Hong Kong inaugurated Sir Henry Pottinger as its first governor in August 1841

Hong Kong inaugurated Sir Henry Pottinger as its first governor in August 1841. Despite British cynicism, Pottinger dedicated his time to building up Hong Kong's future as he realized its potential. He inspired long-term building projects and awarded land grants. In order to make peace with the Chinese, he sent his troops to the Chang Jiang (Yangtzi River) and threatened to attack Nanjing (Nanking). In August 1842, the Chinese yielded and the two governments signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which officially gave Hong Kong to the British. The Chuen Pi Convention was never signed and therefore never legal. With that, Hong Kong carried on to progress as a port and under British influences, it became one of the greatest port cities the world has ever seen.

With the involvement of the British, Hong Kong prospered. Many companies transferred from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, enabling the British colony to begin a prime Asian entrepot. Hostilities between the British and the Chinese of China continued to heighten, leading to the Second Opium War. Subsequently, other foreign nationals - Russia, France, Germany, and Japan - realized the importance of having easy access to trade with China and began to secure ports all along the Chinese coastline. Several treaties were signed between the different nationals. Later, British took possession of the New Territories, which was declared a part of the overall territory of Hong Kong.

The Opium War, also called the Anglo-Chinese War, was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered. In European history, it is perhaps the most sordid, base, and vicious event in European history, possibly, just possibly, overshadowed by the excesses of the Third Reich in the twentieth century.

By the 1830's, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in sheer size of criminality. Growing opium in India, the East India Company shipped tons of opium into Canton which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea. This trade had produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium parlors proliferated all throughout China in the early part of the nineteenth century. This trafficing, it should be stressed, was a criminal activity after 1836, but the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic flowing. The effects on Chinese society were devestating. In fact, there are few periods in Chinese history that approach the early nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy. In an effort to stem the tragedy, the imperial government made opium illegal in 1836 and began to aggressively close down the opium dens.

Lin Tse-hsü

   The key player in the prelude to war was a brilliant and highly moral official named Lin Tse-hsü. Deeply concerned about the opium menace, he maneuverd himself into being appointed Imperial Commissioner at Canton. His express purpose was to cut off the opium trade at its source by rooting out corrupt officials and cracking down on British trade in the drug.

   He took over in March of 1839 and within two months, absolutely invulnerable to bribery and corruption, he had taken action against Chinese merchants and Western traders and shut down all the traffic in opium. He destroyed all the existing stores of opium and, victorious in his war against opium, he composed a letter to Queen Victoria of England requesting that the British cease all opium trade. His letter included the argument that, since Britain had made opium trade and consumption illegal in England because of its harmful effects, it should not export that harm to other countries. Trade, according to Lin, should only be in beneficial objects.

   To be fair to England, if the only issue on the table were opium, the English probably (just probably) would have acceded to Lin's request. The British, however, had been nursing several grievances against China, and Lin's take-no-prisoners enforcement of Chinese laws combined to outrage the British against his decapitation of the opium trade. The most serious bone of contention involved treaty relations; because the British refused to submit to the emperor, there were no formal treaty relations between the two countries. The most serious problem precipitated by this lack of treaty relations involved the relationship between foreigners and Chinese law. The British, on principle, refused to hand over British citizens to a Chinese legal system that they felt was vicious and barbaric. The Chinese, equally principled, demanded that all foreigners who were accused of committing crimes on Chinese soil were to be dealt with solely by Chinese officials. In many ways, this was the real issue of the Opium War. In addition to enforcing the opium laws, Lin aggressively pursued foreign nationals accused of crimes.

   The English, despite Lin's eloquent letter, refused to back down from the opium trade. In response, Lin threatened to cut off all trade with England and expel all English from China. Thus began the Opium War.

The War

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The War

   War broke out when Chinese junks attempted to turn back English merchant vessels in November of 1839; although this was a low-level conflict, it inspired the English to send warships in June of 1840. The Chinese, with old-style weapons and artillery, were no match for the British gunships, which ranged up and down the coast shooting at forts and fighting on land. The Chinese were equally unprepared for the technological superiority of the British land armies, and suffered continual defeats. Finally, in 1842, the Chinese were forced to agree to an ignomious peace under the Treaty of Nanking.

   The treaty imposed on the Chinese was weighted entirely to the British side. Its first and fundamental demand was for British "extraterritoriality"; all British citizens would be subjected to British, not Chinese, law if they committed any crime on Chinese soil. The British would no longer have to pay tribute to the imperial administration in order to trade with China, and they gained five open ports for British trade: Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Ningpo, and Amoy. No restrictions were placed on British trade, and, as a consequence, opium trade more than doubled in the three decades following the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty also established England as the "most favored nation" trading with China; this clause granted to Britain any trading rights granted to other countries. Two years later, China, against its will, signed similar treaties with France and the United States.

   Lin Tse-hsü was officially disgraced for his actions in Canton and was sent to a remote appointment in Turkestan. Of all the imperial officials, however, Lin was the first to realize the momentuous lesson of the Opium War. In a series of letters he began to agitate the imperial government to adopt Western technology, arms, and methods of warfare. He was first to see that the war was about technological superiority; his influence, however, had dwindled to nothing, so his admonitions fell on deaf ears.

