[ { "id": 204590, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "60\n\nTHE OLD BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING, 1860-1959\n\nBased on a lecture delivered on 20 August, 1962\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG, M.A.*\n\nOn the afternoon of March 26th, 1861, Frederick Bruce, the first British minister to China to reside in Peking, entered the grounds of the former palace of Duke I-liang, and the history of the old British Legation had begun. The desire of Great Britain to have a minister resident in the capital was of long standing, and had its origins in the eighteenth century. From at least 1760, some English merchants in Canton had been arguing that only when an ambassador from England resided at Peking would their grievances be properly represented to the Emperor of China and their position improve. Eventually, this point of view was strong enough to influence the Government of England. Indeed, one of the prime objects of the embassy of Lord Macartney to the Court of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793 was to secure for England just such permanent representation at Peking. However, there was not the slightest chance that such a request would be granted. All foreign embassies to China were regarded as tributary missions of a temporary nature, and all foreign countries as inferior. Even the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, and the subsequent Treaty of Nanking failed to obtain this object. From the Chinese point of view, relations with the western barbarians were still a local matter to be carried on by the Governor-General at Canton or by the Governor-General at Nanking. The foreign powers, for their part, were still unable to gain direct communication with the Imperial Government at Peking, and therefore were unable to protest effectively when the treaties did not appear to be working properly, or when they wished to revise them. This was the background to the War of 1858-1860, in which English and French forces were used to secure the Treaties of Tientsin, by which the earlier treaties were revised. Article III of the British Treaty of Tientsin stated (in part): \"It is further agreed that Her Majesty's Government may\n\n* Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. Author of An Embassy to China, reviewed on page 136 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204641, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n109\n\nThe Imperial forces had very little success against the Taipings in the next two years, and although it had been stipulated that the three ports on the river were not to be opened until they were defeated, a second naval expedition left Shanghai early in 1861 to establish consular posts at Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow. This expedition went up 158 miles beyond Hankow before turning back. Shortly after the return of this expedition the river was opened to foreign trade.\n\nThere is some ambiguity about Western policy during the Taiping Rebellion. It seems to have been regarded with sympathy in the early stages, when it was looked on as a reforming movement with Christian affiliations; and many foreigners welcomed the prospect of a change from the corrupt and reactionary Manchu régime. The British, American, and French governments, therefore, adopted a policy of neutrality in the early stages of the conflict. Later on, however, a marked change took place, which was not entirely due to the excesses committed by the rebels. Commercial considerations undoubtedly played some part. The Treaty of Tientsin had legalised the opium trade, but the Taipings were against opium and alcohol, and banned this trade in the territory under their control. They also made it clear that under their rule foreign trade would not be carried on in the one-sided manner so favourable to the foreign merchants. The Treaty of Tientsin again had stipulated that foreign ships could not navigate the Yangtse until peace was restored. Because of these and other reasons, the Western Powers abandoned their policy of neutrality. The rebels were looked on and referred to as firebrands and extremists, and the Manchu government as a peaceful and stabilising element, and steps were taken to help the latter. These included supplying the government forces with arms and ammunition — including the new Lee Enfield rifle, not yet used in Europe — allowing foreign steamers to transport government troops, and supplying officers to train and lead them.* As a result Nanking was captured in 1864, and the last vestiges of the rebellion were stamped out by 1866.\n\nIn 1862 the Scotland, a steamer belonging to Lindsay and Company of Shanghai was the first ocean-going merchant ship to go to Hankow, and thus opened the interior of China to direct\n\n* Gordon was the most famous of these officers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205123, "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-1966", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "74\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nIn 1873 the first Japanese missionary arrived in the Middle Kingdom. His name was Ogurusu Kocho and he had been sent to look over the situation in Shanghai by the Higashi Honganji sub-sect of Jodo Shinshu (the larger of the two main Pure Land sects). The following year he paid another visit to Shanghai and also went to Peking.\n\nIn 1876 the Higashi Honganji drew up a new creed that could be interpreted as a bid for collaboration with the state. Among other things, it emphasized that glorious death in military service would be rewarded by rebirth in the Western Paradise. It spoke of brotherhood with the Chinese in face of the unfilial barbarians. In May that year Count Otani, the hereditary patriarch of the subsect went to Tokyo accompanied by Ogurusu Kocho, and consulted Terashima Munenori in the Foreign Ministry on the problem of missionary work in China. We are not told the substance of their conversation, but in August a branch temple opened its doors in Shanghai, staffed by six priests, including Ogurusu. It was \"the first Japanese religious organization in China.