[ { "id": 204251, "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-1961", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n16\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nChristian centuries of the new states of South-east Asia, formed under Indian influence in Indo-China, Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula.\n\nDuring the Middle Ages the navigation of the Southern Seas was in the hands of the Arabs. But after the rounding of the Cape, direct contact between Europe and the East by sea was restored. It was mainly by the sea-route that India, China, and South-east Asia became known to modern Europe. In this the Portuguese navigators played an all-important part. Passing over the rivalries of the Western nations we come to the days of the East India Company.\n\nIn India the Moghul empire had reached its height, fine examples of its art remaining in the Moghul architecture of Pakistan and North-west India, and Moghul miniature painting. But with the Moghul Moslem law had come to India, and it was soon recognized by the East India Company that the study of Moslem languages was necessary for the government of India. So Islamics now became part of the study of India as of Persia.\n\nIn 1783 Sir William Jones, a brilliant linguist who had mastered Persian and Arabic during his student days in England, was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. In 1784 he proposed the forming of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and became its first President. Becoming aware of the importance of Sanskrit, he became the founder of Sanskrit studies in the West. In accordance with Warren Hastings' decision in 1776 that Indians should be ruled by their own laws, he undertook the immense task of compiling a complete digest of Moslem and Hindu law, a task which he left unfinished at his death eleven years later.\n\nIt was from India that the Western study of Tibet commenced, initiated by Catholic missionaries, of whom the most eminent was Desideri who lived for many years in the great Sera monastery at Lhasa, and wrote the first comprehensive account of Tibet.\n\nMeantime the Jesuit missionaries had proceeded eastwards in the wake of the Portuguese to Malacca, Macau and Japan. It was from Macau that Matthew Ricci entered China in 1580 and in course of time reached Peking, where a beginning was made in the study of the Chinese Classics and Histories, which led to the first real knowledge of Chinese civilization in the West. It was now realized that the 'China' at the end of the sea-route was the same as Marco Polo's 'Cathay'.\n\nAt the beginning of the nineteenth century modern Sinology commenced with Robert Morrison at Canton, and continued with a number of able scholars, too numerous to mention here, of whom James Legge with his translation of the Chinese Classics into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204502, "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-1962", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "BRITAIN AND CHINA\n\n119\n\nBut only once, in September 1950, has Britain voted for a resolution in the General Assembly calling for the admission of Communist China. From June 1951 the British representative has continued to vote in favour of postponement of discussion of the question, even when, on conclusion of the Korean war, the argument that China was participating in aggression against United Nations forces no longer held good. Mr. Luard well brings out, though unfortunately he does not try to explain, the expediency which guided western policies; how one argument was produced after another when the old ones went out of date; how the British government allowed itself to be swayed in this matter by the wishes of the Americans. He does not go into the intricacies of American internal politics, which are at the root of this matter—obviously he could not in a book about Britain and China—but without some understanding of them, Britain's behaviour, somewhat unfairly, seems feeble and misguided. Britain could have done more than she has to influence American public opinion, but to have brought China into the UN against the wishes of numerous Americans would only have devalued the institution in their eyes, and might even have resulted in earlier days in an American withdrawal of funds (upon which the U.N. is very dependent) or even, disastrously, of membership.\n\nSuch a criticism does not affect the discussion of Hong Kong, which is a matter purely for the British and the Chinese. As in the rest of the book, the historical background is only sketched in; the interest is all concentrated on wartime and post-war developments. Hong Kong is unique among British colonies in that since the war it has made no progress towards independence; having narrowly escaped being \"liberated\" by Kuomintang armies at the end of the war, the prospect of a more democratic constitution was shelved when the Communists overran neighbouring Kwangtung. As Mr. Luard points out, the constitution of the Colony remains, in all essentials, exactly what it was in 1843.\n\nAnd this is where the British government's devotion to commercial interests in its relations with China again becomes apparent. Now that Hong Kong has found a new lease of economic life in manufacturing, neither the British nor the Hong Kong government are prepared to do anything which may upset the present favourable climate for investors. It is generally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204672, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n137\n\nIt is therefore a delight to read such a work as Mr. Cranmer-Byng's An Embassy to China. Produced by an historian, and one moreover who combines integrity with an uncommon knowledge of the East, this book is indispensable to an understanding today of the problems that East and West have inherited in their dealings with one another.\n\nThe main body of the book consists of the Journal kept by Lord Macartney on his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung in 1793. He describes his journey to Peking, beyond the Great Wall to Jehol, and back by the Grand Canal and by river to Canton. There follow a series of \"observations\", compiled by Macartney from his own shrewd judgment and from data supplied by members of his entourage, on subjects such as the Manners, Religion, Government, Population, Arts and Sciences, Language etc. of China under the Ch'ing Dynasty.\n\nThe first 58 pages of the book contain an Introduction by the editor, in which he comments on early Anglo-Chinese relations, paints a brief biographical picture of Lord Macartney, and discusses the embassy, the manner of its reception, and its results. The final pages of the Introduction lead up to the Journal itself, its style, content and the method used by the diarist in compiling such a detailed account of his mission - an account written by a professional diplomat, skilled at seeing behind the facade, patient in negotiation, lucid in recollection and description.\n\nLooking back today from our vantage point in time nearly two hundred years later, it is easy to see that Macartney was given an impossible task. Remote in her geographical isolation and sublimely ignorant of world affairs, China had sealed herself for centuries in a false cocoon of imagined cultural superiority. The eighteenth century was both too late and too early for any European power to overcome the supreme complacency of the Imperial Court and Government. From the mid-sixteen hundreds onwards, Western nations, notably the Dutch, the Russians and the Portuguese had sent embassies to China, but all had failed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205014, "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-1965", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n113\n\nin the west is that Southeast Asia is undergoing 'Westernization' and that its countries differ from those of Europe or America only in being more 'backward' or 'underdeveloped'.\" Purcell quickly points out that such a view is an oversimplification, but the chapters which follow are not convincing. Purcell has done little more than present the myriad problems which beset the area, and has clouded the picture by misconceptions and personal conclusions based upon too little serious consideration of all the ramifications of a complex area. Lennox Mills, covering much of the same ground, has now provided the specialist and non-specialist alike with an extremely readable book on the political and economic condition of these underdeveloped nations. He makes no attempt at simplification. Indeed, the complexities in the situation do not lend themselves to the \"nutshell\" approach. He has instead analyzed the component parts of the large picture in each country.\n\nMills is looking for certain characteristics in each country which, operating upon economic and political forces, indicate similarities, and make possible the identification of general trends in the whole area. I should judge that the author succeeds admirably. He has isolated a dozen or so similarities which exist or have existed in the national independence movements, in the formative national period, and in the emerging period. He notes, for example, that absolute and despotic rule in all the countries has been the norm throughout most of the historical period; that the leadership of the revolutions and of the new nations rests with the Western educated elite; that their support is drawn from the urban working and \"lower middle classes,\" and that 80% of the population, the peasantry, have little part or interest in nationhood and citizenship. He notes that all the countries lack the prerequisites for democracy although all have at one time or another established democratic forms. Ruling oligarchies control the governments. The political emphasis remains tied to the personality of the leaders and not to parties or factions.\n\nHaving identified the general trends Mills goes on to analyze in some detail the political and economic ramifications of these trends. Political sophistication does not run deep. In most respects the major part of the population of the area are little", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205101, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "52\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nKhan of the Golden Horde (r. 1313-1340) is mentioned together with a very few notes on some nations which belonged to the Golden Horde, the Cherkess, the Alans and Ossetes, the Qipchaq Turks, the Russians (Wo-lo-ssu, from the Mongol Oros) and the Bulgars (Chinese Pu-li-a-êrh). Under the Qipchaq entry we find some data mentioning Russia and the Russians, such as Batus' conquest of Yeh-lieh-tsan which is the Chinese name for the ancient Russian town of Ryazan (1237), adorned with an Altaic prothetic vowel (like Oros from Ros, Rus). And in 1253 the Chinese annals record that a Mongol dignitary was dispatched to register the households of the Russians for taxation purposes. This was under the Great Khan Mongke (r. 1251-1259) under whom there was still a certain unity of command over the vast territories of the Mongol empire. But in later years the cohesion among the ulus was reduced more and more, and the Chinese official sources have little if anything to say of the West.