ordinances, but colonial governments were then instructed by the Secretary of State to follow the British example. The Governor of Hong Kong protested vigorously to London, claiming that the repeal of the local Contagious Diseases Ordinance would be unanimously opposed by the Executive and Legislative Councils, by the naval and military authorities and by all classes in the community, since it was the only means of controlling the spread of venereal disease, of preventing the proliferation of brothels in respectable areas of the city and of protecting young girls from being forced into brothel slavery. But the Secretary of State was adamant that the law imposing the compulsory inspection of women must be repealed, though he was prepared to allow the registration of brothels to continue solely for the purpose of providing a means to check against the possible enslavement of their inmates. The Hong Kong government continued to prevaricate, forwarding petitions to London from the keepers of 42 brothels reserved for Europeans and from 23 European prostitutes begging that weekly examinations and the issuing of health certificates might be allowed to continue. These pleas had no effect and the Secretary of State sent Hong Kong a copy of an ordinance which had already been passed in the Straits Settlements with instructions to introduce a similar bill as soon as possible. He also ordered that the issuing of certificates should cease forthwith. Finally in 1889, two years after the original directive from London, a bill entitled the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance was introduced into the Legis-\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210197, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "147\n\nThe continued existence of a system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong soon came to the notice of the moral reform societies in Britain which had succeeded in abolishing such houses at home and were determined to end the system overseas as well. Pressure was brought to bear upon the Colonial Office by written appeals from the societies and by questions and speeches in parliament. So in 1893 a new Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, sent instructions to Hong Kong that the registration of brothels and the periodic examination of their inmates, whether nominally voluntary or not, must cease forthwith. Once again the Governor expostulated, forwarding a petition from the leading Chinese who objected that with the abolition of registration prostitutes would have no opportunity to complain about ill-treatment and that brothels would proliferate in respectable residential areas. The Colonial Surgeon also added his views, claiming that it would be cruel to forbid the women to attend for regular examinations; they were well aware of the need for early diagnosis of venereal disease and came of their own free will. But the Secretary of State, under pressure from moral reformers in Britain, was obdurate, and a bill to repeal the 1890 ordinance and abolish the whole system of control was introduced into the Legislative Council in 1894 and passed by the official majority against the unanimous opposition of the unofficials. Hong Kong's long delaying action to avoid reform was apparently at an end.\n\nThe results of this measure were soon evident: prostitutes ceased to attend for their weekly examinations; a large number of new brothels were opened in areas of the city which had formerly been free of them; and the incidence of venereal disease in the garrison soared. In 1897 half the soldiers in Hong Kong were under treatment for venereal diseases, compared to 15 per cent ten years earlier. In Singapore, which had been given the same directive to abolish registered brothels as Hong Kong, the incidence of venereal disease among troops reached 60 per cent. Faced with this situation the governors of the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong submitted a succession of reports to London and proposed draft legislation which would broadly have had the effect of reintroducing the legal system of control that had existed before 1889. The China Association in London and its branches in Hong Kong and Singapore strongly supported the Governors' views and se-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210898, "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-1986", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "232\n\nCARL SMITH\n\ntal to their people, and it will thus be in their power to cut off the supply altogether by a pecuniary sacrifice, far less than that voluntarily taken by England in the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies.\n\nA number of historians have regarded Li Hung-chang's attitude towards the opium problem as ambiguous. However that may be, he took a strong stand in a letter he addressed to the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.\n\nHis statement was couched in a high moral tone.\n\n\"Opium is a subject of discussion of which England and China can never meet on common ground. China views the whole question from a moral standpoint; England from a fiscal. England would sustain a source of revenue in India, while China contends for the lives and prosperity of its people. The ruling motive of China is to repress opium by heavy taxation everywhere, whereas with England the manifest object is to make opium cheaper, and thus increase and stimulate the demand in China.”\n\nLi recognised that the crux of the issue was the importance of opium for the revenue of India, and thus indirectly of Britain. He contended that China did not tax opium because of the revenue it produced, but “the present import duty on opium was established, not from choice, but because China submitted to the adverse decision of arms. The war must be considered as China's standing protest against legalising such a revenue.