\"2\n\nAfter China's defeat by Japan in 1895 a trade agreement was signed that gave the Japanese the right to construct temples in all the Treaty Ports. In 1896 Nanking had a Honganji temple.3 Shanghai got a Nichiren temple in 1899 and a second Honganji temple in 1906. According to one source special efforts were made to build temples in Fukien province, where the Japanese were trying to create a sphere of influence across the straits from their newly acquired colony of Formosa. Their missions were often able to attract parishioners because they could offer the same protection as their Christian counterparts, but did not require anyone to give up ancestor worship. The aim, however, was not merely parish-building, but use of the missions in the same way as the European powers. Thus in the autumn of 1900 a Japanese temple in Amoy was mysteriously destroyed by fire. A few hours later Japanese marines landed from a warship that had been waiting in the harbor and occupied the city. Only the strongest British representations induced Japan to withdraw her troops and bring her first \"missions case\" to a close.\n\nA more subtle approach was already on its way. In 1899 the East Asian Cultural Alliance had been established to create an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205949, "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-1970", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "LORD ELGIN AND THE TAIPINGS\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, Jr.*\n\nWhen Lord Elgin, Great Britain's Plenipotentiary to China and the negotiator of the abortive Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 and of the Peking Convention in 1860, in a fit of anger and frustration at the Manchu government raised the possibility of treating with the Taiping revolutionaries instead, his colleagues quickly dissuaded him from such a drastic course. But the question, having been raised, remained to what extent was Lord Elgin's threat the revelation of an alternative policy that the British might have been considering should the recalcitrant Manchus prove in the end to be hopelessly intractable? In other words, had the British been giving secret thought to negotiating a separate or alternative treaty with the Taipings at Nanking?\n\nAside from Lord Elgin's passing remark in this regard there certainly was little in the record of relations between the British and the Taipings to suggest that any such arrangement had been given serious consideration. The early diplomatic visits to Nanking in 1853 and 1854 were never followed-up by any of the Western powers.2 Despite the features of the Taiping regime that did not set well with the foreigners it had manifested a friendly attitude toward them and did continue to exist as a de facto alternative government with which they might have dealt had they been so disposed. But they were not. Instead the powers opted to deal exclusively with the Manchus, even though this required the waging of further hostilities in order to accomplish their diplomatic objectives.\n\nStill, there does remain Lord Elgin's annoyed comment. Did it possibly signify a line of action that had been hidden? Of course, this was unlikely. Yet the best way to satisfy our curiosity on this question is to examine the record of Lord Elgin's own visit through Taiping territory. Did the Minister Plenipotentiary,\n\n*The author, a former editor of this Journal, currently Associate Professor of History at Duke University, is indebted to the Research Associates Program of the Graduate School of International Studies and the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver for a grant which facilitated the preparation of this article. In modified form the article forms part of a chapter of the author's forthcoming book Revolutionary Taiping China and the West.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206225, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "36\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nAfter giving his reader a vivid picture of China in her sleep, Tseng then urged the public to watch closely for China in her awakening. The awakened China, he said, would not be aggressive or dangerous to any of her neighbouring countries. China, after all, was not a land-hungry nation. Hungering for land was only the affair of the European powers. China was under no necessity of finding in other lands outlets for her surplus population. A considerable number of Chinese had, at different times, been forced to leave their homes and try their fortunes in Cuba, Peru, the United States and the British colonies, on account of the Taiping Rebellion. The Chinese emigrated to these countries of their own free will, and their movement and activities had nothing to do with the Chinese Government. The Chinese in these countries, however, unlike the Europeans who had settled in the East, had no political nor territorial ambitions.