[ { "id": 204972, "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-1965", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205786, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205787, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n87\n\nPursuing this conciliatory line Brooke came to Bangkok determined to win the confidence of the Siamese and to allay their fears. He wrote to a friend:\n\n\"I shall not seek to make a treaty in a hurry. I shall try to remove apprehensions and obstacles and pave the way for the future. The King is old and a usurper; he has two legitimate brothers, clever and enlightened, who ought to be raised to the throne.... A treaty extorted by force would be but a wasted bit of parchment... The Prince Chow-fa Mongkut is an educated man, reads and writes English and knows something of our literature and science\".2\n\nWith such admirable sentiments Rajah Brooke arrived at the mouth of the Menam. Everything went wrong. The Sphinx ran aground attempting to cross the bar at Paknam. When he met the Praklang (the Foreign Minister), every point he raised was opposed. Was there any need for a treaty? What was wrong with the Burney treaty of 1826? When Brooke asked for more freedom of trade the Praklang replied that trade was already free. As for the British having a Consul at Bangkok and being exempt from Siamese law, both proposals were unnecessary and improper. Later talks with the Siamese Ministers made no more progress. They asked Brooke to put his points in writing but letters between the two sides made no more progress than conversations. It was clear that the Siamese did not want a treaty or any improvement in trade or diplomacy with Britain.\n\nThe Brooke mission was obviously failing. And as frustration grew Sir James's conciliatory attitude changed. Finally he advised force. In a dispatch to the Foreign Minister he wrote:\n\n“Should these just demands firmly urged be refused, a force should be present immediately to enforce them by a rapid destruction of the defences of the river which would place us in possession of the capital and by restoring us to our proper position of command, retrieve the past and ensure peace for the future, with all its advantages of a growing and most important commerce.\"3\n\nBrooke alleged, with some justice, that the Burney Treaty had been broken by the Siamese. Monopolies had been restored, trade was no longer free and taxes on British vessels had increased. In", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205788, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "88\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nany case, he argued, trade had dwindled and it was in the interests of the Siamese to accept a new treaty which would expand trade.\n\nThe White Rajah never met the King. He sailed away with nothing but indignation. He had not openly threatened the Siamese with force but had hinted as much. The old King and his Ministers were not impressed but they must have harboured fears of reprisals as there were so many precedents. In October that year Brooke, addressing himself to Lord Palmerston, evoked high principles in the fine Victorian manner in support of his call for force:\n\n\"Justice — compassion — interest — dignity — and a consistent course of policy appear to me to call for decisive measures to be taken without delay.\"\n\nAnd in a letter to a friend:\n\n\"The Siamese must be taught a lesson... our policy should be commanding and our power exerted when necessary. My policy in Sarawak has been high-handed against evil-doers and there, and in England and in Siam, there are bad to be punished as well as good to be cared for.\"\n\nMercifully for Siam, Brooke's gun-boat policy was not accepted in London but he did perceive the solution in spite of his call for force. The old King, Rama III, must soon die and there was good prospect that his half-brother Prince Mongkut would succeed him. In that event, Brooke said, the prospect of a new relation with Britain was bright.\n\nThe Sphinx and the Nemesis had scarcely left the Menam in September, 1850 when an American mission arrived. It was led by a certain Joseph Balestier, a not very successful American merchant of Singapore who came with a letter from his President. If the Brooke mission was a failure, Balestier's was even worse. Bowring comments:\n\n\"Mr. Balestier had not been fortunate in his commercial operations as a merchant at Singapore and it may be doubted whether the nomination of a commercial gentleman whose history was well known to the King and nobles at Bangkok was judicious; it was certainly not deemed complimentary to the proud Siamese authorities.\"4", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206490, "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-1972", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "32\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nSeptember 1841, I was declared Rajah and Governor of Sarawak amidst the roar of cannon, and a general display of flags and banners from the shore and boats on the river. Some observers in Singapore pronounced Brooke's new position a sentence rather than a reward. Nevertheless the new Raja set about vigorously organizing the state and establishing a rule of law, roughly based upon the Bengal code and local adat or customary law. In 1842 he visited the sultan in his ramshackle wooden palace in Brunei Town, an unattractive clutter of Malay huts built on stilts over a sluggish tidal stream. From the sultan he obtained confirmation of his appointment. The following year it was made hereditary, in perpetuity, and in 1846 the sultan executed a deed of cession of Sarawak to Brooke and his heirs. In subsequent years Brunei ceded additional portions of territory to the Brooke dynasty of white rajas, until by 1890 the state of Sarawak reached approximately its present size.