John M. Carroll's engrossing and accessible narrative explores the remarkable history of Hong Kong from the early 1800s through the post-1997 handover, when this former colony became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The book explores Hong Kong as a place with a unique identity, yet also a crossroads where Chinese history, British colonial history, and world history intersect. Carroll concludes by exploring the legacies of colonial rule, the consequences of Hong Kong's reintegration with China, and significant developments and challenges since 1997.

A History of Hong Kong - Frank Welsh

In 1842 a "barren island" was reluctantly ceded by China to an unenthusiastic Britain. "Hong Kong", grumbled Palmerston, "will never be a mart of trade". But from the outset the new colony prospered, its early growth owing much to the energy and resourcefulness of opium traders, who soon diversified in more respectable directions. In 1859 the Kowloon Peninsula was sold to Britain, and in 1898 a further area of the mainland, the "New Territories", was leased to Britain for 99 years - the arrangement from which the present difficulties spring.

Despite its extraordinary economic success, which has made it one of the world's leading commercial centres, Hong Kong has never quite shaken off the raffishness of its early days. It has continued to be a source of embarrassment to British governments, and now, as its enforced return to China approaches, its future is the focus of worldwide attention and speculation. This work is an evocation of Hong Kong and the characters of those who shaped it, from its buccaneering origins to its post-war growth

Economy: A Documentary History of Hong Kong - David Faure

This book demonstrates why Hong Kong was so successful as a commercial, industrial and financial city at different times in its history and how these major changes made an impact on the life of its people. The documents selected for inclusion illustrate vividly problems confronted by entrepreneur and government at every stage in these changes.

"It will be treasured for its strong historical dimension, solid documents, and insightful statements. The appropriate selection of sources will please not only professional socioeconomic historians, but also the reading public."

Dr David Faure, University Lecturer in Modern Chinese History, University of Oxford, has written extensively about Chinese history and Hong Kong history. In addition to this volume he edited A Documentary History of Hong Kong: Society.

Escape from Hong Kong: Admiral Chan Chak's Christmas Day Dash, 1941 - Tim Luard

On 25 December 1941, the day of Hong Kong’s surrender to the Japanese, Admiral Chan Chak – the Chinese government’s chief agent in Hong Kong – and more than 60 Chinese, British and Danish intelligence, naval and marine personnel made a dramatic escape from the invading army. They travelled on five small motor torpedo boats – all that remained of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong – across Mirs Bay, landing at a beach near Nan’ao. Then, guided by guerrillas and villagers, they walked for four days through enemy lines to Huizhou, before flying to Chongqingor travelling by land to Burma. The breakout laid the foundations of an escape trail jointly used by the British Army Aid Group and the East River Column for the rest of the war. Chan Chak, the celebrated ‘one-legged admiral’, became Mayor of Canton after the war and was knighted by the British for his services to the Allied cause. His comrade in the escape, David MacDougall, became head of the civil administration of Hong Kong in 1945.

Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the USA, China and Hong Kong - Emma Jinhua Teng

In the second half of the nineteenth century, global labour migration, trade, and overseas study brought China and the United States into close contact, leading to new cross-cultural encounters that brought mixed-race families into being. Yet the stories of these families remain largely unknown. How did interracial families negotiate their identities within these societies when mixed-race marriage was taboo and "Eurasian" often a derisive term?

In Eurasian, Emma Jinhua Teng compares Chinese-Western mixed-race families in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, examining both the range of ideas that shaped the formation of Eurasian identities in these diverse contexts and the claims set forth by individual Eurasians concerning their own identities. Teng argues that Eurasians were not universally marginalized during this era, as is often asserted. Rather, Eurasians often found themselves facing contradictions between exclusionary and inclusive ideologies of race and nationality, and between overt racism and more subtle forms of prejudice that were counterbalanced by partial acceptance and privilege.

By tracing the stories of mixed and transnational families during an earlier era of globalization, Eurasian also demonstrates to students, faculty, scholars, and researchers how changes in interracial ideology have allowed the descendants of some of these families to reclaim their dual heritage with pride.

Foreign Communities in Hong Kong 1840s-1950s - Cindy Yik-Yi Chu

This collection of essays describes adaptations of minority ethnic groups to cross-cultural situations in Hong Kong from the 1840s through the 1950s. It aims to portray Hong Kong history through the perspectives of foreign communities - the British, Germans, Americans, Indians and Japanese - and to understand how they perceived the economic situation, political administration and culture of the colony.