\n\nReturning to the internal affairs of the awakened China, Tseng stressed:\n\n• Great efforts are being made to fortify her coast and create a strong and efficient navy. China will proceed with her coast defences and the organisation and development of her army and navy, without, for the present, directing her attention whether to the introduction of railways or to any of the subjects of internal economy; the changes which may have to be made when China comes to set her house in order can only profitably be discussed when she feels she has thoroughly overhauled and can rely on the bolts and bars she is now applying to her doors. The general line of China's foreign Policy will be directed to extending and improving her relations with the Treaty Powers, to the amelioration of the condition of her subjects residing in foreign parts, to the placing on a less equivocal footing of the position of her feudatories, as regards the suzerain power, to the revision of the treaties, in a sense more in accordance with the place which China holds as a great Asiatic power\" \"China has decided on exercising a more effective supervision on the acts of her vassal princes and of accepting a hostile movement against these countries or any interference with their affairs will be viewed at Peking as a declaration", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206358, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n159\n\npay certain sums into the Corps Funds. These variations to the old Ordinance are important as no fixed period under penalty had been enjoined in it, and no special duties other than active military service had been envisaged for the force.\n\nThe reasons for these changes must again be sought in the changing nature of the times. The educated youth and the industrial labour of China had entered into a period of unrest and discontent brought about by their country's weakness. China had entered the war as an ally of the Western powers in 1917 but despite this they refused to give up tariff privileges and treaty ports (the European concessions) or to make their other Eastern ally, Japan, relinquish her territorial encroachments on China. The 1920s were a time of growing internal strife in China coupled with increased resentment of the West. Hong Kong was not excluded from the impact of ideological struggle. The Seaman's Strike of 1922 and the General Strike of 1925-26 crippled the port and damaged the economy of the Colony. An emergency situation existed, and thus a fresh impetus was given to the Volunteer Corps whose services were again needed for humdrum but essential work. Colonel H. Owen Hughes recalls being called out for six weeks in 1925, and combining office work by day with duty by night patrolling the streets and guarding hospitals and vulnerable points.20 Whoever decided that a new Ordinance was needed in 1920 was a man of prescience and discernment. Other amendments were made to the Volunteer Ordinance in 1926 and 1927 (No. 15 of 1926 and No. 27 of 1927) in the light of contemporary requirements.\n\nBy the late thirties hostilities were again threatening in Western Europe and Japan's gradual encroachments in China led to actual war in 1937 and the occupation of Canton the following year. The danger which these events might bring to Hong Kong had already been anticipated. The Corps grew in size during this period and the Year Books between 1934 and 1940 make interesting reading. In the first issues we see that, following the Ordinance of 1933, the Volunteer Defence Corps consisted of one battery of artillery, a machine gun battalion that included three machine gun companies, corps infantry (largely Portuguese) and corps engineers and signals and armoured cars with a reserve company.\n\n20 Vol, 1964, p. 42.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207364, "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-1975", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "124\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\nTo be sure, the Ch'ing dynasty was not blindly anti-foreign, having accepted both Russians and other Europeans (the Dutch) as allies, and having allowed a number of Russians to be \"naturalized\" (kuei-hua) and incorporated into the elite Banner forces.58 But the ever-tightening strait-jacket of neo-Confucian orthodoxy under the Manchus, and the rise of anti-foreign (particularly anti-Christian) propaganda, did not portend a friendly reception for Westerners when they attempted to \"open\" China by force in the nineteenth century.\n\nThe Nineteenth Century Context\n\nBy the mid-nineteenth century, the West had earned China's well-deserved distrust for its aggressiveness and intractability. Pronounced anti-foreignism (championed, ironically, by a scholar of Mongol extraction in the 1860's) blossomed after the Opium War of 1839-1842 and grew apace with further Western economic, military and religious activity in China. During the Opium War, the throne had countenanced, and even encouraged, limited and unobtrusive military assistance from Americans in the time-honored tradition of \"using barbarians against barbarians.\" In the area of Canton, for example, a few individuals \"dressed in Chinese costume\" assisted the Chinese in building fortresses and casting cannon.59 But by the Hsien-feng emperor's reign, China had adopted a belligerent anti-Western stance, and despite the panic precipitated by the Taiping outbreak in 1850-1851, the throne seemed totally indisposed to accept any kind of foreign assistance against the rebels. The situation did not change appreciably until 1860, when the British and French occupied Peking in an attempt to enforce the provisions of the Treaty of Tientsin (1858).60\n\nAfter the signing of the Peking Conventions in late 1860, which ushered in a new period of \"cooperation\" between China and the foreign powers, Western barbarians began playing a prominent role in Chinese military affairs. A number of diverse individuals became involved: Foreign military men and diplomatic officials, customs personnel, swashbuckling adventurers, and even missionaries.61 On the whole, the participation of these individuals fell within the bounds of China's long tradition of \"borrowing talent from foreign lands\" (chieh-ts'ai i-ti).62 But unlike alien employees in earlier periods of Chinese history, Westerners in the nineteenth century were a new breed of barbarian, confident of their own cultural and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207365, "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-1975", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n125\n\nmaterial superiority, and intent not on conforming to Chinese ways, but on changing them. Enjoying the privilege of extraterritoriality and other unequal treaty “rights,” they were closely linked to the policies and practices of their respective home governments, who, after 1860, maintained a diplomatic (and at times military) presence on Chinese soil. These foreign employees were at best unwitting agents of cultural change, and at worst, potential tools of the aggressive Western powers. Their use by the Chinese, therefore, introduced special new problems of responsibility and restraint.