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**cogito** · 17-09-2015, 01:10 AM

Originally posted by Napper Tandy View Post

Does anyone know anything more about him?

Asian Sentinel

Page 37 of this if you can get your hands on it...

Lau, Kit-ching Chan. [1990] (1990). China, Britain and Hong Kong, 1895–1945. Chinese University Press. ISBN 962-201-409-7, ISBN 978-962-201-409-1. pg 37.

**cogito** · 19-09-2015, 09:00 PM

Still not a screed on the elusive Mr Mulkern.

Looking at the background events though... and the Boxer Uprising in China, it's interesting to look at the composition of the 'eight nation alliance' sent there to secure imperial interests in 1900. A few years later they'd be killing each other...

Troops_of_the_Eight_nations_alliance_1900.jpg

Left to right... Britain, USA, Russia, India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, japan.

**boxman** · 20-09-2015, 03:37 AM

Originally posted by cogito View Post

Still not a screed on the elusive Mr Mulkern.

Looking at the background events though... and the Boxer Uprising in China, it's interesting to look at the composition of the 'eight nation alliance' sent there to secure imperial interests in 1900. A few years later they'd be killing each other...

[ATTACH]62503[/ATTACH]

Left to right... Britain, USA, Russia, India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, japan.

Very true in just a few years. Interesting also that Italy, Japan, Britain, US, India, France and Russia all allies in the first war, with the Germans and Austria Hungarians all on the other.

**boxman** · 21-09-2015, 05:01 AM

Some info here:

Page Not Found - Hurdan.com

http://www.hurdan.com/sentence/british-malaya-soldier-rowland-j.-mulkern-also-too/6cc539f1-96a4-492e-a090-4da8f330fa5d?t=rowland+j.+mulkern#sentence

Sun Yat-sen

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vh7M1u4IGFkC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=rowland+j+mulkern&source=bl&ots=S1YvFm3Xhu&sig=jbdZB6GzY_kxQjMT7x0UbwOveR0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIpZuYtvGGyAIVATyUCh1B0g1Q#v=onepage&q=rowland%20j%20mulkern&f=false

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the first president of the Republic of China, has left a supremely ambivalent political and intellectual legacy--so much so that he is claimed as a Founding Father by both the present rival governments in Taipei and Beijing. In Taiwan, he is the object of a veritable cult; in the People s Republic of China, he is paid homage as "pioneer of the revolution, making possible the Party s claims of continuity with the national past. Western scholars, on the other hand, have tended to question the myth of Sun Yat-sen by stressing the man s weaknesses, the thinker s incoherences, and the revolutionary leader s many failures. This book argues that the life and work of Sun Yat-sen have been distorted both by the creation of the myth and by the attempts at demythification. Its aim is to provide a fresh overall evaluation of the man and the events that turned an adventurer into the founder of the Chinese Republic and the leader of a great nationalist movement. The Sun Yat-sen who emerges from this rigorously researched account is a muddled politician, an opportunist with generous but confused ideas, a theorist without great originality or intellectual rigor. But the author demonstrates that the importance of Sun Yat-sen lies elsewhere. A Cantonese raised in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he was a product of maritime China, the China of the coastal provinces and overseas communities, open to foreign influences and acutely aware of the modern Western world (he was fund-raising in Denver when the eleventh attempt to bring down the Chinese empire finally succeeded). In facing the problems of change, of imitating the West, of rejecting or adapting tradition, he instinctively grasped the aspirations of his time, understood their force, and crystallized them into practical programs. Sun Yat-sen s gifts enabled him to foresee the danger that technology might represent to democracy, stressed the role of infrastructures (transport, energy) in economic modernization, and looked forward to a new style of diplomatic and international economic relations based upon cooperation that bypassed or absorbed old hostilities. These "utopias of his, at which his contemporaries heartily jeered, now seem to be so many prophecies.

Mulkern, Rowland J-, alias 'Hing Chung Hui' - Social Networks and Archival Context

http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w6136bxp

P . 3 :)

http://celinecwaiwai.weebly.com/p--3.html

Uprisings and incidents

**cogito** · 22-09-2015, 01:41 AM

Originally posted by boxman View Post

Some info here:

Page Not Found - Hurdan.com

http://www.hurdan.com/sentence/british-malaya-soldier-rowland-j.-mulkern-also-too/6cc539f1-96a4-492e-a090-4da8f330fa5d?t=rowland+j.+mulkern#sentence

Sun Yat-sen

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vh7M1u4IGFkC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=rowland+j+mulkern&source=bl&ots=S1YvFm3Xhu&sig=jbdZB6GzY_kxQjMT7x0UbwOveR0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIpZuYtvGGyAIVATyUCh1B0g1Q#v=onepage&q=rowland%20j%20mulkern&f=false

