RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 185 BROWNE, Hon, H. J. C, - BRUCE, R. T BRUUN, F. BUNGER, Dr. K. BURTON, Miss J. V. BUTLER, Miss B. A. T BUTT, Dr. Nancy S. G.. CALCINA, P. G." · CAMERON, N. CAPLAN, M. - CAREY-HUGHES, Dr. J. CARLSON, Miss R. E. - CATER, J. · CENTRE OF ASIAN STUDIES CERRA, R. L. CHAMBERS, J. W. CHAN, Alfred T. CHAN, Gilbert Fook-lam CHAN, Leonard CHAU, Sir Tsun-nin* + CHEN, Prof. Cheng-siang CHEN, Ching-ho L T - c/o Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K. c/o Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona 86301, US.A. c/o H. Tonkin & Co., 908 Takshing House, H.K. $32 Bad Godesberg, Lukas-Cranach-Str. 14. Green Pastures, Blackhill Lane, Sevenoaks, Kent, England. Public Services Commission, Room 573 Central Government Offices, 5th Floor, H.K. The Grantham Hospital, Wong Chuk Hang, Aberdeen, H.K. Commercial Investment Co., Ltd., Union House, 12th floor, H.K. A-9 Repulse Bay Towers, Repulse Bay Road, H.K. 6. Homantin Hill Road, Kowloon, Room 315 Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building, H.K. c/o Education Department, Lee Gardens, Hysan Avenue, H.K. c/o Trade Development Council, Ocean Terminal, H.K. University of Hong Kong, H.K. Yau Yat Chuen, No. 18 Fa Po Street, Flat B-7, Kowloon. c/o Secretariat for Home Affairs, International Building, H.K. Coronet Court, 14/F "H", North Point, H.K. La Belle Mansion, 118-120 Argyle Street, 7th floor, Flat A, Kowloon. c/o Pfizer Eastern Corporation, G.P.O. Box 2513, Bangkok, Thailand. 8 Queen's Road, West, Hong Kong. Geographical Research Centre, Chinese University of Hong Kong, On Lee Building, $45 Nathan Road, Kowloon. New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 6 Farm Road, Kowloon. Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 188 ANTHONY FARRINGTON an essential preliminary to any such scheme." A reformulated version in 1670 incorporated this suggestion and added Taiwan. Beginning in 1672 three ships a year were to be sent to Japan, one via Tongking and the others via Taiwan. Tongking would supply silk, musk, skins and tutenague for Japan; Taiwan would supply hides and sugar. On the return voyage the three ships would separate: one to Surat, one to Madras, and the third to Taiwan, Tongking and Bantam, to pick up any commodities suitable for Europe. Unlike the early years before 1623, the East India Company seems to have begun to appreciate that the whole area of South-East and East Asia, from Malaysia to Japan, formed a region-wide commercial unit, criss-crossed by an inter-dependent trade network powered by the monsoons. What the Company was now attempting to do, as the Dutch had already done, was to insert itself into a Chinese dominated system of exchange. Looking back from the Company's commercial and political strength a century later it is perhaps tempting to see the Japan scheme as a second-best alternative or a prelude to trade with mainland China. However, more than 25 years ago at least one historian argued that the gradual development of trade with China only took place against a background of failure in Japan and difficulties in Tongking, and that it was not until the decade 1674-1684 that interest really shifted from Japan to China. The possibility of direct access to China had agitated Richard Cocks at Hirado in Japan between 1613-1623. But the Company paid little attention to his dreams and the archives covering the new 'East Asian push' of the 1660s and 1670s give China only passing mention. Morse throws Tongking into his confused narrative as a mere extension of China and states that Tongking was the only accessible source for the bulk supply of Chinese silks. The English factory diary, though, makes it quite clear that the silk trade out of the Red River was not a matter of re-export but handled a local product. It seems incredible now that the East India Company never considered that they might not be allowed to re-enter Japan ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 in much broader terms, a crisis about France itself and not only its intellectuals, it is an ideological dilemma about the validity of our privileged position in the world of today. And at both levels, China is still part of our intellectual horizon. How should intellectuals stand in relation to politics? Should they be involved? The prevailing trend in today's France is almost total rejection of the intellectuel engagé figure, of the politically committed intellectual in the tradition of Voltaire and Hugo, of Emile Zola, Romain Rolland and Jean-Paul Sartre. Here China has certainly played an indirect yet influential role; for the simplistic excesses of the pro-Maoist rhetoric of yesterday and the bitter, almost overnight realisation that the Maoist mirage was just a mirage, greatly contributed to the discredit of the intellectuel engagé. Ironically enough, the same ex-radicals who are presently disavowing their Maoist past have not altogether given up their incorrigible tendency to look abroad for an ideal society. The New Philosophers have turned far away from China to a completely new direction, namely the United States and