RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 58 Among the eighteenth century travel books must be mentioned two first editions of interest although not relating to the Far East. The earlier is James Cook's A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World of 1777, unfortunately the second volume only. And the second is Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Mungo Park, published in 1799. There is a 1771 edition of A voyage to China and the East Indies, by Peter Osbeck which includes An Account of the Chinese Husbandry, by Captain Charles Gustavus Eckeberg and A Faunula and Flora Sinensis. The first volume contains ten engraved plates of plants found in China. In the second volume is printed a letter from Charles Linné [Linnaeus] to Peter Osbeck which says:- + + + I have read your excellent books with pleasure and surprize. You, Sir, have every where travelled with the light of science: you have named every thing so precisely, that it may be comprehended by the learned world; and have discovered and settled both the genera and species. For this reason, I seem myself to have travelled with you, and to have examined every object you saw with my own eyes. One other eighteenth century account of travels and exploration in the Far East should be noticed: A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies by the Abbé Raynal, 1784. It may be salutary to notice the bitter attacks which the Abbé makes on English administration in India and elsewhere. Books like Ellis' Embassy and Timkowski's Travels have been too often described to warrant inclusion here. The Hundred Wonders of the World, and of the Three Kingdoms of Nature of 1824 published under the pseudonym of the Rev. C. C. Clarke, has a picture of the Porcelain Tower at Nankin, China, as a frontispiece. It is sad to think that this wonder no longer stands; it was destroyed during the T'ai-p'ing Rebellion. Processes of time, not war, have destroyed two of London's institutions listed as 'wonders', the Linwood Gallery of Leicester Square and Bullock's Museum, Piccadilly. It is strange to think that in their day they were compared with the British Museum and the Louvre of Paris. Elements of political economy by James Mill appears in a first edition of 1821. James was the father of John Stuart Mill for whom he obtained a clerkship in the East India Company after he himself had been given a high position following the publication in 1818 of his History of British India. Among the illustrated books in the collection there is an 1828 edition of Flora Javae by Carolo Ludovico Blume with remarkable colour plates. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 56 H. I. LETHBRIDGE 41 In 1838 Charles Mirfin was killed in a duel on Wimbledon Common. The principal escaped abroad but the seconds were found guilty, sentenced to death, but later reprieved. In 1841 the Earl of Cardigan wounded Captain Tuckett in a duel and was accused of 'assault with intent to murder'. In 1852 a group of Frenchmen were indicted for duelling on English soil, sent for trial, and imprisoned. It must have been well known to both Mayréna and Morès that duelling was a criminal offence under English law and that the guilty could not escape easily from a term of imprisonment, even in Hong Kong. In 1872 the Spanish Consul in Hong Kong and the Peruvian Consul in Macao fought a duel at Chinese Kowloon. The Peruvian Consul was wounded by a pistol shot. They were each fined $200 at the Supreme Court in Hong Kong, although the duel had not taken place on Hong Kong soil! 42 ...the duel is a leisure-time institution... In civilised communities it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an hereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that class' (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, 1934, p. 239.) 43 Alfred Capus (1858-1922) was a well-known journalist and man-about-town. 44 Maurice Mac-Nab (1856-1890) was a chansonnier, poet and notorious noctambule. The Rat Mort was a well-known café-chantant in Montmartre, the haunt of decadents, harlots and pleasure-seekers. The composer Charles de Sivry (1848-1900) was for a long time accompanist at the Cabaret du Chat-noir. He was the brother-in-law of Arthur Rimbaud. 45 At table, for example, the courtiers were expected to wait until the King introduced a topic of conversation. 46 John Fortescue Owen, born in 1869, entered the Federated Malay States Civil Service in 1889 and was appointed Junior Officer and Magistrate, Pahang, in that year. 47 See W. Lineham, 'A History of Pahang', Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 14, Part 2, 1936, p. 135. 48 Sir Hugh Clifford, 'The King of the Sedangs', Asia, July-Dec., 1926, p. 920. 49 Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) wrote a famous book, La France Juive, (1886), in which he attempted to demonstrate that France was controlled from behind the scenes by a pack of Jews. 50 R. H. Sherard gives an account of a personal interview with Morès in the Santé prison in The Real Oscar Wilde, London, n.d., pp. 401-2. 51 Morès did not mean to kill Mayer: Mayer impaled himself by running upon Morès's foil. 52 The Marquise offered a large reward for the capture of the assassins. There is a story that she tried to hire a number of cowboys to effect the rescue. She died in 1921 and in her will—a copy of which is in Somerset House, London—she left a sum of money for the erection of a monument at Mechiguig. In 1928 a large granite cross was placed on the spot where Morès fell. Lesley Blanch in her book The Wilder Shores of Love (London, 1954) claims that the Arab-loving Isabelle Eberhardt went in pursuit of Morès' assassins, but I have found no confirmation of the story. 53 Times, 20 July, 1896. 