[
    {
        "id": 206008,
        "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": 88,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 83\n\nlanded in Cuba alive. Losses of up to 40% were not uncommon on such voyages, and it is not surprising that the emigrant trade was sometimes called the \"Pig Trade\".*\n\nMost of this emigration continued to be in sailing ships as the early steamships were not particularly popular in the emigrant trade; it was thought the passengers were not landed in such good condition as from sailing ships. The number of days at sea was not so important as the number and condition of the passengers landed. It is probable, however, that like the contemporary objections against carrying tea in steamships, the objections against steamships in the emigrant trade were mainly based on prejudice.\n\nBetween the 1840's and the 1870's, when emigration to South America and the West Indies was practically uncontrolled, conditions on the long passage from the China coast were as bad as those on the notorious 'Middle Passage' of the African Slave Trade. Sometimes they were so intolerable that the Chinese rose in revolt, and attempted to kill the captain and crew. Sometimes they would set the ship on fire, hoping either to capture the ship or escape in the confusion. Emigrant ships were usually provided with barricades on deck in those days, like those on convict ships, to prevent the coolies from attacking the officers' and crews' quarters, a device later adopted as an anti-piracy precaution on late 19th and early 20th century emigrant ships in the South-east Asian trades.\n\nDuring this same period Indians were emigrating to the West Indies, Mauritius, Fiji, and other places, and the Indian section of the emigrant trade has been studied more intensively than the Chinese. The Indian trade was not subject to such great abuses as the Chinese, as it was under more effective control at each end. Indians were also more amenable to discipline, so there was less danger of revolt on Indian emigrant ships. Their passivity and personal habits, however, made them more liable to illness, and the greatest dangers in the Indian emigrant trade\n\n* S. Wells Williams, Chinese Commercial Guide (Hong Kong, 1863) pp. 223-224, shows that coolies for the American countries were known as \"chü-tsai ## or pigs\" among contemporary Cantonese \"by an allusion to their [i.e. the Cantonese] mode of catching and carrying off swine in round baskets\". It is not known whether this phrase, which is still remembered today as 7, is of earlier origin. Ed.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206898,
        "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-1973",
        "page_number": 175,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nYING-YAI SHENG-LAN \"THE OVERALL SURVEY OF THE OCEAN'S SHORES' [1433] Translated from the Chinese text; with introduction, notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills. The Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, No. 42, pp. xix, 391. Cambridge University Press, 1970. £11.50 U.K.\n\nWhen the Emperor Yung-lo died in 1424, the Ming dynasty had reached the height of its power. Chinese fleets commanded the eastern seas, and foreign potentates as far west as Egypt acknowledged the suzerainty of the Emperor. Between 1405 and 1433 a remarkable eunuch, Cheng Ho, as outstanding a seaman adventurer as any produced by Elizabethan England, commanded seven overseas expeditions, and visited over thirty countries. Chinese naval, and consequently trading, hegemony extended from Japan to the east coast of Africa.\n\nThe expeditions usually extended over two years. Setting out from the neighbourhood of Nanking in the autumn, powerful fleets, including sixty or more 'treasure-ships', and twenty-eight to thirty thousand men, moved down the Yangtze to the mouth of Liu creek (near Shanghai), where organisation was completed; thence to an anchorage near the mouth of the Min river in Fukien province where the ships waited for the favourable north-east monsoon. Java, Palembang, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut, and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, were regularly visited. On some occasions, detachments from the main force called at Arabian and at East African ports, sailing southward as far as Malindi. On the fourth expedition (1413-15), Cheng Ho was accompanied by a young Chinese interpreter Ma Huan who, on the basis of observations in the course of succeeding voyages with the 'grand eunuch', contributed perhaps the most important record of life and manners in south Asia by any traveller before the arrival of the Portuguese.