\n\nA Shanghai paper did not believe the letter was composed by Viceroy Li. It stated: \"It bears the impression of foreign --- we had almost written missionary penmanship throughout.” It was perhaps the product of one of the Viceroy's advisers trained in a missionary school, such as Wu T’ing-fang (Ng Choy) or Chan Lai-sun. Whoever wrote it, it went out under Li's name and must have represented his opinions.\n\nThe letter became the subject of a question in Parliament to the Secretary of State for India as to whether the Indian Government was taking any steps to review Britain's position on the opium", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211132, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "168\n\n\"We would hope that the almost unanimous voice of the meeting and the tone and manner in which its views would be expressed would have an effect, not only upon the immediate subject of the meeting, but the worldwide China question.”\n\nA few days following the meeting, Mr. David Welsh wrote a letter to the Daily Press supporting Mr. Whittall's unpopular position.\n\nIn introducing his opinions, he took up Mr. Sharp's theme of cries of distress. Mr. Welsh suggested that, “in a war of opinion, a good cry is more than half the battle. This was made painfully evident at the public meeting. The cry of Hongkong blockaded is a good one, and almost every person came to the meeting prepared to vote for resolutions framed in that sense, notwithstanding their extravagance, and that the movers of the resolutions gave not one shred of evidence in favour of what they proposed.\"\n\nThe final resolution of the meeting provided for a wide distribution of its results. They were of course to be sent to the proper Government authorities.\n\nCopies were also to be provided to the Chambers of Commerce in Britain and to all Members of Parliament and other prominent figures.\n\nBritish officials in Canton, Peking and London did not share the strong views of the meeting. Their position was more moderate and no definitive action was taken to break the “blockade.”\n\nSTRIKING A HARD BARGAIN ON TRADE WITH CHINA\n\nOfficials responsible for political relations between Britain and China were less emotional than Hongkong residents about the issues of a Chinese \"blockade\" of the harbour and the appointment of a Chinese consul. As diplomats their perspective was broader.\n\nThey recommended that a report formulated by a commission appointed in Hongkong to study the blockade should not be made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211163, "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "199\n\nteenth century.\n\nThe initial intention was for the entire community to unite on a proposal for the celebration, but it ended with the Chinese going their way and the foreigners another way.\n\nThe Chinese were able to agree about the manner in which they wished to permanently mark the event. The expatriates were torn by different factions each promoting its own project.\n\nThe manner in which the jubilee plans were handled illustrate the difficulty of uniting a community rigidly adhering to social and racial distinctions.\n\nIn the British Parliament the question was raised as to whether the Government was going to initiate plans for the celebration by the nation. The Government spokesman replied that “all celebrations of this kind will probably possess greater value so far as they arise from the spontaneous action of the public.” The local Government shared this view.\n\nEventually, after the Jubilee Year had opened, an informal meeting was held by a group of citizens and an unofficial committee was organised to discuss plans.\n\nOne of the committee, Mr. Paul Chater, who was also an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, announced that at the next meeting of the council on February 11, 1887, he would put to the Government the question: \"Whether it is the intention of the Government to co-operate with the public in celebrating Her Majesty's Jubilee Year in a manner befitting the occasion.”\n\nThere was criticism that the unofficial committee had heretofore acted in a semi-private manner and had not taken the public into its confidence. There was general approval, however, of Mr. Chater's move, for, as an editor commented, \"his question will effectively set the ball a-rolling, and public action will no doubt follow.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211353, "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-1988", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "45\n\nThe mui-tsai question provoked more reaction and heat in the Chinese community than child labour, since the mui-tsai system affected the domestic life of the owners of the child servants. Most of the households affected were of the wealthier class. Child labour also affected families but these were the poorest in the community. The Chinese Christians organised to abolish the mui-tsai system. Those opposed to any drastic changes were the wealthy merchants and compradores.\n\nThere was no easy solution to either problem, as both were part of a complex social and economic pattern.\n\nAnother stimulant for action on child labour was the regulations laid down by the International Labour Organisation following the end of World War I. Britain was committed to these proposals as it was a signatory to the Peace Treaty which embodied them. Both in Hong Kong and in the British Parliament calls were made for the commitment to be honoured in Hong Kong as a colony of the British Empire.\n\nThe 1896/97 Chamber of Commerce Report on labour conditions in the East\n\nUnder the auspices of a British Chamber of Commerce a mission was sent to China in 1896-97 to investigate conditions in trade and industry.\n\nThe mission rejoiced that in China there had been no legislation controlling workers; this included Hong Kong. The report said,\n\nThere is... no hampering legislation for which there has been such a reckless desire in recent years in the West; curtailing the liberty of the labourer within the narrowest possible limits and unduly harassing the employer.