[ { "id": 205788, "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-1969", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "88\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nany case, he argued, trade had dwindled and it was in the interests of the Siamese to accept a new treaty which would expand trade.\n\nThe White Rajah never met the King. He sailed away with nothing but indignation. He had not openly threatened the Siamese with force but had hinted as much. The old King and his Ministers were not impressed but they must have harboured fears of reprisals as there were so many precedents. In October that year Brooke, addressing himself to Lord Palmerston, evoked high principles in the fine Victorian manner in support of his call for force:\n\n\"Justice — compassion — interest — dignity — and a consistent course of policy appear to me to call for decisive measures to be taken without delay.\"\n\nAnd in a letter to a friend:\n\n\"The Siamese must be taught a lesson... our policy should be commanding and our power exerted when necessary. My policy in Sarawak has been high-handed against evil-doers and there, and in England and in Siam, there are bad to be punished as well as good to be cared for.\"\n\nMercifully for Siam, Brooke's gun-boat policy was not accepted in London but he did perceive the solution in spite of his call for force. The old King, Rama III, must soon die and there was good prospect that his half-brother Prince Mongkut would succeed him. In that event, Brooke said, the prospect of a new relation with Britain was bright.\n\nThe Sphinx and the Nemesis had scarcely left the Menam in September, 1850 when an American mission arrived. It was led by a certain Joseph Balestier, a not very successful American merchant of Singapore who came with a letter from his President. If the Brooke mission was a failure, Balestier's was even worse. Bowring comments:\n\n\"Mr. Balestier had not been fortunate in his commercial operations as a merchant at Singapore and it may be doubted whether the nomination of a commercial gentleman whose history was well known to the King and nobles at Bangkok was judicious; it was certainly not deemed complimentary to the proud Siamese authorities.\"4", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206357, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "158\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nundoubtedly due to the Volunteer Movement and to the succession of small imperial wars in the last 25 years of the 19th century which popularised the Army, and fed the emotional needs of imperial Britain in the Victorian age. Between 1902 and 1914 it was due to the sobering effect of the Boer War and the growing realisation by many of the need to reform and rearm against a possible European enemy. Soldiers, in short, were in the public eye, and Hong Kong was no exception to the general rule.\n\nHere, and in the treaty ports, another factor in the popularity of, and support given to, the volunteer corps was the pool of potential recruits provided by the employees of the major European firms, many of whom had attended public schools in Britain and were well suited by their education and sentiment to play a leading part in the volunteer movement.\n\n(b) 1914-41\n\nThe 1914-18 War saw many Volunteers go off to the War in Europe, and led to increased duties for the Corps due to the need to employ regular forces on active service elsewhere. Numbers dropped and compulsory service was introduced in 1917.18\n\nIn 1920, shortly after the War, a new Volunteer Ordinance was introduced to replace those of 1893 and 1910 which regulated the existing Volunteer Corps and Volunteer Reserve. When introduced into the Legislative Council, it was stated to closely follow the old Ordinance, but with a few changes to meet altered times. The Volunteer Force was now \"considered desirable for two reasons for defence against foreign enemies, and also in order to assist the Police and regular forces in case of any serious local disturbances'19 (my italics). We are coming nearer our own times in which the present Regiment was called upon in 1966 and again in 1967 to assist with “duties in aid of the civil power” i.e., internal security. The obligation to serve was also to become more serious. Every Volunteer was to be deemed to have engaged himself to serve for a period of three years and if he left before this without showing good cause he would henceforth have to\n\n18 For the war period see Vol, 1954, pp. 58-67 and Endacott, pp. 284-285. See also the Military Service Ordinance, No. 19 of 1917,\n\n19 Han., 1920, p. 15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206495, "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-1972", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n37\n\nFrance, and in 1859 he \"broke off\" relations with Britain, upon which the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell commented,12\n\nTell Brooke that the people of Sarawak are welcome to any independence they can achieve and maintain but that a British subject cannot throw off his allegiance at pleasure.