[
    {
        "id": 212470,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 24,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages.\n\nFollowing the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia.\n\nThe Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212471,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 25,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "However, many emigrants also went from Xiangshan, Chixi and Baoan prefectures.\n\nSome features of Cantonese emigration were as follows. Firstly, similar to other ethnic groups, Cantonese from the same geographic regions tended to emigrate to the same places because of district and kinship ties. Secondly, Cantonese emigrants kept in close contact with their home villages. The reasons for maintaining ties with the home community were twofold: first, the uncertainties of emigrant life in a hostile environment meant that many could not afford to forego their homeland as a possible refuge in case of discrimination and in times of economic dislocation; second, many emigrants wanted to return to their home communities, where they could experience a substantial increase in prestige compared to their status before they emigrated and their status in the host societies.\n\nFigure 1\n\nThe Pearl River Delta\n\n19\n18\n16\n15\n12\n13\n\n  \n    Canton\n    8. Xiangshan\n    1. Yangjiang\n    7. Heshan\n  \n  \n    \n    9. Shunde\n    2. Enping\n    3. Kaiping\n  \n  \n    \n    10. Nanhai\n    4. Xinning\n    \n  \n  \n    \n    11. Panyu\n    5. Chixi\n    6. Xinhui\n  \n  \n    \n    12. Zengcheng\n    \n    \n  \n  \n    Macao\n    13. Dongguan\n    14. Baoan\n    15. Gaoyao\n  \n  \n    \n    \n    16. Sihui\n    17. Sanshui\n  \n  \n    \n    \n    18. Huaxian\n    \n  \n  \n    Hong Kong\n    19. Qingyuan\n    20. Fogang\n    21. Conghua\n  \n\nSource, adapted from June Mei (1979), p. 466",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212473,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 27,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "became the norm in the new comprador system. The guarantor might simply agree to compensate for losses to a firm caused by its comprador.' While the foreign firm depended on the guarantee system to ensure a comprador's trustworthiness, the comprador himself relied heavily on personal and regional ties in recruiting his own staff or keeping their own posts as hereditary.\n\nWong Kong, a Cantonese native of Shunde, serving in a compradorship to Messrs. Smith, Archer & Co. in Hong Kong, showed in his will his intention for his sons to become compradors in the future. He had arranged that trustees of his properties should provide a sum of not more than five thousand dollars as the sureties ordinarily requested by foreign firms. He wrote,\n\nShould any of my said sons become compradores or assistants in any Mercantile Houses or places of business; It is my desire that my said trustees shall become his or their sureties in any sum not exceeding five thousand dollars and that my said trustees if they shall think proper so to do; shall so long as they continue such sureties retain in their hands so much of the principal money and property to which such son or sons shall be entitled under this my will and shall amount to such sum or sums for which they may so become sureties but in such case or cases the income arising on such property so retained shall be payable to my said son or sons.4\n\nAlthough Wong had not stated which foreign firm his sons were going to enter or whether he had recommended them to Messrs. Smith, Archer & Co. or not, from the above we can see that a surety of about five thousand dollars as well as a personal guarantee were usually required.\n\nCantonese Predominance\n\nForeign firms doing business in China relied upon their local compradors, and before the rise of Zhejiang and Jiangsu compradors in the early twentieth century, most of these compradors were Cantonese. From scholar Yen-p'ing Hao's study, whose data were mainly based on archives of American and British firms, all of the 24 compradors employed between the 1850s and 1860s by Augustine Heard & Co. were",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212482,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 36,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "16 \n\nShunde \n\nDongguan \n\nSanshui \n\nGaoyiu \n\n2 \n\n3 \n\nI \n\nI \n\n1 \n\n1 \n\nN \n\n| \n\n10 \n\n2 \n\nOut of delta region \n\nNon-Cantonese \n\n5 \n\n& \n\n13 \n\n2 \n\n1 \n\n- \n\n1 \n\n4 \n\nHang Kong \n\n1 \n\n༣ \n\n2. \n\n3 \n\n1 \n\n8 \n\nUnidentified \n\n18 \n\n30 \n\n72 \n\n132 \n\n17 \n\n422 \n\nTotal \n\n20 \n\n46 \n\n105 \n\n186 \n\n193 \n\n550 \n\nSource: Hong Kong Record Series #144. The Supreme Court of Hong Kong. Probate Jurisdiction - Wills. \n\nFrom the 894 Chinese wills of the period between 1850-1906 deposited in the Hong Kong Public Records Office, 550 were believed to be held by merchants. Merchants were defined here as owning business, joining in partnership and holding properties. As indicated in table 1, there were 128 out of 550 who stated their native origins. Most of them came from the Pearl River Delta region, Xiangshan men being the largest in number, followed by Nanhai, Xinning, Xinhui, Shunde, Dongguan, Panyu and so on. More interesting, though they had been doing business in Hong Kong for a number of years, they did not claim they were Hong Kong people. Instead they identified with their native place. More frequently they were probably absent from Hong Kong and had resided in Canton and Macau. A puzzling question is that a large portion of these 442 persons had not told in their wills where they came from. Can we take it for granted they did not state it because there was no need to specify as they had identified with Hong Kong? Nevertheless, there were eight cases reported where they were definitely identified as Hong Kong persons. Some claimed “Victorians\", some were \"Hong Kong people\" and some identified with the place where they lived such as Kowloon, Shaukiwan, etc. \n\nIt is supposed that during the nineteenth century the majority of the Chinese in Hong Kong did not settle permanently but returned home or moved to other places in China. They retained ties with their home villages in China. As a scholar points out, wealthy Hong Kong Chinese usually held landed property in Hong Kong, but from the wills we know there were also frequent references to fields and houses in the home villages and houses in Canton, Foshan and Macau. The landed properties they held were mostly houses and land, and little were shares",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    }
]