\n\nThis, in a somewhat sketchy way, is how Raja James Brooke acquired control of an oriental state almost as large as England and sparsely inhabited by a conglomeration of frequently fierce pagan peoples, a few Malays and some Chinese. In the remaining part of the paper I want to consider ways in which, to my mind, Sarawak under Brooke rule stood out as an anomaly in the British colonial experience.\n\nII\n\nFirst, let me consider Raja Brooke's position in his own state of Sarawak. Brooke considered that he had been prevailed upon by the Malay chiefs to become their raja, that they chose him. He described, in his journals, the scene upon the occasion in 1842 when the Sultan's confirmation of his appointment was proclaimed in Sarawak.4\n\nWhen we returned from Borneo the Sultan's letter giving me the country was read in public, and when finished we had a scene. Muda Hassim, who was standing, asked aloud, whether anyone dissented; for if they did they were now to make it known.\n\n3 For a study of the growth of British influence in Borneo see L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo (Hong Kong University Press, 1970).\n\n4 R. Munday, op. cit., pp. 323-24.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206495, "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-1972", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n37\n\nFrance, and in 1859 he \"broke off\" relations with Britain, upon which the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell commented,12\n\nTell Brooke that the people of Sarawak are welcome to any independence they can achieve and maintain but that a British subject cannot throw off his allegiance at pleasure.\n\nAnd Spencer St. John noted13 that \"the Raja's correspondence during this year with Her Majesty's Government was not pleasant, and ended, apparently, in complete estrangement”.\n\nOver the years Brooke had acquired a respectable following of supporters in Britain and Singapore, among whom were some influential figures such as Lord Grey, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, and the late Victorian philanthropist, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, later Baroness Burdett-Coutts. His friends now took up his cause and lobbied Whitehall from the Prime Minister's office down.\n\nBritain refused to extend a colonial or protectorate status to Sarawak on practical political grounds. Henry Layard, an under-secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote that a protectorate was declined because of the \"inconvenience of such relations between this country and a foreign territory\", because Sarawak “would not be of sufficient value politically and commercially\", and because Brooke's title was not \"sufficiently clear\"14\n\nBrooke's friends persuaded the Government to have another look at Sarawak, and in 1861 Lord Elgin, who was about to depart as the new viceroy of India, was instructed to investigate the prospects and potential of Sarawak. He delegated the task to Colonel Cavenagh, Governor of the Straits Settlements. In due course Cavenagh and Elgin provided an optimistic assessment of Raja Brooke's state and suggested making Sarawak a lieutenant-governorship under Singapore. \"I am disposed to think\", wrote Lord Elgin,15\n\nthat the acquisition of Saigon by the French and the persistent endeavor of the Dutch authorities to cripple British trade... give enhanced importance to the preservation of the independence of Sarawak as a matter affecting British interests.'\n\n12 See correspondence between the Foreign Office and Raja Brooke between 26 November and 17 December 1859, FO12/35.\n\n13 Spencer St. John, Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, (Edinburgh, 1879) p. 327.\n\n14 Layard memorandum to Lord Elgin, 2 January 1862, FO12/35.\n\n15 Elgin to Russell, 8 January 1863, FO12/35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206496, "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-1972", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "38\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nIn the meantime Brooke's friend St. John, the Consul in Brunei, provided strong evidence to support Sarawak's claim of independence. In correspondence between the Sultan and the Foreign Office, Raja Brooke's relations with Brunei were the subject of discussion. Lord Russell in 1861 asked the consul if it was true that Brunei looked upon Sarawak as an independent state. He had been told that the Sultan honoured the Raja with a twenty-one gun salute whenever he visited Brunei Town. St. John replied that the Sultan did indeed consider Sarawak independent of Brunei. St. John also produced minutes of an interview he had had with the leading chiefs of Sarawak in which they unanimously confirmed that they had chosen the Tuan Besar, James Brooke, to rule over them in place of the harsh and tyrannical chiefs of Brunei, and that they owed no allegiance to the Sultan of Brunei.16\n\nWhen, then, St. John's tour as Consul in Brunei ended in 1862 Brooke's friends, with a concerted lobbying effort, prevailed upon the Palmerston government to appoint a consul to Sarawak as distinct from Brunei. In August 1863 the Cabinet approved the appointment \"as the most direct and least formal method of recognizing it as an independent state\". Whatever in the way of reservations Lord Russell may have held concerning Brooke and Sarawak he was aware that the appointment meant recognition. He minuted some time earlier,17\n\nIf we appoint a consul I suppose he must be appointed to reside in the territory of the rajah of Sarawak as an independent sovereign.