\n\nBy contrast,\n\nIn the East every man, woman and child is allowed, without restriction, to sell his or her labour at the best price obtainable, and to work under any conditions as to hours, systems or place. Employers are at liberty to conduct their own business as seems best to their discretion and judgment.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211354, "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-1988", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "46\n\nwithout being confronted at every turn by Acts of Parliament, and systems of espionage, that seem especially designed to restrict individual enterprise and frustrate industrial endeavour.\n\nLetter of 1900 - Hong Kong Telegraph\n\n▬▬\n\nThe effects of this \"freedom\" of the individual to sell his labour but occasionally pricked the conscience of the Hong Kong resident only occasionally. A letter writer using the pen-name \"Balthasar\" observed in the Hong Kong Telegraph, 18 May 1900, that,\n\nAmong the labourers carrying bricks and lime up the Glenealy may be noticed several children whose physique is quite unequal to the toil. These poor young children gasp under their burden. One of them, on being spoken to, answered that his father had died of plague, and if he worked not had no rice. He was thirteen years of age, and yet carried two baskets of lime, usually borne by adults, and which he had to lay down several times along the way.\n\nAfter describing these conditions, the writer asked, \"Is there no law in Hong Kong to regulate the employment of minors?\" The answer, as he well knew, was \"No\".\n\nIt was not that there was no money in Hong Kong for charitable purposes. He reminded the community that a Colony \"that can exceed all expectations in its contribution to the War Fund [the Boer War] may well look to the relief of its own stricken poor\".\n\nBowley's Articles on \"The Children's Charter\"\n\nMr. Francis Bulmer Lyon Bowley, a solicitor practising in Hong Kong since 1893, published a series of articles in a Hong Kong newspaper in 1911 on \"The Children's Charter\", that is, the British Children's Act of 1908. He contrasted its provisions with the situation in Hong Kong. The Attorney General took the matter up and two provisions were subsequently introduced into the laws of the Colony.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212285, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "204\n\ncolonial setting. Legge exemplified this role as a social prophet in both Chinese and English contexts in a number of ways.\n\nIn regard to the policies of the Missionary Society itself, Legge stood alone at times in his advocacy of treating Chinese colleagues as equals both in standing and in monetary compensation. Some missionaries felt this might cause too much pride among the first generation of Christians; Legge argued that a person who achieved the rank and fulfilled the duties deserved the pay, whether Chinese or Westerner,\n\nWhen given the opportunity to address the Hong Kong community at the end of his missionary career, Dr. Legge did not hesitate to speak publicly against the opium trade and gambling. This ability to distance himself on selective issues from governmental positions was in fact another aspect of his academic success. Unlike other European scholars who were bound to the directives of their religious and political superiors, Legge's Non-Conformist intellectual and spiritual disciplines were prompted by personal vision. When tensions arose between the government and the missionaries, they voiced their petitions as loyal citizens even if they opposed the government's attitudes and decisions.\n\nEven Legge's entrance into the community of Oxford University was coloured by his Non-Conformist commitments. The British Parliament having only five years earlier overturned a long-standing tradition that entering professors and students must publicly swear to belief in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Creed, Oxford academics were still somewhat wary about introducing a Non-Conformist into their community. Legge's character had to be upheld by supporters external to the university before he was admitted. Soon afterward Legge was acting as the Vice President of the Non-Conformist Union, remaining a major leader until the Union was handed over to A. M. Fairbairn of Mansfield College. Even though Legge was busy in the first years of his Oxford professorship in building up the number of students in his classes and completing the translations of the Sacred Books of China for F. Max Müller, he unabashedly communicated his personal concern and Christian witness to Oxford colleagues who were not Christians.\n\nVI. Legge's Commonsense Philosophy\n\nBasically a form of Neo-Aristotelean philosophy, the so-called", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212302, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "221\n\nabout 20 headquarters staff. Shortly before Hong Kong was founded in the 1830s, this company controlled one-third of all foreign trade with China.\n\nJardine's\n\nToday, the best known of Hong Kong's traders is still Jardine Matheson, which predates the birth of the colony by nine years, although some say there has been an over-concentration on Jardine's history at the expense of other firms. Nonetheless it is the oldest, still thriving, western trading house in the Far East, having been established in the reign of William IV (1830-7).\n\nIn 1817 William Jardine decided to enter commerce, and, on an introduction by Hollingworth Magniac, from 1822 to 1824 he took charge of Charles Magniac and Company (Charles and Hollingworth were brothers) which was in financial difficulties. James Matheson arrived in Canton in 1820 and formed Matheson and Company. In 1828, Jardine and Matheson joined forces. The name Magniac was dropped, and the new enterprise was established by the two Scotsmen in 1832. The name remains the same to this day.