CHAPTER VIII
The Rise of Hongkong – Early Portuguese Settlers
The ill favour with which the early British residents of Hongkong viewed the prospects of the new settlement was reflected in despatches to the British Government in London, and can also be gathered from newspaper reports by men who doubted that the island of Hongkong was worth developing as an integral part of the British Empire. The early pessimists were many. Time has shown to what extent the predictions of the “doubting Thomases” have been falsified.
A typical criticism is the following report which appeared in the Friend of China and Hongkong Gazette74:
“We have no native merchants settled in the colony; neither is produce imported, nor goods exported, to any of the five ports, except it be on British account; and all mercantile transactions are concluded at those ports, whilst the harbour of Hongkong is completely deserted. Not an anchor of a junk is dropped in the bay of Hongkong; they flee from it as a man would from a pestilence … Hongkong, a free port, is deprived of all trade further than the transhipment of goods, and a supply of articles for local consumption, the commissions upon which would barely pay the expenses of a first class mercantile establishment”.
On another occasion the same newspaper reported in an editorial that:75
“The respectable Parsee firm, whose extensive premises near Messrs. Dent & Co. are now nearly finished, have determined not to remove to Hongkong; others, who contemplated settling here, have changed their minds and remain at Macao.”
The poor estimation in which Hongkong was held by the merchants already settled there was also voiced by the same journal on yet another occasion:76” … Colonial Secretary very ill, went on sick leave to Macao; officiating Surveyor-General very ill, went on sick leave to Macao; Colonial Engineer twice ill, went on sick leave to Macao; Auditor-General very ill, went on sick leave to Macao; the Harbour Master and Marine Magistrate went on sick leave to England, his successor proceeded on sick leave to Macao …”
There was cause indeed for Sir William Des Voeux to feel the satisfaction which he expressed in his report, but no one who has followed the history of the past century can feel otherwise than that Hongkong, in the hands of a British administration, was bound to be a success. And when the success is measured in terms of material welfare and financial growth it must be conceded that its prosperity was indeed assured. The subsequent rise of Hongkong to position of eminence as one of the greatest ports in the world has demonstrated, more effectively than any words of praise, the soundness of Elliot’s judgment in his choice of Hongkong as a British settlement. It was in the second half of the ’40’s that the British merchants began to see the greater possibility of permanent residence at Hongkong, after the authorities had introduced health measures, and the more cautious persons who had continued living at Macao for such a long time began to bestir themselves and move over to join their fellow nationals in the British colony. As the number of Europeans in Hongkong increased, churches and schools were built on the Island, not only for the British community but for the Portuguese there as well.
The praise meted out by Sir William Des Voeux to the pioneers of Hongkong embraces all sections of the community of Hongkong, British as well as others, specially those who braved the trials and tribulations of the early days when the merchants seemed so nervous and chary about living in the new settlement. Among the non-British pioneers who assisted the British colonizers, the Portuguese can claim a proud and honourable place.
The decision of the British to transfer to Hongkong, on the 27th February, 1842, the official headquarters of British trade in China showed the determination of the Government to push forward their plans for the building up of their own trading centre in China, despite the serious difficulties attending the founding of the new settlement. It was a move that opened up a new outlook for the Portuguese in China: and who will say that Hongkong did not benefit by it? The Portuguese endured with the British pioneers the trials, hardships, and horrors of those early years of Hongkong’s history, and shared with them the labours which resulted in the building up of Hongkong on a foundation “well and truly laid”.
From the very beginning, younger members of the Portuguese community at Macao in the service of British firms accompanied the latter to their new establishments in Hongkong. The loyalty of the Portuguese was thus displayed at the earliest stage of Hongkong’s existence and it has remained as one of the outstanding traits of the Portuguese in Hongkong during the past one hundred years. Venturesome young men among the Macao Portuguese also emigrated from Macao to try their fortunes on their own account in the new field.
When Sir Henry Pottinger moved over the Superintendency of British Trade in China from Macao to Hongkong it was just such people among the Portuguese at Macao who threw in their lot with the British officials and built their new homes on the fever ridden island of Hongkong. Included in the staff of the Superintendency transferred to Hongkong as well as in most of the British firms were Portuguese young men filling clerical and other essential positions, some of them qualified interpreters in three or more languages. Regarding the competency of the Portuguese to interpret in the English, Chinese, Malayan and Portuguese languages, a tribute must be paid to the Fathers of St. Joseph’s College at Macao for their excellent work in the teaching of these languages.