Reaganism. This is the New Libertarian Right, campaigning in France for economic deregulation and military solidarity with Washington. Another critical question for present-day French intellectuals deals with their own position in society at large. With the present-day tendency towards elitist professionalisation of academics, doctors, architects and engineers, the ‘barefoot doctor' of the Maoist era appears more and more remote. But did the barefoot doctor just represent a Utopian dream, a Rousseauistic image? Interestingly enough, in many developing countries of Asia and Africa, people who probably never read a line of Mao Zedong in their lives commonly refer to ‘barefoot architects', more familiar with local building materials than with reinforced concrete, and more concerned with the needs of the ordinary people than with the tastes of high-ranking business executives in their luxury hotels. More generally, the relevance of the Western model of development for most African, Asian, South American and also Pacific countries is vigorously debated today among French and other Western intellectuals, and this brings us back to China. How to balance heavily centralised technologies, "white elephants' such as ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 256 The Swire Group Swire News (various) Union Corner, (booklet of Union Insurance Society of Canton Ltd.) Watson's Calendar 1897 REPORTS, PAPERS AND FACT SHEETS Bard, S.M., Foreign Trade and Traders in Early British Hong Kong (1988) Hong Kong: The Facts (various Government fact sheets) Leeds, P.F., The Development of Public Transport in Hong Kong Review (November 1974) NEWSPAPERS, SUPPLEMENTS AND PERIODICALS An Historical Art catalogue, excerpts mentioning the Watson family (undated, details unknown) The Asia Magazine Asian Finance Building Journal Hong Kong, Ire (no. 2 Feb. 1990) Hong Kong Standard (various) *A New Era for Swire Travel, Hong Kong Standard Special Publication (31 October 1974) 'New Lane Crawford House', Souvenir Magazine to Commemorate the Opening of New Lane Crawford House, Hong Kong Standard/Sing Tao Jih Pao (June 1977) Newspaper clippings, Hong Kong Public Records (various) South China Morning Post (various) South China Morning Post 75 Years (1978) '139 Years of Temptation', South China Morning Post Supplement (15 March 1989) LETTERS TO THE AUTHOR From: Mr Rupert S.C. Li (Swindon Book Company) The Royal Society, London Standard Chartered Bank ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 345 Collar, Hugh, CAPTIVE IN SHANGHAI: A STORY OF INTERNMENT IN WORLD WAR II, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990. xvi + 160 pp. Index. Hugh Collar, unofficial head of the British in Shanghai after the Sino-Japanese War became a part of World War II, wrote an account of the international community under Japanese internment. This is a rambling but often interesting account, edited by Pauline Woodroffe. AN Liu Binyan, CHINA'S CRISIS: ESSAYS FROM INTELLECTUAL IN EXILE, translated from the Chinese into English by Howard Goldblatt, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1990. xxv + 50 pp. Index. This volume comprises a series of five lectures given at Harvard in 1988-89 by one of China's most eminent dissidents. Liu, who had suffered for his intellectual principles during the 1950s as well as during the Cultural Revolution a decade later, was expelled from the Communist Party and was banned from publishing. There is a Foreword written by Professor Merle Goldman. Mehrotra, Santosh K., INDIA AND THE SOVIET UNION: TRADE AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Notes. Bibliography. Index. As the title indicates, this work is about the economic relationship between the Soviet Union and India (an industrialized planned economy and a developing market economy). The period covered is between 1955 and just before the book went to press. ASIAN DEVELOPMENT OUTLOOK 1992, 1992. 313 pp. This study of economic development in the Asian countries containing a large amount of information with useful statistics, was published by the Asian Development Bank and Oxford University Press. Dardess, John W, CONFUCIANISM AND AUTOCRACY: PROFESSIONAL ELITES IN THE FOUNDING OF THE MING DYNASTY, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. 358 pp. with 1 map. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Professor Dardess argues that, far from being a 'socially indeterminate category', the body of elitist professional Confucian public servants consciously created a highly centralized state at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, leading to five hundred years of autocracy in China. deBary, William Theodore, FIRST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS: A ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 20 tax incentives and other government assistance? Apart from its superb harbour Hong Kong had no natural advantages. Almost all the raw materials for industry had to be imported. The population (840,000 at the 1931 census) was wretchedly poor and could not provide the purchasing power to support large-scale industry. But Hong Kong was