RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
152

JAMES HAYES

in 1859 and spread outwards through the self-governing and other territories of what became the Commonwealth and Empire. It extended to Britain's Eastern Colonies and to the foreign communities of the treaty ports of China and Japan where, from time to time, various alarms and excursions added self-preservation to the list of factors motivating the continuance or periodic resuscitation of volunteer corps.

In Hong Kong the Laws of the Colony early provided for their existence as a constitutional force. A succession of Ordinances established volunteers on a proper basis. The earliest of these was No. 2 of 1862, which was repeated with slight variation in No. 18 of 1882. An important re-modelling was carried out by No. 6 of 1893. This was followed by a Volunteer Reserve Ordinance No. 25 of 1910. Both these Ordinances were replaced by a further Volunteer Ordinance No. 2 of 1920, still modelled largely on the important 1893 Ordinance.

Volunteer forces were the rule in the various foreign concessions in China, though save in the larger ones local volunteer forces tended to be formed and reformed whenever events seemed to warrant it. For example, the Shameen Defence Corps was formed after a serious riot in 1884 and was reformed from time to time, e.g. in May 1911 due to the unsettled state of affairs in Canton (see Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen 1859-1938 compiled by H.S.S. and privately printed about 1938, pp. 19-26).

The largest of the China volunteer units was, in time, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This originated at two public meetings held in April 1853 and its early doings are described in Chapter XXXV of Lanning and Couling's The History of Shanghai, Part I (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1921).

Interesting details of its development are given here and there in Brigadier J. V. Davidson-Houston's Yellow Creek, The Story of Shanghai (London, Putnam, 1962). As in Hong Kong, the passing of the first emergency resulted in the demise of the Corps. "Enthusiasm for the Volunteer Corps sank to a low ebb, members neglected to turn up for training and it was soon practically defunct" (p. 58). The Corps was again raised in August 1860 with the onset of the Taiping rebels, when 107 volunteers came forward for enrolment (p. 65). However, after the successful operations against the rebels the Corps "wilted and died" and was wound up in 1867 to "pay for its debtor's balance by selling its rifles" although the rifle club continued to function (p. 90). The Corps was again formed in 1870 following the Tientsin massacre and continued in being thereafter, its numbers fluctuating between 250-350 for the rest of the 19th century (pp. 92-93). It then continued to grow in size, like the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to meet the difficulties of the troubled 1920s and the war with Japan.

The number of foreign residents in China is relevant to the size and location of Volunteer Corps. Some figures are given at pp. 292-295 of J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China, 4th edition, Hongkong, Kelly and Walsh 1903. There were, for instance, 4,424 foreigners in Shanghai (exclusive of those living in the French Settlement) in 1895 and 6774 in 1900. The Hong Kong Census of 1891 listed 10,446 British and foreign residents.
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
154

JAMES HAYES

account which is intended to provide a factual background to, and trace the major influences on, local volunteering over this long period.

DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANISATION

(a) 1854-1914

The different motivations, needs and attitudes of changing times provide some of the most interesting aspects of the history of the Hong Kong Volunteer Force. Danger is always a stimulus to volunteer efforts and the first Volunteers owed their origin to a foreign 'scare' occurring at a time of war with Russia and imagined insecurity in Hong Kong. This led the colonial authorities in June 1854 to take the initiative in calling for a corps of Volunteers for the defence of the lives and properties of themselves and their families in the temporary absence of a naval force sufficient to deal with an emergency. (It is interesting that Government called for an Auxiliary Police Force at the same time.) This call lost its magic when the emergency did not materialise and naval protection was restored, and for a few years there were no Volunteers in being.7

Attempts to form a new Corps in 1857 proved an utter failure, the subject was mooted in the press in 1860 without result, and the eventual establishment of a new body of Volunteers on 7 April 1862 can be traced to an enthusiast, Captain Frederick Brine, Royal Engineers, a regular officer who had formed the Shanghai Volunteers in 1861 and went on to form other corps at Hankow and Yokohama. This second Hong Kong corps was disbanded in May 1866.