None will be found to grudge the Portuguese migrants the rewards which their loyalty, devotion to duty, ability, integrity, and law-abiding characteristics earned for them in Hongkong. It will be my endeavour to furnish a chronicle of what Hongkong gave to some of them in return during the years which followed.
Birth: 10 April 1848, Cathedral, Hong Kong Death: 2 January 1938, Hong Kong Burial: Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong
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Maria Teresa Gabriela Joana d’Almada e Castro Birth: 30 March 1847, Cathedral, Hong Kong Marriage: 1 May 1871, Cathedral, Hong Kong, João Henrique dos Remédios Death: after 1884, Stratham, England
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João Henrique dos Remédios Birth: 21 July 1844, S. Lourenço, Macau Marriage: 1 May 1871, Cathedral, Hong Kong, Maria Teresa Gabriela Joana d’Almada e Castro Death: 19 April 1884, Hong Kong
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Register or login? , by whom she had two daughters and two sons. When her husband died, she took her children to England, where her sons died at a comparatively early age. The male numbers of this branch of the family thus died out, leaving no sons to carry on the family name.
Mr. José Maria d’Almada e Castro, as we have seen, joined the service of the British Government at Macao in 1836, and came to Hongkong in 1842. He rose step by step in the service of the Hongkong Government, and in 1877, Sir John Pope Hennessy showed his appreciation of his services by appointing him his Private Secretary. At the time of his death (23rd January, 1881), José Maria d’Almada held, as his brother had done before him, the post of Chief Clerk of the Colonial Secretariat and Clerk of Councils of the Hongkong Government. He married in Hongkong, and had a large family of boys and girls. The eldest son entered the Government service and remained a Government employee till his death, and dying early did not have the opportunity of rising as high as his uncle and father before him.
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Register or login? , and among their children are Mr. J.M. d'Almada e Remedios J.M. d'Almada e Remedios #10050
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Register or login? , a partner of the Union Trading Company, Ltd., a well known Hongkong firm, and Mr. F.X. d'Almada e Remedios F.X. d'Almada e Remedios #10049
10049
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Register or login? , of the Hongkong Colonial Secretariat staff. Ignez Maria Ignez Maria #32799
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ITEMS
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Marriage: Petronila Vicência ? Marriage: 2 February 1866, S. Lourenço, Macau, Filomena Albina da Costa
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Register or login? , of the Judicial and Police Establishments, doing duty in the Supreme Court. He appears to have been a son of Lieut. Francisco Xavier Lança of Macao.
João José Hyndman Baptism: 16 December 1814, Sé, Macau Marriage: Luzia Maria Grandpré Marriage: Simplícia Baptista Death: 19 June 1890, S. Lourenço, Macau
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Register or login? , is named in the Directory of 1849. In Hongkong he was first employed in the office of His Majesty’s Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of Trade. He is listed in the Directory as acting Fourth Assistant in the Diplomatic Department. Mr. Hyndman’s father, Captain Henry Hyndman, was in the service of the English East India Company, at Singapore, but resigned his commission and settled down in Macao, where he married; his sons acquiring Portuguese citizenship thereby. His failure to retain the citizenship of his grandfather (General Henry Hyndman) probably militated against Mr. João Hyndman’s preferment to the higher posts in the Hongkong Government Service. Upon his retirement Mr. Hyndman withdrew to Macao where he held a number of honorary commissions of great importance. He married twice, his first wife first wife #24766
Luzia Maria Grandpré Birth: 16 April 1817, Sé, Macau Marriage: João José Hyndman
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A brother of Mr. J. Hyndman, Mr. Henrique Hyndman, was at one time working in Duus & Company, and later as book-keeper with the firm of Messrs.
M.C. Rozario
M.C. Rozario #16160
Marcos Calisto do Rosário
Birth: 7 August 1828, S. Lourenço, Macau
Marriage: Virgínia Ana Rosa Machado5
Death: 11 February 1884, Macau
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& Co., in Hongkong. He joined the China Sugar Refining Co. and was for some time in the Company’s office at Swatow. Later transferred to Shanghai, he was placed in charge of a printing business which Mr. Delfino Noronha, of Hongkong, had bought in the northern port, from which he returned to Hongkong to take up employment at Mr. Noronha’s Hongkong office. Some years later, Mr. Henrique Hyndman with his three daughters returned to Macao. In Macao he was engaged as a teacher in English at the Instituto Comercial of the Associação Promotora de Instrucção dos Macaenses, and later still at the Macao Government Lyceum.
What a noble sentiment to inspire!
