RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v
BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING

61

acquire at Peking a site for Building, or may hire Houses, for the accommodation of Her Majesty's mission, and that the Chinese Government will assist it in so doing". Then, when the Imperial Government appeared to procrastinate over the ratification of these treaties, another English and French force fought its way to the capital and compelled the Manchu authorities to ratify them by the Convention of Peking. This was signed by the British envoy, Lord Elgin,1 and by Prince Kung,2 the chief Chinese representative, on October 24th, 1860 in the Hall of Ceremonies situated in what was later to be called Legation Street. The second clause of the Convention stated that "Her Britannic Majesty's Representative will henceforward reside permanently, or occasionally, at Peking, as Her Britannic Majesty shall be pleased to decide”. 

Lord Elgin proposed that Prince Kung's own residence should be rented to the British, but Prince Kung memorialized the throne as follows: 

As regards the matter of the English residing at the capital in the near future, we have been discussing it with them during the past few days. The chief barbarian official [Lord Elgin] considers that the quarters in Prince I's [Prince Kung] palace are spacious and he insists that it is to be their future residence at the capital. Moreover, he stated that there were still open spaces in the palace and that he wants to build houses there himself. It seems to your ministers that to 

1 James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin. He served as Governor-General of Canada 1846-1854. In 1857 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to China and signed the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, returning to England early in 1859. In 1860 he was again sent to China as special envoy, and signed the Convention of Peking. He returned to England in 1861 and was appointed Governor-General of India in the same year. He died in India in 1863. 

His younger brother Frederick William Bruce held the post of Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong from 9 February 1844 until 27 June 1846. In 1857 he accompanied his elder brother to China as principal secretary. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Emperor of China in December 1858, but had to wait until March 1861 before actually taking up residence in Peking. He left China on his appointment as British Minister to Washington in 1865. 

2 I-hsin (1833-1898), the first Prince Kung, was the sixth son of Emperor Tao-kuang. When the joint French and British forces approached Peking in September 1860 the Emperor Hsien-feng fled to Jehol leaving his half-brother, Prince Kung, to make peace with the allies. When a prototype Chinese foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, was set up in 1861, Prince Kung was in charge of it, and he played an important part in Chinese affairs for the next fifteen years.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d
The Library

189

HUMMEL, Arthur W., ed.

Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing period (1644-1912). Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1944. v. 2 only.

HUNTER, Guy.

South-East Asia — race, culture, and nation. Publ. for the Institute of Race Relations, London. London, Oxford U.P., 1966.

HUNTER, W. C.

The 'fan kwae' at Canton before treaty days, 1825-1844. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1965.

Reprint of original ed., London, 1882.

HUNTER, W. C.

Bits of old China. Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publ. Co., 1966. Reprint of original ed., London, 1855.

JARRETT, V. H. C.

Familiar wild flowers of Hongkong; illus. with photographs by the author... [Hong Kong] South China Morning Post [1937]

JENYNS, Soame.

A background to Chinese painting. London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935.

Presentation copy inscribed by the author.

JENYNS, Soame.

Chinese archaic jades in the British Museum. London, British Museum, 1951.

Presentation copy inscribed by the author.

JENYNS, Soame.

Later Chinese porcelain: the Ch'ing dynasty, 1644-1912. 3rd ed. London, Faber, 1965.

JENYNS, Soame.

Ming pottery and porcelain. London, Faber, 1953. Presentation copy inscribed by the author.

JOCELYN, Robert, Viscount Jocelyn.

Six months with the Chinese expedition; or, Leaves from a soldier's note-book. London, Murray, 1841.

JOHNSTON, Reginald Fleming.

Buddhist China. London, Murray, 1913.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM

89

Ballestier did not meet the King and so never presented the President's letter. He was treated with little respect and left Bangkok in less than a month without a treaty or hope of one. Ballestier reported angrily to Washington that the only way to improve trade with Siam was by the threat or use of force. After he left, fear spread through the city that force might be used. Some teachers who had been instructing American missionaries in the Thai language thought it judicious to leave their employment, but all fear was soon to be removed. The old King died in 1851, and Prince Mongkut ascended the throne.