A third Volunteer Corps was formed in May 1878, arising out of the danger of war with Russia the previous year. It was entitled the Hong Kong Artillery and Rifle Volunteer Corps. Endacott gives a succinct account of this body:

It numbered 150 by the end of the year, but when the crisis passed interest waned; there were quarrels, and all

7 See Vol, 1954, pp. 17-23 and Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, (Oxford University Press, 1958) pp. 90, 119.

8 Endacott, pp. 119-120. The Hong Kong Volunteers were organised as a battery of artillery with a band and rifle company added within a year see Major Arthur Chapman's article in Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. (1908) p. 274.
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.

161

mandant's annual report in the 1937 Year Book that there had been numbers of Chinese members serving in different units in the Corps before 1937.27 Some stimulus was required, and No. 4 Company's contribution to the 1938 Year Book tells us what it was. "Encouraged by the records of the Chinese units in the Shanghai and Malay Volunteers, Headquarters considered that the inclusion of a Chinese unit in the Hong Kong Defence Force was fully justified."28

This was a real innovation, even if it was partly brought about by the preparation for war and the search for more men. All through the 19th century and early 20th century, though it far outnumbered the European community, the Chinese element in the Colony, was considered to be the shifting sector of the population with the European element as the hard core. The fact that Chinese were willing to serve and were coming forward in numbers on a voluntary basis is a significant development, not only in the history of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps but of the Colony itself. These men were not coolies and street traders, but belonged to the settled middle-class that had developed in Hong Kong Chinese society over the years since 1841.

War came to Hong Kong in December 1941. Including auxiliary units, the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force had a mobilised strength of 2,200 at the Japanese Invasion.29 It played a memorable, and costly, part in the defence of the Colony and its members suffered along with their Regular comrades and civilian internees during three and a half years of imprisonment that included, for some, transfer to Japan to work in essential industry, like coalmines. The story of these years has been told elsewhere,30 but the fighting and the period as prisoners of war cost the H.K.V.D.F. the lives of 172 officers and men killed in action or died of wounds, 39 missing, believed killed, and 78 died as P.O.W. The Force was awarded 1 C.B.E., 1 D.S.O., 4 M.B.E.s, 3 M.C.s, 1 D.C.M., 6 M.M.s, 3 B.E.M.s and 18

27 Y.B., 1937, p. 6.

28 Y.B., 1938, p. 47. There is, however, a reference to 'all races' volunteering in 1914-18 for the forces and to serve with the Volunteers in Endacott, p. 284.

29 Vol, 1954, p. 112.

30 See note 6 above.

31 Vol, 1954, p. 111.
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
170

JAMES HAYES

supplied as Commandant.56 This trend intensified in the period after 1893. Indeed, in general terms, the 1893 Ordinance marks the transition from a private army to a public body subject to full military discipline and supervision and official financial scrutiny. This did not mean that public funds were to be spent lavishly on the Volunteer Corps. In the 1930s the Year Books speak rather wistfully of the fact that the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps was not treated so generously by its Government as were the Volunteers of the Colonial Governments of the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, and did not have 'a fairy godmother' such as the Shanghai Volunteer Corps possessed in their Municipal Council57 (though in fairness it should be stated that their economies were more prosperous than Hong Kong's at this time). For instance, the need for a new Headquarters was pressing at this period and negotiations with Government were slow but had by February 1936 reached the stage when, as R. S. M. Parkinson observed sardonically at the Sergeants' Mess Annual Dinner 'they could confidently expect the building up within the next decade'.58 Like other departments of the public service, the Volunteers had to present their case for funds and take their turn in the queue.