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Register or login? , also had many children. This son Henrique took a prominent part in the great fire in Hongkong, in 1878, being commended by the authorities for his work at the head of the demolition squads through whose efforts the fire prevented from spreading further than it did. Mr. Henrique Hyndman, Jr., also had a large family. One of his sons, Alberto Alberto #25517
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Register or login? , volunteered for service in the Great War, in 1914, and I shall have occasion to mention him later in this book. Of the daughters of Mr. Henrique Hyndman, Jr., one, F.X. Soares F.X. Soares #17294
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Register or login? , is a skipper in the Portuguese mercantile marine. His other sons have found employment in Hongkong, Manila, and other places.
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Register or login? was a brother-in-lawh records that Eduardo Pereira was not the brother-in-law of Lourenço Marques, but the nephew of his wife.”] of Commendador Lourenço Marques Lourenço Marques #27896
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Register or login? , and will also come under wider notice in these pages., whose imprint the Hongkong Almanack and Directory of 1849 bears, has an entry all to himself in the Almanack, to the effect that the annual was “Printed and published by Mr. Delfino Noronha for the Editor and Proprietor (Mr. Tarrant)”. For Mr. Noronha can be claimed the distinction of being one of the first, if not the very first, Portuguese to establish a commercial enterprise of his own in the new colony. He dared to face the rigours of the climate and the social uncertainties of young Hongkong without the assurance of a fixed salary and thus has a special claim on our attention.
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Register or login? . A native of Macao, he left the Portuguese colony in the early ’40’s of the last century, with a small printing plant which he set up in Hongkong. The printer settler was then not yet twenty years of age. From small beginnings, he gradually built up a business of quite considerable size, employing a large staff of skilled workmen, many of them Portuguese. Like the Almadas, Mr. Noronha had many dealings with the British Government, and early found his reward when he was appointed printer to the Government of Hongkong. It was Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell, the Governor of Hongkong in 1866 to 1872, who, in expressing his appreciation of the services of Noronha & Co. (the firm name adopted by Mr. Delfino Noronha), stated that “so long as the firm should continue to give satisfaction they would remain the printers of the Government in perpetuum”.
By dint of hard work and thrift, and in spite of the ravages of the climate and other handicaps of life in Hongkong’s early days, Mr. Delfino Noronha brought up a large family of children and grandchildren and built up a prosperous business. Though some of his sons went to Canton, Shanghai, Manila, and Singapore, there to launch out on their own in the printing business, the Noronhas, like the Almadas, have been continuous residents of Hongkong since the Colony’s earliest days. Mr. Delfino Noronha died in Hongkong on the 1st February, 1900, at the ripe age of seventy-six years.e
During his long association with the printing business Mr. Noronha published a large number of books on a variety of subjects and in different languages. In addition to the official organ of the Government of Hongkong, the Hongkong Government Gazette, which has appeared week after week with unfailing regularity under the imprint of Noronha & Company, from the earliest issues, some of the important publications issued from Mr. Noronha’s office were: A Digest and Index of all the Ordinances of Hongkong (to the close of 1849), by William Tarrant, in 1850; The Ordinances of Hongkong, 1868; The Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Colony of Hongkong. Concise Edition, From 1844-1890, compiled by A. J. Leach, in 2 vols., 1891-1892; A Chinese Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect, by E. J. Eitel; The Currency of the Far East from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, by J. H. Stewart Lockhart, 1895; A Chinese and English Dictionary, by W. Lobscheid, 1871; Manuel pratique de la langue chinoise, by C. Imbault-Huart, 1892; The Cities and Towns of China: A Geographical Dictionary, by G. M. H. Playfair, 1879; Mesny’s Chinese Miscellany – a magazine ; The Hongkong Town Messenger – an afternoon daily newspaper, which was short lived; for many years, Government Blue Books, Departmental Reports and Sessional Papers, some of them of the greatest value; the Civil List and Street Index, both official annual publications for the Government of Hongkong, devotional works in Portuguese and English, etc. Mr. Noronha was responsible for the singularly attractive programme done in satin for the Hongkong Jockey Club, presented by the Stewards of the Club to the young lady chosen to hand out the Ladies’ Purse at each annual race meeting of the Jockey Club.
There were a good few compositors and printers of Portuguese nationality in Hongkong during the Colony’s early years. As a matter of fact, “the early compositors were all Portuguese, and this was case certainly up to the Seventies. Chinese compositors were not employed until comparatively late in local printing history”.
This can be verified by referring to the Almanack and Directory of 1849. The staffs of compositors in newspaper offices at that time were all Portuguese:
- The Hongkong Register (newspaper):
- António Jozé Homem de Carvalho, Jr.