\n\nWilliam Jardine had been a ship's surgeon in the Honourable East India Company from 1802-16. He retired to Scotland in 1838 (some records say 1839) and died in 1843. Matheson left the East in 1842 and took an active part in running the firm from Britain. He died in 1878 aged 82. Both were Members of Parliament in the 1840s. William Jardine had already returned to Scotland when the firm set up business in Hong Kong. When the first land sales were held in Hong Kong on 14th June 1841, Jardine's built godowns (warehouses) on land purchased in what is now Queensway. In 1842, these were sold to the Royal Navy for stores. Immediately Jardine's started to build an office, wharves, a slipway for ships, workshops, stables, houses, and a junior mess at East Point, on an isolated promontory. They also built godowns which had thick walls of granite blocks. The site was close to the present Yee Wo Street (fi) which takes its name from the Chinese name of the company (meaning 'pleasant harmony'), although the Chinese name for the firm is more often romanised as Ewo. All the original buildings have been demolished.\n\nOther places named after the company include Jardine's Bazaar", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212399, "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": 341, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "318\n\nThe origins of the Grand Council, which served as the highest executive body under the Emperor in the Qing government from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, are clarified for the first time. It was not created one day through act of parliament. Nor was it the accidental survivor of a military planning group as its Chinese name might suggest. Bartlett shows the transformation from direct imperial personal rule (Yongzheng's ad hoc arrangements of the Military Finance Section, the High Officials in Charge of Military Strategy, and the palace memorial system) to joint monarchical conciliar administration (Qianlong's regularization of the Grand Council). The development of an inner court to offset the rigidity and limitations of the outer court is traced, and we are shown how the Qianlong Emperor adapted to the increasingly complex demands of ruling China. The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) was brilliant, but could rely on raw Manchu force to rule; Yongzheng and Qianlong had to use more \"Confucian\" means, at the same time surviving the factionalism of the imperial family.\n\nBartlett has not simply used the Qing archives to sketch political events, or to mark the stages of development of the Grand Council. She has used provenance to enlighten us on process, and has gained an understanding of the whole range of communication that passed between Emperor, grand councillors and provincial officials. This system has been researched before, but no one has gone into such detail on the forms of communication and the act of decision making. The grand councillors knew that control of information flow led to control of decisions. As the palace memorial system expanded from a secret, personal channel between the Emperor and a few officials to a broader, prioritized but more impersonal avenue, the councillors and their clerks injected themselves into the process. Before long they perused memorials, drafted summaries and proposed imperial replies (see, for example, pp 98-101).\n\nThe tension between Emperor and officials, and among officials, was conceptualized by Joseph Levenson in his trilogy Confucian China and its Modern Fate. Bartlett brings Levenson's provocative concept down to earth, and shows the conflict and cooperation between emperor and councillor, and inner and outer court officials. On the dichotomy of an all-powerful Emperor and officials with independent legitimacy, we are told that the outer court ran according to an administrative code. Although the monarch could probably", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213886, "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-1996", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "212\n\nthe return of Chen Jiongming from the neighbouring province of Fujian. Chen was the Governor-General of Guangdong in 1912 and 1913. After the failed \"Second Revolution\" in 1913 against Yuan, he escaped to Malaysia (while Sun to Japan) and developed his own anti-Yuan organization independent of Sun's party in Japan. When the Canton Government was established in 1917, nominally under Sun Yat-sen, he returned to Canton only to find that the guest armies had real control over the province. As a result, he gathered a small troop of soldiers made up of native Cantonese and moved to Fujian in early 1918, where he strengthened its fighting potential. Chen Jiongming's return was financially supported by a group of Chinese bankers, who were affiliated with Liu Zhubo, in Hong Kong. They advanced to Chen Jiongming an amount of $200,000 and promised to pay the Guangxi troops a “give-way fee”, if the armies retreated to their home provinces. The fighting could not wait for bargains, as in late October Chen Jiongming's army had forced its way into Canton. The Guangxi guest armies obtained the \"overdue army expenditure\" through a different means. The guest armies retreated westward to Guangxi, looting all the way home.\n\nThe return of the Cantonese troops under Chen Jiongming was welcomed by the Cantonese. The atmosphere in Canton, as reviewed in the newspapers, was that Chen Jiongming should be the Provincial Governor. Funds for a new government were promised by the merchants.