This account is no more than an introduction to the subject, which is large and important enough to deserve a full-length study similar to those of regular regiments of the British Army by professional military historians such as C. T. Atkinson, S. H. F. Johnston, and Marcus Cunliffe. However, even a short article demonstrates that Hong Kong Volunteers have a long and interesting history which in its military, community and social aspects is so much interwoven with the development of the Colony at large.

Finally, Volunteering is required to generate its own momentum. In the pages of the pre-war Year Books, the post-war Volunteer Magazine and the letters and reminiscences of former Volunteers, there is abundant evidence of the spirit which has

56 Endacott, p. 209.

57 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 7 and 1938, p. 8.

58 Y.B., 1938, p. 35.
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207
HONG KONG RIOTS OF OCTOBER 1884

55

have not considered that history to be of any great significance to anyone outside the Colony it is hardly surprising that it has not received the attention which it really deserves.

The lack of appreciation for Hong Kong's importance is especially evident when we look at the events of the Sino-French War. The Hong Kong Volunteers were expanded and rearmed in the years before and after the War. No doubt the 1884 riots3 assisted the process but James Hayes' "Short History" does not give the period of the war more than a passing notice indicating that the Sino-French War occurred and had some side effect on Hong Kong.* In his Laws and Courts of Hongkong James Norton-Kyshe did briefly discuss the riots, but he paid surprisingly little attention to the Peace Preservation Ordinance which was inspired by them.

Since the secondary material for this period in Hong Kong's history is so limited, any study of the period of the 1880s has to lean heavily on the equally scarce primary materials available outside the Colony. In this area the records of the Public Records Office in London are most helpful, but they can provide only the official version of the events. They seldom contain information on the motives of the participants, and are severely limited by the nature of government reports.

Though newspapers are frequently very poor sources of primary information, in this case the firsthand reports of the English language Hong Kong Daily Press are probably the most valuable source of information about the events which occurred there in the fall of 1884. Unfortunately the English press in Hong Kong, because of the prejudices of the reading public for which it was produced, is not a very good source of information about the Chinese community in the Colony. Many of the reports in the English press were colored by the prevailing attitudes of the European community toward the Chinese. However, this prejudice makes it just that much more important when the papers depart from those attitudes because that departure should indicate that something had occurred to alter the opinions of the reporters. As we will see, that is precisely the case with the editors of both the Shanghai-based North China Herald and the Hong Kong Daily Press in 1884.

What is really needed, and what is simply not available outside Hong Kong, is primary material which would enable us to ascertain what really were the motives of the Chinese participants in the
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063
30 

WALTER GREENWOOD 

due from him for some sharpness with which he might have addressed the men (there was cries of “not at all”). If he had done so it had been with the best intentions. A gentleman from Shanghai who had recently witnessed them at seven pounder gun drill had expressed the opinion that the Shanghai artillerymen could not hold a candle to them. In May the Governor congratulated the Volunteers on their smartness at the Queen's Birthday parade. In November the Daily Press noted “The Volunteers are very fortunate in the officers they have elected to command them, for since the time they were appointed they have shewn an enthusiastic interest in the welfare of the Corps. During the past week Captain Francis has been busily engaged in getting up a field day at Kowloon so as to give the men a good introduction to the new equipment of small arms and mountain guns which were sent out in the Telemachus, with the additional attraction of a knife and fork drill at Mr. Chater's bungalow afterwards”. In June 1884 a volunteer complained to the press of having to drag guns up and down the parade ground for over an hour. However Francis seems to have been absent from the colony at that time. In 1886 and again in 1887 he was acting Commandant but his active participation in the Corps was coming to an end. He was absent from the Annual Meeting and there was a critical letter in the press about that. He tendered his resignation and in 1888 was placed on the retired list as an honorary member with the rank of captain. However that did not end his contributions to the Corps. In December 1892 he was a member of a committee formed to re-establish the Corps on a new basis and in January 1893 he was chairman of a recruiting committee which met at his chambers on Tuesdays and Fridays at 4-5p.m. In 1897 he contributed to prizes for a firing competition. The firing point was on an eminence near Wong Nei Chong Gap and the target at Deepwater Bay. Common and shrapnel shells were used and “some good practice was made”. Francis presented a cup for competition known as the "Francis Cup" but it seems to be no longer in the possession of the Volunteers. And as one of his obituaries noted he "took a keen interest in military matters and was seldom absent from any important parade or display in his uniform". Francis himself said "I would rather any day attend a military parade or march in front of a military band than march in a procession in Westminster Hall headed by the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. If I have one proclivity more than any
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
163