It was the beginning of a new era. From a long period of isolation, from suspicion and fear of Western merchants and sailors, Siam, in the fourth reign of the Chakri dynasty, turned to co-operation, free trade, and acceptance of the new civilisation. The change came quickly, almost as soon as the cremation ceremonies of Rama III were completed a year after his death. Emerging from a Buddhist monastery at the age of forty-seven, His Majesty Somdet Pra Paramenda Maha Mongkut, King Rama IV, proceeded to reform his kingdom and open new relations with the West.

In 1824, when he was twenty, Prince Mongkut had entered the order of monkhood. It was a custom, still sustained today, for all young men to enter the order for three or four months. That might have been the length of Mongkut's service as a monk, but just then, within two weeks of his entering the monastery, his father, King Rama II, died, and his half-brother was chosen for the throne. Mongkut decided to remain a Buddhist monk indefinitely. Out of disappointment? This may have been so, for his claim to the crown was stronger than that of his half-brother, Pra Nangklao. Mongkut was the eldest son of the King by a royal mother, and his half-brother, though seventeen years his senior, was the son of a lesser wife. However, in Siam, the succession is not necessarily according to strict rules of primogeniture, and in this instance, the choice by the Council of Nobles of Pra Nangklao seemed a wise one. He had had many years' experience in matters of state, often assuming duties for his father, who was more interested in poetry than politics. But if Mongkut was disappointed, monastic life suited him, and he remained a monk for the next twenty-seven years.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM

93

The new King imported printing presses, mainly for the publication of Buddhist writings. He encouraged monks to teach in the monasteries. He continued his own studies, particularly of astronomy and acquired telescopes and other scientific equipment. Some ten years after he became King he took the unprecedented step of employing a foreign woman, the celebrated Anna Leonowens, to act as governess and tutor to his numerous children.

King Mongkut built roads, canals and bridges. New Wats and new palaces were constructed at his command. He encouraged ship-building and personally supervised the building of the first steam-boat on the Menam, importing an engine from England. He abolished the corvée forced labour required for land or other privileges and replaced it by taxation. There was no limit to his energy or his delight in innovation, but in one respect King Mongkut saw no need for change.

He kept an enormous harem in his Palace. Having been celibate for twenty-seven years he now set about building the biggest Royal Family of the Chakri Dynasty. In the "Inside" of the Palace there was a veritable city of women - reports say three thousand or more. They were mostly servants, 'Amazons' for guards, officials, maids and so on, but Mongkut acquired thirty-two wives and by the time he died, aged sixty-four, he had eighty-two children. Some accounts put the number of wives and concubines much higher. Townshend Harris, the American envoy who concluded a treaty with Siam in 1856 - following the British success in 1855 - commented in his dispatches to Washington: "After some twenty years spent in the rigid celibacy of the priesthood the King gives up a large portion of his time to voluptuous pleasures....

he is indulging himself in a manner equally repugnant to decency and the laws of his religion of which he was a stern supporter while in the priesthood." It was, of course, a custom and one required especially of the monarch, but it is a little surprising that the reforming zeal of the King did not extend to his prodigious practice of polygamy.

Of all his reforms the most significant was in his relations with the West. As soon as he became King a new attitude was revealed. He indicated willingness to have a return visit from the disappointed Brooke of Sarawak. Could Sir James come, he said, a little later to allow for the prolonged cremation ceremonies
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077
THE HONG KONG REGION

133

Hayes, J. W., 'Old Ways of Life in Kowloon: the Cheung Sha Wan Villages" in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 1, January 1970: 154-188.

Ho, Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1959.

Hsieh, Kuo Ching, 'Removal of Coastal Population in Early Tsing Period', The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, XIII, 1929: 559-596.

