civilian, saw themselves as more than mere island functionaries, but as members of the wider imperial system. In general it was the example of India that they looked towards, like all British imperialists in those days. The three Governors of the 1840s were all Anglo-Indian by background – Pottinger’s brother Eldred, ‘The Hero of Herat’, had entered the Anglo-Indian pantheon because of his exploits in the war against the Afghans – and the affairs of British India preoccupied the colonists. Indian reports figured prominently in the
Friend of China
, from entire pages about the The Situation in Afghanistan to foot-of-the-column reports about petty promotions in Madras. The East India Company rupee was legal tender in Hong Kong. Indian opium was the staple of its finance. Many Anglo-Indian words and phrases – tiffin, mullah, punkah, sepoy, verandah – entered its English vernacular. Many Indian merchants had followed the flag to the new colony, amongthem rich and influential Parsees, and the Indian troops regularly stationed there, the constant comings-and-goings of ships from Calcutta or Bombay, added satisfactorily to the Anglo-Indian illusion.
There was as yet no Government House, such as provided the traditional focus of the imperial order in other colonies. Throughout the 1840s Governors variously inhabited rented accommodations and furnished rooms attached to the Record Office (also used for weddings). The slopes behind Central had however been nominated Government Hill, and around it an incipiently Establishment style was already becoming apparent. The first mat-shed premises of the Church of England gave way, by the end of the decade, to a properly Gothic cathedral of St John. The tents of the soldiers had metamorphosed into barrack blocks on the Indian pattern, arranged in elegant echelon down the hill. On the site of James Matheson’s original ‘half New South Wales, half native’ bungalow arose Head Quarter House, the general’s neo-classical official residence.
There was a court-house, and a gaol, and a post office, and a harbour-master’s office, whose first occupant, Lieutenant William Pedder, ran a tight enough port – berths strictly allocated, top-gallant yards to be struck on entrance, jib and spanker booms rigged close when ordered. In 1846 the Hong Kong Club opened in a three-storey clubhouse, and in the same year the first races were run at Happy Valley. The Freemasons, who had come to the China coast with the East India Company, pursued their rituals in rented rooms in Queen’s Road; the amateur dramatic society, that
sine qua non
of colonial content, performed in a series of mat-shed Theatre Royals. Ever and again the redcoats came tramping from their quarters to the parade-ground above the sea, bear-skinned, pipe-clayed, long bayonets on their muskets. British warships habitually lay in the harbour, and once a month a packet loaded the mailbags for the Overland Route, via Egypt, home to England.
The official classes were trying hard to achieve a proper colonial stance. For instance amidst all the makeshift the Club, by tradition the fulcrum of colonial identity, set out to be just as lofty as any of its Anglo-Indian progenitors, even down to coolie-energized punkahs. Rules of membership were strict, all foreigners, women and people of unsuitable social background being banned, and very soon the place became, according to one contemporary chronicler, ‘the paradise of the select and temple of colonial gentility’, whose members spent much of their time in its high-vaulted rooms, playing billiards, reading thenewspapers, eating things like roast beef, game pie or suet pudding, and dressed from head to foot in white linen (though at some times of the year they wore flannel underneath).
Out of doors too, if we are to believe the old pictorialists, a suitable display was presented. Ladies in dainty bonnets, men in tall hats, are driven along those few rutted streets by liveried
Friend of China
, from entire pages about the The Situation in Afghanistan to foot-of-the-column reports about petty promotions in Madras. The East India Company rupee was legal tender in Hong Kong. Indian opium was the staple of its finance. Many Anglo-Indian words and phrases – tiffin, mullah, punkah, sepoy, verandah – entered its English vernacular. Many Indian merchants had followed the flag to the new colony, amongthem rich and influential Parsees, and the Indian troops regularly stationed there, the constant comings-and-goings of ships from Calcutta or Bombay, added satisfactorily to the Anglo-Indian illusion.
There was as yet no Government House, such as provided the traditional focus of the imperial order in other colonies. Throughout the 1840s Governors variously inhabited rented accommodations and furnished rooms attached to the Record Office (also used for weddings). The slopes behind Central had however been nominated Government Hill, and around it an incipiently Establishment style was already becoming apparent. The first mat-shed premises of the Church of England gave way, by the end of the decade, to a properly Gothic cathedral of St John. The tents of the soldiers had metamorphosed into barrack blocks on the Indian pattern, arranged in elegant echelon down the hill. On the site of James Matheson’s original ‘half New South Wales, half native’ bungalow arose Head Quarter House, the general’s neo-classical official residence.
There was a court-house, and a gaol, and a post office, and a harbour-master’s office, whose first occupant, Lieutenant William Pedder, ran a tight enough port – berths strictly allocated, top-gallant yards to be struck on entrance, jib and spanker booms rigged close when ordered. In 1846 the Hong Kong Club opened in a three-storey clubhouse, and in the same year the first races were run at Happy Valley. The Freemasons, who had come to the China coast with the East India Company, pursued their rituals in rented rooms in Queen’s Road; the amateur dramatic society, that
sine qua non
of colonial content, performed in a series of mat-shed Theatre Royals. Ever and again the redcoats came tramping from their quarters to the parade-ground above the sea, bear-skinned, pipe-clayed, long bayonets on their muskets. British warships habitually lay in the harbour, and once a month a packet loaded the mailbags for the Overland Route, via Egypt, home to England.
The official classes were trying hard to achieve a proper colonial stance. For instance amidst all the makeshift the Club, by tradition the fulcrum of colonial identity, set out to be just as lofty as any of its Anglo-Indian progenitors, even down to coolie-energized punkahs. Rules of membership were strict, all foreigners, women and people of unsuitable social background being banned, and very soon the place became, according to one contemporary chronicler, ‘the paradise of the select and temple of colonial gentility’, whose members spent much of their time in its high-vaulted rooms, playing billiards, reading thenewspapers, eating things like roast beef, game pie or suet pudding, and dressed from head to foot in white linen (though at some times of the year they wore flannel underneath).
Out of doors too, if we are to believe the old pictorialists, a suitable display was presented. Ladies in dainty bonnets, men in tall hats, are driven along those few rutted streets by liveried
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