concert. Everything was conducted in a quiet gentlemenly manner so that we imagined ourselves in a drawing room more than in a theatre. There was no attempt at grandeur of display (...) which characterises too much the quasi musical taste of the day where the composition of the author is sacrificed frequently to the execution of the performer and the audience is led to think more of the latter than of the former**. "The "Shanghai Commercial Record" reported in a similar laudatory way about the Annual Volunteer Concert on February 15, 1865: “We fancy few home concerts could show anything better; amateur concerts we are sure rarely could".20

However, about professional musicians, and those formed the majority of performers, the critic sometimes made no bones about his disapproval: speaking of a recital given by a Professor Shonbrun on the piano in March 1859, he was "sorry to say we have no great opinion of his powers; the skill and artistic feeling which would be highly respectable in an Amateur reflect no especial credit on a professional player'"; at the same time **the Amateurs who assisted Mr. Shonbrun did their share well and merit great praise". Thus the line was drawn, at least by this particular reviewer.

III. The Companies

A. Theatrical

**21

Writing about the theatrical companies that performed in Shanghai during the period 1850-1865, a distinction must be made between those that were got up from among the local residents, those that were initiated by the military garrison, and those that were of a professional, travelling nature.

The Local Companies

On November 15, 1866, it was proposed at a meeting of the Dramatic Corps of the Infantry and Rangers of the Shanghai Volunteers Corps that “a Dramatic Society be formed",22 and hardly a month later the Shanghai Amateur Dramatic Corps was established on December 7.23 Its objects were stated to be "the encouragement and maintenance of an amateur theatre in Shanghai; the maintenance of a theatrical library and the management of funds for theatrical purposes". There were to be no honorary members but only those who were willing to be active
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
225

"Lady Audley's Secret", for which HED lists the following authors: C.H. HAZLEWOOD (1863), G. ROBERTS (1863) and W.E. SUTER (1863).

C: Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company

Th: N.N. (I)

R: For the first time we have at our disposal another source than the "North China Herald" for reviews of the Shanghai theatre, viz. the "Shanghai Commercial Record". In general, though, the reports were in the same vein as those in the Herald had been, but sometimes more information was given and different accents set. Hardly so for tonight's pieces: they "reflected great credit on the talent of the performers and their endeavour to provide for the amusement of their fellow exiles has we are sure been highly appreciated" (SCR 7.1.1865). The Herald only published an announcement (NCH 24.12.1864).

11.1.1865 (Wedn)

D. BOUCICAULT: "The Octaroon" (1859)

T: Drama (4 acts)

C: Thorne (travelling) Company

Th: Lyceum Theatre (1)

R: Sometimes the availability of two sources does not make it easier to make a judgement about the truth of things. What to think e.g., of the following reports on the Thorne Company: The Herald was short in its weekly summary of 14.1.1865: "The Thorne Company have given a successful representation of the Octoroon at the Lyceum Theatre and announce a second performance for this evening" (i.e., Saturday). In contrast, the Shanghai Commercial Record reported in its issue of January 25: "We have had another theatrical troupe here, calling themselves the Thorne Troupe. But whether it is that Shanghai has had too much of this class of entertainment lately, or that the pressure of the times is so great that people do not care to attend the Theatre, we cannot say. Both these causes combined probably to render the patronage bestowed on the Thorne Troupe extremely small. Indeed, when they opened on Wednesday evening last [this should read January 11 - JH] it was literally to an empty house for we hear there was actually no one present to view the performance. The company, as well they might be, were so disgusted that they left next day for San Francisco where we sincerely trust they will be more successful" Cf. however, Survey, note $2.

