Product Description
John 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent and Well-Rounded
"A Concise History of Hong Kong" by John Carroll does an excellent job of covering the entire history of the the "Fragrant Harbour" of South China; from before the Treaty of Nanking that ceded the territory to the British until ten years after it returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Easy to read and, as the title says, concise at only 270 pages. (Including the bibliography, index, and chronology of key events.) Mr. Carroll does a particularly good job of looking at things from both the Chinese and British points of view. ... Read more

Product Description
English text, 286 pages includes table of realized prices from the auction. ... Read more

Product Description
Since 1983 Hong Kong has pegged its currency to the US dollar through a currency board system that is unique among the world's advanced economies. In this first comprehensive book about Hong Kong's monetary system, Tony Latter draws on his considerably experience in the Bank of England and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to give a detailed account of how the system operates; why it was introduced; what are the important differences from other monetary regimes; and how it has performed.

After a brief description of Hong Kong's currency board system, two chapters explain the key features of mainstream monetary policy as practiced in most economies and how the currency board differs. Then three chapters deal with the history of money in Hong Kong from the mid-1930s describing the salient events and changes of the period up to the crisis and subsequent adoption of the currency board in 1983. Description of the functioning of the system after 1983 and its evolution then follow. The book concludes with an assessment of the performance of the currency board since 1983 and of Hong Kong's wider economic performance.

This book is designed to inform lay readers. Given the central role of monetary policy in the prosperity of Hong Kong business and its financial industries in particular this is a book of importance for all business people in Hong Kong. Describing a unique feature of the Hong Kong economy, it is essential reading for all students of economics. ... Read more

Product Description
The biographical essays in this book - first published in 1962 — give a sharp and fascinating picture of some of the Europeans who helped establish the colony of Hong Kong and lived through its early years. These men (and one woman) worked and lived in times when Hong Kong was plagued by economic depression, piracy, crime and disease. Not surprisingly, in these frontier-like conditions, all kinds and manner of people came to Hong Kong and made their mark. George Endacott, one of colonial Hong Kong’s foremost historians, introduces the whole gamut — from respectable diligent civil servants to drunkards, suspected pirates, the corrupt and the honest. Amongst the subjects are not only Charles Elliott and Henry Pottinger, first administrator and first Governor respectively, but also Charles Gutzlaff , missionary and interpreter for opium traders, William Caine, the first magistrate, known for his ruthless application of flogging to deal with lawlessness, John Davis,! a governor apparently universally disliked, and Daniel Caldwell, official interpreter when few Europeans knew any Chinese, who was suspected of conniving with pirates. But there are also several men who became important scholars of Chinese, Thomas Wade of the Wade-Giles Romanisation system, and especially the great sinologist, James Legge. Hong Kong has always attracted its share of larger-than-life characters, but in this collection of biographies, we have vignettes of an especially varied cast of the worthy and the wicked. ... Read more

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A sweeping history of Hong Kong, Britain's last colony, documents court intrigues of London and Peking, the heyday of the British Empire, economic development, its role as a refuge from mainland Chinese communism, and the 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Scholarly
I'm very impressed with how well researched this book is, considering that the author is not a native Hong Konger. Having said that, I do agree with the editorial statement that "The narrative is focused almost entirely on British rather than Chinese interests."

This is a pretty massive paperback, 652 pages from end to end including a very thick index, bibliography and notes. It's definitely very substantial and meaty. It is however not easy reading, the prose is somewhat formal but well written. Usually subsisting on a diet of easy to read thrillers, I had to mentally change gears to absorb it.

Going back to that editorial statement, this book is really a strategic history of Hong Kong. It starts way back from how the Chinese and British governments began on their journey to cross paths in the Ching dynasty and onto the Opium Wars. Then it goes on to how Foreign office obtained the island and then follows the history of Hong Kong through the service of it's British governors up to the present.

The history of Hong Kong is too vast be contained in one book. So for those who want to read about the history of Hong Kong from the British point of view this is a very informative and interesting book. Remarkable that this book wasn't written by a British historian or British ex-HK civil servant but an ex-banker! Fascinating reading and recommended.