\n\nAnd later, when Russell was urged to inform Raja Brooke \"that the Cabinet had consented to recognize Sarawak by appointing a consul there\", the Foreign Secretary instructed his undersecretary, \"We may write to Sir James Brooke to say that he has reason to believe it\". The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, concurred.\n\nHowever, bureaucratic procedures now took over, and the Consul's instructions directed him to procure his official acceptance from\n\n16 See L. R. Wright, Origins of British Borneo, pp. 75-76; and St. John, \"Minutes of an interview with Sarawak Chiefs\", 25th October 1855, FO 12/22.\n\n17 Russell minute on a memo, by Brooke, 13 August 1863, in the Layard Papers (British Museum), ADD.MSS. 38989, f. 244,\n\n18 Russell minute, Layard Papers, ADD.MSS. 38989, f. 245.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206497, "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-1972", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n39\n\nthe \"local authorities\" rather than from the sovereign prince of Sarawak, as was usual. Thus the anomalous status of Sarawak in the view of some officials remained, and this technicality provided an opportunity for a subsequent permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office to declare that Brooke had not been recognized as a reigning prince. Julian Pauncefote opined in 1877,19\n\nRaja Brooke has not forfeited his claims of British nationality by accepting the position of ruler of Sarawak and as a matter of constitutional law it is competent to Her Majesty to recognize him as a sovereign prince but no such recognition has yet taken place.\n\nJames Brooke died in 1868, happy at having received his country's recognition, and confident that it was merely a step toward the desired British protectorate. In this he was prophetic. Although a formal protectorate was not granted until 1888, Britain made it quite clear by a pronouncement late in 1868 that her paramount interests on the northwest coast of Borneo constituted it a British sphere.20\n\nRaja James Brooke was presented at court on two occasions, in 1847, and again in 1857. His nephew and successor, Charles Brooke, visited England in 1869 and asked to be received officially. He was told that he might write on his card and be presented as \"Mr. Brooke, Raja of Sarawak\". The second white raja was incensed and refused to appear until finally, in 1874, he was presented as \"His Highness, the Raja of Sarawak”, and granted a place just below the Indian maharajas in the order of precedence at Court.\n\nUntil 1888, Britain's empire building in Borneo was done largely by proxy, by Englishmen indeed, but by the agency of political structures and vehicles outside the direct control of Whitehall. That was the role of the Brooke raj, and later of the chartered company that ruled North Borneo, so far as they were a part of the British empire. One of Brooke's friends, John Abel Smith, M.P., was quite accurate when in 1866 he noted rather sourly,21\n\nThe English government is quite alive to the importance of Sarawak to British interests, but as long as Raja Brooke\n\n19 Pauncefote minute, 2 January 1877, FO12/43.\n\n20 FO to Hennessy, 2 December 1868, FO12/34A.\n\n21 Owen Rutter (ed) Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts, London, 1935, p. 272.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207998, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n21\n\nvery small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the \"Venice of Borneo\" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,* and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Brunei of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,† with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.§ Brunei has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a\n\n* \"I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes.\" The Rajah called the place a \"Venice of hovels.\" Mercator in his Atlas describes it as \"being situated on a salt-water lagoon like Venice,\" hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo.\n\n† Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteen century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago.\n\n§ The Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments, such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this would still point to a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209122, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n11\n\ntwo longhouses. They were massively built wooden fortresses standing on piles, usually about 30 feet above ground level. Each village was politically independent in its own territory, and was frequently on terms of active hostility with its neighbours. The investment of labour and capital in a longhouse was so great that it was rarely moved or completely re-built. The district was conquered by the Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke, in 1861; and over the next twenty years a measure of law and order was imposed on the villages. In time, too, the longhouses became so overcrowded that the people simply abandoned them and built small, separate houses along the banks of the river in ribbon development.