\n\nAt this juncture, on November 25, Sun Yat-sen and his key supporters left Shanghai and triumphantly returned to Canton. He prepared to assume power again. After all, Chen was Sun's subordinate in 1913 and 1917. The situation Sun found on his return to Canton was not to his liking. Sun was made Director and Minister of the Interior in the restored government. Wu Tingfang was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. But Chen Jiongming had been planning for the future in Canton, and his list of titles was impressive. Chen was the Minister of War, Governor of Guangdong, Commander in Chief of the Guangdong Army, and High Inspecting Commissioner of Guangdong and Guangxi. In January of 1921, Sun summoned all available parliamentarians to a meeting in Canton. There was no quorum, but they voted anyway. At the end, the Parliament elected Dr. Sun Provisional President of China. Chen Jiongming was in no hurry to act, nor was he ready to listen to Sun. In an interview with the British Consul, Sun described his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213967, "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-1997", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nTHE DICKINSON REPORT: AN ACCOUNT OF THE BACKGROUND TO, AND PREPARATION OF, THE 1966 WORKING GROUP REPORT ON LOCAL ADMINISTRATION\n\nTREVOR CLARK\n\nMuch commentary on Hong Kong's internal affairs before its return to China focused on the alleged anomaly of having delayed the introduction of a wider franchise until the very last years of a century-and-a-half's span of power. There was also dispute over whether the evident split of faith among the indigenous Hong Kong leadership was in reality between those openly \"pro-China\" and those supposedly \"anti-China\"; or whether it was not more truly between those who are \"pro-Hong Kong's people\" and those simply (and more pragmatically) \"pro-business.\" It is in this context that the death of William Vivian Dickinson MBE(Mil) reminded his past colleagues of 'The Dickinson Report', otherwise known as Report of the Working Party on Local Administration'. The recent discussion and controversy over institutional changes make a backward glance at this document and its provenance a matter for poignant reflection.\n\nIt will be remembered that Britain's immediately post-war Labour Secretaries of State for the Colonies had required all Governors to accelerate the long-accepted progress towards dominion status, as independence with full membership of the Commonwealth had been known: pressures from the United States of America and the new institutions of the United Nations had demanded no less. Attlee's government was happy to require action, by way primarily of building upwards from local government reform, coupled with improved labour and trades union legislation, and attention to education - all this backed by development and welfare plans funded by acts of parliament, which had started with the ground-breaking Colonial Development & Welfare Act passed in the dark wartime year of 1940.\n\nHong Kong had been treated no differently, and Sir Mark Young had returned as Governor after the Pacific War with plans for appropriate initiatives. These included a Municipal Council, with Mayor, 30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "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": 214581, "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": 439, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "408\n\nwas said to have been a British Member of Parliament. Alice was a gracious lady. Choa gives her maiden name as Walkden. It is sometimes elsewhere, puzzlingly, quoted as Whitcome. Did she have a step father one wonders? Or was this an unfortunate mistake by some writer and a case of give a slip-up five minutes start and the truth never catches up with it?' This could be the case. Certainly the name on the huge family memorial, in the Hong Kong Cemetery at Happy Valley, is carved as Alice Walkden.\n\nBefore the couple arrived back in Hong Kong in 1882 the then Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, announced to the Legislative Council that this young Chinese had taken the highest honours at Lincoln's Inn. 'It was something that a gentleman belonging to the Colony should have gained such honours.'\n\nAnyway, back in the British colony in those days the 'superstitious' Chinese generally did not take readily to 'newfangled,' western medicine and Ho Kai switched to law. But a brilliant Chinese with fluent English was rare in those days. He was enticed into business. He also entered public service and, in addition to sitting on a number of other government committees, sat on the Sanitary Board (the forerunner of the Urban Council) and, in 1890, became a Legislative Councillor. He was the third Chinese to sit on this august body. He was also a Justice of the Peace.\n\nHaving lived in the West for a number of years it is not surprising he developed strong views about social reform and the modernisation of China. He became an associate of statesman Dr Sun Yat-sen. This was at a time when China was striving to rid itself of the Qing dynasty and there was danger the country would be assimilated by colonial powers.\n\nIn his latter life Ho Kai spent most of his time serving the community. He helped, together with his colleagues, to mould the Territory in which we now live. Ho Kai was capable and, understandably, there was no need for him to take to heart the Chinese axiom: 'If you do not become a good minister be a good physician.'\n\nHe was 'lionised and eulogised' after his death by all sectors of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214953, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "4\n\nand serve tea. Credit for initiating the custom of afternoon tea is generally given to Anna, Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861). The correct protocol states that tea should begin between 4 and 4.30 in the afternoon and should last just one hour.”