Great Read but Traditional Outlook
This book provides a good source for the origins of Hong Kong and tells a fascinating story. It is especially good in detail in pre 1945 history with more than 2/3 of the book dedicated to that time period.
What bothered me about this book was the readiness of the author of accepting Nationalist assumptions of the origin of states. Writing about the time after 1962, Welsh says: "China had regained what could be regarded as her historic boundaries, with major exceptions of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and was willing to allow negotiations for the restoration of these to take their course without more pressure" (p. 444) The assumption of historic borders, though, is problematic. Tibet and Xinjiang have been rather recent additions to what is today the People's Republic of China. Taiwan only became a province under the Qing dynasty. During World War II, Mao Zedong even considered independence for Taiwan. It was Chiang Kai-shek's brutal conquest of the island that changed the equation. In the end, Welsh should be aware that countries are a mere creation of humans and are bound to change over time.

One with Nineveh and Tyre Redux
One is old enough to remember the British Empire during the period between 1945 and the devaluation of sterling in 1967, as a young, inquisitive, American, and when I visited London in 1973, I was duly impressed, as was Henry James in 1880, by the sooty *gravitas* of that great city as if it was still dreaming of Hong Kong, and palm and pine.

But much water has passed under London bridge since then. The past year or so, my commercial affairs have taken me to two dying embers of the British Empire, Suva in Fiji and Hong Kong, now a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Welsh¡¯s book is invaluable on Hong Kong.

Dying? Dead. Suva is today a province in fact if not in law of Australia and Frank Welsh's book makes it very clear that Hong Kong never was British. It's always been a Chinese city with a vast Chinese majority.

The British overlordship was curiously meaningless, and, if I read Welsh's book alright, it has serious lessons for any American still so foolish as to support Bush's idiotic attempt at reconquista in Iraq.

For in weak piping times of peace, there is, it seems, and at least in the UK and in America, dominated as they are, and rightfully so, by formidable females, no shortage of men who come upon a mad desire for military folly nel mezzo de camin, as a midlife crisis.

Precisely when the generation that had actually braved shot and shell at Waterloo was beginning to succumb to age and strong drink, ambitious and unscrupulous politicians, it is clear from Welsh, decided it was time, in Marx's sense, to resolve a few contradictions with gun-powder.

The Opium wars resulted even as today the Iraq wars have been the folly of choice.

Like the Iraq wars, the Opium wars had a curious two-phase structure. The first war was limited by what the impossible French would call considerations of humanity on both sides. British commanders set specific limited goals and the Chinese mandarins actually expressed, more than once, concern for the welfare of white colonies in Guangdong factories and in Macau.

In the 1840s, neither side in other words quite fit the demonizing caricature and one is reminded of the fact that Tariq Azis, now in American clink, is an Iraqi Christian (a damnably inconvenient fact well-concealed by the idiot American news media) who endeavored to limit the first war for nothing more, and nothing less, than considerations of humanity (for ¡°let us not speak falsely now the hour is much too late¡±)¡­even as Bush the elder (and a genuine coalition) could not stomach a drive on Baghdad.

Iraqi physicians and soldiers in April of 2003 protected Jessica Lynch until her rescue for nothing more, and nothing less, than considerations of humanity.

In the Guangdong region, British commanders demanded extra-territorality because the Mandarins would, they said, impose savage and un-Christian punishments on Britishers, and the British wanted to impose condign Christian punishments including the cat of nine tails, hanging, and abandonment at town¡¯s end to starve.

The second war, and the subsequent Elgin mission, were thanks to Palmerston (the evil genius of the entire affair) less informed on the Chinese side by Mencius¡¯ benign philosophy, or what the unspeakable French would call considerations, de l¡¯humanite. And as a result, by the time of Elgin¡¯s violation of China, beastliness erupted on both sides: the scent of blood was in the air as it is today in Najaf.

Britain received as its prize a humid gaggle of mountainous islands, and, as soon as it was known that money was to be made, millions of Chinese swarmed in, who in fact made Hong Kong the great city it is today. Hong Kong never really benefited Britain. Any more than Iraq, so far, has been a net benefit to the sharpers and criminals who lured America into hell has been anything more than bloody and expensive folly, did Hong Kong benefit Britain. For as Welsh notes, Britain¡¯s trade with little Holland has always exceeded its trade with China.

