[
    {
        "id": 206969,
        "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": 40,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "34 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna was joined by Father Guerlach, a missionary who had lived in the Moï region for many years and spoke several local dialects. On 3 June 1888, the members of the confederation accepted a constitution drawn up by Mayréna, which made him king. It is suggested by Marcel Ner1 and other scholars that Mayréna owed much of his success to his skill at prestidigitation, for the Moï were extremely superstitious and accepted his tricks as a sign of moral excellence and divinity. \n\nMayréna by a surprising turn of fortune had become Marie, King of the Sedangs. The new kingdom was named after the Sedangs simply because this tribe formed the most populous element in the confederation of Moï tribesmen. He made Mercurol, the middle-aged, malaria-riddled adventurer from Saigon, the Marquis of Henoui, and created a number of orders of chivalry. His most fanciful creation was the Order of Merit pour récompenser les lettres, les arts, les sciences, l'industrie et le dévouement à la maison royale. It is difficult to understand for whom this order was intended since the Sedangs were totally illiterate. His Annamite mistress—Ahnaïa20—became Queen of the Sedangs, but although the official religion of the kingdom was now Catholicism, the young Ahnaïa resolutely refused to give up her pagan practices, much to the disgust of the missionaries who had foregathered at Mayréna's capital, Kon-Djeri, where the royal palace was a primitive hut above which, however, the royal standard fluttered. \n\nMayréna led his warriors into several campaigns against recalcitrant tribes with varying success; but his real problem was not one of warfare but of money. He lacked the means to live in the style which he now felt was his due. It was the search, therefore, for financial support which led him to Hanoi and Haiphong and in November 1888 to Hong Kong. \n\nThe Marquis de Morès21 \n\nAntoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent-Manca de Vallombrosa, marquis de Morès et de Monte-Maggiore, was born in Paris in 1858. Unlike Mayréna, he was of noble blood. His ancestors, the Spanish Mancas, had been granted feudal estates in Sardinia in the fourteenth century. The family remained based in Sardinia until the early nineteenth century when the Marquis' grandfather settled in France. Morès received the conventional education of one of his class; he was first tutored by an abbé, then sent to the Catholic",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206984,
        "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": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\nForeign Adventurers\n\n49\n\nThe word 'adventurer' derives etymologically from the French aventurier, a term applied in the fifteenth century to a gamester. Over time the word has evolved to encompass a number of social types such as the soldier of fortune, the speculator, the impostor, and a person who lives by his wits. The Grand Larousse encyclopédique states magistrally that the aventurier is a 'personne qui vit d'intrigues, et n'est pas très scrupuleuse sur les moyens de se procurer de l'argent, le pouvoir, etc.' The concept includes two important elements—the idea that an adventurer is one who freely chooses to take risks and is involved, if only faute de mieux, in some kind of imposture or degree of deceit. This latter quality is particularly attached to the role of the adventuress, for she is perceived as someone who will stick at nothing to gain her ends, including the prostitution of her body; but it must be granted that the terms ‘adventurer' and ‘adventuress' are not simply the male and female equivalents of the same thing, they are linked to social roles, each of which, the male and female, has a different content. An adventurer may be an extremely moral person, like the Marquis de Morès, but an adventuress can hardly be that.\n\nPsychologically, adventurers may be positioned on various points of a continuum, ranging from the atavistic adventurer (the adventurer per se or sui generis) at the one end, to the run-of-the-mill soldier of fortune,54 hardly distinguishable from any other professional, at the other. Mayréna exemplifies the first species; a poseur, liar, gambler, swindler, and crook; his morals were those of the barnyard, though he was often extremely brave. The aristocratic and patriotic Morès, devoted husband and father, a devout Catholic of impeccable private morality, was more a soldier of fortune, as were many of his Spanish forefathers in Sardinia; he was a gentleman who simply enjoyed danger, challenge, movement; he was exhilarated by life in exotic climes. Thus Mayréna and Morès represent two extremes of a class of adventurers, a social category equivalent to that of bandits, feminists, sportsmen, terrorists.55\n\nThe golden age of the European adventurer spanned the hundred years from Waterloo to the First World War. It is true that adventurers of all types flourished before that period—condottierri, landsknechten, conquistidores, filibusters, freebooters, buccaneers, explorers, imposters, swindlers and tricksters—but the hundred years of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]