14.1.1865 (Sat)?

As above?

4.2.-10.2.1865

Concert by Mr. Desvachez and Signor Enrico Grossi. Th: Town Hall of the French Concession

R: The violinist DESVACHEZ returned to Shanghai, this time accompanied by the bass singer Enrico GROSSI who had earlier, in December 1863, performed with the Faylor Company in Macao (see BGM 14.12.1863). The concert had called for favourable comment at the hands of our music critic” — indicating that a more detailed review had appeared in the North China Daily News (NCH 11.2.1865).

15.2.1865 (Wedn)

Annual Volunteer Concert by the Volunteer Band and the "Shanghai Amateur Quartet Club**.

Th: Shanghai Club

R: The Commercial Record of 22.2.1865 gave the following impression of this concert: "The Volunteer Band was assisted by the Shanghai Amateur Quartette Club and several gentleman amateurs. The large room in the Club House was lent for the occasion and we were glad to see it well filled. The gay uniforms of the Shanghai Mounted Rangers, mingled with the more sober dress of the Volunteers gave the room a very gay
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
116

controlling the rackets of the Shanghai underworld. With the advent of the Japanese they no longer felt safe there and so had taken refuge in Hongkong. The long-gowned men were their bodyguards. These were the gangster chiefs, well regarded by the Chinese government, who had been responsible for the communist purge ten years previously. You can imagine what sort of a strain the presence of such men placed on the vigilance of the Hongkong police.

The police, however, did trip up badly once. One day a well-dressed, good-looking Chinese gentleman landed from the Chungking passenger plane. He had no passport or credentials and refused to say who he was. So he was detained. He turned out to be Mr. Tai Li, the formidable head of Chiang Kai Shek's dreaded Gestapo. The detention, although very brief, involved a loss of face, and it took a special visit of the British Ambassador to China to Hongkong to smooth the affair over. It is said Mr. Tai Li has ever since used his influence in a direction unfavourable to Britain.

Hongkong carried imperial liabilities. It was less irresponsible than Shanghai: nor was it a place like Shanghai where Japanese bagmen flocked in the wake of their army as instruments of Japanese policy with the dual role on the one hand of beguiling the foreign businessman, and on the other of reaping a rich commercial harvest from the trade restrictions imposed by the army on all business which did not pass through Japanese channels. Hongkong knew it had nothing to expect from Japan. It guessed the defences and the garrison were both inadequate; two weak British battalions, one Indian battalion, four out-of-date aircraft, and a small assortment of guns. Yet small as they were, the armed forces looked to their defences. Workmen set to to build concrete pillboxes to cover the beaches, of which there were a large number; alternative sites were prepared for light anti-aircraft guns, roads were built to link weak points in the system, bomb shelters were tunnelled out of the hillsides, and the British civilians, enrolled as volunteers, went into military training. Others served as watchers of the fixed minefields laid off the island, and small naval vessels were set to patrol the adjacent waters outside the boom which floated ready to stretch across the harbour entrance.

But the Japanese had their spies everywhere. The excellent barber's shop on the ground floor of that English stronghold, the Hongkong
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
134

phone. It was a friend of mine, a former N.O., to let me know he had just heard from the British gunboat that the Luftwaffe was bombing Warsaw. I went over to a party at another table to tell them that the launch picnic we had arranged for the following Sunday would be off. The news spread from table to table. No emotion registered on the faces of the stolid English people sitting on the verandah of that exclusive club. A stranger coming in just then would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary except, perhaps, that it was later than usual when the members scattered from their tables to go home to dinner. I do not think that this display of composure was entirely due to British phlegm; it sprang in part from an unimaginative failure to realise what the news meant. Warsaw was very far from Shanghai. My Sunday picnic need not have been cancelled for all the difference the war made in its early stages. The chief problem seemed to be whether those with children in England should move them elsewhere, to the States or to China. There was no encouragement to join up; in fact, young men were informed officially that it was their duty to stick to their jobs to keep British trade going.