   It wasn't until a second conflict with England that Chinese officials began to take seriously the adoption of Western technologies. Even with the Treaty of Nanking, trade in Canton and other ports remained fairly restricted; the British were incensed by what they felt was clear treaty violations. The Chinese, for their part, were angered at the wholescale export of Chinese nationals to America and the Caribbean to work at what was no better than slave labor. These conflicts came to a head in 1856 in a series of skirmishes that ended in 1860. A second set of treaties further humiliated and weakened the imperial government. The most ignominious of the provisions in these treaties was the complete legalization of opium and the humiliating provision that allowed for the free and unrestricted propagation of Christianity in all regions of China.

The Illustrated Gazatteer of Maritime Countries

China's defeat at the hands of England led to the publication of the Illustrated Gazatteer of Maritime Countries by Wei Yüan (1794-1856). The Gazatteer marks the first landmark event in the modernization of China. Wei Yüan, a distinguished but minor official, argued in the Gazatteer that the Europeans had developed technologies and methods of warfare in their ceaseless and barbaric quest for power, profit, and material wealth. Civilization, represented by China, was in danger of falling to the technological superiority of the Western powers. Because China is a peaceful and civilized nation, it can overcome the West only if it learns and matches the technology and techniques of the West. The purpose of the Gazatteer was to disseminate knowledge about the Europeans, their technologies, their methods of warfare, and their selfish anarchy to learned officials. It is a landmark event in Chinese history, for it was the first systematic attempt to educate the Chinese in Western technologies and culture. This drive for modernization, begun by Lin Tse-hsü and perpetuated by Wei Yüan would gain momentum and emerge as the basis for the "Self-Strengthening" from 1874 to 1895.

ritish traders first set up shop in China at Canton, now known as Guangzhou, in 1711, exporting silk and tea. By the early 19th century, they began shipping opium to China to help balance out Britain's mounting trade deficit. When China tried to restrict the opium trade, Britain used force to pry open the Chinese market. It was through the treaties that settled these conflicts that China turned over most of what is now Hong Kong to Britain.

How did this unique city emerge from a sparsely populated coastal area to become one of the world's most vibrant international centers of commerce? A Library exhibition, "Hong Kong: From Fishing Village to Financial Center," tries to answer this question by tracing Hong Kong's development from the mid-19th century to the present, through materials from the Library of Congress collections.

Hong Kong: 1950s-1980s

During the 1950s, Hong Kong began its transformation to the modern economic success story of today. An influx of capital and entrepreneurial talent from Shanghai in the late 1940s and the Korean War trade embargo of China in 1950 spurred the colony's industrial development.

Hong Kong is both a key business center and a popular tourist destination. Another panoramic view of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak reflects the lively nature of the metropolis at night.

The 1950s also saw a worsening of Hong Kong's most serious social problem, a severe housing shortage caused by the influx of refugees fleeing the mainland. The development of public housing has been one of the Hong Kong government's major programs since that period, and today the squatter areas have largely disappeared.

With the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, much of the West was cut off from contact with the communist country. Diplomats, scholars and journalists based in Hong Kong used access to China's press, radio broadcasts, refugees and local contacts in the arcane art of "China-watching." For its part, China could maintain some contacts with the West through its unofficial representatives in Hong Kong at the New China (Xinhua) News Agency and the Bank of China.

A brilliantly illuminated floating restaurant sets sail on a sunset cruise.

Hong Kong was not isolated from Chinese domestic politics, however, especially during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. The Chinese government incited citizens of Hong Kong to protest British rule. The result was large-scale demonstrations against the colonial government, sometimes violent, during the spring and summer of 1967. The police handled the eruptions with firmness but restraint. Moreover, China did not force a confrontation with Britain and order was restored by that fall.

With President Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972 and the establishment of full U.S. diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, Hong Kong's role as a "China-watching" post declined. However, its economic role grew dramatically as Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms began to take hold in the early 1980s.

s Hong Kong grew into an international financial center, its culture became a mixture of the East and the West. The local Chinese absorbed elements of Western art, fashion, food, music, entertainment, and consumer behavior, thus creating a colorful, modern culture unique in Asia.

Traditional Chinese arts have comfortably coexisted with Western-influenced ones. Writers in the local Chinese community have clung to the ancient history of China as a source of literary inspiration. Moreover, traditional Chinese opera, which portrays heroes and heroines from the ancient Chinese dynasties, continues to attract a large local Cantonese audience.

Although martial arts did not originate in Hong Kong, they became popular with large numbers of Chinese and were featured in novels and films. Hong Kong's vibrant film industry produces large numbers of movies that are popular there and in many overseas Chinese communities.

The entrance to the Peninsula Hotel, one of the former colony's most luxurious accommodations.

Hong Kong and china One country two system

For much of the 20th century, Hong Kong has been "a borrowed place living on borrowed time." Worry about the future surfaced again in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Hong Kong's business community started to express unease about the New Territories lease, set to expire in 1997.

Legally, commercial leases in the New Territories could not be extended beyond June 30, 1997. As the date approached, therefore, shorter and shorter leases would be necessary, providing less time for investors to realize profits. This would, many feared, begin to damage investor confidence in Hong Kong.

Under pressure from the business community, during Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's visit to Beijing in 1982, Britain raised the issue of extending the New Territories lease. China, however, had long taken the position that all the 19th century treaties and agreements on Hong Kong were "unequal" and as such were not binding. Extending the New Territories lease was not an option, and Britain's discussions with China became serious negotiations over the terms of Hong Kong's return to China. These negotiations concluded in 1984 with the signing of the Joint Declaration. Drafting of the Basic Law was completed in 1990, setting the stage for the formal transformation of Hong Kong into a Special Administrative Region of China on July 1, 1997.