\n\nAnd Spencer St. John noted13 that \"the Raja's correspondence during this year with Her Majesty's Government was not pleasant, and ended, apparently, in complete estrangement”.\n\nOver the years Brooke had acquired a respectable following of supporters in Britain and Singapore, among whom were some influential figures such as Lord Grey, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, and the late Victorian philanthropist, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, later Baroness Burdett-Coutts. His friends now took up his cause and lobbied Whitehall from the Prime Minister's office down.\n\nBritain refused to extend a colonial or protectorate status to Sarawak on practical political grounds. Henry Layard, an under-secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote that a protectorate was declined because of the \"inconvenience of such relations between this country and a foreign territory\", because Sarawak “would not be of sufficient value politically and commercially\", and because Brooke's title was not \"sufficiently clear\"14\n\nBrooke's friends persuaded the Government to have another look at Sarawak, and in 1861 Lord Elgin, who was about to depart as the new viceroy of India, was instructed to investigate the prospects and potential of Sarawak. He delegated the task to Colonel Cavenagh, Governor of the Straits Settlements. In due course Cavenagh and Elgin provided an optimistic assessment of Raja Brooke's state and suggested making Sarawak a lieutenant-governorship under Singapore. \"I am disposed to think\", wrote Lord Elgin,15\n\nthat the acquisition of Saigon by the French and the persistent endeavor of the Dutch authorities to cripple British trade... give enhanced importance to the preservation of the independence of Sarawak as a matter affecting British interests.'\n\n12 See correspondence between the Foreign Office and Raja Brooke between 26 November and 17 December 1859, FO12/35.\n\n13 Spencer St. John, Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, (Edinburgh, 1879) p. 327.\n\n14 Layard memorandum to Lord Elgin, 2 January 1862, FO12/35.\n\n15 Elgin to Russell, 8 January 1863, FO12/35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206530, "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-1972", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "72\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\ntheir duties effectively. Of this latter group, student-interpreters in the Consular Corps probably made the greatest contribution — such names as Herbert A. Giles, E.H. Parker, E.D.H. Fraser, W.F. Mayers, Thomas Watters, G.M.H. Playfair, E.T.C. Werner,44 speak for themselves but Hong Kong cadets, although few in number (from 1861 to 1941 only eighty-five were appointed), also made a significant contribution and one should cite not only Lockhart but Sir Cecil Clementi45 and Sir R.F. Johnston. All these early British 'scholar-officials' helped to lay the foundations in Britain of Chinese studies and were among the first to staff and to head new departments of Chinese studies or to interest people in the study of a unique Asian civilisation and culture.\n\nLockhart, of course, was a busy, conscientious and efficient civil servant who could not spend his working hours brooding over knotty problems of translation or sinological conundrums; but he was always a remarkably energetic man and, according to his daughter, rose early in the morning and did his private work long before his Department was open officially.\n\nLockhart's studies appear to have extended into the evenings as well. There is an interesting reference to him, by T. Kirkman Dealy, in the Preface (1907) to his revised edition of Chambers' English-Cantonese Dictionary:\n\nI still vividly retain very clear recollection of a periodical after-dinner meeting which I was privileged to attend, in the middle eighties, at the former London Mission House, where, round a lamp-lighted table, under the personal presidency of the then venerable head of the London Mission [Dr. John Chalmers], sat the late Dr. Faber, Mr. J.H. Stewart Lockhart (now His Honour the Commissioner for Wei-hai-wei), Mr. (now Dr.) G.H. Bateson Wright, Head Master of Queen's College, Mr. Addys of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the late Mr. A. Falconer, Second Master of the old Government Central School, and others, eagerly discussing, assiduously comparing, commenting on, and revising, translations of portions of a minor Chinese classic made, since the previous session, by individual members of the class.46\n\nThis very Victorian passion for work, which embraced not only his official duties but his private interest in sinology, allowed Lockhart to publish in 1893 his first book, a Manual