\n\nThis was particularly true in light of China’s all-too-obvious military weakness and the new role Western technology was beginning to play in Chinese military affairs. The Manchus, obsessed with internal security, were fearful enough of modern Western weapons in the hands of Chinese (as opposed to Manchu) soldiers. To allow foreigners to train and command Western-armed Chinese troops introduced an additional element of risk. Yet under the exigencies of the massive Taiping Rebellion, the dynasty sanctioned the rise of foreign-trained and foreign-officered Chinese contingents in a desperate effort to stem the threatening rebel tide.63 And despite the changed circumstances of China’s internal and external situation after 1860, Ch’ing policymakers instinctively looked to the past for policy guidelines.\n\nPage 04\n\nAs the first Westerner to hold high military rank in the new situation, the career of Frederick Townsend Ward is worthy of special attention. Like many other barbarian employees in China’s past, this outlaw-adventurer from Salem, Massachusetts owed his position in the Chinese military service to singular circumstances. At a crucial juncture in the Taiping Rebellion, Ward raised a unique, foreign-officered Chinese military force, the Ever-Victorious Army, which proved useful not only as a weapon against the Taipings, but also as a means to limit Western intervention in the Chinese civil war.65 In the course of his brief career, Ward attained the rank of colonel (fu-chiang), and upon his death in 1862 he received high posthumous honors and abundant praise for his loyal service to the dynasty. But during his lifetime, Ward’s behavior was under close and constant scrutiny. So innovative was his position that Chinese officials were reluctant to suggest historical parallels, and it was not until well after his death that the “Yankee adventurer” began to be compared with such noteworthy barbarian employees in the past as Yu Yu and Chin Mi-ti.66", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207378, "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-1975", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "138\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\n86 See Smith, \"Foreign-Training;\" also Yang-wu yün-tung [The “foreign matters\" movement] (Shanghai, 1961), 3: 463, 469, 492, 599, 613, etc.\n\n87 IWSM, TC 22: 12-13b; 23: 42-43.\n\n88 See the IWSM references cited in note 85. Pennell became fully sinicized, shaving his head, changing to Chinese clothing, learning Chinese, marrying a Chinese, and finally petitioning to be registered as a native of Ho-fei, Anhwei. Mesny, too, was attracted by Chinese civilization, thus reinforcing the persistent notion of barbarian \"transformation\". See especially the memorial by Wu Tang and Ch'ung-shih in 1870 requesting that Mesny be advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel (ts'an-chiang) and awarded the peacock feather for his efforts against the Miao. This memorial was in many respects a replica of Hsueh Huan's request for similar awards to be granted to Ward in 1862.\n\n89 Examples in IWSM and WCSL abound. See also Fairbank, \"The Early Treaty System,\" esp. 264-265; John Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 50. Traditional attitudes were, of course, reinforced by the examination system. One of the topics for the metropolitan examinations in 1880 was the following quotation: \"By indulgent treatment of men from a distance they are brought to resort to him from all quarters. And by kindly cherishing the princes of the states, the whole empire is brought to revere him.\" Cited in the North-China Herald, May 18, 1880.\n\n90 See, for example, WCSL 101: 9; 129: 17.\n\n91 See especially K. C. Liu, \"The Confucian as Patriot and Pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's Formative Years, 1823-1866,\" HJAS, 30 (1970); David Pong, \"Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woosung Railway, 1877,\" Modern Asian Studies, 7.4 (1973).\n\n**\n\n92 For a discussion of the concept of r'i-chih, see Immanuel Hsü, China's Entrance into the Family of Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).\n\n93 See Ella Lonn's Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, 1940) and Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy (Baton Rouge, 1951).\n\n94 See, for example, Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, 1965); Noboru Umetani, \"Foreign Nationals Employed in Japan during the Years of Modernization,\" East Asian Cultural Studies, 10.1 (March, 1971).\n\n95 What differed was China's international situation. China had to endure far more political, economic and military pressure from the European powers than either the United States or Japan in the nineteenth century.\n\n96 The great majority of Japanese military employees in the latter half of the nineteenth century neither became Japanese subjects nor accepted Japanese culture. See, for example, Presseisen, 112.\n\n97 See the discussion in Smith, \"Foreign-Training.