Hummel, Arthur W. (Editor), Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912), Taipei, Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, 1967. Reprint of the first edition, Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 2 vols., 1943.

Krone, Rev. Mr., A Notice of the Sanon District. C.B.R.A.S. Transactions VI, 1859: 71-105. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 7, 1967: 104-137.

Lo, Hsiang-lin, 'The Sung Wang T'ai and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung' in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. III, No. 2, July 1956.

-, (and others), Hong Kong and Its External Communications before 1842. Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963. An English version, abbreviated, of the Chinese edition of 1959.

Mayers, W. F., Dennys, N. B. and King, C., The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A Complete Guide to the Open Ports of these countries, together with Peking, Yedo, Hong Kong and Macao. London, Trübner & Co., Hong Kong, A. Shortrede & Co., 1867.

Murphey, Rhoads, The Treaty Ports and China's Modernization: what went wrong? Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 7, Ann Arbor, 1970.

Montalto de Jesus, C. A., Historic Macao, International Traits in China Old and New. Macao, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1926.

Neumann, C. F., Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with Notes: 1 History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, John Murray, 1831.

Ng, Peter Y. L., The 1819 Edition of the Hsin-an Hsien-chih, A Critical Examination with Translation and Notes. Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (1644-1842). Unpublished M. A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1961.

Ng, Ronald C. Y., 'The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri. On the Centenary of the Copy in the R.G.S. Collection', London, Geographical Journal, Vol. 135, Part 2, June, 1969: 231-235. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 141-148.

Orme, G. N., Report on the New Territories for the Years 1899 to 1912. in Sessional Papers 1912.

Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural Development in China 1368-1968. Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company, 1969.

Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968.

Schofield, Walter, Personal Communications, 1958-1968.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938
8

CHAN KIT-CHENG

Office's wish. The Far Eastern division in the department believed that "the sympathy of the American public would lie almost entirely with China and would be strongly critical of this Government,”32 The American government was fortunately spared the embarrassment of having to reject the British request in that the Chinese, for some still unknown reasons, agreed on 31 December not to raise the question of the New Territories in connexion with the extraterritoriality treaty.33 Under the changed circumstance, Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, was given to understand that the American government would have been prepared to indicate its displeasure had China been obstinate over the inclusion of the New Territories in the treaty.34 The interesting question remains as to what attitude the United States would have adopted had China requested her support.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Pacific Relations was actively preparing for a conference to be held at Mont Tremblent in the United States at the beginning of December. The conference attracted the serious attention of all those countries concerned with Pacific affairs because of the increasingly wide publicity enjoyed by the Institute since Pearl Harbour through its large publishing programme of books, pamphlets, and periodicals. From late spring onwards, earnest preparations for attending the conference were made by Chatham House, the British national council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, together with the Foreign Office which, despite its earlier apprehension of "the risk of a lot of washing of dirty linen in public' ”, had now decided to make full use of the conference as a platform from which Britain could educate the American opinion about the British empire. From the beginning the Foreign Office was alive to the danger that the question of Hong Kong would arouse great attention at the conference. However, it was decided that the British delegation would not be briefed on Hong Kong because it was feared that the idea of returning Hong Kong on terms after the war, a point the British government had conceded after much painful inter-departmental consultation and deliberation, would be badly received by the Americans and Chinese who would denounce anything short of an outright retrocession,35

The Chinese delegation was equally well prepared. Pressure coming from the Chinese delegates, who explicitly expressed their desire for Hong Kong, was so intense that Sir John Pratt, the British delegate charged with the duty to speak on China, Japan, and
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938
THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45

17

◄ Hornbeck to Cordell Hull, secretary of state, 20 May 1942, Hornbeck Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 465.

* Generally see Thorne, op. cit., p. 163, and note 51 on pp. 168-9, referring to Leahy's diary and the King Papers. Also Hornbeck's memorandum, 3 October 1942, Hornbeck Papers, box 180.