of Chinese Quota-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212753, "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-1992", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "47\n\n18\n\non the depth and interest of their writings. Some, like Archibald Colquhoun1 went into great detail describing the wealth of minerals, the scope for modernisation in communications and the economy, all subjects which Mesny too, at the same period if not earlier, had written about at length. Others like Mrs Scidmore2 list 'intrepid travellers to Szechuan3 and the far west,' with names like Richtofen, Pumpelly, Von Kreitner, Hosie, Baber, Blaikiston, Little, Gill, Hart, Parker, and Pratt, Mrs Little and Mrs Bishop, and Dr Morrison, but not one of these authors referred to Mesny whose travels and experiences outweigh most if not all of them. Was it because he was considered to have gone native or been more Chinese than ‘one of us\"? We shall never know but each time yet another book was published it must have been galling for Mesny to find only very rarely he had earned a mention. After his trip with Gill to Tibet and India in 1877 he was scarcely referred to in books on China; this together with his constant and repeated reference to his contacts with and closeness to Chinese friends and acquaintances, mostly in high places, suggests that he was ostracised or perhaps no more than ignored by the western social community in Chinese ports and in Shanghai in particular.\n\nDuring his later years when fortune seemed to elude him, when there was no caste lower than the impoverished European or American, a number of themes and points of view in Mesny's writings place him fairly firmly into a class and category of his time. A plague of self-importance swept late-Victorian Britain and spread through its colonies and dependencies. Mesny suffered a massive dose and never, as far as his Miscellany record, appears to have had his balloon pricked. He must have been seen by foreigners in Shanghai and, in particular by his fellow 'Old China Hands', during the latter years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of this as a vulgar, low-born upstart, too fond of his own ideas, a self-centred braggart and an opinionated man, but let it be stressed that he would not be alone in this category in Shanghai or for that matter in all the other major western communities in the Orient. His own notes reflect the disdain with which he was regarded by people like Sir Thomas Wade and Sir Robert Hart. His name dropping in many of his writings, mostly in his personal relationships with Chinese viceroys, provincial governors and commanders in chief, suggests that he probably also dropped names to the same extent in everyday conversation. However, he knew the importance of patronage, especially in China, as one can see from his obituary of Tso, and his description of the momentary meeting with a Manchu hereditary prince.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212930, "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-1992", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "224\n\nP'i) mentioned in the main text. Anne Birrell's Chinese Mythology achieves such distinction that we can easily forgive its minor shortcomings. The book is a delight to read and a joy to give to others. I only hope that her editors see fit to issue a paperback version soon. My own hardbound copy is already rather dog-eared.\n\nMICHAEL NYLAN\n\nNOTE\n\nFor example, the apocrypha to the Documents give an amusing explanation of the white fish omen that appeared at the end of the Shang dynasty\n\nFrank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, Harper Collins, 624 + xv pp. Appendices, notes, appendix, maps.\n\nThis review has been excerpted from The New York Review of Books (7 April, 1994) by kind permission of the reviewer, Dr Jonathan Mirsky, who is East Asia Editor of The Times.\n\nThe entire history of Hong Kong, as Frank Welsh shows in his magnificent, much needed, and compendious history of the colony, is filled with misunderstandings and cultural collisions. One hundred and fifty years of muddle and injured pride are what permits Peking's leaders to call Chris Patten, whom they perceive as the point-man for an international conspiracy to overthrow the entire Communist system in China, 'a whore.'