Since the outbreak of the war between China and Japan, there had been a succession of political murders and outrages in the foreign areas of Shanghai. I think probably that the Chinese government started it. They considered any "puppet" fair prey and, I daresay, those Green and Red tongs came in useful. Then the Japanese retaliated by organising terrorist gangs of their own, and attacking Chinese with prominent government connections, or such as refused to collaborate. It almost amounted to a reign of terror, under cover of which ordinary crime, too, increased. The police found great difficulty in coping with the situation. They themselves were sniped at by both sides. The police, in both foreign areas, were remarkably efficient, but unpopular with the official Chinese, because so often involved in suppressing illegitimate political activities, which had a long history in Shanghai.

My wife and I were living in a small flat in the French town, and several of us, in preference to joining the Shanghai Volunteers, decided to join the French Special Police. We were issued with a blue uniform, with a thin red line down the trouser, a police kepi, and a French tin hat; also a large Mauser automatic, one of numbers collected from time to time at the Concession entrances from disbanded Chinese troops seeking admission to the safety of the foreign area. In this accoutrement we paraded several evenings a week at the Central
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641
And the wise man withers away like a plant

Late of Shanghai and Hong Kong, Arnold Graham frequently wrote to the newspapers in Hong Kong under the pseudonym of 'Ancient Gwailo'. Before he left Hong Kong, in 1994, he made a donation of about 515 books to our library for which we remain grateful.

Finance

Again our Honorary Treasurer, who looks after our precious dollars and makes sure we charge members sufficient for our services, will present his own report. We are grateful to him, and we depend a great deal on his professionalism and sound advice.

The Council

Much of the work done by your Council requires a special expertise, for instance posts like Treasurer, Librarian, and Editor. As mentioned above, we are grateful for the experience these office bearers bring to bear. Likewise, it is important the Council is able to offer a standard of scholarship and some of your Councillors are, or were, employed in academia. Several Councillors, as well as non-Council members, have published. Some offer administrative experience. It must be repeated here that your Council is a working Council. Everyone is expected to pull his or her weight. Some have undertaken additional tasks. For instance, Dr Elizabeth Sinn, with the assistance of Matthew Hockaday, is in the process of sorting and indexing the Society's collection of photographs.

In addition, because of their individual expertise, several Council members also serve on the Antiquities Advisory Board, in a personal capacity, and some are involved with 'Heritage Year' which is presently running in Hong Kong. Several Society members have acted as volunteers and have assisted the Antiquities and Monuments office. Your Branch has a good relationship with the Antiquities and Monuments office which we value.

xvii
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
122

his birth and childhood, and my favourite stamping ground in China Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi province, to his first wife, the daughter of John Mesny, a junior employee of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, the life of whose elder brother, William Mesny, was the subject of my earlier research [vide.: my paper in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch: Volume 32, 1992]. Sowerby roamed far and wide throughout northern China before serving for a while in France as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps [vide: my Note on Chinese Labour Corps Graves in England in the Journal of the RAS HK Branch Volume 29, 1989]. He then visited Fukien province and met Caldwell whose book on the Blue Tigers of that province had intrigued me when I was much younger. Finally, I was drawn to Sowerby's life story because he was not only a dedicated member of the North China Branch of the RAS in Shanghai for whom he wrote prolifically and eventually became its President, an honour he held for some five years, 1935-1940 but also because he produced his fascinating bimonthly journal on both everyday and exotic Chinese subjects. Since his death nearly fifty years ago he has faded into insignificance and is forgotten by all but those who happen to come across his books and journals.