\n\nYing-yai Sheng-lan, introduced in two parts, the first describing the expeditions under Cheng Ho, and the second discussing Ma Huan and his book, may have been first published in 1451. Its author died about ten years later, scarcely better known than his book which never acquired a wide circulation. Ma Huan claimed",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211624,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "14\n\n48\n\nto have been a more junior soldier such as a drill or colour havildar who would have been ordered to hoist the flag. At the moment it is not possible therefore to say whether Mohammed Arab hoisted the Union Jack on Hong Kong or not, but what is undeniable is that by his death in 1878 Hong Kong had prospered and grown in importance to such an extent that he and the wider community in the colony considered that whoever had hoisted the flag that day had done something of interest to posterity. If it had been Mohammed Arab, it would have been a foretaste of the multiracial legacies that colonialism would leave to the island.\n\n49\n\n50\n\nThe other candidate for the honour of hoisting the flag is a far more conventional one. In his guide to Hong Kong of 1893, William Legge wrote: 'In January [1841] . . . the British Ensign was hoisted on Possession Point . . . by midshipman Dowell (now Admiral Sir William Dowell KCB)'. William Montagu Dowell was born on 2 August 1825 and was made a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1847, rising to be vice-admiral in 1880 and admiral in 1885. In January 1841 he would have been fifteen, so it is possible that he could have been a midshipman at that date and could have been among the group landing on Hong Kong to hoist the flag. More important than whether Dowell raised the flag or not is the fact that the author wished to associate a famous person with the act. William Dowell had been involved in the Second China War of 1857, he was at Shimoneseki in Japan in 1864 and he returned to the Far East as commander-in-chief of the navy in China between January 1884 and September 1885; his naval career had also included spells at the Cape of Good Hope, on the West coast of Africa and on the Egyptian expedition of 1882. By claiming an admiral and a knight as the perpetrator of the deed, the author may have been expressing a desire that Hong Kong's rise in importance should be seen to be mirroring that of Dowell.\n\n51\n\n52\n\nIt is extraordinary that historians have paid so little attention to the acquisition of Hong Kong and that so little effort has been expended in trying to establish the manner in which Hong Kong came to be possessed by the British, and contemporary reactions to that possession. Such omissions might perhaps have been more understandable had Hong Kong at this stage only been thought of as a temporary possession. But by the 1870s it was clear that Hong Kong had become a permanent and financially successful part of the Empire, and certainly by the twentieth century it could have been expected that there would have been considerable interest in constructing a colonial history. That such a history",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212501,
        "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": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "35\n\nFaure, David W. 1990. The Rice Trade in Hong Kong Before the Second World War. In Between East and West Aspects of Social and Political Development 216-25. Edited by Elizabeth Sinn. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.\n\nFok, Kai-cheong. 1988. Wanqing qijian Xianggang dui neidi jingji fazhan zhi yingxiang (The influences of Hong Kong on the economic development of mainland during the late Qing period). In Xueshu Yanjiu 1988/2 70-4.\n\n1989. Xianggang huaren zai jindaishi shang dui Zhongguo de gongxian shixi (A preliminary study on the contributions of Hong Kong Chinese to China in modern history). In Huaren Yanjiu | 81-8.\n\n1990a. Lectures on Hong Kong History Hong Kong's Role in Modern Chinese History. Hong Kong: Commercial Press.\n\n1990b. Private Chinese Business Letters and the Study of Hong Kong Industry: A Preliminary Report. In Collected Essays on Various Historical Materials for Hong Kong Studies. Edited by Hong Kong Museum of History. Hong Kong: Urban Council.\n\n1992. Xianggang yu Jindai Zhongguo (Hong Kong and modern China). Hong Kong: Commercial Press.\n\n1993. Nineteenth Century Hong Kong: China's Gateway to the Western World of Business - themes and sources. Unpublished paper presented at the 34th International Congress on Asian and North African Studies. Hong Kong.\n\nGaw, Kenneth. 1988. Superior Servants: the Legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East. Singapore and New York: Oxford University Press.\n\nGodley, Michael R. 1981. The Treaty Port Connection: An Essay. In Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12/1 248-59.\n\nHamashita, Takeshi. 1991. Higashi Ajiashi ni okeru Honkon no ichi (The role of Hong Kong in East Asian history). In Sōbun 320 1-8.\n\nHamilton, Gary Glen. 1991. Edited Business Networks and Economic Development in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong: University Press.