RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR 159 forces during hostilities against China to settle and allotted them small lots on the waterfront. The Upper Bazaar which lay in the area of Graham and Stanley Streets consisted also of relatively small areas granted to Chinese who were presumptively useful to the nascent colony as tradesmen. The Lower Bazaar was almost totally destroyed in the great fire at the end of 1851 and the Upper Bazaar was removed in 1844 and its inhabitants resettled in Taipingshan. 3 See Gordon to Pottinger, 10 February 1844 [CO129/V/f.141]. + Evidence given by Colonel Malcolm to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China, answer to question 4633. 5 Davis sought to let as many monopolies go as possible to private individuals for what they were prepared to give. Thus, in addition to the markets, he let out also opium, salt, and quarrying monopolies. 6 Lease Register Volume C, f.94. The lot was leased as Marine Lot 38. The lease registers referred to are the Registers of the Land Office in which all dealings in crown land were recorded. The actual transactions themselves are also recorded separately as 'Memorials' and reference is made to them by number. The numbering was done according to the order in which they were registered. I am indebted to the Registrar General of the Government of Hong Kong for allowing me access to the records of the Land Office and for permission to publish material derived from that source. 7 Memorial 122. 8 Memorial 143. 9 Memorial 258. 10 Friend of China, 7 July 1847. 11 Memorial 383. 12 In this article, the romanisations found in the Land Office records are used even where they do not correspond to those either in the Wade-Giles system or current usage. 13 Memorial 304. 14 Ibid. 15 Memorial 345. 16 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847. 17 Friend of China, 14 July 1847. 18 And in so doing, incidentally, infringing the provision of the Treaty of Nanking, 1842, which allowed British subjects to proceed only to the "Treaty Ports" and to nowhere else in China. 19 Friend of China, 14 July 1847. Tam Achoy's market was known as the Kwang Yuen and in the disastrous fire in December 1851, the fifty-one houses which comprised the market were destroyed: see Hong Kong Register, January 1852. Tam was referred to a few years later as the "most respectable Chinaman" who made a practice of going into the witness box to speak for the character of accused persons. He remained in Hong Kong until his death in the 1870's and was one of the founders of the Tung Wah organisation, a charitable body still functioning in Hong Kong. 20 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847. 21 Hong Kong Register, 19 October 1847; Friend of China, 23 October 1847 and 18 December 1847. 22 The Editor of the Friend (John Carr) claimed to have seen Hwei's accounts and that they revealed the "squeeze" payment. Page 165 Page 166 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x Chinese Military Services which have not before been recorded in English. One aspect of Mesny's writings which will bring wry smiles to a number of western faces was his occasional essay into the ever-popular art of China-watching. In 1896 his conjecture that Earl Li Hung-chang was a likely candidate to be the first ruler of a China ruled by Chinese is now, with the benefit of hindsight, amusing to say the least. Even more so was Mesny's next thought. Li perhaps might even marry the Empress Dowager and thus amalgamate his influence with that of the reigning line. He added that the Empress Dowager was however too old to bear children and would therefore only be a witness to her own departing glory by seeing her husband, [and Li would then have been 74] begetting an heir to the throne through a younger woman. Between 1850 and 1873 peasant discontent, both Chinese [Han] and non-Chinese, led to a wave of rebellions, some of exceptional size. These included the Taipins, the Nien and the Moslem revolts, but not Ya'qub Beg's Sinkaing rebellion which ended in 1877. Mesny first became involved in the Taiping rebellion [1850-1864] towards its latter days, a time when the imperialists were gaining the upper hand and had confronted the Taiping leadership in its capital, Nanking where he was held captive for some months. Later, whilst he was working with the Chinese Maritime Customs in Hankow, he became involved with the Nien-fei [the Nien rebels] bandits who ravaged north of the Yangtze between 1851 and 1868. The Nien, a decentralised association of peasants, were basically bandits without any ideology as such, whereas the Taiping rebels were a pseudo-Christian movement led against the imperial rulers in Peking by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan who had adopted some elements of Christian beliefs into his ideology. The Taiping rebels, whose capital city was Nanking, enjoyed some sympathy from westerners but eventually the rebellion was defeated but not until many millions had died. When the final defeat came it was due mainly to the Chinese imperialists under Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-t'ang, aided to some extent by several foreign-trained Chinese forces which included the much-vaunted western-trained force, first under an American Frederick Ward and finally under a British colonel in the Royal Engineers, Charles Gordon, together with direct British and French military intervention in Shanghai and Ningpo areas. The rebels, with whom Mesny and many Christian missionaries at first sympathised, introduced many reforms such as monogamy, and the banning of opium, tobacco and alcohol, and foot-binding. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 69 Green Standard forces and not so about the Lien-chün, we can assume that he was a member of, or attached to one of the Lien-chün. Mesny wrote relatively short explanatory notes in the first volume of his Miscellanies on the three armies, the Army of the Huai River, the Army of the Hsiang River and the Army of Ch'u, about which he felt he had unique knowledge having served with the Chinese military. 