Indeed, I am reminded, reading of British trade¡¯s misadventures in Hong Kong and in China, of the hapless Indian touts at Tsim Sha Shue, who attempt to interest one in a fine ¡°British tailored¡± wool suit. This is usually in 100+ Fahrenheit when one is covered in sweat, where the very thought of worsted is the worst thing in the world. One says to the tout with a grin, nemestay, sahib, knowing that he is just trying to get by; but one wonders who signs on for fine British tailoring in the tropics other than mad dogs and Englishmen.

Welsh is most amusing on, and most unimpressed by, Thatcher who like a tropical storm visited Hong Kong and China in the 1980s, making silly noises about treating Hong Kong as Britain treated the Falklands while her generals and admirals had kittens. Britain had, of course, no real leverage.

Britain exhibited le perfide Anglais and nauseating hypocrisy. It extracted a series of promises from the Chinese leadership without being in the least able to enforce China¡¯s conformity to them. In the one area where Britain had leverage, the issuance of passports to Chinese inhabitants, Britain simply stonewalled: one can¡¯t have more wogs, especially hard-working wogs.

But China does keep more or less to her 1997 commitments in order perhaps to lure Taiwan into ¡°one country, two systems¡± and Hong Kong flourishes as before with today, it seems, at least one Brooks Brothers outlet per capita¡­offering wear appropriate to the noonday sun. For China, much depends on dinner and Hong Kong is a meal ticket.

All¡¯s well, that ends well, so far. But clearly the Opium wars and the grab of Hong Kong began Britain¡¯s slow decline into the tragicomic opera of today. For it was shortly after the Arrow nonsense that Germany began to beat Britain atcommerce.

Perhaps Iraq is America¡¯s paredon in the same way.

A spirited history
Frank Welsh has written a magnificent history of Hong Kong: His account of nearly two centuries of British rule is comprehensive, spirited, fair and funny. Welsh obviously enjoyed writing this book, and his energy and enthusiasm are contagious. I loved his concise, blunt and often hilarious assessments of the rogues, eccentrics, incompetents and occasional heroes who governed or otherwise played major roles in Hong Kong: Gov. John Bowring "possessed almost every gift but that of common sense.'' "It might have been possible to find a man more unsuited to be a Colonial Governor than John Pope Hennessey,'' Welsh writes, "but it would not have been easy.'' Welsh admits that he writes from an Anglo perspective, and he is sympathetic to Hong Kong's British colonial rulers. But he is not blind to their snobbish, condescending and sometimes plainly racist attitudes toward the ethnic Chinese they ruled. To this reader, Welsh's argument that the Opium War wasn't really about opium isn't convincing, but his defense of the so-called "unequal treaties" between China and Britain is. Welsh sometimes wades too far into the minutiae of diplomacy and politics, and he too readily assumes the reader's familiarity with 18th century British history and personalities. But these are quibbles; in fact, the weaknesses are the flipside of one of the book's great strengths: It strives to put events in Hong Kong in a broader historical perspective, explaining the political backdrop in Britain or mainland China. One of Welsh's recurring themes struck this reader as particularly timely: the shameful degree to which Hong Kong's business elites, be they British or Chinese, put their narrow interest in profit above the public interest. In the 19th century, Hong Kong moneymen, worried about losing tenants and facing higher costs, opposed efforts to improve public sanitation and fight disease by tearing down squalid, congested tenement buildings. Today, they argue alongside the communist leadership in Beijing against any expansion of democracy in Hong Kong - fearful no doubt that a democratically accountable government might look twice at their privileges and dodgy business practices. Overall, this is a fine book and belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the history of Hong Kong or indeed of Great Britain.