\n\nHao, Yen-p'ing. 1969. Cheng Kuan-ying: The Comprador as Reformer. In Journal of Asian Studies 29/1 15-22.\n\n1970a. The Comprador in Nineteenth-Century China: Bridge Between East and West. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.\n\n1970b. A New Class in China's Treaty Ports: The Rise of the Comprador-Merchants. In Business History Review 44/4 446-59.\n\n1970c. Maiban shangren wanqing tongshang kouan yi xinxing jieceng (Comprador-merchants: \"new class\" in late Qing treaty ports). In Gugong Wenxian 2/1 35-44.\n\n1977. Zhongguo jindai yanhai shangye de buwenling-sheng (Commercial uncertainties along modern China's Coast). In Shihuo Yuekan 7/8-9 1-11.\n\n1979. Commercial Capitalism along the China Coast during the Late Qing Period. In Proceedings of the Conference on Modern Chinese Economic History 303-27. Edited by Chi-ming Hou and Trong-shian Yu. Taiber: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica.\n\n1982a. Entrepreneurship and the West in East Asian Economic and Business History. In Business History Review 56/2 149-67.\n\n1982b. The Compradors. In Maggie Keswick (edited) 85-102.\n\n1986. The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.\n\nHayes, James. 1979. The Nam Pak Hong Commercial Association of Hong Kong. In Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 19/2 16-26.\n\n1984. Collecting Business Papers of Chinese Enterprises in Hong Kong. In Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies 47-55. Edited by Alan Birch. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.\n\nHe, Wenxiang. 1989. Xianggang Jiezushi (History of Hong Kong's big families). Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212601,
        "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": 155,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "Maymyo 1941 \n\nGUERILLA TRAINING* \n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE \n\n135 \n\nThe shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four.\n\nHongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”.\n\n*This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213972,
        "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": 41,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "6\n\nordinary people could play a greater part in their own local affairs without \"rocking the boat,\" and so strengthen what was still in the 1960s a nebulous sense of identity with Hong Kong as something more than a dependent entrepôt.\n\nBill Dickinson had come to Hong Kong from West Africa as a man of good report with capacity for high office, widely experienced in local government and as right-hand man to the deputy governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). It may be thought that he made insufficient effort to affect the outward manners of a society that regarded itself as more sophisticated than an officer who preferred to wear khaki shorts in summer; he was generally seen as a stranger from a dark continent, and though well-liked did not move in élite circles. As Clerk of Councils and a Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary, he had held positions which gave knowledge but little power. Sir David Trench found in him an appropriate officer to assist in solving his dilemma. On 29 April 1966, he appointed Dickinson to chair a working party with the following (typically for Hong Kong detailed) terms of reference:\n\nTo explore and advise on practicable alternatives for the development of an effective and convenient system of local administration in Hong Kong which will take account of the size and complexity of the existing Urban Areas, the planned creation of new towns in the New Territories, and the different stages and development in the rural areas, with particular regard to—\n\n(a) the types of local authority which might be established and the criteria which might govern their establishment;\n\n(b) their possible composition, and the various methods of selection and tenure of office of members which might be considered;\n\n(c) the powers and functions they might have;\n\n(d) possible sources of revenue and financial powers;\n\n(e) their staff and the means by which their functions might be carried out;",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215281,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 58,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "6\n\nStraits Settlements, but not to Hong Kong. The governor protested to the Colonial Office at Hong Kong's exclusion in 1907, 1910 and 1912 but the Canadian government refused to include Hong Kong within its preferential tariff on the grounds that goods from China might be shipped through Hong Kong's open port and fraudulently obtain the benefit of Canada's preferential tariff.