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211112, "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-1987", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "148\n\ngrievance in regard to smuggled opium. The geographical position of Hongkong immediately adjacent to the coast of China made it difficult for China to control the contraband trade.\n\nTo do so would require patrolling all the rugged coastline and its thousands of inlets and navigable streams, or, as an alternative, to place a cordon of Chinese ships around Hongkong. They could patrol within Chinese waters the entrances and exits of Hongkong.\n\nIn view of the alternative, Sir Rutherford proposed that \"it would seem reasonable that the Emperor of China should have the same right to appoint a consul to reside in Hongkong as all other Treaty Powers have, and to enjoy the same rights and exercise the same authority in matters connected with the trade of Chinese subjects as any other nation in treaty with Great Britain may claim in British Colonies.\"\n\nThe proposal was received as worth consideration by the British Government and the item was put on the agenda for the formal negotiations regarding treaty revision which were to begin soon.\n\nIt is not surprising that a cry of alarm arose in Hongkong over the suggestion.\n\nSir Rutherford was a diplomat and not a trader. He viewed the problem as one to be resolved according to diplomatic usage. The Government officials in Hongkong were eager to protect its commercial interests.\n\nThey viewed the problem from a financial and not a diplomatic stance.\n\nSir Rutherford looked at the request within the enlarged context of Britain's total relation to China, of which Hongkong was only a part.\n\nHongkong, on the other hand, related the problem to its own peculiar position and the difficulty of governing a population it regarded as a potential threat to its security.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211114, "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-1987", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "150\n\nTo rally support, the Governor invited representatives of the largest merchant firms to sit in on the meeting. Everyone at the meeting was in thorough agreement that a Chinese consul would be a great blow to trade in Hongkong.\n\nThe Hongkong merchants were convinced the Chinese were already pursuing a policy of harassment of legitimate traders. A consul would only expose them to additional pressures.\n\nSir Richard put forth the thesis that China could not expect the same rights as other Treaty Powers. He argued that China was different because all of its treaties with foreign powers had been entered into at the point of a gun.\n\nIn spite of China having to make concessions, Governor Sir Richard claimed it still wished to be a hermit nation. It stubbornly resisted foreign demands for unrestricted trade and access to its markets by foreigners.\n\nThe mercantile interests were ever pushing for the right to reside and trade anywhere in China, but on the condition that they also enjoy extra-territorial privileges. They did not wish to be subject to Chinese law.\n\nThis view arose from a conviction that the institutions and customs of the European nations were superior to those of other parts of the world. Therefore, it was the duty of \"civilised\" nations to protect their citizens from becoming subject to the laws and customs of places that did not share their tradition.\n\nIn support of the argument that China should not enjoy the rights of other Treaty Powers because of its reluctance to enter the community of nations, Sir Richard pointed out that while China had been given the right to send a minister to the Court of St. James in London, it had not done so. It was, therefore, inconsistent of China to wish to place a consul in Hongkong.\n\nIf China was peculiar, so too was Hongkong. Sir Richard asked the Colonial and Foreign Offices to weigh the matter in the light of \"the special and exceptional circumstances of this very peculiar", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211119, "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-1987", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "155\n\nlegal system. This, the memorial claimed, China did not have.\n\nIt was for this reason that foreign nations had demanded extra-territorial rights. By insisting on this protection for their subjects in China, the Treaty Powers showed, it was affirmed, that “in one most important particular they consider it (China) outside the pale of modern civilisation.”\n\nThe foreigners easily recognised that the Chinese legal system was different from theirs, but they did not appreciate the traditional values and procedures it embodied. These had enabled China to survive as a united nation for more than a millennium.\n\nOn the other hand, the administration of the law in Hongkong was sometimes arbitrary and unfair. There was special legislation affecting the Chinese only; and an examination of nineteenth century court cases leads me to conclude that it often did not properly ensure the life, liberty and property of the Chinese who were under its jurisdiction.\n\nNor was every European in that day convinced that the Chinese received fair treatment in Hongkong. In 1863 a traveller, probably a missionary, reported the following incident at a village near Shumchun just beyond the present border:\n\nA Chinese, when he saw the stranger, took off his coat and showed his back to the assembled villagers. It bore the marks of a severe flogging. The victim called upon all to observe \"how the foreign devils in Hongkong treat a respectable Chinese.”