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HISTORY

prominent boulder bearing the characters Sung Wong Toi* (Sung Emperor Stone) was held sacred to his memory until the hill was demolished in 1943, during the Japanese occupation, to make room for an expansion of the airport. His brother, the last Sung Emperor, met with final defeat in an attempted stand in the New Territories, and he and his ministers fled to Ngai Shan further south, but some of his followers found refuge in Lantau where their descendants are still to be found.

The maritime relations between China and the West were at first dominated by Arab and Near Eastern traders who formed a considerable community at Canton from the seventh century onwards, but Chinese traders also penetrated to the Indian Ocean from the eleventh century.

The Portuguese formed the spear-head of European maritime contacts with China. Jorge Alvarez reached China by sea in 1513, the first European to do so; the earliest Portuguese traders followed in 1517 and forty years later, in 1557, they established themselves at Macau, partly in return for assistance in the suppression of piracy. For nearly three hundred years, through many vicissitudes, and against the main current of Chinese official opinion which was not interested in commercial or cultural contacts, Macau provided the-one reliable point of contact between China and the West.

The first Englishman to attempt to trade with China-was John Weddell in 1637; he found Portuguese influence against him and tried to force his way up to Canton and not surprisingly his venture ended in complete failure. Later attempts were similarly unsuccessful, the first English ship to trade peaceably with the Chinese being the Macclesfield in 1699 under the East India Company. The Company sent ships to Canton each year thereafter, and in 1715 decided to establish permanent commercial relations and set up a 'factory', as it was known, outside the town. Attempts to extend the trade to Amoy, Ningpo and Tamsui failed and in 1757 trade with the West was confined to Canton by Imperial edict, and placed under the direct control of an Imperial office called the Hoppo. In addition, a guild of Chinese merchants called the Hong Merchants or Co-hong was given a monopoly of western trade by a similar edict in 1755. Many other European nations sent

* The stone bearing these characters has now been erected in a small public park adjoining the original site.