[
    {
        "id": 214301,
        "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": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "123\n\nwhile trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.\n\nArthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].\n\nSowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving,\" later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as \"dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as \"the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed.\" China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,\n\nThe only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.\n\nArthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214314,
        "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": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "136\n\nI am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for the following information:\n\nAn announcement from a China mail of 1925. Married, at Shanghai, yesterday, Miss Clarice Sara Moise, to Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby, publisher of the China Journal of Arts and Science. Will of wife, Clarice Clara Sowerby, probated in Hong Kong in 1948, written in Shanghai 1933, in favour of her husband Arthur de Carle Sowerby of Shanghai, and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby. Sister, Nina Ethel Moise. Will of Sowerby himself: Arthur etc., probated in Hong Kong, 1955, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, scientist, at present residing at Fairfax Hotel (?), 2100 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC. Wife, Alice Muriel Sowerby. If predeceased, sister-in-law, Nina Ethel Moise, 6485 San Marco Circle, Hollywood, to receive half; and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby, to get the other half. Will written 7th November, 1949. A death record of Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 16th August 1954.\n\nCarl Smith also commented that it was known that Sowerby had children (sic) by a Chinese woman. It would appear that most expatriates in Shanghai were unaware of Sowerby's first marriage in Tientsin to William Mesny's niece, Mary Anne, and that the reference to the 'children by a Chinese woman,' remembering that Mary Anne's mother had been Chinese, suggests that Sowerby's first marriage had been quietly 'forgotten.'\n\ni The bandits were referred to as the Ko-lao Hui, the Elder Brother Society, an old powerful secret society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch'ing government and punishable by death. Their gangs robbed and killed far and wide as well as causing trouble with their inter-gang feuding.\n\nii The British Residents' Association was formed in 1931 to enable long-term residents to have a say in the running of the Concession. At about the same time, in order to support the authorities in the Concession following the recent troubles and crises, a body known as the Shanghai Fascisti was organised, and led for a while by Sowerby. The Fascists at this time were regarded by many as an honourable force against encroaching communism.\n\niii John Mesny died in 1884 in Hankow leaving a widow and eight children, all under the age of sixteen.\n\niv Davidson-Houston, JV: Armed Pilgrimage : Robert Hale Ltd : London: 1949\n\nv Journal of Oriental Studies Vol. II. No. 1. January 1955 [University of Hong Kong]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]