• Ballantine's diary in Ballantine Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 1. Also see Tung Hsien-kuang, Chiang Tsung-t'ung ch’uan (Biography of Chiang Kai-shek; Taipei, 1954), II, pp. 343-4; and B. W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York, 1971), p. 352.

'Hornbeck's memorandum, 20 May 1942, op. cit.

8 The two sets of statistics are available in Hornbeck Papers, box 466 and box 467 respectively.

"Thorne, op. cit., pp. 175-6.

1o Announcement of the loan was made on 1 February, but the agreement was not signed until 21 March. For details of the loan and its use during subsequent years, see Department of State, United States Relations with China (hereafter US and China; Washington, 1949), pp. 470-71.

11 Hornbeck's autobiography, Hornbeck Papers, box 497.

12 For more details, see US and China, p. 37,

1a Madame Chiang, however, was intensely disliked by Roosevelt's household staff at Hyde Park who found her "arrogant and overbearing", W. D. Hassett, then aide to President Roosevelt, Off the Record with F.D.R. (Rutgers University Press, 1958), pp. 181-2, 288.

14 For text of the relevant treaty between the United States and China, see US and China, pp. 514-7.

15 For more details, see ibid., p. 37.

1 Chinese leaders freely expressed their anti-British sentiments to the Americans; see, for example, H. Morgenthan, Morgenthau Diary (China; Washington, 1965), II, pp. 862-895.

17 Minute of Sir John Brenan, a veteran official in the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, on Anglo-Chinese relations since the outbreak of the Pacific War, 3 November 1942, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/31627.

18 For elaboration on this point, see author's article, "The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American Chinese Relations", Modern Asian Studies, 11, 2 (1977), pp. 262-3.

19 Thorne, op. cit., p. 195.

20 Details of the British discussion leading to the invitation are available in FO 371/31627. The British government was understandably embarrassed by the Chinese response. Ashley Clarke, an official in the Far Eastern Department, confided this point to Stanley Hornbeck, his opposite number in the Department of State. See Hornbeck's attempt to explain for Madame Chiang, Hornbeck to Clarke, strictly confidential, 27 February 1943, Hornbeck Papers, box 467.

21 Thorne, op. cit., p. 161.

22 "The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)", p. 58.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938
18

CHAN KIT-CHENG

23 W. Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (University of Georgia Press; 1959), p. 105.

24 This is according to the observation of Ashley Clarke, head of the Far Eastern Department in the British Foreign Office, during his one month visit to the Department of State early in the summer of 1942; see his report on his visit to A. Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, 11 June 1942, FO371/31804. See also Ministry of Information to Colonial Office, 22 October 1942, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/31774.

25 "The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations", pp. 266-272.

26 Brenan's minute, 3 December, on J. G. Winant, American ambassador to London, to Eden, 2 December 1942, FO371/31664.

27 Eden to Winant, 7 December 1942, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), China, 1942 (Washington, 1956), p. 390.

28 "The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations", op. cit., pp. 284-5.

29 Ibid., pp. 287-8.

30 Ibid., pp. 288-9.

31 War cabinet conclusions 173 (42), 28 December 1942, Cab65/28. Also Eden to Winant, 29 December; and Eden to Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, tel. 8264, immediate, 29 December 1942, FO371/31665.

32 Thorne, op. cit., p. 179, and note 53, p. 198, referring to G. Atcheson to Hornbeck, 29 December 1942, Department of State, Decimal and Other Files, National Archives (Washington D.C.) 793.003/12-2942.

33 W. L. Tung in his book V. K. Wellington Koo and China's Wartime Diplomacy (New York, 1977), based on the Wellington Koo Papers deposited with Columbia University, gives a possible explanation: "Koo was then Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain and returned to Chungking for consultations. As an experienced diplomat well familiar with the attitude of British official and unofficial circles, he counselled the government to conclude the treaty on the relinquishment of extraterritoriality but reserve the right of later negotiations on the Kowloon question”, p. 53.