\n\nTea had become so much the national drink that the East India Company was required by an Act of Parliament to keep a year's supply always in stock. For the British Exchequer, tax on tea brought revenue amounting, in the 1830s, to over three million pounds - an astonishing amount. Tea could be obtained only from China. Indian tea (or Ceylon tea) was still many years away. It had to be paid for, preferably not in silver coin, but by equitable trade exchange. China, however, while keen to export tea, wanted nothing in return except silver bullion. Faced with an alarming trade disadvantage, British merchants discovered that opium was one item by which they could balance the trade in tea. As addiction to tea, for that is what it was, could not be stopped, moral scruples did not prevent British traders from fostering opium, far more pernicious than tea, on China. It may be safely assumed therefore that had it not been for Britain's demand for increasing quantities of tea, China might never have been subjected to opium, which was grown in India under British supervision.\n\nOpium and the Chinese\n\nMany scholars and historians believe that mankind has known opium since prehistoric times. It was certainly known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, used extensively for medicinal purposes mainly as a remedy for pain and to induce sleep. Opium has been known in China at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD) and possibly much earlier, originally only for its medicinal value. It was derived from Papeverum somniferum, a species of poppy cultivated in India and Turkey. Although not indigenous to China, the opium-bearing poppy plant was cultivated in the western province of Yunnan to supplement opium imported overland from India. Trade with the Middle East and India flourished in the Tang Dynasty, but import of opium into China was comparatively small as homegrown opium supplied most of local needs. It would be surprising, however, if some non-medical use of the drug had not developed. M. Booth believes that such use was not widespread and was restricted to 'an upper-class elite'; the drug was probably eaten. This seems to be confirmed by the absence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214963, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "14\n\n4) Had Commissioner Lin adopted less drastic measures in suppressing the opium trade? A difficult course to predict. However, knowing Elliot's repugnance of the opium trade, it is possible the two might have joined forces in fighting the infamous trade. It was Lin's methods, in particular laying siege to the foreign factories, that alienated Elliot's respect, not the end he sought to gain by adopting them.\n\n5) If China had suddenly developed a strong interest in British goods? Tin, wool, and cotton were imported from Britain, but not in sufficient quantities to balance the export of tea. A strong public opinion against opium had been building up in Britain. A greater demand for British goods might have shifted the British official position from laissez faire to oppose opium, dealing a serious blow to the opium trade.\n\nNo doubt, many other alternative courses of history can be suggested, but the few above show how the two addictions—to opium and tea—had determined the course of history of that period and region, and how easily that course might have been altered, preventing the conflict, and possibly subsequent imperialist policy of western nations in China.\n\nConclusion\n\nOf all the foods, solid or liquid, tea has had great influence over the centuries around the world. It has played a part in history, medicine, politics, manners and customs. British interests in the 19th century kept the opium supply line open and the manufacture of opium in India solvent in order to pay for China's tea. Britain went to war with China to protect those interests. In this sense the war was also the Tea War. When Sir George Staunton, an authority on Chinese-British relations and a member of Macartney's mission to China in 1793 (aged 15, he went as a page-boy), declared in Parliament: 'If there had been no opium, there had been no war,' he might well have added: \"And if there had been no tea, there had been no war.\"\n\nSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nALLEN, N.:\n\nThe Opium Trade, Lowell (2nd Edition), U.S.A., 1983.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215284, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "faced serious opposition from the unofficial members. Except in the case of Ceylon, where the elected unofficials had a majority in the legislature, governors were able to ensure the enactment of the new customs schedules by the votes of the officials and the nominated unofficial members, but they were reluctant to do so against popular opposition. The Colonial Office warned the recalcitrant colonies that if legislation were to be delayed or amended the dominions might refuse to implement the new preferences agreed at Ottawa or withdraw existing preferences; the British parliament might also withdraw the preferences granted to the colony under the 1932 Import Duties Act.\" So the legislation was eventually passed in all the colonies in spite of great popular opposition. In the Leeward Islands there were shouts of 'What happened to Judas?\" at the end of the meeting, and the residence of a nominated unofficial member who voted for the bill was destroyed by fire.\" \n\n... \n\nIn the West Indian colonies opposition focused on the clause in the United Kingdom-Canada agreement which obliged the colonies to impose a duty of one shilling per pair on rubber boots and shoes and rubber-soled canvas boots and shoes in addition to the general preferential ad valorem rate. Hosiery of cotton or artificial silk (rayon) was to be charged an additional duty of sixpence a pair and silk hosiery an additional duty of ninepence a pair. These massive tariff increases were designed to exclude Japanese competition from a market which had been a Canadian monopoly until 1929. The governor of Barbados protested that Japanese shoes were sold at one shilling and eightpence a pair with the result that many were now shod who had previously gone barefooted, reducing the incidence of ankylostomiasis (hookworm infestation); if a specific duty of one shilling were imposed the resultant price would be beyond the reach of the poor, while being still much below the price at which Canada could supply footwear.