[ { "id": 204649, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "116\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nThere was intense rivalry between John Swire's China Navigation Company and Russell's Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in the years before the latter's ships were sold to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company. John Swire seems to have adopted and improved on Russell's methods of soliciting business from Chinese merchants, and making his shipping services and godown facilities as attractive to them as possible. This was a policy which the \"Princely Hong\" were much slower in adopting in their shipping services. It is amusing to read F. B. Forbes's exasperated comments on a dinner party which Swire's compradores gave for their Chinese freight brokers, and at which their European clerks were present and assisted in the hostly duties.12 Forbes thought this undignified, but one imagines his real grievance was that he had not thought of this himself.\n\nThe Chefoo Convention between Britain and China was signed in 1876, following the murder of A. R. Margary, a British consular officer, on the border between Burma and China. The connection between the two events may appear remote, but at this time the murder of a foreigner, or any untoward outburst of xenophobia on the part of the Chinese, was often followed by China being compelled to surrender some of her territory or sovereignty to the foreign power concerned. In this instance the Chefoo Convention provided for the opening to foreign trade of several more ports on the coast, and a further 340 miles on the Yangtse, the section between Hankow and Ichang known as the Middle River. Ichang, at the upper end of the Middle River, became a treaty port, and also Wuhu, a port between Nanking and Kiukiang. At the same time, Anking, Hichow, Luhchow, Tatung, and Wusueh, were opened to foreign trade as ports of call. These were ports where passengers and cargo could be loaded and discharged, but where foreigners had no rights of residence. All these ports of call, except Luhchow, were below Hankow; Luhchow being on the Middle River 70 miles above Hankow.\n\nF. B. Forbes was a nephew of P. S. Forbes, a former head of Russell and Company in America. He was a director of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company from 1863 to 1866, and from 1868 to 1872, and president from 1872 to 1874.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206280, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n91\n\nas the American Trading Company of Borneo, with the intention of developing the concession the Sultan of Brunei had granted to an American, Charles Lee Moses. The Chinese partners supplied most of the capital. The Company established a settlement, but after a few years of ship-building, experimental planting, and trade the project was abandoned. The company did not have sufficient capital to finance the undertaking properly.24 This drain of capital may have been the primary cause of the bankruptcy of Pang Wah Ping in 1866. He had acquired his original capital from profits of trade in unprepared opium, and during his years of prosperity his name appears on the various documents used as criteria for élite status.\n\nThe Li family, however, was more firmly established and survived the failure of the American Trading Company of Borneo. Its interests were diversified. It had large real estate holdings in Hong Kong which regularly brought in rental income. It was perhaps the largest broker for coolie labor and charterer of ships for these emigrants. In 1868 gambling was legalized in Hong Kong and the monopoly was bought up by the Li family firm. They also had interests in the opium monopoly.\n\nTheir financial investment in Hong Kong appears to have led them to identify their interests with the British at the time of the Second Opium War, and a Chinese source states that they \"gave contributions to foreigners to the extent of over a lakh of ready money and recruited native braves who went to the front at Tientsin. When peace was declared they shared in the War Indemnity as well as in the Imperial effects and curios of the Yuen-ming-yuen (Summer Palaces)\".25 They were accused of supporting France in its efforts to gain control of Annam. The Chinese authorities of their home district tried to derive some benefit from the fortunes of the family, by requesting large contributions for the reclamation of waste land. When the family seemed somewhat hesitant to meet the full demands of the authorities, they sought to provoke generosity by seizing a member of the family who happened to have returned to his home district, imprisoning him, and eventually putting him on trial.\n\nThis account of the troubles the family encountered in its relations with Chinese officialdom illustrates the predicament the wealthy merchants and compradores found themselves in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207133, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDock Company for $150,000. In turn, the Company sold the property in 1883 to a Chinese consortium composed of three members of the Li Family and Chan Kun, with the proviso that the premises were not to be used as a dock or slip except for Chinese style ships. This was to prevent Chinese competition to their Dockyards at Hung Hom and Aberdeen. In time other industries were developed on the site: a soy factory, and a lard manufactury, and godowns were built along the Praya.