\n\nThe political control of a village was in the hands of a small group of aristocratic elders who were said to be the descendants of the village's founders. The society was rigidly ranked: about 10 percent of a village's population were what one can call aristocrats; 80 percent were middle rankers of varying degrees; and another 10 percent were slaves. An elaborate set of customary rules (adet) regulated the behaviour of the members of the different ranks to one another and most other aspects of life as well. The adet was one of the community's most valued possessions and was in the custody of the aristocratic elders. No single elder was superior to the others, though he might have special knowledge that fitted him for particular tasks. A man with unusual abilities in war was put in charge of raids, and another with knowledge of rituals might assume leadership on appropriate occasions. It is interesting, though, that in general the aristocrats did not handle matters of the adet that dealt with ritual, with illness, and with dealings with other beings than humans. They were primarily concerned with power over people in this world. But leadership among the ruling committee of elders was not formalised into permanent offices, and there was no single political chief who ruled a village as of personal right. This is, of course, a possible and workable political arrangement in an independent village of five to eight hundred inhabitants.3\n\nLet me summarise the situation. A Melanau thought of himself as a citizen of a particular village whose inhabitants were thought to be, and often were, peculiar in matters of dialect and custom. As an individual, a man or woman was also the focal point of a circle of kinsmen with whom he shared a wide range of social and economic interests; and, lastly, he had by virtue of birth a position of rank. In any context the behaviour of one individual to another was largely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209703, "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": 360, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "338\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe diffusion, he feels, through the bureaucratic network ended by the middle of the Ch'ing dynasty, thereafter the other two types have been the dominant methods by which theatrical styles have diffused into the Hong Kong area.\n\nIn short, the author has an appropriate conceptual framework for presenting the field research data. The book will be welcomed by many scholars, particularly by anthropologists and sinologists. The book is written in Japanese, but includes a short guide to contents in English. It is profusely illustrated with photographs.\n\nWANG SUNG-HSING\n\nJohn M. Chin, The Sarawak Chinese, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981. xvi, 158 pp. maps, plates, appendices, bibliography, index.\n\nR.H.W. Reece, The Name of Brooke: the end of White Rajah rule in Sarawak, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982. xxxi, 331 pp. maps, plates, tables, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index.\n\nThese two books published recently by Oxford University Press in Kuala Lumpur are so disparate that a combined review seems to this reviewer very unfair. Hence my observations are given below separately.\n\nFirst, The Sarawak Chinese: This small readable work is a thumbnail sketch of the role of the Chinese in Sarawak from their earliest arrival to the present. It gives a background to Chinese contact with Borneo from ancient times (Ch. 1); sketches the migration of Chinese (mostly coolie laborers) to Sarawak (Chs. 2-6) and the policies of, first, distrust and then gradual toleration, and direct encouragement of Chinese immigration and enterprise in the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth century development of agriculture and trade (Chs. 6-7).\n\nThe historical section, covering the period up to World War II (Chs. 1-7) lacks sufficient detail to be more convincing than a cursory sketch can be. It contains a few myths: that “Majapahit succeeded Shivijaya\" and \"extended its rule over Ternate, Luzon and the northern coasts of Borneo\" (p. 3) (A better term would be \"influence\" or \"suzerainty\"); the \"intolerant\"\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209704, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n339\n\nand arrogant views of Rajah James Brooke toward Chinese in Sarawak (a better interpretation would be his suspicion of “Triads” among the kongsi as well as of “bad elements” among other ethnic groups).\n\nAnd the book contains a few glaring errors: \"Ferdinand Magellan's call at Brunei in 1521\" (p. 7); the infusion of Chinese blood into the Brunei royal house (p. 4) (It is not at all a historical certainty how this occurred.)\n\nThe author, a one-time civil servant in the Ministry of Welfare Services in Sarawak, is more certain of his facts and hence more convincing in his description of political developments in the state since World War II (Chs. 8-9). These chapters cover the period of direct British colonial rule, 1946-63, and the recent experience of Sarawak as a member state of the Federation of Malaysia, 1963 to present.\n\nThis section is valuable as an outline of the positions and stances of the conglomeration of political parties which proliferated upon the Sarawak (and Malaysian) political landscape during the last two decades. The development of ethnically mixed parties of the left, right and center has been vigorous; the role of Chinese citizens, energetic. But once again the lack of detail gives it a cursory flavor perhaps sufficient for the outside observer but hardly meat for the student of politics.