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the first president of the Republic of China, has left a supremely ambivalent political and intellectual legacy--so much so that he is claimed as a Founding Father by both the present rival governments in Taipei and Beijing. In Taiwan, he is the object of a veritable cult; in the People s Republic of China, he is paid homage as "pioneer of the revolution, making possible the Party s claims of continuity with the national past. Western scholars, on the other hand, have tended to question the myth of Sun Yat-sen by stressing the man s weaknesses, the thinker s incoherences, and the revolutionary leader s many failures. This book argues that the life and work of Sun Yat-sen have been distorted both by the creation of the myth and by the attempts at demythification. Its aim is to provide a fresh overall evaluation of the man and the events that turned an adventurer into the founder of the Chinese Republic and the leader of a great nationalist movement. The Sun Yat-sen who emerges from this rigorously researched account is a muddled politician, an opportunist with generous but confused ideas, a theorist without great originality or intellectual rigor. But the author demonstrates that the importance of Sun Yat-sen lies elsewhere. A Cantonese raised in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he was a product of maritime China, the China of the coastal provinces and overseas communities, open to foreign influences and acutely aware of the modern Western world (he was fund-raising in Denver when the eleventh attempt to bring down the Chinese empire finally succeeded). In facing the problems of change, of imitating the West, of rejecting or adapting tradition, he instinctively grasped the aspirations of his time, understood their force, and crystallized them into practical programs. Sun Yat-sen s gifts enabled him to foresee the danger that technology might represent to democracy, stressed the role of infrastructures (transport, energy) in economic modernization, and looked forward to a new style of diplomatic and international economic relations based upon cooperation that bypassed or absorbed old hostilities. These "utopias of his, at which his contemporaries heartily jeered, now seem to be so many prophecies.

Mulkern, Rowland J-, alias 'Hing Chung Hui' - Social Networks and Archival Context

http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w6136bxp

http://celinecwaiwai.weebly.com/p--3.html

-Thanks... there's a few more details alright - the biography of Sun Yat-sen who befriended Mulkern in London in 1895 - while telling us the basic facts about Mulkern that we already know, adds the detail that he was a member of the 'Restoration Party' at the time. I can find nothing about a party of that name in Britain or Ireland during that era... maybe it was a translation from Chinese and refers to Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party - or even the newly formed Sinn Fein.

Also, the virginia.edu link gives us the scant information that Mulkern sometimes went by another name... Hing Chung Hui. This seemed promising...until I discovered Hing Chung Hui was the Chinese name of a revolutionary movement (Society for the Restoration of China) founded by the aforementioned Sun Yat-sen.

Oh, wait a minute... 'restoration' ???

**boxman** · 22-09-2015, 09:20 AM

I understood it to mean he was member of China Restoration party. He's British army so if he has an interest he may have been stationed there or Hong Kong or Singapore. Might be a lead there. Brit army records are online I think.

**boxman** · 22-09-2015, 09:45 AM

I can't find him in the Brit archives.

**cogito** · 23-09-2015, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by boxman View Post

I can't find him in the Brit archives.

Think I may have found him in, of all places... thepeerage.com

He was one of eight offspring of Edmund Cowell Mulkern - a City of London banker who died in 1897 - so the timelines fit. And they seem to have a military connection, with Edmund senior having spent time in the army... and one of Rowland's brothers posted MIA in the Boer War

The only problem with all that is... peerages, city bankers, war heroes... it's not exactly the bold fenian men ...is it ?

Maybe he was the black sheep....

**boxman** · 23-09-2015, 01:33 AM

I've found a Rowland Joseph Mulkern, born 1869 in Okley, Surrey.

His father Edmund was born in Bengal India in 1834 and his grand father Martin was born in Ireland in 1805. This puts them smack dab in the middle of the East India Company days.

**boxman** · 23-09-2015, 01:40 AM

Martin Mulkern had bought a captaincy in the East India Company, rising to the rank of Major before his son Edmund was born.

**boxman** · 23-09-2015, 01:43 AM

Rowland's grand mother was the daughter of Maj General Sir William Toone of the East India Company.

**cogito** · 23-09-2015, 01:45 AM

Originally posted by boxman View Post

I've found a Rowland Joseph Mulkern, born 1869 in Okley, Surrey.

His father Edmund was born in Bengal India in 1834 and his grand father Martin was born in Ireland in 1805. This puts them smack dab in the middle of the East India Company days.

Ties in with the London electoral register which has him living in London during 1891, 1892, 1893,1894,1895,1896...and then he disappears - which ties in with Sun Yat-sen's account of him heading off to China.

**boxman** · 23-09-2015, 01:49 AM

Family tree

Attached Files

mulkern.jpg (22.6 KB, 0 views)

**boxman** · 23-09-2015, 01:52 AM

Interesting bit here:

China, Britain and Hong Kong, 1895-1945

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ee5Qr6dn_SAC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=rowland+joseph+mulkern+hong+kong&source=bl&ots=9N9axLdDLy&sig=nLyJFWgU9qiCC-IIEs7kqar78vk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIoNiZ-feLyAIVhIyUCh2IQQy-#v=onepage&q=rowland%20joseph%20mulkern%20hong%20kong&f=false

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Rowland J Mulkern

Rowland J Mulkern

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