\n\nThe multi-national auxiliaries of the Mongols included some Russians. These were mostly slaves, or prisoners of war, and repeatedly gifts to the Mongol rulers in China of Russian slaves are mentioned. In 1330 even a Russian guards regiment was established in Peking. There were other guards regiments in addition to the Mongol and Chinese soldiers at that time, consisting of Alans (i.e., Ossetes), Tanguts, Jurchen, Koreans, Qipchaq, and \"Western Regions People\", probably from Turkestan. And a Mohammedan (Hui-hui) artillery corps was equally a part of the Mongol armed forces. The Russians who served in the Peking guards regiment were given land north of Peking and settled there as military colonists. Their total number must have been something like 10,000 because the Yuan-shih mentions that figure in 1330. Other Russian troops were, together with Ossetes, dispatched to the Manchurian and Korean borders (Liao-yang Province), and to places in Northern China. As late as 1339 the Chancellor Bayan was appointed a commander of these Russian soldiers but after that date no more is heard of them. We do not know what became of these Europeans who had been a definitely Western element in the multi-national metropolis of Yüan China.\n\nIf official Chinese historiography as reflected in the dynastic annals did not display any great interest in the West, there are at least other fields where we find traces of broader world conception stimulated by a growing consciousness that the world did stretch", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205110, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n61\n\nYangtse basin. The national Chinese state of Sung therefore tried hard to defend Hsiang-yang against the invading Mongol forces, and the town was besieged for five consecutive years (1268-1273). The engineers who built catapults for the Mongols came from Baghdad and had such unmistakably Muslim names as Ala-ud-din and Ismail. This disproves the story told by Marco Polo, that it was the Polos who distinguished themselves by constructing the artillery used against the fortifications of Hsiang-yang10. Another technological field in which Muslim engineers excelled was hydraulic engineering. In Yunnan, a Chinese province that was incorporated into the Chinese-Mongol empire as late as 1253, the governor was a Muslim from, it seems, Turkistan, by the name of Sayyid Ajall Shams-al-Din. He did much for the irrigation of the K'un-ming basin, works that still survive today.11 The eternal hydraulic problem of China, the Yellow River, came, at some time under the Yüan, equally under the supervision of a foreigner; a Persian or rather Arab called Shams (1278-1351). He is the author of a treatise on river conservancy, the Ho-fang 'ung-i \"Comprehensive Explanation of River Conservancy\", published in 1321. The grandfather of Shams had come to China in the wake of the Mongol conquest of Arabia and settled there. Apart from hydraulic engineering, Shams is described in his biography as having been an expert in astronomy, geography, mathematics, and musical or rather acoustic theory. He had not yet lost the cultural ties with the homelands of his forefathers, as so many other Westerners did once they had come to China, but was still interested in what the Chinese biography called \"books of foreign nations\". In this case, Arab or Persian literature is certainly meant. But, ironically, the biography of Shams has been incorporated in the section reserved for Confucian Learning in the Yüan dynastic history! It is a matter for regret that of all the works he wrote in his lifetime, only the treatise on Yellow River conservancy has survived. The list of the books he wrote is tantalizing to read because their titles reflect a lasting interest in Western (Islamic) scientific thought, and their contents would perhaps have enabled us to see more clearly the interplay of Chinese and Near Eastern science.12\n\nThe largest group of foreigners in Yüan China were, however, not the Arab and Persian or Syrian scientists but merchants from the Near East. Transcontinental trade flourished under the Mon-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205120, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n71\n\nthe former empire of Chingis Khan this development was, as we saw, mostly a result of the conversion of the ruling minority to the religion of the ruled majority. Events would have followed a different course if the Mongols had been able to substitute a religion, or a universal set of values of their own, for the existing indigenous creeds and patterns of life in their respective dominions; this had happened some centuries earlier with the Arabs who not only conquered much of the Near East but also succeeded in imposing Islam, their own religion, on the subjugated countries. In the cultural field, Islamisation had a much stronger effect on the affected areas and nations than the equally or even more far-reaching conquests of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The most lasting, and, from the point of view of world history, perhaps most important result of East-West contacts in the period of Mongol domination was that these commercial and cultural contacts inaugurated for Europe the age of maritime exploration. The seafaring nations of Europe attempted to reach by sea those fabulous countries in the East which Marco Polo and other travellers or merchants had described after their travels through the Mongol dominions. When Columbus left Spain to discover a sea route to the East Indies and to Cathay, land of the Great Khan, he had a copy of Marco Polo's book on board his ship. And so it came that instead of achieving a renewed contact between the Far East and the West a new world was discovered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205577, "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-1968", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "114\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nthat the pseudo-historical background is merely intended to highlight the logical existence and desirability of this final political form. Again, this is not an acutely reasoned historical-theoretical construct.\n\nSun's indifferent use of history, his inaccuracies, his unquestioned acceptance of a heavily and simplistically idealized vision of the past and his limited ability for historical theorization was an aspect of his behavior that can be largely abstracted; it was a disposition apart from his nationalistic or emotional impulses. For Sun Yat-sen was never interested in history. He was a man completely the revolutionary; his entire being concentrated upon changing the present. And like other Chinese revolutionaries of his day, confronted with awesome tasks and frustrated at every turn, history, China's vast arsenal of history, stood at hand as a ready source of ammunition to be used as necessary, for the only all-important struggle. Not unlike Li Ta-chao, who even as Professor of History at Peita, was less interested in discovering the actual way history developed as its psychological usage for the present.13 Sun also used his little understood history for practical revolutionary purposes. This pragmatic political concern largely set the limits of Sun's interest in history and determined his usage of it.\n\nThis is all by way of saying that nationalism alone is not to be held accountable for Sun's distortions of history. Nationalism, to be sure, is inextricably a part of Sun's make-up, but Sun is so unique a Chinese type for his period, and is so much the revolutionary that nationalism manifests itself in a rather special way through him. It is almost a managed attitude in his hands, so that his use of it is as great as its influence on his use of history.\n\nOnce again, I would not underestimate Sun's dedication to China, nor his earnest life-long efforts to resolve China's difficulties, to see his country free and strong, and constituting a progressive force in the comity of nations. Sun cannot and should not be faulted on these grounds. I am only saying that Sun helped to evolve the feeling and the concept of nationalism in China, and he did this while being a rather atypical Chinese on the whole. Sun's Western education and experience abroad, rather than his having had traditional Chinese training in depth in China, set him apart from the overwhelming majority of Chinese. Likewise, his social background distinguished him from most intellectuals of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205578, "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-1968", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "SUN YAT-SEN AND CHINESE HISTORY \n\n115\n\nperiod. This produced for him an identity problem of sorts, and may explain the hiring of the Chinese tutor, but it also produced a rather cosmopolitan man. This familiarity with the real political world made Sun personally aware of China's relative position in the world, as a nation among nations. He was unencumbered by the traditional culturalism that inhibited a clearer-cut and timely appreciation of nationalism on the part of many of his peers. And Sun, as pragmatic revolutionary, early recognized the mobilizing efficacy of nationalism. His problem was that of finding the way of \"turning-on\" the Chinese people by means of it.\n\nYet the \"nationalism\" that Sun articulated is a difficult concept to pin down, as Lyon Sharmon's excellent analysis has shown.14 Min-ts'u, Sun's term for nationalism, means the people's clan. Prior to 1912 it had meant Chinese solidarity against the Manchus, but afterwards was re-interpreted to mean the unity of all races in China, including the Manchus, on an equal basis. Almost until the end of his life this concept of nationalism was interpreted in moderate terms. As late as 1923 it carried two connotations, or aspects. The first was the internal one of unity of races within China; the second, external, aspired for an equal place of respect for China among the nations of the world.\n\nHowever, in 1924 the San Min Chu I lectures muddied the issue considerably. Suddenly, there was evinced in Sun a bitterness against imperialism that was uncharacteristic of the man, but probably explainable in terms of accumulated disappointments at the lack of Western support and, at the same time, of increasing Russian influence. This sudden antipathy toward imperialism was contradictory, incidentally, to Sun's own erstwhile plans to solicit incredibly large amounts of foreign economic assistance for China. Unfortunately too, this final form of nationalism had again a strong racist connotation. Sun expressed in alarmist fashion the fear that the Chinese people, because their population was allegedly static at a time when the West's was increasing, would be absorbed by the racially alien foreigners. Sun made race then, and fear, a part of his nationalism. He also was at pains to demonstrate now how it was that China's nationalistic spirit had declined historically. This he laid directly to the Manchus whose superior techniques of denationalization allegedly robbed China of her \"precious jewel.\"15 This is not exactly persuasive, and one is left to wonder further at his concept of nationalism when he\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205589, "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-1968", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "126\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\ncase put by Fei Hsiao-tung and others who were influenced by the \"orthodox\" Marxist-Leninist interpretation is now convincingly shown to be oversimplified and misleading; and if not wholly unsatisfactory, at least open to serious question. Nevertheless, by his change of title, Potter exposes himself to the criticism that his original choice of field and the data he drew from it may not have been an adequate testing ground for so large an hypothesis. He asserts that in all relevant respects, the situation of Ping Shan resembled that of villages in the hinterland of other Western Treaty Ports; and although he acknowledges the fact of the security of land-tenure given by the British registration of all holdings in the Colony, he is inclined to minimise its importance. Villages in the Chinese mainland, however, had no such security, and, more importantly, lacked the benefits of the Pax Britannica. Hong Kong's peaceful development was interrupted only by the Japanese Occupation, and Potter recognises that as a watershed of change: how much greater changes must have been caused in China by the long series of upheavals that took place there?