\n\nThe traveller was sympathetic. He observed: \"I strongly disapprove of the way such punishments are carried out by the police. It used to be a most horrid spectacle to see, as often one might have done, a poor wretch, with his back all raw and bloody, exposed in Queen's Road, trembling with pain, shame and cold.\"\n\nHe thought it was natural for the Chinese to bitterly resent such treatment, especially those who \"had suffered unjustly, or from some trivial offence such as three hairs from a horse's tail, for which I have known flogging with a rattan afflicted.”\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212217, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "136\n\nAmerican films were flown over quickly from Hollywood, and pictures would often be released earlier in Shanghai than in London. When the newsreels of the war began to come along, they led to disturbances; the Germans got nasty and wanted to break things up. Cinema owners did not wish to see their cinemas wrecked and in the end the showing of newsreels was discontinued. Unfortunately, they also did not dare show pictures, like \"The Great Dictator\", which were critical of Fascist methods. The French were, however, determined to see \"The Confessions of a Nazi Spy\", an anti-Nazi picture which was doing much in the States to open the eyes of the population to the methods of the German 'Bund'. They stationed two armoured cars outside the cinema, while inside armed police, with drawn automatics, stood along the gangways. The picture had a very popular run for two weeks, without incident.\n\nSince the disturbances of 1927 the leading Treaty Powers had maintained garrisons at Shanghai. The Japanese forces were quartered in the section of the International Settlement north of the Soochow creek, where the majority of the Japanese population lived; the British, American, and Italian contingents guarded sectors of the perimeter south of the creek; and the French garrisoned their own Concession. There was a local understanding of live and let live, and even after the Italians came into the war, the Grenadiers of Savoy, decked out in patches of red on collar and sleeve, and the baggiest of plus-fours, continued to man their sector: but to avoid argument with Thomas Atkins and Jack Tar they were confined to their own particular taverns. Blood Alley remained an Anglo-Saxon preserve, where Johnnie Doughboy sometimes threw his weight about.\n\nIt was in January, 1940, that the Royal Navy stopped the Asama Maru, within a few hours steaming of the Japanese Coast, and removed 21 Germans from on board. The Japanese, of course, went up in the air at this alleged insult to the Imperial flag, and the British community in Shanghai questioned the expediency of the action. The incident was settled by negotiation, 9 of the captives being returned, and the Japanese undertaking not to convey in their ships military personnel of the belligerents. It is interesting to remember that, when the S.S. \"President Hoover\" ran aground on the East Coast of Formosa, in Japanese territorial water, closed to foreign shipping, the Japanese refused to allow the Americans to salvage her, but insisted on the work being done by Japanese firms. Soon after, the Asama", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212219, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "138\n\nmight be more useful outside. The Japanese had not yet occupied all the coast; foreign ships were still sailing to the unoccupied ports. I slipped out to Ningpo, intending to remain a few days while watching to see which way the cat jumped: but instead of attacking Hongkong, the Japanese landed at Chinhai, at the mouth of the Ningpo river, and I was thus cut off. After a fortnight they withdrew, leaving guard ships to watch the approaches. In the meantime the Chinese had mined the Ningpo river to deny entry to Japanese ships.\n\nI was shut in at Ningpo for three months during the heat of the summer. It was my first contact for two years with unoccupied China. With the restrictions imposed, first by the impediments arising from the Japanese war with China, and in the second place by the shortage of shipping and exports consequent on the war with Germany in Europe, British trade in the interior of China was at a standstill. The large British firms found it commercially unprofitable to keep their staff in many of the remaining treaty ports of free China, and withdrew them to Shanghai and Hongkong. British opinion thus, on the one hand, tended to lose touch with conditions in free China, while, on the other, was increasingly exposed to impression by the Japanese, who swarmed so actively in the occupied ports. The British were no more at fault than the Americans or the French, but for the Americans the balance was to some extent redressed by their larger and more vocal upcountry missionary organisation; as British interests out-numbered those of the other powers, so did the Chinese tend to concentrate criticism on them for continued failure to realise that China was fighting the battle of the democracies.\n\nA particularly unfortunate failure was the continued indifference shewn to the Chinese Government at Chungking. While it was still in Nanking, with branch divisions in Shanghai, foreign firms had extensive contacts with all the various departments, but when the Government was driven first to Hankow, and then to Chungking, no attempt was made to follow and nurse those contacts. The Chinese Government in its extremity would have welcomed any display of sympathy and was affronted by this neglect, but the large firms continued to treat their business in the Capital at the level of the small and remote treaty port, which Chungking had been. One consequence, for instance, occurred in 1943, when the two leading British banks belatedly decided to open branches in Chungking. The Chinese kept them waiting six months on the doorstep.