Arthur Sowerby was an explorer and author who lived through very exciting times, first as the son of a Christian missionary in the Chinese interior at the time of the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through the Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the War Lord period during which he roamed some of the more remote areas of northern China. This was followed by the crises and struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists, the incursions and eventual full-scale invasion by the Japanese, his incarceration in an internment camp in Shanghai during the Second World War, ending with learning during his latter years in retirement, first in England and then in the United States, of the Communist victory in 1949 and, just before his death, of the Korean War when China sent its "Volunteers" to aid the North Koreans against the South Koreans and their allies which included the Americans and British. During the last thirty-five or so years of his life he suffered great pain wracked as he was by arthritis.

It was said that he could speak Chinese ‘like a Chinese.' There is no reason to doubt this as he must have learned it at his ayah's knee though he appears never to have made any effort to learn to read and write the language. During his life in China, the next forty or so years,
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n
52

found four such phrases." They added, in answer to a question, that the CWGC commemorates all members of the Commonwealth forces who died in conflicts regardless of the circumstances of their death. Those who died following sentences given by Courts Martial are commemorated in exactly the same way as anyone else.

Officers and NCOs supplied by the British consisted of volunteers from the British Army as well as British officer-candidates from China, consisting of missionaries and members of the China Customs Service from Treaty Ports. Some were promoted from the ranks.

Those from the Chinese Customs Service in Shanghai include Arthur H H Abel, who was gazetted as a 2Lt in May 1918; George B Appleton, who enlisted with the 16th Bn Middlesex Regt in February 1915 and transferred to the CLC in April 1917 as a sergeant, being promoted to 2Lt in May 1918; Charles N Cross, who in August 1917 joined the CLC as a 2Lt, transferred to the Royal Air Force in July 1918 and transferred back to the CLC in March 1919 as a captain; Arthur HF Edwardes served with the CLC from April to July 1917 as a 2Lt, and in August 1917 was promoted acting captain commanding No 59 Company CLC in Belgium; Ernest N Ensor, enlisted in December 1914 in the 9th Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers and, after promotion through the ranks, to captain in August 1916, was transferred in July 1917 to command No. 27 Company CLC. Amongst his medals, and being Mentioned in Despatches, he was awarded the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, for military services. Hugh G Lowder served in various Army battalions before transferring to the HQ CLC from which he was demobilised in March 1920 in the rank of captain. He also received the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, in 1919. Walter Moore served two and a half years with the CLC, from June 1917 to October 1919. John Murphy served with the Royal Marine Artillery, first in German New Guinea and German West Africa, then in France and also on HMS Warspite. In September 1917 he transferred to the Army and from the Armistice to May 1920 he was attached to the CLC conducting coolies from France back to China. Norman Travers was commissioned as a 2Lt into the CLC in May 1917 and was attached to the Royal Flying Corps, with Chinese, on forward aerodromes, subsequently working also in the forward area in trench, ammunition and lines of communication, finally assisting clearance of the devastated areas.
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390
CONTENTS

PRESIDENT'S REPORT
..XX

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
..xxviii

HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT
.......xxxix

FRIENDS OF THE HKBRAS (UK) REPORT
..xlvi

VOLUNTEERS REPORT
...xlviii

ARTICLES

Sidney Cheung - Traditional dwellings, conservation and land use: A study of three villages in Sai Kung
1

Eric Danielson - How old is Shanghai's Longhua Temple?
15

James Hayes - Canton symposium: The world of the old China trade: the locales and the people
29

Lan Li and Deirdre Wildy - A new discovery and its significance: The statutory declarations made by Sir Robert Hart concerning his secret domestic life in 19th century China
63

Roderick O'Brien - Justice, law, and the proposed tribunal for the Khmer Rouge
89

Jonathan Parkinson - H.M.S. Hermes: China Station, 1930-1933
105

Keith Stevens - Between Scylla and Charybdis: China and the Chinese during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905
127

xiv
================================================================================