\n\nPotter's objections to the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of rural China's economy are otherwise well-founded. He shows that while in some areas rural handicrafts were destroyed, the extent to which peasants depended for their livelihood on rural handicraft industries was in general very slight: relatively few areas were as dependent as was Fei's Kaihsienkung on the silk industry. There is, in fact, evidence for the stimulation of China's rural industries by the presence of the Treaty Ports. Similarly, absentee landlordism was not so major a problem as has been supposed. Potter adduces data from a wide variety of sources on other villages in comparable situations, and concludes that the \"orthodox\" interpretation is invalidated by its failure to take into account the tremendous complexity and diversity of the data. He could indeed have brought his point home by citing the wide variety of reactions to modernisation apparent within the limited compass of the New Territories themselves.\n\nPotter has tackled a problem which is of major significance not only to the history of modern China but to the worldwide impact of the developed upon the undeveloped nations. It is not only the student of China who will welcome his eclectic approach and thorough re-examination of accepted views. He has made us aware of the diversity of China's rural scene before 1949, the com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205783, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205784, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "84 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlost Java and gained Singapore for a reluctant Company, and Malacca followed. Siam was eventually drawn into the picture not for her trade or her position on the way to China \n\na little \n\noff the route -- but, in fact, because of Kedah and the other northern Malay States. \n\nBy 1818 the Chakri dynasty had gained sufficient strength to instigate her vassal Kedah to attack the neighbouring Malay State of Perak. The Siamese army then entered Kedah itself and the Sultan fled to Penang. British merchants there were indignant and called on the Company to intervene, but the Supreme Council in Calcutta considered that \"a war with Siam would be an evil of very serious magnitude\". Their policy was one of conciliation. \"All extension of our territorial possessions and political relations on the side of the Indo-Chinese nations\" the Company declared, \"... is earnestly to be deprecated and declined as far as the course of events and the force of circumstances permit\". \n\nAs well as the Malay States there was the Burma question. The restive Burmese had extended their power to Arakan, thus making them neighbours of the British in India. By the eighteen-twenties Britain became involved in war with Burma in the southern part of the country. With the extension of the East India Company's interests to Siam's western and southern borders it became desirable that relations between the Company and Bangkok should be regulated on a peaceful basis. At the same time trading relations should be improved. The bad conditions of trade were described by Raffles as \"slavish and humiliating” for English merchants. He gave this account of the trade: \n\n“On arrival in port the most valuable part of the cargo is immediately presented to the King who takes as much as he pleases; the remaining part is chiefly consumed in presents to the courtiers and other great men, while the refuse of the cargo is then permitted to be exposed to sale. The part which is consumed in presents to the great men is entire loss; for that which the King receives he generally returns a present which is seldom adequate to the value of the goods which he has received; but by dint of begging and repeated solicitation this is sometimes increased a little.\" \n\nTo remedy the situation John Crawford was sent to Bangkok by the Governor General of India in 1822. \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205795, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n95\n\nSiamese were willing to have a treaty which would open up trade and increase Western influence. They had some anxiety, however, about what the Cochin-Chinese, the Vietnamese would think about the treaty. Would they conclude that the Siamese had surrendered to the British? King Mongkut asked Bowring time and again to go to Cochin-China to make a similar treaty. The King was also anxious about the kind of man who would be chosen as British Consul, if this article of the treaty were accepted. Would he be as much a gentleman as Sir John? Bowring assured him that only the best man would be appointed and that he hoped to go to Cochin-China.\n\nThe whole business for this momentous treaty was transacted in the most felicitous manner. King Mongkut and his equally intelligent Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, understood the issues at stake; these were not merely the details of imports and exports, the appointment of Consuls and the rights of foreigners, they were no less than the independence of Siam and the beginning of her modernization. It was much to Bowring's credit (and to Harry Parkes and young Bowring) that he was able to gain the confidence of the King, to allay his fears, and to assure the Siamese that the new policy that the treaty was launching was greatly to their own as well as to the British advantage.\n\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed on 18th April, 1855, less than a month after the arrival of the mission. Its first article pledged perpetual peace and friendship and the protection of the two nations' subjects in each other's countries. Article 2 provided for the appointment of a British Consul at Bangkok who would have jurisdiction over British subjects in Siam. The third article was an extension of the second, requiring that Siamese offenders should be given up to Siamese justice and British offenders to British justice, that is, the Consul. This was the system of extra-territorial rights which had recently been obtained from the Chinese after the Opium War. It was an infringement of Siam's sovereignty but it gave assurance to British subjects that they would not be exposed to the severity of Siamese justice and encouraged the setting up of business houses. This right was given up in 1909, long before its withdrawal in China, in return for the independence of Kedah and the other northern Malay States from Siam. The next three articles of the treaty were all concerned with the rights of British subjects. They could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207373, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n133\n\n6 On this point, see John K. Fairbank, \"The Early Treaty System in the Chinese World Order,” in J. K. Fairbank, ed. The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). See also L. S. Yang's article entitled \"Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order\" in ibid., 22, for a discussion of Kuo Sung-t'ao's innovative outlook.\n\n7 See Fairbank's introductory essay in The Chinese World Order; also, John K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Ch'ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6 (1941). An exception to the standard tributary view of China's foreign relations is John Wills' Pepper, Guns and Parleys (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).\n\n8 James Legge, The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong, 1961), 5:521. For the use of this phrase in various contexts, consult Li Te-yü, chüan 8: 59; Li Hung-chang, Li Wen-chung-kung ch'üan-chi [The collected works of Li Hung-chang] (Nanking, 1908), Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 11:24b; Chang Ch'i-yün, Chung-kuo chin-shih shih-lüeh (A short history of Chinese military affairs] (Taipei, 1956), 115.\n\n9 Dai Kanwa jiten [Sino-Japanese Dictionary] (Tokyo, 1955-1960), 1926, 6437. For random examples of this common usage, see Su Ch'ing-pin, 1, 2, 35; Hsin T'ang-shu, 145:14b; Ch'ou-pan i-wu shih-mo [The management of barbarian affairs from beginning to end] (Peiping, 1930; hereafter, IWSM), TK, 72:34b, TC 4:25b; 5:51; 8:64b; 12:2b; 23:36b; etc.\n\n10 See the illuminating discussion in Mi Chu Wiens, \"Anti-Manchu Thought during the Early Ch'ing,\" Papers on China, 22A (May, 1969), especially 2-3.\n\n11 Legge, 2:253; Wiens, 2; Wu Hung-chu, \"China's Attitude towards Foreign Nations and Nationals Historically considered,\" The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, 10.1 (1926), esp. 17-19. On the reverse theme, consult Li Hung-chang, Letters to Friends, 1:9b; Lu Shih-ch'iang, Ting Jih-ch'ang yü tzu-ch'iang yün-tung [Ting Jih-ch'ang and the self-strengthening movement] (Taipei, 1972), 241-244.\n\n12 Chinese policy toward the \"sinicization\" of foreigners was not consistent, however. See Schafer, 22, 49, 291 note 75; also Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. C. Goodrich, trans., Western and Central Asians in China under the Mongols, by Ch'en Yuan (Los Angeles, 1966), 6ff.\n\n13 Cited in Ch'ien and Goodrich, 9. I have modified the translation slightly after consulting the Chinese original. For a view contrary to Ch'en Yuan's, see Legge, 5: 355: \"If he is not of our kin, he is certain to have a different mind”—an oft-cited passage from the Tso-chuan. These two conflicting views suggest a central question: What constituted a barbarian? Unfortunately, no clear answer can be given. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao noted in the late nineteenth century that the implications of the term had changed over time (see Wiens, 1); but even his comparatively sophisticated analysis oversimplifies an enormously complex problem. Lacking an objective standard by which to judge barbarian-ness, one is perhaps best served by deferring to the Chinese chronicler. If, for whatever reason, an individual appears in the record as a barbarian, then that is what he is. Such an arbitrary classification is in many respects unsatisfactory, but it reflects accurately the Chinese viewpoint at a given time, and underscores the uncertain status of even the most \"sinicized\" barbarian. An argument against writing about China's relations with foreign peoples \"in the Chinese idiom and from the Chinese point of view\" may be found in Timothy Connor, \"Translating the 'Barbarians': A New Book in an Old Tradition,\" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (hereafter, HJAS), 32 (1972).\n\n14 Cited in Benjamin Schwartz, \"The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,\" in Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, 280.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207644, "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-1976", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n17\n\nhistory of nations is largely moulded by the forms and development of their armed forces.