\" The governor of the Windward Islands protested that stockings from Japan cost only fourpence a pair and would rise threefold to 13 pence a pair if the new tariffs were imposed.\" Other governors of the West Indian colonies made similar complaints, but the Colonial Office was obdurate that the preferences granted to the colonies by the dominions on their exports of primary products were conditional on the full implementation of the Ottawa agreements by the colonies. \n\n13% \n\nIII \n\nThe swingeing increases in duty on Japanese canvas and rubber footwear did not achieve their intended effect of restricting the market to Canadian manufacturers. Within months of the implementation of the Ottawa agreements, canvas shoes with rubber soles produced by a factory in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "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": 215779, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "11\n\nsocieties;72 William Pickering was appointed as Chinese Interpreter in 1873, and as Chinese Protector in 1877. These examples also illustrate the gradual introduction of the English system of laws (an alien system) being drawn into and manipulated to serve the purposes of an Eastern society.\n\nHowever, although the problem was reduced, it still exists until the present day. Nevertheless, the Colonial Office did try to improve the situation; a beginning was made, and hence, it could be deduced that the transfer meant a positive step in this area. In this sense, the grounds of the petition were justified.\n\nFurther to the last paragraph of the preceding section, I note again that there were several systems of law regulating the society of the Straits Settlements. In addition to the laws passed by the Indian regime,74 there was also the intervention of the British Parliament from time to time;75 and there were the Chinese secret societies which had their own courts of justice, which provides an example of an alternative system for settling disputes. Thus, amidst radical change in the mainstream administration of justice, there was also continuity in the Chinese system, and it did not die out after the transfer, but instead became a subterranean practice which still continues to exist.\n\nIndian convicts\n\nThis was the last of the problems cited in the petition, and also another hazy issue. Although the merchants complained of the fact that the 'felons sent here [were] being those whose crimes are those of the deepest dye' and that many were sent to the Straits Settlements on a permanent basis, analysis shows that in actual fact the convicts were not as dangerous nor as disadvantageous as they were made out to be.\n\nThe convicts were a source of cheap labour, and hence economically viable. Furthermore, even though they were loosely guarded, very few ever tried to escape. There were occasional violent incidents but these were few and far between, and convicts rarely rebelled against authority. Many of them settled down in the Straits Settlements after serving their prison sentences, as no provision had been made on the Indian government's part, before 1859, to repatriate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215780, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "them. These ex-convicts married local wives, and some even rose in prominence.82 The European merchants complained mainly about the high cost of keeping the convicts (for example, as early as 1841, they grumbled about the costly body of troops to be maintained in the Straits Settlements mainly because they were penal stations).83\n\nThere were some disturbing facts about the Indian convicts pertaining to the growth of Indian-type secret societies,85 and to the spread of criminal activities among present and ex-convicts. There are no statistics to prove how far these groups were involved in crime, but there were nevertheless a few notorious incidents.87\n\nOn the whole, the convict \"problem\" was not really a problem. The Indian government did make some attempts to improve the situation. However, this only took place after the petition of 1857 to the House of Commons. Thus, even though most defects of the system were remedied by the time of the transfer to the Colonial Office, little credit can be given to the Indian government in this issue. Taking into account the context in which the convict problem was cited in the 1857 petition,88 it is not difficult to sympathise with the European merchants,8991 and hence, this \"problem\" in my opinion, was a bona fide one.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nThe transfer was governed by a series of factors. The overall argument has been broached with a revisionist's method of assessment. However, the conclusion is nonetheless an orthodox one in that having clarified the \"problems,\" most would appear to have been bona fide and convincing enough to necessitate a liberation from the Indian government's rule. In this respect, the transfer was a necessary, and hence, a justified move. The act that was eventually passed by Parliament, to change the government of the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office, was the result of a complex variety of causes, which also explains how legal changes were brought about, not in isolation, but in the context of and in accordance with the Straits society's requirements. The regulations of the Straits Settlements were made subject to London's control, and this is a confirmation of the primacy of the English legal system in which was entrenched the rule of law in the Straits Settlements.