- Jozé F. Homem de Carvalho
- Cipriano do Rozario
- Agostinho do Rozario
- The China Mail (newspaper):
- Jozé Maria da Silva
- Francisco Cicílio Barradas
- Manuel Luiz da Roza Pereira
- Vicente Francisco Barradas
- João Braz Garson
- Athanásio Agostinho de Fonseca
- Joaquim da Silva
- The Friend of China Office (newspaper):
- Luiz de Azevedo
- António Vidigal e Roza
- Roque Vidigal e Roza
A Mr. António Fonseca was then (in 1849) the only compositor employed in Mr. Noronha’s printing establishment.
The more enterprising compositors, such as the brothers Homem de Carvalho and Silva e Souza, about whom I shall have some remarks to make later in this book, tried their fortunes subsequently in Hongkong and at Shanghai with printing and stationery businesses of their own. By 1861 the number of compositors of Portuguese nationality in Hongkong had increased to thirty-three, not a small number for such a small community.
The explanation for the steady increase in the number of Portuguese compositors in Hongkong can be found in the fact that there had been a printing press at St. Joseph’s College in Macao at which Portuguese lads were given training as compositors and printers. Some of the young type-setters upon completing their apprenticeship migrated to the neighbouring British colony as the demand there for men skilled in this class of work increased with the growth of the settlement.
The priests of the well-known school had adopted the idea of giving instruction in the art of printing as a means of providing the youths of Macao with a desirable profession when the older calling of the mariners’ career no longer offered the rewards which could be had by them in older days. During the second and third decades of the XIXth Century increasing numbers of foreign ships had appeared in Far Eastern waters, competing for China’s trade, and sharing in the trade between Macao and a number of other places. The wealthy trading concerns of Britain, the United States, and other countries had greater resources than the Portuguese, and this had the effect of reducing the number of Portuguese vessels engaged in commerce in the East. This meant fewer opportunities at sea for Portuguese youths in Macao who were seeking employment. For some of such youths the printing press at St. Joseph’s College, at Macao, offered a training in a new craft which provided a remunerative living, as it proved, in Hongkong and elsewhere in China.
The young Portuguese compositors trained at that institution were the ones who staffed the printing works not only of the British and American missionaries and other foreign printing establishments at Macao, Hongkong, Canton and other places, but also the composing rooms of Hongkong’s newspaper offices for several decades. But for these Portuguese compositors, the newspapers in Hongkong could not have functioned, as the expense of engaging compositors form England or elsewhere would have been prohibitive.
Other Portuguese printers besides Mr. Noronha went on from Hongkong to places farther North, as new ports were opened to trade along the China coast, and they started their own printing businesses
at Canton, Swatow, Amoy, Foochow, and Shanghai. From the Portuguese as well as the missionary printeries the Chinese learned the trade of setting up the foreign style type and the art of printing by the “strange methods” of these foreigners.
When we think of the great daily newspapers and the thousands of well printed and illustrated books which pour out of the large printing establishments in the Far East at the present time, we do well to remember the debt that is owed to Macao. It was from that little Portuguese colony that the art of modern printing spread to Hongkong and to the rest of the Far East. The pioneer printers at Macao, whose names even are unknown or unremembered to-day, have not been given their proper due for the contribution they made to the advance of Western knowledge in the Orient. Their work is apt to be forgotten, though it well deserves an honoured place in the story of the spread of man’s civilising influences by means of the printed word.
I have often pondered on the foresight of those priests of old Macao, who, early in the XIXth century, gave a thought to the material needs of their flock and furnished so many of them with a knowledge of the printer’s art, thus enabling quite a number of Portuguese youths to earn a living in a new profession. What a fine thing it would have been if the educational authorities of Hongkong, civil as well as ecclesiastical, had been as thoughtful of those whose education had been entrusted to them! Had they but thought it their duty to look ahead and provide instruction adapted to the individual natural aptitudes of the youth of Hongkong, what a difference it might have made too many members of the Portuguese and other communities in Hongkong!
I trust that in the newer world which is coming, the needs of the young men and women of Hongkong will not continue to be disregarded, and that they will be given the necessary preparation and opportunity to enable them to fill a worthy place in the world.
[NOTE. – In the foregoing pages references have been made to some of the early members of the Portuguese community in Hongkong; others will be mentioned in the next few chapters. The particulars were prepared by my father, but he did not complete them. I have endeavoured to add to my father’s observations, but am conscious of omissions in family records. I should be thankful, therefore, if those in possession of pertinent information would supply me with particulars, so that they may be included in later chapters or in any reprint of this book which it may eventually be possible to make. – JACK M. BRAGA].