\"32 In so-called underdeveloped countries, especially those facing an immediate military challenge, armies can perform a crucial modernizing function. Ike Nobutaka indicates that during the Meiji era \"the armed forces were probably more modern than the rest of the nation in terms of technology and organization,\" but it was not only in these areas that the Japanese military made its modernizing influence felt.33\n\nIn the political sphere, it is clear that the new-style army of Meiji Japan contributed to the consolidation of the regime, and to the further development of a national political consciousness. Conscription at once solidified government authority and enhanced national security. Throughout the nineteenth century, moreover, the military provided a deep pool of bureaucratic talent. From 1885 to 1912, for example, over thirty-five percent of all Japan's civilian ministries were under military men (41 of 112). The balance of generals and admirals in the cabinet did not shift in favor of civilians until 1898.34 In the lower echelons of the bureaucracy, too, the military provided talented and disciplined personnel. At yet another level, the rank and file acquired at least a heightened sense of political participation, as well as a vibrant nationalistic spirit. Educational opportunities within the army only increased this tendency.35\n\nIn the social realm, the military also promoted modernizing change. Conscription, for example, helped level society, giving greater meaning to concepts such as social equality and the idea of mobility based on performance.36 The growth of the military, which continued throughout the nineteenth century, contributed to urbanization, with all its concomitant changes.37 Living standards and health care improved for large numbers of traditionally disadvantaged individuals who were now entering the army. Individual expectations were naturally raised. Recruits acquired new tastes and personal needs. It is said that the habit of cigarette smoking was spread in Japan by soldiers who had picked up the practice in the army. Many recruits also developed a taste for beef, a mark of cultural refinement in the Meiji period.38\n\nOther new influences in the army spread rapidly to Japanese society at large. Western-style uniforms, for example, became standard in the army; soon they were adopted for policemen, train conductors, and other civil functionaries. The shift to wearing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209156, "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-1981", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 45\n\nIntellectual conditions which are implied by the modernizing process in Taiwan should go hand in hand with significant changes in religion. The fact that there are connections between social and religious change is too obvious to be doubted. What is less obvious are the kinds of religious changes which are connected with modernization in Taiwan. To be sure, one tendency has long been observed, i.e., secularization. Yang has given an excellent analysis of secularizing tendencies in modern China which can also be applied to Taiwan. Moreover, it can easily be seen that the factors mentioned above do in fact undermine the social base of many traditional forms of religion. The socio-economic frame of many traditional religious activities has been the peasant village community. To the same degree that industrialization reduced the relative importance of agriculture, the religious rites and festivals which were strongly related to the cycle of the farming seasons lost their significance for the society as a whole. Urbanization, a seemingly inevitable concomitant of industrialization, brought many people to the fast-growing cities, which lack the intimate social contacts of the villages. While in the countryside residential community and religious community were nearly identical, symbolized in the village temple; in the modern cities, new social relationships are formed, which normally do not coincide with the residential neighbourhood. As a result, the traditional religious life which formed an integral part of the village community loses its social base and is weakened. Finally, cultural contact in Taiwan has taken place to a degree that it can properly be named 'westernization'.\n\nWesternization in Taiwan has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the integration in the capitalist world economy, which resulted in a socio-economic readjustment after the model of the Western industrial nations. On the other hand, there is the strong impact of the Western intellectual tradition, above all of science, but also of philosophy, political thinking, and religion. The rationalistic and materialistic coloration of Western science and philosophy induces many well-educated people to disregard traditional forms of religion as superstitious. At the same time, the Chinese cultural heritage is no longer the sole repository of social and cultural values; people are turning more and more to Western ways of life, which are fashionable especially among the middle and upper classes in the cities.\n\nThere cannot be any doubt that industrialization, urbanization, and westernization affected many traditional forms of religion and diminished their structural as well as their functional position in Taiwan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209165, "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-1981", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "54\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nsuperiors and inferiors are without righteousness, there is no faithfulness between friends. What a talk of liberalism! People get married and they get divorced again; if such conditions are common everywhere, how then can the orthodox tradition of the Tao be restored? Look at the following examples: In the European and American nations it is such that, when people are old and approach the end of their life, one is only waiting until they close the eyes and die. This is called the New Culture! Continually new weapons are being developed to destroy the human race. This is called the New Morality! How terrible it is! And we Chinese, we are giving up our own culture and our own morality, which we have inherited from our ancestors, in order to adopt the so-called New Culture and New Morality of other people. If one continues in this way, then our Chinese nation will soon have perished!\n\nIn the first section the present time has been pictured as one of utmost danger, threatened by an impending catastrophe. The second passage exposes the roots of this crisis, i.e. the general moral decline which can be stopped only by reviving the traditional virtues. In the above section the explanation again goes one step further. The moral decay, i.e. the extinction of traditional Chinese morality, is seen in relation to the influence of Western civilization. The westernization of Chinese society is regarded as promoting licence and demoralization. By implication, westernization is a major obstacle to the restoration of the orthodox tradition and will finally result in the perishing of the Chinese nation.\n\nThis pessimistic and critical picture of the present forms the background to the final revelations of the deity, which show the way to deliverance leading to a bright future:\n\nIf my heavenly Tao can be spread all over the world, the multitudes will not know any more suffering caused by weapons nor will there be malefactors or criminals. This is called to regulate without acting purposely (wu wei). Even if one does not plan for peace, peace will occur without doubt; even if one does not plan for a renaissance, a renaissance will come by itself. Then, what need will there be for rules and regulations, what need for severe laws and heavy punishments? And yet the days of Yao and Shun can come again and there can be a perfect world for men to live in.\n\n31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209172, "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-1981", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF KUAN TAO 61\n\ndegree is a result of the impact of the Western powers and the ensuing cultural contact, not only was reflected in the field of religion negatively but also led to a further development of popular religious ideology. That basically means that traditional religion can cope with modernization and is not necessarily doomed to extinction.\n\nAt a glance it looks as if the recognition of Christianity and Islam amounts to a withdrawal of the traditional claim for superiority of the Chinese culture. To a certain degree this may be the case. But if we analyze the argument carefully we find that this is only one side of the coin. By declaring a basic unity of the Western and the Chinese religions, the Christian (and Muslim) claim to absoluteness is countered most effectively. Christianity and Islam are no longer fought against but embraced and in this way their thunder is stolen. Having neutralized the Western claim to superiority, in a second step of the argument the priority of the Chinese tradition can be restored. For, as we have seen, Christianity and Islam are recognized as true teachings because they partake of the same Tao as the Chinese religions. But in China the orthodox tradition of the Tao goes back as far as Yao and Shun and even Fu-hsi, i.e. it is significantly older than the Western traditions. That means that the Tao originally came down in China.\n\nAge is an important factor in the Chinese way of thinking. Since China was in possession of the Tao from the beginning it is obvious that she occupies a special position among the nations. Indeed Chinese tradition is made a yardstick for the assessment of foreign cultural traditions. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions implies their subordination to the standards of the Chinese tradition.\n\nThe exceptional position of China can be seen from still another angle. In the revelation of Shang Ti which was quoted above we saw that the dangerous disorder of the present world is regarded as an immediate consequence of that materialistic way of life which originated in the West. To save China from the impending catastrophe it is imperative to redress Chinese tradition. This is what I have called \"traditionalism\". In addition to the traditionalist approach, however, there is the universalist one. By universalism I mean the tendency to extend the normativity of the Tao, i.e. the original Chinese tradition, beyond the boundaries of China proper. One aspect of this universalism has been described above: the inclusion of the Western religions in the tradition of the Tao, thereby extending by implication the validity of the Chinese Tao to the Western cultures. Another aspect of universalism comes to the fore when the deliverance from threatening disaster and\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209177, "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-1981", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "66\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nto the traditional legitimation system results in increasing tensions. If the tensions are to be diminished or at least kept to a tolerable level, then either the modernization process has to be stopped or even reversed, or the legitimation system has to be changed in such a way that it is more compatible with the social reality. I would argue that such an adaptation of the legitimation system can be observed in the teachings of I-kuan Tao.\n\nOne typical innovation in the teachings of many popular religious societies, of which I-kuan Tao is just one example, is what has been described as universalism. Not only are Western religions, especially Christianity, not fought against anymore, but they are accepted as being equal to the Chinese tradition. Foreign religions should even be learned from as they may contain truth which has not been revealed in China. On the other hand, the Chinese spiritual heritage is valid not only for the Chinese nation but for all of mankind. There is only one truth, one Tao, in the world of which all religions partake.