34 Halifax to Eden, tel. 6310, immediate, 31 December 1942, FO371/35679.

35 "The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)", pp. 58-68.

34 Ibid., p. 68.

*7 See memorandum in Hornbeck Papers, box 466.

** Cordell Hull, secretary of state, to United States chargé d'affaires in London, tel., 4 April 1943, in FRUS, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, The Far East, 1943 (Washington, 1963), III, pp. 46-7. Also see R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 707.

30 For American interest in India, especially early in the war, see for example, M. S. Venkatramani and B. K. Shrivastava, "The United States and the Cripps Mission", India Quarterly, XIX, no. 3 (July-September, 1963), pp. 214-65. See also author's article, "Britain's Reaction to Chiang

Page 45

Page 46
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q
Introducing a motion for the adoption of the recommendations of the sub-committee, Mr. Bowley stated that in the Peace Treaty then under discussion provisions were made for an International Labour Convention and for a League of Nations. In the proposals for both organizations the welfare of women and children were dealt with. Appended to the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with the Labour Convention was the affirmation of the principle of an eight hour working day and a forty-eight hour week.

Mr. Bowley reminded the Board that the matters being proposed were on the agenda of the Labour Convention which was to be held in Washington, D. C. in the United States in October 1919. These developments had a particular meaning for Hong Kong as a British outpost in the East, for if Hong Kong took action as a part of the British Empire it might influence “our neighbouring allies' China and Japan, both of whom were parties to the Treaty and who had accepted both the League of Nations and the Labour Convention.” He continued. “If Hong Kong, China and Japan are to be included in the comity of nations on equal terms, it behoves us and our neighbours to consider these questions very carefully”.

He contrasted the absence of factory legislation in Hong Kong with Britain where such legislation had been gradually developed and enforced over the past eighty years. One reason for the difference between the two places was that Hong Kong until only recently had not been much of a manufacturing centre, but now there were many new factories. "The time has come", he said, "when some, at least, of most of the elementary principles of the Factory Acts should be introduced into the Colony”. The experience of England had been that factory legislation had to be related to provisions for education and it would be difficult to apply the same laws to Hong Kong if there was no movement at the same time toward compulsory education, but since the Sanitary Board had no jurisdiction over education, the committee had concluded that it was impossible to prohibit employment of children even of the tenderest age, for it was better for children to be occupied with light tasks with their parents than playing in the gutter. Moreover, the criminal law contained provisions for the punishment of parents or masters and mistresses who ill-treated or neglected their children or child servants. So until something was done about universal education, the present measures were as much
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641
200

The influence of these western-educated Cantonese extended northward in the 1860s when western firms such as Jardine and Swire established their branch offices in the newly opened Treaty ports — Shanghai in 1850, Fuzhou in 1854 and Hankou in 1861. It was in these new Treaty ports that the Cantonese recognized that a new job market in politics was open to them. A "Western Affairs Movement” was initiated by several powerful provincial officials in China by the 1870s. Under the patronage of these officials, economic and legal reforms were introduced into China in the name of westernization. These officials who rose to power after suppressing the Taiping Rebellion without Beijing's support, developed huge business enterprises in the name of the "official supervision — merchant management” or “western-affairs movement". The Hong Kong compradores were mainly responsible for the collection of capital. Their credibility came not from the enterprises they set up, with or without the legal backing of a company law, but from their own reputation as well as the political patronage behind them.

Amidst the rhetoric of these western affairs movements, “reform-minded" officials recruited their own advisors and set up their own personal governments, known as Mufu, literally, tent government, or what we now call think-tanks. Many Cantonese, with or without imperial degrees, were sought to fill these posts. The strength of this “Cantonese party” rested on their early access to things western — the "Cantonese faction established predominance in China's internal affairs and foreign relations... [their strength] lies in the monopoly in the matter of emigration overseas ... Before 1840, Canton was the only port open to foreign traders”. On how these think-tank members were appointed, westerners observed that:

in the exercise of patronage... the principle is that which animated Washington in the selection of his first cabinet. Latterly the Canton party, ultra-progressive, has come to the front.