\n\nThe Li family of Tsat Po Heung, San Wui District, had established its interests in Hong Kong as early as 1854, and under the astute leadership of Li Sing it had become probably the wealthiest family in Hong Kong by the turn of century. Shortly before the death of Li Sing in 1900, he divided his extensive real estate holdings among his eight sons. Marine Lot 239 was included in the share of Li Po Lung (***), also known as Li Wai Tong (*). He sold out most of his interests in the property in 1921.\n\n**\n\nIn 1918 new Crown Leases were granted to Li Po Lung in lieu of the original lease of 1873. The upper part of the original lot was then set off as an Inland Lot numbered 1355. The top left-hand corner of the Lot (as seen when standing on the seafront facing the hillside) had some years previous been given to the Contractor's Guild to build the 'Lo Pan' Temple, and a path led up to it bearing the name of Li Po Lung. The hillside was terraced for building sites. The first row was known as Li Po Lung Terrace, situated between Belcher Street and the present Tai Pak Terrace. Ching Lin Terrace upon which the Temple is located was formerly known as Li Sing Kui Road and To Li Terrace was formerly Tam Woon Tong Road.\n\n44\n\nLi Sing Kiu, Tam Woon Tong, Look Poong Shan, Li Tsz Chung and Chung Sek Fan had purchased the site of the Temple along with other land from Li Po Lung in 1921. They, in turn, in 1923, sold the Temple site as Section E of Inland Lot 1355 for a sum of $4,222.40 to Lam Lau, Lam Sheung, Yu Cheuk, Ng Wah and Ng Tsz Mei, representatives of the Temple, though the conveyance stated they were tenants in common in equal shares rather than Trustees.\n\n44\n\nDue to difficulties over payment of the Crown Rent for Inland Lot 1355, the Government re-entered the lot in 1926 in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208947, "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-1980", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE\n\n77\n\nIn 1629 the Viceroy Conde de Linhares ordered that both the Macau-Nagasaki and Macau-Manila voyages should henceforth be made under the supervision and control of the Crown and the profits from them used for the upkeep of the royal dockyard at Goa and the maintenance of the Portuguese fleet in Asian waters, but it was not until 1635 that an administrator for the voyages was sent from Goa to Macau to enforce the new system.32 In the same year the Viceroy finally agreed to allow one pinnace to make the Macau-Manila voyage each year, laden with munitions for the Manila garrison and enough silk for local consumption in the Philippines without any surplus for export to Mexico, where it would compete with silks from Seville.\n\nBy the end of the 16th century Macau's trade was already being threatened from several quarters. On the one hand, the development of the Manila-Japan trade, the increasing power and cohesion of the Japanese state under the Tokugawa and the encouragement of a Japanese merchant navy by Tokugawa Ieyasu — the famous Red Seal ships33 — and, above all, the growing hostility of the shoguns towards Christianity and the missionary activities of Portuguese Jesuits and Spanish friars undermined Macau's trade with Japan. On the other hand, competition from the Dutch, whose control of the Straits of Malacca made trade and communications between Macau and Goa difficult and dangerous and whose establishment in Taiwan after 1624 extended this danger into the China Seas, had a deleterious effect on Macau's trade with Indonesia. The extortions of the Chinese merchants, who also of course carried on direct trade in competition with the Portuguese, licitly or illicitly, both with Japan and Manila, weakened Macau's position still further. Between 1613 and 1640, an average of 60 to 80 Chinese junks visited Japan yearly, though from 1634 they were, like the Portuguese, confined to Nagasaki. These difficulties culminated in the summary expulsion of the Portuguese from Japan in 1639 by the Shogun Iemitsu and in the fall of Malacca to the Dutch in 1641. The embassy sent from Macau in 1640 in a last attempt to get Iemitsu to revoke his edict of expulsion met a terrible fate. 61 of the 74 members of the delegation were beheaded by 61 executioners sent specially from Yedo to Nagasaki for the purpose. A contemporary Portuguese account of how the citizens of Macau reacted to the news of the calamity sums up well the peculiar quality of the whole Portuguese adventure in the East, its mixture of missionary zeal and ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208950, "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-1980", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "80\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\n24 Investigations at Manila concerning trade with Macau. In E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson (eds.). The Philippine Islands 1493-1803. 55 vols. Cleveland, Ohio, 1905. VIII. pp. 174-196.\n\n25 Miguel de Benevides, Bishop of Nueva Segovia to the King. Tulac, 17 May 1599. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. X. p. 193.\n\n26 Memorial to the Council. 26 July 1586. In Blair and Robertson, op cit. VI. p. 169.\n\n27 See Morga, op cit., pp. 136-149, Boxer, Fidalgos, pp. 46-47, Idem, Great Ship, pp. 61-62, Spate, op cit., pp. 163-164.\n\n28 Morga, op cit., p. 341 and Boxer, Great Ship, p. 73.\n\n29 Morga, op cit., pp. 341-342.\n\n30 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 111.\n\n31 D. Fernando de Silva to the King. 30 July 1626. In Boletin de la Sociedade Geografica de Madrid. XII. pp. 142 sqq. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, p. 144. For an account of Fort Zeelandia see F. R. J. Verhoeven, Bijdragen tot de oudere koloniale geschiedenis van het eiland Formosa. The Hague, 1930.\n\n32 Boxer, Great Ship, p. 117.