\n\nIn a certain way, this universalist view is not new in Chinese intellectual history. In historic times too, there was only one truth which was theoretically valid for the whole world. But this truth did belong to the Chinese tradition, and to the degree that other nations did not accept the Chinese way, they were barbarians. The Middle Kingdom was the centre of the world, unequalled by other civilizations. While, as we have seen, the claim of uniqueness is not completely abandoned, the new universalism still represents a decisive innovation. The pretension to Chinese superiority could not be reconciled with the events of history since the last century. In the first phase, the national consciousness refused to take cognizance of other nations as being equal or even superior. The result was a rigid rejection of and hostility towards everything foreign. But reality could not be disputed for long. In the second phase, the pendulum tended to swing to the other extreme. China was seen as backward and unenlightened, and the Chinese intellectual tradition, especially Confucianism and religious thinking, was held responsible for this backwardness. By contrast, the West was idealized as a model which had to be emulated.\n\nOn the popular level, the replacement of the traditional symbol system by Western science and philosophy, which might be possible for intellectuals, was never a realistic alternative. To be sure, the success of Christian missions during the last hundred years would probably be unthinkable had there not been the strong need for new world interpretations which promised to be more consistent with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209281, "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-1981", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "170\n\nNG LUN NGAI-HA\n\npart in affecting the social and political attitude of the students. The Anglo Chinese schools in Hong Kong were modelled on the Western pattern, in their curriculum, textbooks and teaching method. In addition, Chinese students here had frequent contact with British school-masters and fellow students of different nations and religions for starting from 1867, the Central School was opened to students of all nationalities and the enrolment included English, Portuguese, Americans, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos and others. The interflow of ideas and experience went on in their daily intercourse not only through formal lessons but also through simply being mixed in a class, in their recess and games. The interchange of ideas was further facilitated by the publication of a school magazine, which contained not only school news, but also interesting articles by staff or students.\n\nAs a youth and student, Dr. Sun Yat-sen spent his most formative and impressionable years in Hong Kong, and learnt much that could serve as a stimulus to his political awareness. It was never the intention of the Hong Kong Government to include any political content in the school curriculum. Care was taken, in fact, to avoid arousing any national sentiment among the Chinese students, and Chinese history was not taught in government schools. Yet, in a number of ways, some more subtle than others, the curriculum did stimulate political awakening and ideas of reform. In the Central School, topics like \"Patriotism\", \"The Follies of Foot-binding\" and \"The True End of Education\" were often set for English composition. Lessons on the history of England, such as the growth of parliamentary government or the Industrial Revolution, might directly or indirectly activate the minds of the students on the problems in China. What would a young man from China think of his local magistrate when he read about the municipal council in England, the rising influence of the merchant class, or the workers in the West, knowing how humble peasants fared in China? The impact of these lessons of course depended very much on the personality and mind of the individual. This explains why the Central School produced during these years officials of the Ch'ing court, reformists, as well as revolutionaries.10\n\nHong Kong from the mid-nineteenth century onward was an important centre for the publication of journals and newspapers containing news and articles from Hong Kong, China as well as the West. The more important early newspapers were the China Mail, the Hong Kong Daily Press and the Hong Kong Telegraph.11 These papers formed the important backbone of the China coast newspapers of the time.12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209285, "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-1981", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "174\n\nNG LUN NGAL-HA\n\ndemonstrated on his occasional visits to his native village while he was a student in Hawaii and in Hong Kong.\n\nAs to the promotion of commerce, Sun's ideas were very much inspired by Ho and Cheng, both of whom were of the comprador merchant class preoccupied with commercial interests. Yet, as an eye-witness of the economic prosperity of Hong Kong, a free port under the Western and British commercial system, Sun's ideas were much more than echoes of the above thinkers. His exposition on this aspect went much deeper than the section on industrial development, which was then not a main feature of the Hong Kong economy, and which he knew about merely from his reading. The three important measures prescribed by Sun for the promotion or free flow of commerce were not original. They were the abolition of internal customs barriers, protection of merchants by government against extortion and the building of railways and ships to ensure facilities for transportation. Yet the examples he cited as being carried out by Western nations, especially Britain, were evidently learnt in Hong Kong. He pointed out that the merchant class in Western countries had long been actively involved in government policies and their overseas commercial expansion had received military support from their governments. In return, it was the financial support of the merchants which enabled Britain to conquer India, territories in Southeast Asia and Africa, and also to annex Australia. Sun wanted to prove that commercialism was the road to the nation's wealth and power and that merchants were a very influential class in the nation. The privileged position and influence of merchants and the mercantile houses were in fact evident in Hong Kong since the first day of its founding. Very often, the Governor and even the home government had to yield to their requests and demands, and all the unofficial seats in the Hong Kong Legislative and the Executive Councils were taken by prominent merchants and members of the General Chamber of Commerce.18 To show that Chinese merchants, if given chance and encouragement, would also be able to help in building up a modern China, Sun pointed out that a great part of the railway network in Southeast Asia was built by overseas Chinese investment. \"If government would give assurance for proper interest and profit, these merchants would certainly be willing to invest in their native country\", Sun remarked.\n\nSince Sun had received a major part of his formal education in Hong Kong, he was able to experience personally the advantage of a Western education, especially the professional training at the medical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210205, "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-1984", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "155\n\nof the policy of suppression which had been adopted in Singapore. He strongly opposed the sending of an investigatory commission from London, which the Colonial Office had been pressing upon him. Peel's views were supported by the Permanent Under-Secretary and officials in London, who advised against any immediate action. A League of Nations commission to enquire into the international traffic in women and children was about to visit the Far East and this gave a good reason for delay, since any sudden change of policy would appear to be either designed to impress the commission or else to be an admission of guilt. Lord Passfield accepted this advice.\n\nFor the next six months the question was allowed to rest. Then in June 1931 Peel again wrote to the Colonial Office, enclosing a long memorandum on the legal position of brothels in Hong Kong written by the Chief Justice, Sir Joseph Kemp. This legal exposition concluded by warning that, though the suppression of all registered brothels might possibly lead to less illicit intercourse, it would probably arouse great resentment if the Chinese brothels patronized by the Chinese were to be suppressed. He continued: ‘I fear the danger of shaking the loyalty of the Chinese community as a whole and their confidence that the government will respect Chinese customs generally. The risk may have to be run, but I think it is a real one. It must be remembered that the Chinese do not view prostitution as we do. They look upon it with a more lenient eye, though excess is reprobated just as excess in other forms of self-indulgence is reprobated. Prostitutes are not social outcasts to the same extent as in 'Western' countries. A prostitute often becomes a highly respectable concubine . . . I realise that this is a very difficult defence to make, especially as the English public do not always realise the delicacy required in ruling an alien civilisation.' Peel offered up a small sacrifice to appease the Secretary of State: he suggested that the seven brothels containing European prostitutes should be closed down. This was not a sign that Peel had been converted to the moralists' point of view; European prostitutes were customarily deported from Hong Kong from time to time, since their presence was considered demeaning to European prestige in the East. This decision to close the brothels employing European, Australian and American women was endorsed by the Executive Council in July 1931.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210800, "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-1986", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "134\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nare committed. However, any foreign proposal which is consistent with these plans might be more favourably received than one which is not included.\n\nIn the short time that Hainan has been opened to foreign investment, forty-four contracts representing a total investment of US$ 87 million have been signed with foreign firms, thirty-four of which were operative in 1983. To provide technical counterparts for these projects, more than 4,000 intellectuals, cadres and workers have been transferred to Hainan, while many overseas Chinese have also offered their services. Talks on a number of key projects are under consideration including a petrochemical plant, an express highway, additional power stations (China Daily, 1983), and a tunnel link with the mainland across the Qiongzhou Straits (South China Morning Post, 1984), while the first joint-venture for onshore oil exploration in China was recently arranged for northern Hainan with an Australian consortium (Sydney Morning Herald, May 27, 1985).\n\nAlthough significant development has taken place over the past five years, naive mishandling and in some instances outright abuse of the autonomy delegated to Hainan officials has hobbled the momentum. Recent reports of corruption and profiteering on Hainan have exposed a sophisticated system where racketeers have spent cherished foreign exchange on imported cars and home appliances made cheaper by the preferential import duty cuts the island enjoys, and resold these on the mainland at huge profits. One source alleged that the racket involved the purchase of more than 89,000 cars, 2.86 million televisions and 252,000 video recorders which cost more than US$ 1.5 billion in foreign exchange (Thompson, 1985). Besides prosecuting officials, the Central Government has reacted by strictly limiting funds for joint-ventures and technology imports, and increasing import duties by as much as 80 percent to price foreign goods out of the local market.