[
    {
        "id": 214327,
        "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": 185,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "149\n\nber of thirty-nine British, French, and Sikh prisoners who had been taken by the Chinese on 18 September 1860. They had literally been carted from here to there, denied water for long periods, imprisoned, interrogated with violence, and loaded with chains. Some had been tied so tightly with ropes that the circulation was impeded, and eighteen at least died slowly of the resulting gangrene.\n\nContained in the Daily News correspondent's narrative as quoted by The Illustrated London News was a thumbnail sketch of one of the prisoners who died, Private Phipps, of the King's Dragoon Guards. \"He was a strong and cheerful man, and could speak enough Hindustani to make himself intelligible to them... [that is, to the Sikh soldiers]. To the last he appears never to have lost heart, and even when dying encouraged his companions, telling them to keep up their courage, for that help would soon come. All honour to this noble soldier! Though but a private in the ranks, he had the soul of a hero. Well may England be proud of such sons.\n\n913\n\nThe same issue of The Illustrated London News also gives an account of an event which has subsequently been held synonymous with wanton destruction—the burning of the Emperor's Summer Palace in Peking. At the time, however, a different view of this was offered: \"It having been ascertained that [the prisoners'] ill-treatment began in the Emperor's Summer Palace, it was determined to burn it to the ground, to mark in some tangible way the detestation entertained of the Chinese treachery and cruelty\".14\n\n15\n\nThe Illustrated London News was to maintain the Chinese theme over a period of months. Its next issue (12 January 1861) carried a portrait of Henry Loch,1 Secretary to the Earl of Elgin, who had been the bearer of the official despatches which had arrived from China on 27 December 1860,16 and which had occasioned the high degree of coverage in the subsequent issues of The Illustrated London News, which has just been described. (Loch was the gentleman with whom, as it seems, Fraserburgh North Eastern Scotland historian, John Cranna, confused Frederick Stewart (“Founder of Hong Kong Government Education\"), when he inaccurately asserted that Stewart, at one time a secretary of Lord Elgin's, when that administrator held office in the Far East\".)17",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214330,
        "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": 188,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "152\n\nIn the next issue, there is again coverage of Chinese events and background. On 19 January 1861, two half-page illustrations show, \"The Peace with China - Reading the Treaty at Pekin\"27 and \"Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin.\"2\n\nA brief account of a lunch meeting between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung (the two signatories of the Convention of Peking) highlights what British readers would have perceived as the need for the geography lessons which Frederick Stewart was to introduce into the Hong Kong Government Central School by 1870,29 and which - by 1889 - his successor reported as increasingly being adopted into the Hong Kong Village Schools.30 (Prior to this, according to Stewart, there was no geography taught in Hong Kong's traditional Chinese schools.)31 Apparently, Prince Kung commented that until very recently he had not known, \"that India was merely a province of the British empire; they formerly believed Great Britain to be a very small island, the population of which was so large that more than half were obliged to live in ships.\"32 Even as late as 1902, some students in Hong Kong's \"Vernacular Schools\", influenced by a different set of political circumstances, were reported as being, “at the last examination ignorant that Hong Kong was a British Colony: a number hazarded the opinion that it belonged to Russia.”33\n\nIt seems that the withholding of geographical teaching and its content when given were both decisions coloured by politics, whether on the Chinese or the British side.\n\nIn spite of Prince Kung's tenuous respect for the British land mass, the Editor of The Illustrated London News, as published on 19 January 1861, felt that there was sufficient reason for the expression of cautious optimism for the solidity of the peace that had been won: \"There seems to be good grounds for believing that we have at length fairly impressed the Chinese Government with the necessity of good faith in their dealings with us, and a reasonable hope that the treaty will be rigorously observed, leading to an interesting feeling of good will and confidence between our people and the Chinese.\"\n\n34\n\nOn 26 January 1861, the view that the Chinese were now respecting their promises was supported by a full double page spread showing \"The Chinese Bringing to the British Headquarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling]35 as Compen-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214335,
        "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": 193,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "157\n\nhaving been graciously pleased to accept Looty, it forms one of the Royal collection of dogs. Looty is considered by everyone who has seen it the smallest and by far the most beautiful little animal that has appeared in this country.\"63\n\nWhile compassionating the plight of the prisoners and stirred by the brave example of Private Phipps of the King's Dragoon Guards, many British readers must have felt shock and dismay at the burning and looting of the Summer Palace. While many must have responded with particular interest to the information about China and the Chinese people which was being carried in British publications (including The Illustrated London News, discussed in this article), some must have ruefully contrasted and compared what was happening in China with English activities in Ireland and Scotland a century or more earlier.\n\nFollowing the sustained, detailed and circumstantial coverage of Chinese affairs and British interventions in China at this time, of which The Illustrated London News gives us a taste, it is not surprising that when advertisements for “A Gentleman of suitable Literary and Moral qualifications” to fill the new post of Headmaster and Inspector of Schools in the British crown colony of Hong Kong appeared in four British newspapers in August 1861, hundreds of respondents applied.\n\nHong Kong, China\n\n64\n\nIn spite of its full coverage of China and events in China, there had been little mention of Hong Kong in The Illustrated London News at this time. One rare mention was of a comparatively frivolous nature. An illustration of \"The Barrister's Cup\", which the \"chief legal gentlemen of the colony\" had decided to present, had appeared on 23 February 1861 with the accompanying narrative: “In spite of war and war's rumours, our countrymen at Hong-Kong are still as fond of home sports as ever. One of the principal English institutions imported into that distant island is that of racing, and English colonist or Chinese resident seem equally to enjoy the sport.\n\n\"65\n\nIn early to mid-September 1861, interviews were held in Britain66 for the educational position in Hong Kong which had recently been established at least partly to address the task of creating mutual understanding and goodwill between British and Chinese in the colony. Some",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214340,
        "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": 198,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "162\n\n(28)\n\n(29)\n\n(30)\n\n(31)\n\n(32)\n\n(33)\n\n(34)\n\n(35)\n\n(36)\n\n(37)\n\n(38)\n\n(39)\n\nClose of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin. - From a sketch by our Special Artist\", half-page, The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 67.\n\nSee Gillian Bickley, The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), Hong Kong, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, p. 106.\n\nSee Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 91.\n\nSee Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 76.\n\nThe Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 49, c. 3.\n\nSee Edward A. Irving, Inspector of Schools' Annual Report for 1904, Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30 June 1905, p. 1031, quoting a Committee on Education Report on the Vernacular Schools, written in early 1902.\n\nThe Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 64, c. 1.\n\nThe Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 83, c. 3.\n\n\"The Chinese Bringing to the British Head-quarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling] as Compensation to the Released British Prisoners and to the Families of those who were Murdered - From a sketch by our Special Artist\", full double-page spread, The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 82.\n\n\"Curiosity-Street, Pekin - From a sketch by our Special Artist\", full-page, The Illustrated London News, 16 February 1861, p. 142.\n\nThe Illustrated London News, 15 February 1861, p. 147, c. 1.\n\nE\n\n\"Peking Cab\", sketch by our special artist, one third page sketch, The Illustrated London News, 23 February 1861, front page.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]