\n\n33 On the Red Seal ships see Boxer. Christian century, pp. 261-267 and N. Peri. Essai sur les rélations du Japon et de l'Indochine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Hanoi, 1923.\n\n34 Antonio Francisco Cardim S.J. Relação der gloriosa morte de quatro embaixadores portuguezes da cidade de Macao com sincoenta e sete Christãos de sua Companhia... a tres de Agosto de 1640. Lisbon, 1643. Quoted in Boxer, Great Ship, pp. 165-166.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212397, "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": 339, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "316 \n\nand traditions that make men (and women) take to the profession of piracy. As it is the book is a \"good read\" in the sensational nineteen-twenties style of journalism, padded out with cuttings from the newspaper library. And the piracy which forms the main theme of the book is less the battle-boarding-bang-bang scenario of excitement and tension favoured by generations of schoolboys, than a roughly institutionalised form of \"protection\". You entered into \"discussions\" with fishing-junks to protect them from real pirates, in the same way as today's Hong Kong Triads contact a new shop or restaurant to \"protect\" them against burglars.\n\nNot that the nineteen-twenties lacked their share of genuine piratical drama. This was the decade of the inside operation, with villains booking passages on coastal and ocean-going ships and, once out of sight of land, storming the bridge and forcing the crews to steer to Bias Bay, where the cargo would be looted, and the passengers sometimes held to ransom.\n\nOf all the piracies that of the SS Sunning in November, 1926, was the most spectacular and interesting, because the officers not only fought against overwhelming odds, but actually recaptured the ship, although with heavy losses in dead and injured. All this against a background of well-defined Hong Kong colonial policy. The drill was simple. Any pirates caught in Hong Kong waters, if found guilty, were hanged. If the crimes were committed in Chinese waters it was up to the Mainland Chinese authorities to deal with them, and in the nineteen-twenties China was too occupied with war-lord politics and other problems to bother much with coastal piracy, which had anyway been a nuisance for centuries.\n\nIn order to make contacts with the sea-going underworld the author paid many visits to Macau and was extraordinarily lucky in making contact with useful intermediaries. He lacks literary style but he is the kind of determined reporter every editor would like to have on hand for investigative purposes. In an effort (unsuccessful) to pursue useful contacts he even committed a minor crime and got himself locked up among the convicts in Hong Kong's Victoria Prison. Not surprisingly the pirates there had been found guilty not of piracy but lesser offences; had their real identity been revealed and proved they would have been doomed men. The gallows was a few yards outside author Lilius' cell.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215134, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "187\n\nvirtually cut off the supply to the waterfall other than when they are overflowing, for instance after a heavy storm.\n\nApart from pleasure boats and other small craft, Tai Tam Harbour was used more in the 19th century than it is today. During the period 1806 to 1819, long before Hong Kong was taken over by Britain, James Horsburgh, a hydrographer with the East India Company, surveyed the waters around the Island. He wrote that Tai Tam afforded shelter from almost all winds (Liu Shuyong, 1997:24). It is not of course a harbour as we sometimes know it with wharves and godowns. It is an inlet, which provides a place for ships to shelter. To illustrate again the Harbour's use as a place for protection from the elements mention is made of ‘tactical manoeuvring and target practice,' in February 1878, by the Royal Navy (White Ensign-Red Dragon, 1997; 39). It continues, 'The 20th February being very misty the fleet remained at Tytam Bay.'\n\nPeople naturally ask when exactly were the two Obelisks first erected; who erected them; and what purpose did (or do) they serve? As a start, with the aims of answering such questions, two Chief Inspectors, H J W Chetwynd-Chatwin and Keith Francis, both then serving in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, arranged an informal meeting, in 1994. The meeting took place in a bar at a police officers' mess in Wan Chai. It was followed by a curry lunch. About a dozen people were invited who, it was felt, could contribute. They included the Government Director of Marine and RASHKB member R S Hownam-Meek who spent his career in shipping with Jardine. A couple of weeks or so after the meeting the topic of the Obelisks was raised by Radio Television Hong Kong. Little of real substance emerged from the meeting or the ‘phone-in radio programme. The late Arthur May, then a retired civil servant, did however ‘phone in to say that, as a youth, he went to live at Tai Tam in 1919. He also recalled that when he sailed around the Harbour in the 1920s the two Obelisks were definitely already there.\n\nThe Hydrographic Data Centre, at Taunton in England, maintains that information was received from the Commander-in-Chief, China, that two beacons, each 30 feet high, had been erected. These were first inserted on Admiralty charts by 'Notice to Mariners 755' of 1900 (Atherton, 1996:94). I have a chart showing Tai Tam Harbour, dated 1894, which shows the Obelisks, but Atherton informs me that this is a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]