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

141

in the Colony. In 1948 they were taken over by the Medical and Health Department.

58 G. W. Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Yale University Press, 1958, p. 79.

59 James Michie wrote: "The means taken to conciliate the Chinese (in Hong Kong) must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colony Legislature and on the Commission of the Peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government." The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood, 1900, vol. 1, pp. 280-1.

60 The Labour Advisory Board was established in 1937 and consisted of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Secretary and Cashier of His Majesty's Naval Yard, the Assistant Director of Supply and Transport of the China Command, a representative of the Public Works Department, the Manager of the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, the manager of the Hong Kong Electric Company, and the manager of the Taikoo Dockyard. The members consisted entirely of representatives of large government departments and employers of labour. The board rarely functioned.

61 The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1896 principally by Ho Kai and Wei Yuk. It was called at first the Chinese Merchants Bureau. In 1913, after a period of decline, a new building costing $40,000 was erected in Connaught Road. After 1913 the Chamber became one of the most influential bodies in Hong Kong, and many members of the District Watch Committee served at one time or another on its executive committee. The Chinese Club was founded in 1899 by Sir Robert Ho Tung and modelled on the European Hong Kong Club. A description of the Club's premises is to be found in Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1902, p. 323: "We were taken by the Committee into an upper room, where European comforts of curtains and cushioned arm-chairs were judiciously intermingled with Cantonese elegances of black carved wood and landscape marble." Mrs. Little was a member of the Anti-Footbinding League or Natural Feet Society.

62 See G. William Skinner for a detailed analysis of Chinese associations. See especially ch. 6 of his Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand.

63 For Overseas Chinese associations, see important works by the following: Maurice Freedman, "Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth Century Singapore," Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1960, and Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London, H.M.S.O., 1957; G. W. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1957, and Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1958; William E. Willmott, The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London, The Athlone Press, 1970; and Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1965.

64 See Wilfred Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, London, Oxford University Press, 1969.
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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
232

but at page 349, read,

BOOK REVIEWS

"Indeed, the Chinese garrison troops fled their strongholds en masse, before the assault forces reached the shore."

"... the Chinese defenses simply folded up...."

- and later, page 350,

"Once they (Chinese) had recovered their astonishment of seeing ships moving against wind and tide, they ranged along the banks, some performing kowtows as the gunboats passed."

And see also numerous instances in Chapter II.

But the lapses do not greatly detract from the sound scholarship which this study represents. It is well documented and well articulated; it is written in a most elegant style; and this reader was greatly absorbed in the moving narrative. In more than one place one seems to hear strong echoes of Somerset Maugham relating the piques and barbs and jealousies and smoldering antipathies among colonial officials and merchants in the field. Certainly Napier and Pottinger were not universally loved; and Elgin and Admiral Seymour must have disliked each other intensely.

The book must be one of the most readable scholarly works on the period, and it makes excellent use of many specialist studies of some narrower issues and individual episodes, such as Peter W. Fay's The Opium War, 1840-42 (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), and Jack Gerson's excellent Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino-British Relations, 1854-60 (Cambridge, 1972), as well as all the now standard works on the nineteenth century opening of China.

University of Hong Kong, May 1980.

LEIGH WRIGHT

THE IMPACT OF CHINESE SECRET SOCIETIES IN MALAYA--A HISTORICAL STUDY. Wilfred Blythe, pp. XIV, 566, maps, ill, app. Oxford University Press, 1969.

As befits the complicated, extensive and important nature of the subject, this is a long book (566 pages). It carries an introduction by the Right Hon. Malcolm Macdonald who, rightly in my
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