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 213262, "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-1994", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "64\n\nthe agreement is only a diplomatic document and not part of the treaty or laws of Hong Kong, it would be unlikely to present a successful legal claim (Wesley Smith; 1992; 29). Customary law is, nevertheless, an essential part of rural life in the New Territories. It has thus been argued that the existence of fung shui was tacitly acknowledged by the government (Hayes, 1963: 143).\n\nWhile Englishmen sometimes claim that, legally, their houses in Britain have 'right of light' or 'right of air', in ancient China disputing parties sometimes went to court over infringements of fung shui rights. 'He has ruined my fung shui. He has no business to put himself above me,' a Chinese would state. In Hong Kong, however, impaired fung shui has never been actionable under British law.\n\nCompensation\n\nNevertheless, the Hong Kong Government has not only respected the beliefs of the New Territories' villagers but also paid out sizeable amounts over the years as compensation when people have claimed the Government has spoiled their fung shui. One wonders how many other colonial powers would have been as considerate. Examples of spoiling fung shui include excavations that break the 'neck of the dragon' and constructing highways or water supply schemes which impair the sweep or rhythm of hills. A less caring government would have ridden roughshod over any perceived obligations,\n\nIn 1990, the Government paid HK$1.1 million to fund a 72-hour fung shui ritual at Ha Tsuen, which included engaging Taoist priests and erecting a small, temporary temple. The fear was that the construction of a sewerage disposal system, which included tunnelling through a small hill on which many of the villagers' ancestors are buried, would disturb evil spirits.\n\nAnother example occurred on Tsing Yi Island when the villagers reacted at intervals from 1977 to 1980 (Hayes, 1979: 213; and Hayes, 1980: 155). There are many other cases. Women protesters are often more visibly active than men.\n\nIn November 1994 Mr Brian Jenney, the Government Director of Audit, tabled his annual report. Tuen Mun New Town, he stated, had cost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214295, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "116\n\nThere was a gap of nearly twenty years between the first and second China Wars. It would have been expected that, in this period, the Chinese would have updated their arsenals and have been able to defend themselves more effectively. Whilst, as already seen, this was done to a degree, they were not able to overcome all the problems. The biggest problem was probably the attitude of those in charge, which is so often difficult to alter in any institution, particularly the armed forces. Hence, in the second war the story was much the same, although the batteries at the Pei Ho river were able to repel the European navies and delay the end of the war by a year.\n\nIn conclusion it can be seen that not only did the Chinese suffer a great disadvantage in the technology of their weaponry, but they also were behind in training and discipline, factors which turn brave men into efficient troops. Obviously there is more than fighting to any war, and political, economic and social factors all have an influence on events. However, in order to gain a full insight into the wars between China and the Western powers, it is necessary to understand the military aspects. Fortunately the military men, like so many Victorian travellers, have left records of their experiences. This paper draws on some of those records and aims to put them in context with the development of weapon technology that was taking place at the time. The range of weapons being used by the two sides spanned centuries of development and their coming together is, in itself, a fascinating story.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Keith Stewart Mackenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China, London 1842, p. 92 notes \"the Tartars making a most determined resistance, standing by their guns till the sailors cut them down, hand to hand.\"\n\n2 Captain Granville G. Loch R.N., The Closing Events of the Campaign in China: The Operations in the Yang-Tze-Kiang and Treaty of Nanking, London 1843. P. 107. Loch is horrified by \"old men, women and children, cutting each other's throats, and drowning themselves by the dozen.\"\n\n3 Loch R.N., op. cit., p. 113.\n\n4 Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 62 notes \"for both (Admiral) Kwan and his second in command, fell by bayonet wounds received in their breasts, whilst gallantly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214955, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "6\n\nmet in armed conflict - futile and unnecessary. Ironically, both were strongly devoted to tea though their actual taste in tea may have been different.\n\nThe Chinese did not call their country China. To them it was the Middle Kingdom, the kingdom between heaven and earth, the Celestial Kingdom. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven who possessed divine powers. Their civilization was 5,000 years old, and for nearly half that period they lived in solid houses, dressed in silk, and produced works of art which are still admired today. Almost completely isolated from the western world since the Song Dynasty, China was oblivious to the achievements of the West in many fields. Proud and self-contained, China shunned outside contacts. In their self-proclaimed superiority, the Chinese in the 18th century still believed that only barbarians lived beyond their boundaries and that their countries were automatically vassal states of the Celestial Kingdom. Chinese contempt for foreigners persisted into the later periods, no doubt fuelled by the shameful behaviour of the foreign powers towards China, humbled and humiliated by the defeats in the Opium Wars. 