'The Huai Army, an important Field Force raised in the area drained by the River Huai, did such good service to the Imperial cause under the C-in-C Li Hung-chang, who had been wise enough to advocate and introduce the use of foreign weapons. The Ever-victorious Army, styled Chang-sheng Chün, first organised and disciplined in a foreign manner by General Ward and subsequently rendered so famous under the command of General Gordon, was the principal corps of this army, and consisted of 5,000 men all told. The Ming-tzu Ying, another corps of the same army, raised by General and later Governor Liu Ming-ch'uan, and disciplined by General Pinel and Colonel Lucas, though senior to the Ever-victorious was, however, secondary in importance at the time' [but still existed when Mesny was writing this in 1895]. At no time did Mesny allude to a general staff in the sense we understand it today. This raises the question what did the Force have by way of what we now call an operations staff or department? Nor did Mesny refer to staff officers responsible for the organisation of manpower or materials; and although he mentioned procurement officers and a staff of officers surrounding the General commanding to carry out his bidding, 'operations' as such, the most crucial aspect of an army's functioning was kept strictly in the hands of the Szechuan force C-in-C. It would appear that military operations in their wider sense were directed by civil mandarins who were more interested in cost cutting than in the direction of the campaign, whereas the military officers, who grade for grade were very much the juniors to the civil mandarins, were responsible for the day to day running of the various forces. Forward planning was always limited by financial constraints. Arms and ammunition, rations and reinforcements had to be reviewed and planned well in advance, but with the attitude of the Viceroy in Ch'eng-tu [according to Mesny] and the restraints imposed by him little could ever be expected to be achieved. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 86 NOTES In one of the notes written by Mesny in his Miscellany, [Volume 4 page 34], he listed the various classes and degrees of military rank in what he terms the Chinese Militia Service. A marshal or general was a T'i-tu Chün-men, a lieutenant-general was a Tsung-ping Kuan, a major-general a Fu-chiang; and a colonel a Ts'an-chiang. 2 Mesny gives various totals for the number of battalions serving with the Szechuan Force and in particular with the Ko-i Brigade, with a grand total of thirty-three battalions in the whole Force. These vary from eight to fifteen and a half operating with the Ko-i Brigade. Presumably the explanation lies in the arrival of new battalions to support the Force from time to time, though we are unable to be certain how many battalions were serving at any one particular moment. Mesny states at the beginning of Volume 1 of his Miscellanies that in 1861 General Ward had organised a disciplined force for the Chinese Government, at first locally styled "Ward's Force" and later as the 'Ever-victorious Legion'. 4 Mesny later keeps referring to thirty-five battalions. The I-ho-t'uan, the "Patriotic Train Band", was the official title of the Boxers, of ill-repute. 6 Mesny too had been a member of a train band, the volunteer force in Hankow between 1863-67, under arms several times during the approach of the Nien-fei rebels, when he wore the uniform of the Queen's Western Rifles [sic]. 7 Mesny goes into some detail providing recruitment policy, promotion schemes, ranks and titles, training and duties. Use of the term Disciplined Force was a contemporary fashion. It later became popular to refer to the Lien-chun Ying as Field Forces. 9 Most of the ranks of unit commanders given by Mesny do not tally with those given by Hucker in his Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. 10 All commanders of divisions and corps had one or more battalions, regiments or brigades, serving a sort of staff brigade and forming the headquarters of that particular army corps. It was popularly designated the Body Guard Battalion or Regiment. Presumably Han Chinese rebels such as the Huang-hao or the Pai-hao, the remnants of the Taipings or even the Moslem rebels. 12 This is the same title as the Force previously operating under the command of General Gordon during the Taiping Rebellion. Either Mesny has incorrectly recalled the title of the new Force or the new Force continued to bear the former title. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 96 Ch'in-ch'ai Ta-ch'en ✯✯E : Imperial High Commissioner, a very senior appointment. Ever Victorious Army ET: A European-officered Chinese force of the Imperial Army raised by the American, Ward, which ultimately, under the command of Colonel Gordon, assisted in putting an end to the Taiping Rebellion. Expectant... (Ho-ju) ✩A : A prefix indicating that an official was qualified and certified to take up duty in the post named. Fan-t'ai #: A provincial treasurer known to foreigners as the Commissioner of Finance; charged with the fiscal or financial administration of a province. Formosa: The Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan. Hakkas [Ko-chia] ** : One of the southern Chinese ethnic groups said to have migrated from northern China during the Mongol dynasty, ca the thirteenth century AD. Han-lin Yuan #: The Chinese National Academy, admission to which was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar. Ho-shang : Buddhist monk or priest. Hongkew : Site of the American Settlement in Shanghai, where Mesny later lived. Hsien : Administrative district. Huang Ma-kua : The Yellow Riding Jacket. A high award from the emperor to his senior officials. Imperial Maritime Customs: Chinese customs service with a foreign inspectorate largely able to control the collection of duties and taxes without the usual Chinese squeeze [q.v.]. Robert Hart became Inspector General in 1863. Jingal (gingal): The Chinese blunderbuss. It was generally fired from a swivel fixed on a wall or wooden post, but sometimes it was fired with ================================================================================