Impending changes in the political status of Hong Kong have in recent years brought about considerable interest in Hong Kong studies. Despite the very active publication of academic works and general books about Hong Kong in the last few years, there is still a need for a good scholarly general history which takes account of overall changes in Hong Kong’s politics, society, external relations, education, economy, culture, and many other aspects of life. Indeed many recent publications are rather narrowly focused on either the Sino-British negotiations of the early 1980s or the transition of Hong Kong from a British Crown...

Britain detached the island of Hong Kong from China and turned it into a Crown Colony in order to serve British interests, which initially were primarily commercial. Advancement of the interests of the Chinese Empire or of the Chinese inhabitants there was certainly not part of the British motive. Equally certainly the British had no objection to it should their occupation prove to be advantageous to the Chinese as well. In time it did—at least from the point of view of those Chinese who voted with their feet and migrated to Hong Kong. It is ironic that despite Hong...

British possession of Hong Kong began on 26 January 1841 in the course of the First Anglo-Chinese War (1840–43) when Commodore Sir Gordon Bremer of the Royal Navy occupied it on the instructions of Captain Charles Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary in China and Chief Superintendent of China Trade. Elliot acted on the basis of the Convention of Chuenpi, which he concluded with the Chinese Imperial Commissioner Ch’i-shan on 20 January 1841. Although the Convention provided that China would cede the island of Hong Kong to Britain, no formal transfer of sovereignty took place as the Convention was repudiated by the...

As Chapter One has demonstrated, Hong Kong was founded as a Crown Colony with a political system that was authoritarian rather than democratic. Established primarily as a trading post and a naval station, Hong Kong was not intended by its founding fathers to develop into a miniature of democratic Britain, the metropolitan country. However, this was not on its own sufficient to prevent Hong Kong from developing democracy if this had been the wish of a majority of its people. To put this in perspective, one must understand the history of the evolution of the modern British Empire into the...

This chapter follows closely from the last one since the issue of political advancement at times involved not only developing the Legislative Council but also reforming the Executive Council, or introducing changes at the municipal level. This chapter focuses on the evolution of the Executive Council and the question of developing one or several municipal councils as a vehicle for local government.

As was the case with the Legislative Council, the constitutional basis for setting up an Executive Council was the Letters Patent (document I.a5) issued by Queen Victoria in 1843. Its original membership, organization, and rules were laid down...

This chapter is not concerned with documenting comprehensively the origins and evolution of the entire Hong Kong civil service. It focuses instead on the four most important issues, beginning with the founding of an independent civil administration. This will be followed by a section on the cadet or administrative service which constitutes the backbone and the central nervous system of the Hong Kong government. Next comes the development of the police, which is one of the corner-stones of stability and good order. The police is also of central importance as it, more than any department excepting the Registrar General’s Office,...

The Legislative Council has been the most important channel of communication between the government and the people in Hong Kong. It is also the parliamentary body for public participation in politics. The evolution of the Legislative Council and the various attempts to reform it have already been documented in considerable detail in Chapter II. In this chapter, only the basis for the selection of unofficial members to the Legislative Council will be dealt with, as this will help to illustrate the development of the government’s attitude towards it as a representative body and as an arena for political participation. After...

The emergence of a distinctly Hong Kong political culture has proved to be a long and agonizing process. Throughout the nineteenth century and until the Pacific War in the middle of the twentieth century, the Chinese and the non-Chinese communities maintained only limited contacts. As the debates over constitutional developments in Chapter Two have illustrated, politics in the narrow sense, relating to the development of government and to policy making, largely concerned only the expatriate community and the very small Chinese elite who had become Westernized to a large degree and were recruited to serve in various local councils. Their...

After the offices of the Governor of Hong Kong and the Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of China Trade were separated in 1859, the question of what kind of contact Hong Kong should maintain with the Chinese authorities emerged. At the diplomatic level, a formal channel was established with the appointment of a British Minister to the Court in Peking, which was later followed by the sending of a Chinese Minister to the Court of St James in London. Formal communications between the governments of Hong Kong and China would be handled through the usual diplomatic channels, which is to say through...