\n\nHainan's agriculture has also undergone development through the adoption of new agricultural policies and the transfer of technology from western nations. In the last five years substantial changes to commune structure and productive practices have occurred with the introduction of the \"production responsibility", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210870, "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-1986", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "204\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThe Tong brothers, King-sing and Mow-chee, were strong supporters of any scheme to introduce modern scientific, commercial and industrial ideas to China. They participated in the organisation of the Chinese Polytechnic Institute founded in Shanghai in 1874. Its object, as set forth in the prospectus, was “to bring the sciences, arts and manufactures of Western Nations in the most practicable manner possible before the notice of the Chinese.\" The proposed means of doing so were through exhibitions, lectures and classes, and a library and reading room.\n\nAt the time of Tong Mow-chee's 60th birthday celebrations, it was stated that \"the Tong family had played an important part in the history of the trade relations between foreigners and Chinese in Shanghai, and they may be said to be the leaders of the party of progress in the initiation and development of commerce after the style of foreign countries.\"\n\nAs compradore of the leading foreign firm in China, Tong Mow-chee held important positions in Chinese business associations such as the Canton Guild at Shanghai, the Hankow Tea Guild and the Canton-Swatow Opium Guild. In these organisations he was called on to use his ability as arbitrator when disputes arose. In this his early experience in San Francisco in diplomatic negotiation proved of great help.\n\nTong Mow-chee died in Shanghai on July 6, 1897. A description of his funeral and a sketch of his life was published in the North China Herald. Some of the statements in the biographical account do not agree with contemporary documentary evidence about certain facts of his life.\n\nThe description of the funeral procession depicts a form of Chinese pageantry that has now all but vanished. \"The coffin was of very heavy and expensive wood which had been painted and varnished, over and over again, until the outside coat of the coffin was over an inch thick, which would enable it to defy damp and wet for years. A handsome gold-embroidered red satin pall covered the coffin, which took relays of 32 men each time to carry it. Many beautiful and expensive banners were to have been unfurled for the occasion, but rain prevented it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211495, "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-1988", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "187\n\nMunicipal Council, 718 volumes and pamphlets were purchased from Wylie for Tls 1,767.50 to form the nucleus of the society's library. The Shanghai Municipal Council stipulated that the society would be responsible for providing “suitable rooms and a librarian”, and should they fail to do so, the books would be given to another organization.\n\nO. R. Crockett was appointed the \"honorary librarian\" in 1864, the first of at least twenty-eight people to hold this office. Over the years they represented at least four nations, England, the United States, Germany, and France. The third librarian, the American-born Frenchman Henri Cordier who compiled the monumental Bibliotheca Sinica, was the real founding father of the library.\n\nUnlike many members of the society, Cordier was a young man newly arrived in China, and full of both curiosity and energy. He immediately struck up a friendship with Wylie and was instrumental in the transfer of his books to the library. His first task for the society was to compile a catalogue of its recently assembled collection. As he recalled later:\n\nOn the first of April, 1871, Mr. Ney Ellis, then a merchant, took me to the library, which was indeed in a most dilapidated state in a large room of the Commercial Bank Building... I began at once the Catalogue of the books, which was published the next year (1872) at the Ching-Foong General Printing Office.\n\nThis catalogue showed 1,300 titles in Western languages, arranged according to Klaproth's classification, \"at least in its principal divisions\", with Wylie's books noted with asterisks. Not catalogued were an additional 1,023 volumes in Chinese, mostly from Wylie, and the **Transactions of Learned Societies and Periodical Publications, which form one of the most important classes of the Library**. Cordier noted in the preface:\n\nHowever valuable this collection may be, its deficiency is very great; and many a volume which an Orientalist ought to find is sought in vain through the pages of the Catalogue. Now that the paucity of our resources is known, no doubt people will come forward and help us fill the blanks.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211768, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "158\n\nTHALIA AND TERPSICHORE ON THE YANGTZE A SURVEY OF FOREIGN THEATRE AND MUSIC IN SHANGHAI 1850-1865\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\n\"Thanks for the merry laugh that cheered our hearts\n\nFor loud applause that bade us top our parts. For mirth, that taking all things for the best\n\nMade even a blunder seem a clever jest'.\"*\n\nThus an epilogue to an evening of theatrical entertainment in 1852 that was given for the foreign community of Shanghai, and it sums up nicely the attitude with which generally speaking the efforts of the local amateurs were greeted. What happened on the stage in this outpost of Western civilisation may not have been very exciting or very daring but still it seems interesting enough to go into in more detail than has been done before now.2\n\n1. Some notes on foreign life in Shanghai\n\nUntil the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, foreigners were severely limited in China. In fact only one port, Canton, was open for external trade and merchants had to reside part of the year in the so-called foreign factories. After the war several treaties were concluded with Western nations (England, France, United States) in which the right of foreigners to settle themselves in a number of cities on the China Coast was granted.\n\nAmong these cities was Shanghai, and it was not long before a predominantly British community came into being. A Foreign Settlement was delimited, Land Regulations (a kind of constitution) were issued in 1845 and 1854, a Municipal Council of foreign merchants was formed as early as 1846,3 houses in colonial style were built, roads and a race course laid out, a drainage scheme begun and a home-like church erected. To the south of the Settlement the French had their own Concession, while to the north an American settlement gradually developed. Problems abounded, sometimes caused by the obstructions of foreign residents;\n\nOrdinary reference notes are indicated thus: (1); notes in which additional information is supplied thus: (1x).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212211, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "130\n\nto commercial goods, as it moved under the Japanese shadow. Under her conception of “incident” Japan had methods of applying pressure to foreign shipping companies, a pressure which in the existing atmosphere of appeasement it was difficult to resist.\n\nFollowing on the occupation of Canton, the Japanese mopped back towards Hongkong, but they left only a small garrison to watch the border. A heavy smuggled trade sprang up, not only over the border, but also by junk through the countless small inlets and bays of the neighbourhood. The Japanese exerted themselves to coerce the Colonial Government to suppress the trade. Their efforts met with failure: until Hongkong was itself submerged in a wider conflict, the Chinese war effort continued to benefit.\n\nHongkong is one of the world's great ports, the offspring of British administrative practice and Chinese commercial fecundity. Every year twenty-two million tons of shipping were entered and cleared. In the harbour the flags of many nations could be seen, from those of the great Western Powers to that of the little republic of Panama. The flags of the Scandinavian nations, of Norway and Denmark, were particularly in evidence, so far from home, witness to the freedom of the seas for which Britain stood sponsor. The volume of trade which passed through Hongkong was naturally restricted by the Japanese occupation of Canton. Cargo vessels called less frequently, but the great liners on fixed passenger schedules continued to go alongside the Kowloon wharves, often two or three at a time, ships of the American President line, the Canadian Pacific line, the Peninsular and Oriental, the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, the Nippon Yoshen Kaisha, the Dutch J.C.L., the Lloyd Trestino, the Blue Funnel, the City, the Messageries Maritimes and many other lines.\n\nI was due for home leave and sailed in the new P.& O. liner, the R.M.S. \"Canton\", on her maiden trip, in December 1938. The passengers lined the rails as we steamed towards the Lyeemoon passage. Did they realise what a remarkable monument to Sino-British co-operation was that lovely green hill side at which they gazed? Hongkong bears happy testimony, in a difficult future, to the benefits that flow from cordial relations between China and the British Empire.\n\nShanghai and Eastern China 1939\n\nShanghai was the splendid stronghold of foreign interests in the Far", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212281, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "200\n\nLegge urged missionaries to reach into the very heart of the Middle Kingdom and seek to fulfil the Chinese spirit through appeal to the traces of God left in their own Classics, while supplementing and fulfilling them through Christian revelation.\n\nWhy was Legge so persistent in this approach? One major factor in his motivation came from a special passage in the Old Testament. The nineteenth century Protestant missionary mandate to China was driven by a Biblical prophecy understood to include a promise of the eventual Christianization of China. According to many nineteenth century Protestant missionaries including Legge, the place referred to in Isaiah 49:12 as \"Sinim\" must refer to China. (More recent scholarship sometimes refers it to Assuan in Egypt.) Being thus convinced that God had a plan to include the Chinese peoples within the Kingdom of God, many 19th century Protestant missionaries believed that God's Spirit would accomplish this Christianization through the influence of great Christian leaders. A claim that this prophesy indicated essentially Protestant endeavours was also emphasized: the earlier Christian missionary groups, Nestorians, Jesuits and other Catholic orders, as well as a few Russian Orthodox priests, had been kept from completing this building up of the Kingdom of God in China. Thus it was claimed that the nineteenth century was the time for the Protestant nations to fulfil their Divine destiny in bringing to China the transformative message of Christ as well as their own brand of Christianized civilization.\n\n—\n\nThis particular attitude explains to a large extent why Legge himself was both supportive and critical of British and other colonial powers. If they were to be beacons of Christian civilization, they had to be criticized whenever they did not live up to this calling. Protestant missionaries therefore acted in relation to Chinese societies as social revolutionaries, and in relation to Western nations as prophets of either (and sometimes both) glory or judgement.