In the 1870s amidst this rhetoric of westernization, and with the assistance of western-educated Cantonese, the "reform-minded" officials managed to bargain with Beijing and develop huge business enterprises under their patronage. In an environment where company law and stock markets were absent, these reform-minded officials started these modern enterprises under an arrangement known as the
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
248

A Quarter for the Brigade Commander

2 Blocks of Officer's Quarters

1 Block of 2 Warrant Officer's Quarters

1 Block of 12 Warrant Officer's Quarters

1 Block of 12 Married Soldier's Quarters

The work took about a year to complete and in 1937 a further building programme was initiated to provide additional accommodation, messes and a church. At the same time artillery defences were also being built.

The Artillery Defences

Design of fortifications was the responsibility of the Directorate of Fortifications and Works at the War Office. This department prepared the drawings of fortifications and issued them to the various army commands, which in turn issued them to their contractors. The Commander Royal Engineers at the various commands modified the designs to suit local requirements and local materials. The designs took the weapon to be used and protection from enemy fire as the main considerations, but standardisation was also introduced as far as possible to assist in construction. The siting, positioning, and grouping of structures were also obvious major considerations in the building of defensive works, batteries, and other types of fortifications.

Modernisation and reorganisation of the defences in Hong Kong in the 1930s was also governed by the Washington Treaty, an agreement signed in 1921 by nations with interests in the Pacific Region. Article 19 of the Treaty proscribed any increase or major improvements in heavy weapons and any improvements in coast defences other than those already planned and agreed to by the signatories to the Treaty. Gun emplacements were not regarded as fortifications but any disused emplacements were to be destroyed when new ones were erected.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
Pottinger Battery: 1 officer + 26 soldiers

3 February 1920 The Chief of Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, considered that Hong Kong could resist Japanese attack for 3 months before relief from Singapore arrived.

Washington Treaty

1920/1921

1922

The Admiralty informed the Committee of Imperial Defence that it was the authority to advise the scale of attack on ports and that for Hong Kong, the "status quo applies."

Rollo, 1992, p.98

Rollo, 1992, p.101

Rollo, 1992, p.102

1924

"Devil's Peak Sheet No.3," Ordnance Survey 1904, corrected and printed at the War Office 1924, shows road access, including "roads suitable for man-handled guns" and detailed land uses in the Devil's Peak area, with boundaries of War Department lands delineated. However, the locations of batteries and the Redoubt are not shown.

PRO100(2)

1927

Aerial Photograph No. H19 15 taken by HMS Pegasus.

The Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee review.

Rollo, 1992, p.104

1928

Steel choke caused problems to the 9.2-inch guns at Devil's Peak.

Rollo, 1992, p.105

1929

August 1930

February 1931

Chinese writer/composer, Tien Han, visited Hong Kong and was impressed by the scenic views of Lei Yue Mun, as stated in his poem "Good Bye Hong Kong."

The 12th Heavy Battery replaced the 9-inch guns with anti-choke pattern.

Rollo, 1992, p.105

The 12 Heavy Battery fired new guns at Gough Battery. "Gough Battery fired over Hong Kong Island and Repulse Bay."

Rollo, 1992, p.105

1933

Annual Review of the Defence of Ports.

Rollo, 1992, p.105

22 October 1934 The 12 Heavy Battery practised indirect shots at Pottinger Battery.

1934

A letter from the Military Operation Branch of the War Office indicated plans to modernise two 9.2-inch guns at Devil's Peak in 1936/37 with 35-degree mountings.

1936

The Hong Kong Defence Scheme

Rollo, 1992, p.107

Rollo, 1992, p.108, 109

Rollo, 1992, p.110, 112

131
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