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215792, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "24\n\nTreaty of Holland (Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824), (Hertslet's Treaties Vol VIII) Pangkor Engagement of 1874 (Treaties with Native States Part II)\n\nBill:\n\nStraits Transfer Bill (House of Commons), 1866, V (Session 1 Feb - 10 Aug 1866)\n\nStatutes:\n\nAct 24th George III Cap 25 (1784)\n\nIndian Charter Act of 1833\n\nIndian Act No. XVII of 1855\n\nCharters of Justice (1807, 1826, 1855)\n\nThe Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865, 28 & 29 Vic, Cap 63\n\nThe Government of the Straits Settlements Act, 1866, 29 & 30 Vic, Cap 115\n\nThe Courts (Colonial) Jurisdiction Act, 1874, 37 & 38 Vic, Cap 27\n\nThe Straits Settlements Offences Act, 1874, 37 & 38 Vic, Cap 38\n\nCase:\n\nRegina v Willians Esq (1858) (3 Ky 16)\n\nSecondary Sources:\n\nAllen, Richard H S, 1968, Malaysia, Prospect and Retrospect. The Impact and Aftermath of Colonial Rule, Oxford University Press\n\nAuber, P, 1826, An Analysis of the Constitution of the EIC and the Laws Passed by Parliament for the Government of Their Affairs at Home and Abroad, London\n\nBlythe, W L, 1969, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, Kuala Lumpur\n\nBraddell, Roland St John, (1915) 1982, The Law of the Straits Settlements. A Commentary, Oxford University Press (Kuala Lumpur)\n\nBraddle, T, (1853) 'Notices of Singapore', JIA, vii, 1328\n\nBuckley, Charles Burton, (1902) 1984, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore, Oxford University Press", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216383, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "92\n\nthe United Nations withdrew from the negotiating process, citing concerns that trials under the proposed law would not be effective within Cambodia's judicial system.\n\nNegotiations resumed late in 2002, and in early 2003 a further memorandum of understanding was initialled between the UN Representative, and the Royal Government.3 That agreement was approved by the Third Committee of the General Assembly, and then by the General Assembly. The agreement, and the necessary implementing legislation, was put before the Cambodian parliament in mid-2003. However, the Cambodian parliament went into recess for an election held in July 2003. The election did not produce a clear result, and negotiations between the political parties have continued for almost a year. At the time of writing (July 2004) the negotiations appear to have been resolved, and a new cabinet has been formed.\" There is quite a backlog of legislative work, including the legislation for the proposed tribunal. The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, had earlier stated that the legislation will be a high priority for the new legislature.\n\nIn anticipation of the establishment of the tribunal, both the United Nations and the Cambodian Government have formed Task Forces to work towards implementation. At the same time, a number of governments have made financial commitments to the project. The next stage will be the distribution to Cambodians of booklets explaining the tribunal.\n\n3. The Structure and Processes of the Tribunal\n\nThe most recent proposals for the tribunal are contained in the March 2003 agreement initialled by UN representative Hans Correll and Royal Government representative Sok Ann on 17 March 2003. The tribunal will be constituted as Extraordinary Chambers, a Trial Chamber and a Supreme Court Chamber. This is not an international tribunal: these Chambers are established within the existing Cambodian legal system. But the chambers will include a minority of international judges, and at least one international judge must concur with the decision of the Chamber. The Chambers will be served by national and international investigating judges, and national and international prosecutors.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216499, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "209\n\nthe original plaque, with the words as above, has been cleaned and is easy to read,\n\nA new, interesting information panel now also accompanies the exhibit. It reads as follows:\n\nSteam Ship Tyndareus\n\nIn 1916 the 25th (Garrison) Battalion, the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment) was ordered to proceed to Hong Kong from Aldershot. The Battalion was to be taken as far as Durban by S S Tyndareus, a 7058-tonne vessel with a crew of 108 owned by Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool which was making her maiden voyage. Having sailed from Glasgow, the Tyndareus embarked the battalion, 1005 strong, and left Devonport on 22 December 1916.\n\nAt 6.55pm on February 1917, off Cape Agulhas, 173 Km south-east of Cape Town, the vessel struck a German mine which exploded creating an 84 square metre hole in the starboard side and bottom of the ship. The Tyndareus heaved over, began to ship water and started to go down by the head. No lives were lost in the explosion or the subsequent evacuation and the vessel managed to reach Simontown two days later.\n\nThe Tyndareus received partial repairs in South Africa, served through the Second World War and was not broken up until 1960. The Battalion had recovered sufficiently from its ordeal to form a guard of honour at the opening of the South African Parliament on 16 February, and after a further stop in Singapore the 25th reached Hong Kong on 1 April 1917. Here the Battalion's commanding Officer commissioned the erection of a memorial, sited on the Peak of Hong Kong Island, to commemorate the exemplary conduct displayed by his men when the ship was mined.\n\nAn inscribed metal plaque was later added to the rock which erroneously stated that it was erected in memory of the men who died in the accident - perhaps a confusion with the wreck of HM Troopship Birkenhead in 1852 which claimed 445 lives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]