\n\nLegge was not only able to define a prophetic duty for missionaries, he was also deeply motivated to provide intellectual tools to make it all the more possible.\n\nThis is one of the motivations which explains Legge's important reassessments of Confucius (LF) in his second edition of the Four Books completed in 1895. (He did not find similar reasons to revise", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212713, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Until the middle of the 19th century China assumed and acted on the principle that the world owed allegiance to the supreme ruler, the Emperor of China, a view considered by the British in particular as ludicrous, and despite costly emissaries to try to persuade them otherwise, the Chinese were only forced to accept change by military force—leading to what it was hoped by foreigners would be an era of equality such as existed between other nations. Mesny experienced but probably failed to appreciate the depth of change within China in which he was involved; Chinese military commanders in the field without the presence of their foreign overlords, the Manchus, being one. But much more important were the changes in style of xenophobia, a newly acquired awareness of the power of western nations by the Chinese and most of all the deep resentment of the imposition of foreign equality. It is this more than anything else which makes Mesny's story so fascinating and refreshing.\n\nHe also lived in China during the era when the attitudes of Christian missionaries were changing, from those who felt such a strong cultural superiority and behaved arrogantly, with an attitude of self-righteousness and a complete lack of sensitivity towards Chinese feelings, which caused the vast majority of Chinese to become even more xenophobic than they had been before westerners forced through 'unequal' treaties; to those with more sympathetic views. By the end of the century many missionaries were comparatively understanding and tolerant of Chinese customs and culture, and though their mercantile compatriots were still of the old views, a number of missionaries were working with Chinese and helping to bring about the modern transformation of China. Although Mesny was one of the few foreigners whose sympathies lay with the Chinese, with his feet in both camps he found good and bad on both sides. One of Mesny's more revealing snippets is the irritated and grieving rather than angry digression; an item in the Miscellany on an uncommon Chinese saying \"Tsai ssu szu wei\" meaning \"Try, try and try again\". He wrote 'It (the phrase) is probably worth using by foreigners as a very expressive and convenient tenor when trying to persuade natives [Chinese] that it is impossible to comply with the requests and importunities to \"do something for them\". I have reflected on the matter,' he continued, 'and though I have repeatedly tried still I have not succeeded.' Many foreigners, even to this day, will sigh in agreement.\n\nMesny would, in later life, doubtless have seen himself as a ‘China Expert' and would also have wished others to regard him so. He cultivated this impression in print from the first issue of his Miscellany with his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212717, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "The Boxer Rebellion in north China in 1900, which involved the massacre of some western missionaries and a siege of the Legation area in Peking, did not reach as far south as Shanghai, though in his curriculum vitae Mesny mentions 'Volunteered for service at Peking 1900'. Unfortunately, we do not know whether his service was accepted or what he did during that period.\n\nThe Chinese Imperial government survived these rebellions but slowly became even weaker as the years went by. Western nations also took full advantage of Chinese imperial weakness until in 1911 the Revolution overthrew the imperial government and established a very weak republic which, after some further thirty or so years of both inner turmoil and invasion by the Japanese, ended with the Communist victory. Mesny lived through the first eight years of the Republic, and though they were stirring times, he must have had many nostalgic memories of his prowess and success in the Chinese imperial army, particularly in the latter days of the suppression of the Miao rebels, and the time when he was a prisoner of the Taipings, features which make his eye-witness accounts of value today.\n\nMesny lived in a China which followed a predominantly masculine routine. The majority of foreigners were either isolated loners or members of small groups in remote parts of China, or they lived in treaty ports, enclaves in which the relative comfort of 'home', friends, and social occasions made life bearable, even though foreign women tended to live circumscribed and artificial lives. However, his accounts lack such intimate detail of his and his family's lives. Despite the autobiographical notes in the Miscellany, not only in segments but selective in the extreme, Mesny remains somewhat of an elusive person, and, as none of his letters appear to have survived, much of his personal life would seem to be largely irrecoverable. His enigmatic snippets about his Chinese family are such that they do little more than fuel guesswork. We still lack an account of Mesny's private life in his later years, one in which we might hear the voices of his wives and children as clearly as those of the senior officers we have been provided in the Miscellanies, of the senior Chinese officers during the Kueichou campaign.\n\nMuch of the raw material provided by Mesny contains stark, bald statements which leave loose ends and strands which we cannot gather together without straying into the realms of guesswork. Regrettably, there would appear to be little chance of ever satisfying our curiosity from...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212729, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "23\n\nMesny shared with other Europeans the assumptions of Christian moral superiority. He did, however, have a genuine respect for Chinese culture that was absent in so many foreigners in China. He also approved of Christian missionaries and their work and anticipated that China would be converted to Christianity within the next century, i.e., by the year 2000, and noted at one point during a discourse on meeting Chinese during his travels that he occasionally took the opportunity afforded him by his contact with groups of them to discuss the importance of Christianity.\n\nSeveral times Mesny raged against the iniquity of the Western nations in their support of the Chinese Imperial Government in its struggle against the rebellion of the Taipings. The latter was led by Hung Hsiu-ch’üan, a failed examination scholar and a professed Christian. Hung, a Hakka, was influenced by Protestant faith and adopted a number of its elements into his cult. After a series of visions, he declared himself to be the son of God and a younger brother of Jesus. The Taipings, a major threat to the last Imperial dynasty of China, were puritanical, having outlawed gambling, opium, tobacco, and alcohol. Their rebellion thrived on the tensions stemming from the economic and political issues of the day, though by the end, it had destroyed very many millions of lives and lasted some thirteen years with much of southern China under their control, and with its centre and capital at Nanking on the Yangtze. Defeated by the Imperialists aided by Western mercenaries, Hung committed suicide in 1864, and the Taipings were eliminated. Mesny, who had been well treated by the Taipings during his captivity in Nanking, explained that Hung had eventually been viewed as blasphemous by Western missionaries for believing the Lord's Prayer, calling God their Heavenly Father, and Jesus [the author, he noted, of that very prayer] their Heavenly Senior Brother. It was logical to Hung, said Mesny, to take it that step further, if God is the Father and Jesus is the Son, and God is also our Father, then Jesus must be our Brother too. Hung simply saw himself as a modern-day Saint leading his followers in the way of Jesus. The Chinese slant included concubinage for the leaders together with a number of misinterpretations of Christian beliefs and rituals which, when identified, became anathema to the missionaries both Protestant and Roman Catholic.\n\nHis Other Publications and Letters to the Press\n\nApart from the major work, his Chinese Miscellanies, Mesny appears to have written one book, Tungking, printed by Noronha in Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212956, "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-1993", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "In the economic sphere, the concept of face also prevails. A Japanese who worked in China for quite some time thought that a strong sense of nationalistic pride among Chinese was at work. Chinese thought that being a great nation with a great history, they could achieve whatever the foreigners had accomplished. While it had been clearly stated that the country could not lose in the competition with other developing nations such as India, Taiwan, etc., China chose to spend much more time modernising her own model than learning from the developed industrial nations whose colonial spirit she refuted (Funadashi, 1985: 224-228).\n\nRegardless of the excuse of colonial spirit, Chinese people could not learn from foreigners because they thought they belonged to a superior race. To follow foreigners' steps would mean depreciation of face (Hsu, 1981: 469; Bo, 1987: 199). Even when a Chinese praises Western culture and civilization, he is bound to be called by his fellow countrymen a worshipper of the West (Bo, 1987: 69).\n\nSome Recent Observations\n\nIt is the question of face at work, the importance of it, which pervades the whole country, her culture and her people. Now, in the 1980s, face still seems to be at work. Sun Longji (1983: 60) has cited Yu Luoji's (44) and Li Shuang's (*) cases. Had they not been publicised, they would not have encountered such great reaction from the authorities. It was the revelation of these cases which put the Communist leadership into an embarrassing situation. It could not help putting heavy sentences on these two persons who openly acted against what it preached, otherwise its reputation and power as the outright governing body of China would be hampered.\n\nIn the political sphere, in the 13th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (the most recent session of the All-China Representatives Meeting), a new Central Committee was elected and a once powerful man, Deng Liqun, believed to have lost power in the recent shuffle, was given membership in the Central Advisory Commission. Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary having resigned in disgrace, remained in the Politburo. Hua Guofeng, the former chairman, deposed in the third comeback of Deng Xiaoping, continued his party member status. Aside from the recognition of these men's contributions as a reason for their retention of some participation in the party, it might just be evidence of Pye's postulation - avoidance of putting someone in a totally defeated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213384, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "194\n\nBaddeley, John Frederick (1854-1940) ed, Russia, Mongolia, China, London Macmillan, 1919 (NY B Franklin 1967 mostly memoirs of Russian envoys from beginning of 17th century to end of reign of Alexander I).\n\nBaikov, Feodor Isakovich, An Account of Two Voyages. First of Feodor Isakovitz Backhoff to China, Second Zachary Wagener, a Native of Dresden also in China, in Churchill, Awnsham, compilers, A Collection of Voyages and Travels. London, 1744, v 2, 474-478\n\nBall, Benjamin Lincoln, Rambles in Eastern Asia, Including China During Several Years' Residence (1848-1850), Boston J French, 1856.