\" So Hong Kong's exports of cement and refined sugar were taxed at the highest rate and soon lost their market in Canada. In 1912 a trade agreement was negotiated between Canada and the West Indian colonies whereby Canadian exports were granted preferential tariffs in return for Canadian preferences on Caribbean cane sugar, cocoa beans and lime juice. The West Indian colonies negotiated this trade agreement directly with Canada and the secretary of state for the colonies raised no objection. These preferences were increased by a new trade agreement in 1920 and were generalised to benefit goods from all empire sources.20 The Colonial Office invited all colonies and protectorates to consider the practicability of introducing preferential rates of duty for goods of imperial origin. But most of the colonial empire was prevented by international treaties from imposing discriminatory tariffs. Northern Rhodesia, Kenya and Uganda, being part of the Congo Basin, were forbidden to discriminate by the Convention of St. Germain (1919); Nigeria and the Gold Coast by the Anglo-French treaty of 1898; and Tanganyika, Togoland, Cameroons and Palestine were mandated territories of the League of Nations which prohibited discrimination. By 1932 the only colonies which were free to adopt imperial preference but had not done so were Somaliland, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and certain islands in the Pacific.\" Canada and New Zealand were the only dominions which granted any preferences to the colonial empire before 1932. Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Southern Rhodesia and India granted none.\n\nThe world trade depression which began in 1929 convinced British politicians that the liberal principles of free trade which had been followed for the past 70 years must be abandoned. The National government elected in 1931 quickly passed the Import Duties Act which imposed a general duty of 10 per cent ad valorem on all imports. Section 5 of the act granted an entire exemption from the general duty to imports from all colonies, protectorates and mandated territories, provided that at least 25 per cent of the value was derived from materials grown or produced or from work done within a part of the empire.\" Imports from the dominions and India were exempted from duty only until November pending the outcome of an Imperial Economic Conference.\" A circular despatch was sent by the Colonial Office to all colonies and protectorates drawing attention to the great advantages extended to the colonies by the Import Duties Act and inviting them to give similar preferences to United Kingdom manufactures",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215556,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 333,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "283\n\nan important strategic port for merchants.\n\nIn the process of competing with Macao as the doorway to China trade, Hong Kong had its moments of hesitation. It had its own internal problems to solve during the three decades after 1841, such as building roads, houses, godowns, and having to provide an attractive and safe environment for trade. Only in 1875, after Hong Kong had developed into a port which was busy receiving Chinese junks from the north as well as Japanese vessels from the East and European steamers from the West was the first lighthouse at Cape D'Aguilar constructed to facilitate the navigation route leading to its harbour.\n\nShips from the West\n\nTo build lighthouses was a need formed by several elements. First, the marine navigation route from Europe to Asia used to go round the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa. In 1869, the Suez Canal was opened for navigation, shortening the distance between Europe and East Asia by 20 to 30 per cent as well as cutting the cost, facilitating more frequent sea traffic.4 Secondly, the Industrial Revolution in Europe increased drastically the supply of consumer goods which, in turn, demanded more and more large steamships with greater speed to carry them. Thirdly, shipping costs depend not only on the size and speed of the vessel or the time needed for the transportation. Part of the cost goes to the insurance against the danger of shipwrecks. The safe route with good navigation aids affected the cost of the goods directly. Because of the above elements, the demand for building lighthouses on the sea route to Hong Kong became more pressing with the increase of trade.\n\nOld lighthouses\n\nBefore the setting up of lighthouses in Hong Kong there were already lighthouses in nearby waters. On the Eastern approaches to the Singapore Straits Horsburgh Lighthouse was established in 1851.5 Off the west coast of Taiwan located on Xi Yu Island of the Pescadores/Penghu Islands, the Fisherman Island Lighthouse (Yureng Tao Lighthouse) was set up as early as 1778.6 In Macao, the Guia lighthouse (Farol da Guia), built in 1865, claims to be the oldest on the China coast. These lighthouses, however, did not provide enough help for\n\n7",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]