\n\nThe book is skimpy on sources; the reader who is looking for the \"blood and guts\" of Sarawak's dynamic political and social scene will be disappointed. This is a primer on the success and general stability of a multiracial society. As such it is just adequate.\n\nThe Name of Brooke: An entirely different experience awaits the reader of this meticulously documented study of Sarawak's politics from the 1920s to the imposition of direct British rule in 1946. It covers the eventful years which saw the weakening of the Brooke raj, through the Japanese occupation, to the final denouement of this \"medieval\" fiefdom as it gave way to the modern depersonalized rule of British colonial bureaucrats.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209705, "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": 362, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "340\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe author sticks strictly to plan and plunges directly into the issues (and intrigues) of Brooke rule, giving the space of only twelve pages to a historical background.\n\nThis is very much a book centering upon the characters who played roles in Sarawak public life during the three eventful decades of the reign of the third white Rajah, Charles Vyner Brooke (1917-1946). The author says directly what Somerset Maugham would have (and did partially) veiled in fiction about the intrigues, pettyfogging and peccadillos of Englishmen in a remote corner of tropical Malaysia, and the dedication and opportunism in their relationships with an often fickle native elite.\n\nCharacters worthy of a Hollywood drama flit, and more often linger, across the engrossing narrative: the opportunist-adventurer (and unbalanced?) T. E. Lawrence-like G. T. M. MacBryan; the feckless and no less opportunistic camp-followers of the Brooke family; the forever feuding Brookes themselves (although in the present century they are pale shadows of the energetic giants of the last century represented by Rajah James and Rajah Charles, the first and second rulers.)\n\nThe author's style is an entertaining and revealing approach to the recent history of this always appealing little state. But it is more, for it weaves the characters and episodes into the major serious issues which have confronted Sarawak in its journey from the status of a backwater private estate into the modern \"third-world\" of Southeast Asia. Such issues as the propriety of the Brooke cession of the territory to the British crown following World War II; and the very real issue of economic modernization in balance with the protection and preservation of traditional ways and rights. The pages on the development of political awareness and activity among the various ethnic groups is most interesting.\n\nThe one major criticism of the work is that the author can't seem to make up his mind whether the Brookes were progressive or conservators of the traditional status quo as regards economic and social policies. On pages 9 and 10 Rajah Charles was \"preparing\" the way for drastic change as the state moved into the twentieth century. But in summing up two pages later the author decided that Rajah Charles was \"opposed\" to change that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209706, "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": 363, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n341\n\nmight threaten the Brookes' autocratic rule. Again, on page 43 the author describes Rajah Vyner as \"resisting change\" yet in the following chapter (IV) we find the last rajah pressing strongly for a most drastic change of direction to a constitutional monarchy. Given the idiosyncracies of Rajah Charles's rule and the weakness and downright boredom with official obligations of Rajah Vyner perhaps this is an unfair criticism. It may just be impossible to label either ruler so precisely.\n\nThe book is the most exhaustive study of the last few years of Brooke rule that has yet appeared.\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nStudies in Chinese Archaeology, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. 1982. Xii, 148 pp., 45 plates, 3 maps, bibliography, index.\n\nCheng Te-k'un. \n\nThis book is a collection of nine articles previously published in various journals by Prof. Cheng Te-k'un, formerly of Cambridge University and now with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is the third in a series published by the Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art, and the reader is informed fully about the financing of the Centre's publication programme on the page just after the title page. Unfortunately, one searches in vain for biographical information or even an identification of Prof. Cheng himself. The editors have also neglected to include a map of China, a map of Szechuan province (subject of four of the nine articles), or a map of Fukien province (two articles). One minuscule map of \"The Coast of China\" measures 1 x 4 inches, and is useless. There is, on the other hand, a good map of the Santubong region of Sarawak, also showing Sarawak in its Southeast Asian context.\n\nThe articles fall into three groups: general surveys, field reports, and miscellaneous notes. Seven of the articles were written in the period 1933-1949, the other two in 1969 and 1982. As basic descriptions of excavations and field survey results, the earlier articles contain hard data, and have not been rendered obsolete by more recent work, apart from some points of interpretation offered by Cheng. However, the articles do not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 } ]