\n\nBarnett, Eugene Epperson. As I Look Back, Recollections of Growing Up and Twenty-six Years in Pre-Communist China 1888-1936, typescript\n\nBarr, Patricia Miriam, To China with Love, the Lives and Times of Protestant Missionaries in China 1860-1900, London Secker and Warburg, 1972\n\nBarrow, Sir John, Travels in China, London T Cadell and W Davis, 1806 (Listed in Yale University Library catalog as Some Account of the Public Life, and Selection from the Unpublished Writings, of the Earl of Macartney and the date of publication is given as 1807)\n\nBarzini, Luigi, Pekin to Paris, An Account of Prince Borghese's Journey Across Two Continents in a Motor-Car, translated from the Italian, London, 1907,\n\nBates, Lincoln Wallace Jr, The Russian Road to China, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1910.\n\nBeattie, Hilary J, Protestant Missions and Opium in China, 1858-1895, Papers on China, 22A 115-156 (1969)\n\nBecker, C H, et al, The Reorganization of Education in China, Paris. League of Nations, 1932\n\nBell, John, A Journey From St Petersburg to Pekin 1719-22, edited with an Introduction by J L Stevenson, Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press. (NY Barnes and Noble reprint 1966)\n\nBennett, Adrian A, John Fryer the Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1967\n\nBergeron, Marie Ina, Letters a Yeou-wen, Souvenirs de Chine, Tours Mame, 1973\n\nBerry-Hart, Alice, Ching-a-Ring-a-Ring-Ching or Three Victorian Sisters in Shanghai, London. Rex Collins, 1977)\n\nBillingsley, Phil, Bandits in Republican China, Stanford Stanford University Press, 1988", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214557, "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": 415, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "384\n\nby the British. By the turn of the century folk memory in Zhoushan itself of the battles and occupation by the British had disappeared much as it has today in Weihai in Shandong province, which had been a British naval base, with a colonial governor, leased at the same time as the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1898 and held until handed back to China in 1931,\n\nThe British captured and occupied Zhoushan on two separate occasions during the First Opium War. The first occupation was short and brutal, ending with an agreement ceding Hong Kong to the British, the reopening of Guangzhou (Canton) to foreigners for trade and an indemnity in exchange for the restoration to the Chinese of Zhoushan. Both sides promptly repudiated the agreement but not before Zhoushan had been handed back. The Chinese commissioner, Qi Shan was recalled to Beijing (Peking) in chains and charged with treason having surrendered Chinese soil.\n\nThe War restarted some six months after the first retrocession by the British and the city of Dinghai was once more taken. The second occupation of nearly four years was longer but much more amicable on both the British and Chinese sides. The British appear to have failed, intentionally or otherwise, to extend their control far beyond the city of Dinghai and were at the mercy of the local Chinese tradesmen who controlled the victuals required to maintain the British occupation forces. This, however, does not appear to have led to trouble as doubtless the local Chinese were comparatively well paid for their provisions.\n\nOnce the third and final British occupation ended, that is after the Second China War in 1860, there would appear to have been neither routine British consular presence on Zhoushan nor representatives of the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs on Zhoushan. These were stationed in Ningbo, the city on the mainland a mere couple of hours sailing away. However, there was a lighthouse on Zhoushan run by westerners of the Chinese Maritime Customs though this would seem again to have been directed from Ningbo, and at one stage there was a small American Christian missionary presence contrary to official agreements between the Chinese and Western nations, as well as a Lazarus Mission of Roman Catholics; in practice no Christian missionary presence on the archipelago had been authorised by official agreements.", "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": 214963, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "14\n\n4) Had Commissioner Lin adopted less drastic measures in suppressing the opium trade? A difficult course to predict. However, knowing Elliot's repugnance of the opium trade, it is possible the two might have joined forces in fighting the infamous trade. It was Lin's methods, in particular laying siege to the foreign factories, that alienated Elliot's respect, not the end he sought to gain by adopting them.\n\n5) If China had suddenly developed a strong interest in British goods? Tin, wool, and cotton were imported from Britain, but not in sufficient quantities to balance the export of tea. A strong public opinion against opium had been building up in Britain. A greater demand for British goods might have shifted the British official position from laissez faire to oppose opium, dealing a serious blow to the opium trade.\n\nNo doubt, many other alternative courses of history can be suggested, but the few above show how the two addictions—to opium and tea—had determined the course of history of that period and region, and how easily that course might have been altered, preventing the conflict, and possibly subsequent imperialist policy of western nations in China.\n\nConclusion\n\nOf all the foods, solid or liquid, tea has had great influence over the centuries around the world. It has played a part in history, medicine, politics, manners and customs. British interests in the 19th century kept the opium supply line open and the manufacture of opium in India solvent in order to pay for China's tea. Britain went to war with China to protect those interests. In this sense the war was also the Tea War. When Sir George Staunton, an authority on Chinese-British relations and a member of Macartney's mission to China in 1793 (aged 15, he went as a page-boy), declared in Parliament: 'If there had been no opium, there had been no war,' he might well have added: \"And if there had been no tea, there had been no war.\"\n\nSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nALLEN, N.:\n\nThe Opium Trade, Lowell (2nd Edition), U.S.A., 1983.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215673, "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": 450, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "402\n\nBy July 15, the 24th Division was forced back on Taejon, sixty miles below Osan, where it initially took position along the Kum River above the town. Clumps of South Korean troops by then were strung out west and east of the division to help delay the North Koreans.\n\nWhile pushing the 24th Division below Taejon, the main North Korean force split, one division moving south to the coast, then turning east along the lower coastline. The remainder of the force continued southeast beyond Taejon toward Taegu. Southward advances by the secondary attack forces in the central and eastern sectors matched the main thrust, all clearly aimed to converge on Pusan. North Korean supply lines grew long in the advance, and less and less tenable under heavy United Nations Command (UNC) air attacks. The U.S. Far Eastern Air Force meanwhile achieved air superiority, indeed air supremacy, and UNC warships wiped out North Korean naval craft.\n\nAlarmed by the rapid loss of ground, Walker ordered a stand along a 140-mile line arching from the Korea Strait to the Sea of Japan west and north of Pusan. His U.S. divisions occupied the western arc, basing their position on the Naktong River. South Korean forces, reorganized by American military advisers into two corps headquarters and five divisions, defended the northern segment. A long line and few troops kept positions thin in this **Pusan Perimeter**. This line was, essentially, the front on August 12, the day that Mr. Morrison was killed.\n\nMr. Morrison's movements in Korea before his death are unknown. Seoul had fallen several days before his arrival, so he would have been forced to arrive in the south of the country, perhaps at Taegu. One assumes he spent the next five weeks, or so, behind the retreating UNC frontline.\n\n\"Morrison, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, and a great friend of mine, Uni Nair (sic), acting as a UN observer, were all killed together. I have always been convinced that Nair probably got them all into trouble. He was notably fearless. While with the Indian army in Italy during WW2, as a PR officer, he thoroughly enjoyed taking visitors into particularly dangerous sectors where their jeep attracted hostile fire. Towards the end of the war, in Burma, he volunteered without training to jump with paratroops in the drop on the outskirts of Rangoon.\n\n'Nair was fond of palm reading. My own, that I would reach a ripe old age, turned out pretty true. But if we asked Uni what sort of future he read in his own palm he always said, after a pause, “A short life and a merry one.”\" (Russell Spurr -- personal communication with the author)\n\nPage 450\n\nPage 451", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216437, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "146\n\nA contemporary comment in a western journal explained that ‘the Concert of Powers, that powerful instrument which Lord Salisbury compared to a steamroller, gravely assented to the theory of China's neutrality in principle, and did nothing else in practice. Japan's reply to the Russian charges was to cite a number of flagrant breaches of neutrality which the Russians themselves had committed. Japan, too, gravely warned China, and entered various solemn protests. These were not without effect, for by this stage of the war the Chinese were beginning, perhaps more alertly than most western nations, to be awake to the fact that the Japanese were the coming race.\"\n\nOne of Japan's protests to China was that ammunition for the Russian Army at Mukden was being transported there by way of Tientsin (Tianjin), and in one instance as many as three and a half million rounds were seized by Tientsin Customs while awaiting shipment. Peking took the only course open to it in telegraphing to local Chinese authorities that they must end these practices.\n\nA Russian breach of neutrality\n\nOn 4th October 1904 a body of Russian infantry of the 3rd Regiment of Sharpshooters, all wearing Chinese uniforms, attacked the Japanese on the road to Mukden. 'There had been a number of reports of Russian soldiers dressed in Chinese uniforms having approached Japanese troops and even attempted surprise attacks. It was also reported that the Russian Army was continuing to purchase an enormous number of Chinese uniforms. This was not only contrary to the rules of war but exposed innocent Chinese to danger owing to the impossibility of distinguishing at a distance between Russian soldiers and the real Chinese. As the Hague Convention stipulated that unlawful use of uniforms of the enemy, and the Chinese were not the enemy, the Russians deemed it a legal stratagem xüli\n\nAnother major breach of China's neutrality occurred in early January 1905 when Russian General Mistchenko determined to violate Chinese neutrality to get his army to Newchwang without danger to himself. A British correspondent’s description reads:\n\nThe Russians had no intention of playing the game fairly; the rules had been made for the Japanese and not for their own observance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216508, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]