"Despite Hong Kong's status as a cosmopolitan 'city of the world,' readers formerly searched in vain for a comprehensive and engaging collection of historical essays on the major non-Chinese populations in the former British colony. This volume of essays is the first to study the British, German, European, American, Japanese, and Indian communities there from 1841 to the early Cold War period of the 1950s. Based on multi-archival material and memoirs, this timely book will be of interest not only to Hong Kong and China specialists but to students of Sino-foreign relationships, ethnic studies, and intercultural relations."

Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery - Patricia Lim

The book has recorded the inscriptions on all 8,000 graves in the HK Cemetery to provide a rich description of life in Hong Kong during the first 100 years approximately from its colonization and a wonderful series of anecdotes.

"For the historian or genealogist, Patricia Lim's exhaustive cataloguing of the Hong Kong Cemetery is both comprehensive and easy to use. For the curious and intrigued who've ever passed the Cemetery and wondered who lies within, Forgotten Souls is a wonderful collection of facts, anecdotes and lost Hong Kong tales." - Paul French, author of The Old Shanghai A-Z

Patricia Lim has lived in Hong Kong for more than thirty years. She studied at Cambridge University and had a long and happy career teaching English, History and Latin in various schools.

Fragrant Harbour - John Lanchester (Novel)

'It's Hong Kong,' she said. 'Heung gong. Fragrant harbour.' "Fragrant Harbour" is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia's last seventy years. Tom Stewart leaves England to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong's best hotel. Sister Maria is a beautiful and uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face of money and power and big business. Matthew Ho is a young Chinese entrepreneur whose life has been shaped by painful choices made long before his birth. The complacency of colonial life in the 1930s; the horrors of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War; the post-war boom and the handover of the city to the Chinese - all these are present in "Fragrant Harbour", an epic novel of one of the world's great cities.

Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood - Martin Booth

Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire...An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s.

Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a 'pale fellow' like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Martin Booth's compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.

Hong Kong 1941-45: First Strike in the Pacific War - Benjamin Lai

On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two battle-hardened IJA divisions.

What defines the battle of Hong Kong was not the scale - just 14,000 defended the colony - but the intensity of this battle, fought not only by the British Army, Navy and Air Force but also Canadians, Hong Kong's own defence force, the Indian Army and many civilians. The campaign itself is characterized by a fierce land battle, with long artillery duals and as well as fast naval actions with intense actions at the Gin Drinkers Line as well as the battle of Wong Nai Chung Gap where a handful of defenders took on an entire Japanese regiment. Less known but equally important are individual acts valour such as CSM John Robert Osborne winning a posthumous VC, throwing himself over a Japanese grenade to save fellow combatants

Hong Kong Remembers - Sally Blyth and Ian Wotherspoon

The story of Hong Kong's social, political, and economic development - from the post-War period to the end of its life as a colonial territory - is a remarkable Chinese-British story. This book contains first-hand accounts of life and times in Hong Kong by luminaries, former governors, officials, politicians, business people, artists, and average people - natives, émigrés, and expats alike.

Over six decades, Hong Kong has been transformed from a depressed and overcrowded, refugee haven, fraught with health and welfare problems, to a shining model of laissez-faire capitalism with an exemplary public housing programme, a modicum of democracy, and a thriving, hybrid cultural life. The contributors to this book recall the important events along the rocky path of development, including the housing crisis of the 1950s, the 1967 anti-Government riots, the Sino-British talks over Hong Kong in the 1980s, the sobering affect on the Hong Kong people of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, and the contentious politics of the transition to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hong Kong's Watershed: The 1967 Riots - Gary Ka-Wai Cheung

The book provides an account of the 1967 riots in Hong Kong and the social background to the disturbances. It also details the impact of the riots, ranging from forcing the colonial government to introduce long overdue social reforms and adjust its governing strategy to reinforcing the cleavage between the left wing and the mainstream society.