'Barbarian devils' was a description often uttered even by relatively enlightened Chinese. Is it then any wonder that even in our time “Kwai Lo” (though no longer “Fan Kwai”) is still often heard, though perhaps more in jest, and used even by the foreigners themselves?\n\nBritain, on the other hand, in the early 19th century was opening one of the most glorious pages of its history. Napoleon was defeated and France was no longer a threat. The Royal Navy reigned supreme over the waves and Britain had become truly a great imperial power dominating huge areas of territory and much of the trade from the New World to the Far East. In 1837 the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne and a long period of British colonial rule had asserted itself. The British nation had every reason to feel proud and superior. But with superiority came also arrogance and a deep distrust of foreigners.\n\nWe live in a time when the world has discarded Imperialism and Colonialism, the right of strong nations to rule over weak ones, when some disputes at least are settled in a forum of nations, when the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognized. The latter is a recent principle: born of the Versailles Treaty, after the 1st World War, it has forged ahead without stopping. But in the 19th century, imperialism", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215983, "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-2002", "page_number": 282, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "216\n\nforces of the British and French armies were departing Canton, so that whether these events had any correlation may be an additional issue. Nothing seems to have been consciously planned as an attack on the Governor-General, though he felt threatened by the riot (the events in Poklo being some 40 miles east of Canton). At the very least the vigilantes were acting \"in flagrant violation of the stipulations of the [1860] Treaty,\" \"stirring up the hatred of the people toward foreigners, and their dislike to Christianity.\" Whether they had other \"ambitious ends\" hidden under the banner and their rhetoric remained a serious, but moot, question.\n\nFollowing normal protocol for this kind of emergency, Chalmers acting on behalf of the London Missionary Society presented their complaints to the consul at Canton. The missionaries had been given no indication of the Governor-General's intentions, but Legge specifically adds that, if all else failed, they could refer the matter \"to our Ambassador at Peking.\" His attitude toward the Qing bureaucracy was unqualified and negative: \"The [Qing] Government is effete. The foundations are destroyed.” Although this might seem like an overstatement, the feelings reflected a fairly realistic evaluation of the disarray of an empire overcome by foreign powers in the capital and unable to handle the massive Taiping Rebellion which continued to defy imperial armies and ruled over much of the centre of the empire at the time. Other means for dealing with the crisis were also at hand. Daily prayer about the whole situation and its continuing problems became the self-imposed discipline by the Chinese Christians in Hong Kong, prompting Legge to compare this \"painful and discouraging\" situation in Poklo with the \"primitive forthgoing of Christianity” where persecution was also a stimulus for expansion.\n\nIt was part of the \"cunning of history\" that Legge's life and name for the next decade were identified with two major issues of the year of 1861: Poklo and his Chinese Classics.90 In missionary publications he became \"Dr. Legge of Hong Kong and Poklo,” and in Hong Kong itself, the memories were more vivid and even more powerful in creating around him a kind of aura as a “folk hero\" in the Carlylean sense of the term. At least one major event later in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216436, "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-2003", "page_number": 195, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "145\n\ncigarette, or a drink of water to the thirsting horses the men rode. The Chinese looked on with as much indifference as the foreigners showed.\n\nThis would appear to have been a rare display of bias against the Japanese.\n\nThe vexed question of neutrality\n\nBoth the Japanese and Russians accused each other of breaching the neutrality of China. China's neutrality was hard to sustain. Problems were mainly caused by trade being maintained as usual by neutral powers at and through Treaty Ports with both belligerents.\n\nIt was claimed that contraband included arms, coal, rice, flour and eggs. Traders in China furnished supplies with impartiality to both sides, but China feared that any breaches of neutrality could lead to retaliation against them. The brunt of maintaining a sort of neutrality fell upon the Chinese Maritime Customs.\n\nRussia was the first to bring categorical charges of breaches of neutrality against China. In late 1904 they raised the following seven points in their note to the Western Powers:\n\n(1) The use by Japan of the (Chinese) Miao Islands as a naval base\n\n(2) The transport of Japanese military material, stores, etc., by the Shanhai Kuan - Newchwang (Niuzhuang) Railway\n\n(3) The supply of material to the Japanese from the Hongkew Ironworks,\n\n(4) The enrolment of Chinese soldiers in the Japanese Army.\n\n(5) The engagement of Japanese officers for the purpose of drilling Chinese on the frontier.\n\n(6) The organising of Hunhutses to fight against Russia.\n\n(7) The seizure by the Japanese of the destroyer Rechitelni at Chefoo.\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]