Hong Kong feel less than utterly British, in the way that most imperial towns were British. The Chinese were very different from flexible Bengalis, naïve Africans, charming Malays or frankly hostile Pathans. They infiltrated everything with a peculiar air of self-sufficient calculation, and seemed hardly like subjects at all. Several hundred million of their compatriots lived just across the water, and they had been brought up one and all in the conviction that every Chinese ever born was superior to every foreigner.
The British of course felt precisely the opposite, and were for the most part animated by a profound contempt for all things Chinese. The very purpose of the colony was to puncture the pretensions and delusions of the Celestial Empire, and the naming of its principal town after the Queen of England would, as was claimed by its first newspaper, the
Friend of China
, ‘prelude a glorious victory over the superstition, pride and prejudice of the Chinese’.
The colonists accordingly, in their own sufficiently untidy enclave on this foreshore, set out to live very Britishly. For a start they symbolically renamed much else in Victoria after their monarch and her ministers. There was Victoria Peak, Victoria Harbour, Queen’s Road, the Royal Battery, while the smaller settlements of the island’s southern shore, reached by bridle-paths over the mountains, were named respectively for Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Lord Aberdeen, Foreign Secretary. Chinese residence was banned in the central part of Victoria, and the neighbouring bazaar quarter was reserved specifically for Chinese who had helped the British in the recent war – collaborators, in fact.
Standard institutions of colonial life were soon established, on the pattern of Crown Colonies like Jamaica or Mauritius. Hong Kong was ruled by a Governor, assisted by a three-man Council nominated by himself, and supported by a proper little hierarchy of official grandees – a general in command of the garrison, a commodore in charge of the naval establishment, a Colonial Secretary and a Colonial Treasurer and a Colonial Chaplain, a Chinese Secretary, a Registrar of the Supreme Court, a Chief Justice, an Auditor-General, an Attorney-General. (They were not always as stately as they sounded,though, there being no professional Colonial Service in those days: in Pottinger’s administration the Chinese Secretary was a Pomeranian clergyman, the Treasurer a former ship’s mate, while in 1849 the Registrar-General dropped everything and joined the Gold Rush to California.)
The Governor was absolutely in command. He was subject directly to the instructions of the British Government, indirectly to the decisions of Parliament at Westminster, and theoretically to the will of the Queen, but since it took anything up to a year for any message from Hong Kong to get an answer from London, in immediate matters what he said went. Moreover he was not merely a Governor. Once reconciled to the fact of Hong Kong, Palmerston had seen it chiefly as an off-shore station from which would be supervised the trade of the new Treaty Ports – Guangzhou, Amoy (now Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo) and Shanghai. By 1844 some fifty British firms were operating in the ports, and another twenty or so Indian, also of course entitled to the imperial attentions. Lord Aberdeen went further still, and envisaged Hong Kong, the only British possession east of Singapore, as a military and administrative centre for the entire Far East. The Governor was therefore, ex officio, also Her Majesty’s Plenipotentiary and Envoy-in-Ordinary, whose authority embraced all matters of British concern in the Far East – ‘accredited’, recorded Sir John Bowring of himself with satisfaction, ‘to a greater number of human beings (indeed no less than one-third of the human race) than any individual had been accredited before’.
His more responsible officials too, military or
The British of course felt precisely the opposite, and were for the most part animated by a profound contempt for all things Chinese. The very purpose of the colony was to puncture the pretensions and delusions of the Celestial Empire, and the naming of its principal town after the Queen of England would, as was claimed by its first newspaper, the
Friend of China
, ‘prelude a glorious victory over the superstition, pride and prejudice of the Chinese’.
The colonists accordingly, in their own sufficiently untidy enclave on this foreshore, set out to live very Britishly. For a start they symbolically renamed much else in Victoria after their monarch and her ministers. There was Victoria Peak, Victoria Harbour, Queen’s Road, the Royal Battery, while the smaller settlements of the island’s southern shore, reached by bridle-paths over the mountains, were named respectively for Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Lord Aberdeen, Foreign Secretary. Chinese residence was banned in the central part of Victoria, and the neighbouring bazaar quarter was reserved specifically for Chinese who had helped the British in the recent war – collaborators, in fact.
Standard institutions of colonial life were soon established, on the pattern of Crown Colonies like Jamaica or Mauritius. Hong Kong was ruled by a Governor, assisted by a three-man Council nominated by himself, and supported by a proper little hierarchy of official grandees – a general in command of the garrison, a commodore in charge of the naval establishment, a Colonial Secretary and a Colonial Treasurer and a Colonial Chaplain, a Chinese Secretary, a Registrar of the Supreme Court, a Chief Justice, an Auditor-General, an Attorney-General. (They were not always as stately as they sounded,though, there being no professional Colonial Service in those days: in Pottinger’s administration the Chinese Secretary was a Pomeranian clergyman, the Treasurer a former ship’s mate, while in 1849 the Registrar-General dropped everything and joined the Gold Rush to California.)
The Governor was absolutely in command. He was subject directly to the instructions of the British Government, indirectly to the decisions of Parliament at Westminster, and theoretically to the will of the Queen, but since it took anything up to a year for any message from Hong Kong to get an answer from London, in immediate matters what he said went. Moreover he was not merely a Governor. Once reconciled to the fact of Hong Kong, Palmerston had seen it chiefly as an off-shore station from which would be supervised the trade of the new Treaty Ports – Guangzhou, Amoy (now Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo) and Shanghai. By 1844 some fifty British firms were operating in the ports, and another twenty or so Indian, also of course entitled to the imperial attentions. Lord Aberdeen went further still, and envisaged Hong Kong, the only British possession east of Singapore, as a military and administrative centre for the entire Far East. The Governor was therefore, ex officio, also Her Majesty’s Plenipotentiary and Envoy-in-Ordinary, whose authority embraced all matters of British concern in the Far East – ‘accredited’, recorded Sir John Bowring of himself with satisfaction, ‘to a greater number of human beings (indeed no less than one-third of the human race) than any individual had been accredited before’.
His more responsible officials too, military or
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