"The 1967 riots were a historical watershed for Hong Kong. Condemned by official verdict as terrorist acts of zealots, but praised by some in the leftist camp as struggles against colonial oppression, these uprisings have since been treated as political taboo and seldom revisited. Gary Cheung's original book in Chinese attempted to provide a more human account of that political upheaval. This English edition should be much welcomed by readers who are interested in a chapter of the real history of modern Hong Kong." - Anthony B. L. Cheung, President of The Hong Kong Institute of Education, and Member of Hong Kong's Executive Council

Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China's World City - Paul O'Connor

More than a quarter of a million Muslims live and work in Hong Kong. Among them are descendants of families who have been in the city for generations, recent immigrants from around the world, and growing numbers of migrant workers. Islam in Hong Kong explores the lives of Muslims as ethnic and religious minorities in this unique postcolonial Chinese city. Drawing on interviews with Muslims of different origins, O'Connor builds a detailed picture of daily life through topical chapters on language, space, religious education, daily prayers, maintaining a halal diet in a Chinese environment, racism, and other subjects. Although the picture that emerges is complex and ambiguous, one striking conclusion is that Muslims in Hong Kong generally find acceptance as a community and do not consider themselves to be victimised because of their religion.

Love in a Fallen City: And Other Stories - Eileen Chang

Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang's achievement is her short fiction - tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life.

Written when she was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. "Love in a Fallen City", the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Society: A Documentary History of Hong Kong - David Faure

This book puts together historical documents that illustrate the lives and concerns of Hong Kong people through a century and a half of colonial rule. It describes not only the ideals of the elite, but also the harsh realities of life faced by the majority, who until recent years lived under considerable poverty. It documents changes in standards of living, housing conditions, family life, communal organization and political aspirations. This vivid account of Hong Kong's social history as Hong Kong people lived it summarizes the predicaments of people who chose to live in Hong Kong.

Dr David Faure, the editor, is University Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on Chinese social history and Hong Kong history, and is currently interested in the history of the identity of Chinese people.

The Battle for Hong Kong, 1941-45: Hostage to Fortune - Oliver Lindsay

The Battle for Hong Kong, 1941-1945 is illuminated by the remarkable personal story of John Harris. An architectural student, he was pitched into battle as a subaltern in the Royal Engineers and was a prisoner of the Japanese for four years. His powerful testimonial describes the appalling struggle to survive in a Japanese prison camp.

Thoroughly researched, particularly through exceptional access to war diaries, The Battle for Hong Kong also explores the catastrophic repercussions of the sudden collapse of the British Army Aid Group (cover name for the agency that handled spies in Southeast Asia) and the resulting suspicion that Britain's senior intelligence officer was working for the Japanese, the role of military leaders in prolonging the fighting and the serious casualties that resulted, and the true extent of the atrocities inflicted on POWs and internees

The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation - Philip Snow

On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years. The Japanese occupation was a turning point in the slow historical process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from four centuries of influence in East Asia.

In this powerful narrative, Philip Snow unravels the dramatic story of the occupation from the viewpoint of all the key players - the Hong Kong Chinese, the British, the Japanese, and the mainland Chinese - and reinteprets the subsequent evolution of Hong Kong.

'Stimulating and highly informative' Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review 'The amount of work involved, and the clarity of mind Snow brings to his storytelling and contextualising, are amazing' John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph 'Snow's book is by a country mile the best thing written about the period' Independent on Sunday '...very different, and very good'.

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of Modern China - Julia Lovell

In October 1839, a Windsor cabinet meeting votes to begin the first Opium War against China. Bureaucratic fumbling, military missteps, and a healthy dose of political opportunism and collaboration followed. Rich in tragicomedy, The Opium War explores the disastrous British foreign-relations move that became a founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism, and depicts China s heroic struggle against Western conspiracy.

Julia Lovell examines the causes and consequences of the Opium War, interweaving tales of the opium pushers and dissidents. More importantly, she analyses how the Opium Wars shaped China's self-image and created an enduring model for its interactions with the West, plagued by delusion and prejudice.

Travellers' Tales of Old Hong Kong, Canton & Macao - Michael Wise

Collected for the first time in a single volume are these true and often comic stories of the South China Coast. Seventy visitors from around the world give vivid accounts of their experiences—of high society at Government House and low life in Canton gaols, of spies in Hong Kong and pirates on buccaneering junks, of typhoons, burglars and Eastern magic, of gambling, opium and slavery. Most revealing of all, they write about their encounters with the people, the misunderstandings between East and West, the constant battle of wits between Chinese and foreigner, united only by a pidgin lingo. This was a time when the Colonial Secretary could say with confidence: “I have in vain sought for one valuable quality in Hong Kong… I can see no justification for the British Government spending one shilling on Hong Kong”.

First published in 1986, this classic volume is sure to entertain and inform a whole new generation of readers.

FURTHER READING: HONG KONG STORY

A Concise History of Hong Kong - John M. Carroll