54 Soldiering was also an aristocratic sport, better than the chase. Many people volunteered to fight in wars which did not concern them; see, for example, the career of St. Leger Grenfell, who fought with John Hunt ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 22 RICHARD J. SMITH 11 Comparative studies on selected aspects of modernizing change in these two time periods would be illuminating. One might compare, for example, the aims and accomplishments of the Peking Tung-wen kuan (established in 1862) and the Bansho Shirabesho (established in 1858). On the former, see Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862-1874 (New York, 1967), 241-248; on the latter, consult Marius Jansen, "New Materials for the Intellectual History of Nineteenth-Century Japan," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 20 (1957), 569-582. On the use of Westerners in military affairs in Japan from 1853-1868, see Presseisen, 1-23; H. J. Jones, "Bakumatsu Foreign Employees," Monumenta Serica, 29.3 (Autumn, 1974). 12 Presseisen, chapter 1; Smith, , chapter 4. 13 Albert Craig, Chôshu in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 131-136, 201-203, etc.; Richard J. Smith, "Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Fenghuang-shan, 1864-1873,” Modern Asian Studies, 10.2 (1976). 14 Presseisen, 22-23. 15 See notes 7 and 8; also Hyman Kublin, "The 'Modern' Army of Early Meiji Japan," Far Eastern Quarterly, 9.1 (November, 1949), 24-26; Meron Medzini, French Policy in Japan during the Closing Years of the Tokugawa Regime (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 125-133. 16 For a discussion of Li's modernizing efforts, his extensive use of foreign assistance, and the obstacles he encountered, see S. Y. Teng and John K. Fairbank, China's Response to the West (New York, 1966), 111-112; K. C. Liu, “The Confucian as Patriot and Pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's Formative Years, 1823-1866,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30 (1970); Kenneth Folsom, Friends, Guests and Colleagues (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), 152-157; and K. C. Liu, “Li Hung-chang in Chihli,” in Albert Feuerwerker, et al., eds. Approaches to Modern Chinese History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967). 17 See, for example, Lord Charles Beresford, The Break-up of China (New York and London, 1899), 267-289, esp. 270-280; Major A. E. J. Cavendish, "The Armed Strength (?) of China," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 42 (June, 1898), 709-710, 713-714, 717; Richard J. Smith, "Chinese Military Institutions in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1850-1860," Journal of Asian History, 8.2 (1974), 127. 18 See Smith, "Foreign-Training," 212; Cavendish, 709-710, 713-714. 19 See, for example, Cavendish, esp. 720-723; Captain W. R. E. Gill, "The Chinese Army," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 24 (1881), 371-377; Chester Holcombe, China's Past and Future (London, 1904), 81-88; "The Chinese and Japanese Armies," reprinted from the Army and Navy Gazette in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, 15 (1894), 1258; James Scott, "The Chinese Brave," Asiatic Quarterly Review, 1 (1886), esp. 240; etc. 20 See Smith, , Chapters 8 and 9. 21 See Yang-wu yün-tung cited in Smith, "Foreign-Training," 218. On Chinese resistance to foreign instructors and officers, see ibid.; also Cavendish, 720-721. 22 See, for example, L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes (London, 1931), 18; Stanley Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, 1950), 478-481; John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839-1895 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 65-78, 93-94, 163; Holcombe, 80-85, esp. 83. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 220 NOTES AND QUERIES The borrower then pays that amount weekly until his loan is paid off, while the other depositors reduce their weekly payments by the amount of interest. However, their share value remains. The bidding occurs at a meeting to which all depositors are invited. If no one bids, the banker finds a single borrower from the list of depositors and the funds are thus dispersed. Borrowers must have another person vouch for their integrity and be considered solvent themselves, but no loans are secured by property or recorded in courthouse files as liens. After the loan is made, regular deposits resume until a new round of bidding occurs. After a period of time agreed to by the group, the "bank" stops making loans. After all loans are paid back, the depositors receive their money, and the bank is closed. Then a new one is formed and the process begins again. In this system there is no policing as such. The operation is run by a "banker" chosen by the organizers. The banker accepts deposits, keeps the books (usually handwritten in Chinese characters), keeps the money in a safe place (invariably cash, never in a regular bank account), dispenses the loans and ultimately pays the depositors. When it came time to close the four banks in late 1976, the money was not there to pay the depositors. The lack of that money, according to those involved, is related to the financial difficulties of [name] one of the bankers and head of the local Chinese Free Masons..... This interesting piece was supplied by one of our Members, Captain Charles S. Mill, United States Marine Corps. The account by Eugene Meyer, Washington Post Staff Writer, clearly relates to the traditional Chinese money loan association, not something "created long ago in this country by enterprising Chinese immigrants" as Mr. Meyer supposed. Accounts of it as practised in China may be found in J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese, 4th edition, Kelly and Walsh, Hong Kong 1903: 632-645 and as Appendix E to G. N. Orme's Report on the New Territories [of Hong Kong] for the years 1899 to 1912 in Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, 1912. TWO LETTERS FROM WARTIME CHINA The two letters which follow were passed to me by the late Walter Schofield (Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-1938) They are from the ================================================================================