\n\nWelsh, a former Hong Kong banker, starts his dense but wittily written history in the early nineteenth century, and just manages to include the accession of Mr Patten in 1992. He refers to Hong Kong as 'that natural child of Victorian Britain and Ch'ing China... a source of embarrassment and annoyance to its progenitors since it first appeared on the international scene in 1842.' More than an annoyance: for the Chinese, Hong Kong has been a perpetual symbol of national humiliation. There are many instances of mutual disregard, which Welsh understandably enjoys and quotes copiously. In 1831, James Matheson, one of the founders of the 'noble house' of Jardine Matheson, the trading firm whose history", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213984, "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-1997", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "19\n\n# THE CRAFT OF THE BAMBOO SCAFFOLDER\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nAdmired by Taoists for its resilient beauty, tenacity and flexibility, bamboo symbolises endurance and the lifestyle of an upright, virtuous gentleman. It has rings marking, as it were, important events in a person's life. It is fast-growing and has great powers of survival. Not long after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945, bamboo on the devastated site was said to have sprouted new shoots.\n\nBamboo also, with classical, delicate leaves like painting on porcelain, bends but seldom breaks. The tender sprouts are a popular vegetable. With its unbounded usefulness it is employed to make waterpipes, poles for hanging out washing, mats, incense sticks, wide-brimmed hats to offer protection from the sun, shields used by riot police, chopsticks, pillows, divination blocks for temples, carved ornaments and countless other types of utensils. The elderly will have slept in bamboo cradles as children. Their coffins will be conveyed at their funerals by bearers using bamboo carrying poles.\n\nJames Stewart Lockhart, a senior Hong Kong civil servant who played a major part in the taking over of the New Territories by Britain from China at the end of the last century, described bamboo in a large, undated notebook, as follows:2\n\nTo start with, the bamboo has seven virtues of its very own: it is clean and unspotted in itself; a sheaf covers the stem as it pierces the dark earth, so the bamboo has protection from the world; being hollow it is symbolical...of a pure heart; it is strong and unyielding; the stem being divided into segments is orderly; the stalk is pure green without blemish; and is lastly eternal and enduring.\n\n3\n\nAlthough the Victorian naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace,3 described bamboo as one of nature's most valuable gifts, the main purpose of this paper is to look at bamboo as a material for scaffolding, together with the methods of training and the role of the bamboo scaffolder.\n\nA legendary sage named Yau Chao Shi is said to have lived 5,000", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214384, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "208\n\nnior Inspector of Nuisances' and the 'Instructions to Head Watchmen and Watchmen' are of importance in this current study and, since the duties of the Watchmen contained in these instructions are so different from those originally envisaged by the creators of the District Watch scheme, their relevant parts are reproduced at the end of this paper.\n\nBefore continuing with a discussion of the District Watchmen's role in sanitary inspections, some explanation of the word 'nuisance' is appropriate. In the context of Victorian Britain, the term 'nuisance' implied something much more than the modern milder meaning of 'pest' or 'irritant.' 'Nuisance' was a general term to describe anything noxious which would offend the senses, whether these were sight, sound, smell or touch. Brenda Yeoh, in her study of colonial Singapore, describes it as 'an elastic term which encompassed many possibilities from filthy premises to undesirable animals.' She further mentions the comprehensive list of nuisances in The Acts and Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements from 1st April 1867 to 1st June 1886 compiled by Mr C.G. Garrad which extended over two pages. Given the graver meaning of the term in the nineteenth century, it can be seen that the post of Inspector of Nuisances was much more important than might be regarded today from its title. Inspectors of Nuisances were found throughout the British Empire and also in the Treaty Port of Shanghai.\n\n14\n\nReturning to the removal of the District Watchmen to undertake sanitary duties, what we have here is the appropriation by the Hong Kong Government of the whole of an existing viable private security force to be used by the Government for a completely different function. Moreover, this change would incur the Government in only minimal additional expense since the bulk of the watchmen's wages would still be met by the Chinese merchants. There can be no doubt that the plan was put into operation since, in the Blue Books for 1883-85, a total of six Head District Watchmen and thirty-seven District Watchmen appeared under the heading of Sanitary (a sub-heading under Public Works Department) at an annual cost to the Government of $24 for each Head District Watchman and $12 for each District Watchman. During these three years the Chinese merchants continued to provide these men with an annual wage of $180, in the case of a Head