well-placed to export cheap manufactured goods to the vast market of China and the neighbouring countries of Asia where until the 1930s tariffs on imports were low. The world depression led China and other Asian countries to erect high tariff barriers which threatened to cripple Hong Kong's burgeoning industry. The colony was saved by the decisions taken at the Ottawa conference to adopt the policy of imperial preference. This handicapped its main competitor, Japan, by imposing high tariffs and later quotas designed to exclude Japanese manufactures from markets in the British empire. This created a vast imperial free trade area embracing Britain, its colonial territories and New Zealand. Traders and businessmen in the African or Caribbean colonies could have seized the opportunity to exploit it, but it was only the energetic and adaptable Chinese entrepreneurs of Hong Kong who did so. The decisions taken at Ottawa which were designed to help industry in the dominions gave an unintended boost to Chinese factory owners in the back streets of Kowloon. University of Hong Kong NOTES 1. M. Havinden and D. Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1850-1960 (London, 1993), 1. D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism 1870-1945: An Introduction (London, 1981), 51–108. David Meredith, "The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy 1919-1939', Economic History Review, 28 (1975), 484-99. Louis Nthenda, 'From Trade to Manufacture: Britain's Dilemma in the Face of Colonial Industrialization 1931-1938', Journal of Social Sciences, 1 (1972, University of Malawi), 95-112. 2. Leo Amery in 1926, quoted by Meredith, 495. 3. Meredith, 494. The only supporting evidence for this theory in the Colonial Office files is a letter from the governor of Uganda, 22 Dec. 1934, who warned that any large-scale industrial development which caused rural depopulation would result in a serious increase in sleeping sickness. CO323/1298/10, Public Record Office, London (PRO). 4. See for example J. Riedel, The Industrialization of Hong Kong (Tubingen, 1974), 5-6; F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (London, 1993), 451; D. Lethbridge, The Business Environment in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1980), 1–2. A contrary view is given by Frank Leeming, "The Earlier Industrialization of Hong Kong', Modern Asian Studies, 9 (1956), 337-42, who cites evidence from Hong Kong and Macao Business Classified Directory (1940, in Chinese). 5. Minute by G.L.M. Clauson, 7 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Memoranda and Draft Report of Interdepartmental Committee 1937, CO852/164/6 and T160/763/F14811/1 and 2, PRO. 6. According to D.J. Morgan, The Origins of British Aid Policy 1924-1945 (New Jersey, 1979), 9, the proportion of general revenue in the colonies derived from customs duties in 1933 was: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 361 THE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY J. L.Y. CHAN In the early days of Empire, when western institutions permeated around the world as a result of colonisation in the nineteenth century, libraries were among the first community organisations established wherever foreign settlements developed. Some of the libraries began as informal shared collections of reading materials, but a few developed a specialty of publications providing sources of information about the host country and its culture. This paper traces the development of the Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, its progress and growth since inception, and addresses some of the concerns faced by the Library. The Royal Asiatic Society The establishment of the Asiatic Society dates back to 1784 when a group of interested traders, missionaries, diplomats and administrators founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. This provided the impetus for the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society in London (now known as the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland) in March 1823 which again gave rise to the founding of other branches, in Bombay and Madras in 1838, in Ceylon in 1845, in Japan in 1875, in Malaya in 1878, and in Korea in 1900. In China, two branches were established, the Hong Kong Branch (formerly named the China Branch) started in 1847 followed by the North China Branch in Shanghai in 1857/58. The aim of the Royal Asiatic Society and its branches is "... investigation of the subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia." As such, they serve as fora for discussion and greater understanding of Asian culture. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had actually grown out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society which was founded in 1845, initially constituted as the China Branch in January 1847 with the effort of Sir John F. Davis, the then Governor, himself a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Due to dissent and feuds within the trading community in Hong Kong, the China Branch collapsed in ================================================================================