District Watchmen, and $72 per annum for each District Watchman. The following year there appears to have been a change in policy because, in the 1886 Blue", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214853, "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-1999", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "236\n\nThese symposia were mostly held in the gracious old Hong Kong Club building, completed in 1897, which had a wonderful ambience. I fell in love with its splendid Victorian lavatories which, believe it or not, still actually flushed. In 1954 in England, a septuagenarian surveyor, Harold Palmer, said to me:\n\n'When you get to Hong Kong, Dan, see if some of the buildings designed by my architect grandfather, Clement Palmer, are still standing.'\n\nI reported back after I arrived here that the old Hong Kong Club building was still basking in its glory. Sadly, it was demolished in 1981. There, before World War Two, you had four waiters for a table of four guests. A fifth 'senior' waiter oversaw the four waiters.\n\nAn RAS member who lived in Hong Kong for approaching 30 years wrote a couple of years or so ago from his home in England:\n\n'No, I do not miss the present-day Hong Kong one little bit. But I do miss the Hong Kong of the 1950s and '60s.'\n\nTo what degree does nostalgia creep in? Let us take a wander down memory lane. What was the Colony really like when our Branch was re-constituted in 1960?\n\nOur first Patron was the then Governor, the late Sir Robert Brown Black, and he honoured us by chairing one of our RAS meetings. In his South China Morning Post obituary, on 7 November 1999, the heading read, 'Farewell to “Golden Days” Governor'.\n\nA few months before he left Hong Kong, in 1964, a petition signed by many Chinese was delivered to the Colonial Secretariat to try to get the 'powers-that-were', in Britain at the time, to grant Sir Robert an extension.\n\nA similar request for an extension had also been submitted in the case of his predecessor, Sir Alexander Grantham, Governor from 1947 to 1957, one of Hong Kong's early post-World War Two 'architects'. But certainly, in those days, everything was not rosy. After 1949 we had our 'backs to the wall' and entrepot trade with China had ceased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216056, "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": 355, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "289\n\nThere has been many an article printed in Britain and the US both for and against their nationals whose activities as missionaries in China varied from the mild and mediocre to the wild, bigoted and in a number of instances weird and incomprehensible. There were those whose lonely lives drove them to despair, to insanity and even to suicide. Others caused untold harm to the cause by their intemperate sermons, lectures and even actions. Their success rate in China was abysmal and The Times even wrote that missionaries in general were not very well educated and not gentlemen.\" This was not always so and their social origins did not matter, but with a number taking the Bible literally, their grasp\n\nof the accepted meaning of biblical scriptures and of language, both English and Chinese, was inadequate leading not only to blinkered bigotry but also to an inability to 'sell' their ideals. There were a great many good, well-intentioned missionaries but with the general evangelising attitude of the Victorian era most Chinese found any spiritual message out of step with their personal religious experience and their own culture. Christianity as taught during the 19th and early 20th centuries failed to appeal to or attract contemporary Chinese who were possibly no more than mildly intrigued to hear what a foreigner might have to say. The multiplicity of sects, teachings and churches, as well as different terms for God, confused Chinese. The Roman Catholics had a far higher conversion rate primarily due to their sympathetic attitudes and policy of getting as near to being one of the community, in dress and living conditions [apart, that is, from the very rare luxuries of wine and cigars].\n\nMissionaries had first seen the Taiping Rebellion as the outcome of missionary enterprise. This view changed when it became apparent that the Taiping leadership had revised and interpreted Christianity. The Taiping leaders had, for example, adopted polygamy for themselves whilst banning it for their followers, and lived in luxury having misappropriated untold wealth.\n\nThe notable early Protestant missionary, Griffith John, made a sweeping reconnaissance across the Yangzi basin in June of 1858 but when visiting Zhenjiang he decided that it was too close to the Taipings at Nanjing and moved on.27\n\nThe London Mission eventually commenced work in Zhenjiang in 1868, and regarding the city as an outstation of Shanghai they rented", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]