Definitely Worth the Time
Although a little 'dry' at times, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Frank Welsh's analysis of the development of this incredible city, its history and culture is fantastic. What caught my attention was in the Introduction when he remarked that Hong Kong was never a British colony but a Chinese colony administered by the British. From there on, he had my attention. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume provides a short history of the Portuguese colony in the Far East. Beginning with an account of the pioneering ambitions of Prince Henry the Navigator, historian Austin Coates retraces the discovery of the sea route to the Far East and the subsequent foundation of Macao as a Portuguese enclave in 1556-7. A Macao Narrative relates the story of Macao, from its glorious beginnings as a 'city of adventurers enjoying a rich life, confidently aware that at any moment they might have to fight for it' to the Opium War, that led to the end of 'one of the most remarkable trading epochs in history'. ... Read more

Product Description
. . . The first original contribution to the debate on the opium war in a very long time. -- Peter Wesley-Smith, author of Unequal Treaty 1898-1997--Relations between Britain and China have, for over 150 years, been inextricably bound up with the taking of Hong Kong on 26 January 1841. The man responsible - Britain's Plenipotentiary Captain Charles Elliot - was recalled by his government in disgrace and has also been vilified ever since by China. --This book tells a different story. Describing the taking of Hong Kong from Elliot's point of view - through the personal letters of himself and his wife Clara - it shows a man of intelligence, conscience and humanitarian instincts. On three occasions, for example, Elliot insisted on negotiating with the Chinese as British forces were poised to take the large and prosperous city of Canton. These revelations about Elliot's role, intentions and analysis are significant and could make an important difference to our understanding of the dynamics of Sino-British relations.--On a different level, the book explores how Charles, the private man, with his wife by his side, experienced events, rather than how Elliot the public figure reported them to the British Government. --This book is both for students and scholars of East Asian history and for the general reader. It also has appeal for readers of biography and letters, of naval history, of women's place in history and Victorian politics and mores. --Susanna Hoe is author of amongst other books, including Watching the Flag Come Down: An Englishwoman in Hong Kong 1987-97 (2007).-Derek Roebuck is author, co-author or editor of more than forty books in ten languages on law and legal history.- ... Read more

Product Description
A scheme to build a road across the wastes of the Great Islands off the coast of China means very different things to the very different people it is likely to affect - the acting Governor, the District Officer, his wife, the island's simple villagers, and their more worldy kin. ... Read more

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This historical novel is based on the true story of the affair between the Chinese orphan Martha Herop and her English lover, son of the founder of Lloyd's, in the 18th century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A romantic look into the historical conflict of England in China
Clearly this book has not had the attention it deserves. As one who traded in Hong Kong for many years, this book helped ease me into the cultural conflicted days of Britain opening China for its trade; tea and opium. This woman's ability to turn a dispicable personal situation into a success is worthy of anyone's attention interested in the history of these two cultures, both assuming to be the center of civilization at that colorful time.

This is one of my favorite books of all time because it tells of overcoming irreversible adversity to forgive and succeed over it all. Set in Macao in the 1780-90s, it is the life story of a Chinese woman Martha Merop "who came with the house" and was the property of the son of the first Chairman of Lloyd's of London. Abandoned at birth, sold into prostitution, she became the richest woman on the China Coast and Macao's greatest bunlic benefactress. I manufactured in Hong Kong for twenty years and this was the book everyone read. I corresponded with Coates but never met him before he retired to Portugal and died in 1997. He as the son of the English composer Eric Coates.

Frederick R. Andresen, Author of "Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia," over sixteen years in Russian business, six years in residence.

The best (only?) attempt to portray Old Macau in fiction...
Coates is one of those colonial Brit types, who is probably most famous for his book Myself a Mandarin. He's the son of Tin Pan Alley composer Eric Coates, and an interesting writer about Asia and Asians. While he usually writes non-fiction (his books include histories of the Whampoa docks, the rubber trade, the Hong Kong telecommunications industry, Macau in the good old days, etc.), this is his attempt at a novel set in 18th-century Macau.

As a novel, you could easily do better. But if you want to hear someone tell a story of Old Macau, at a time when Hong Kong was still part of San On county in the Qing government, you have no other choice. Since none of the 20th Century's great authors have taken an interest in Macau, Coates currently claims the land for himself. The story is quite romantic. It's also quasi-historical, in that the main female protaginist was an actual person. Coates draws on his extensive research of Macanese history to flesh out the plot.

Again, for someone who wants to be whisked away to this far-off time and place, Austin Coates is your best (and only) choice. ... Read more

Product Description
"Hong Kong's Chinese History Curriculum from 1945: Politics and Identity" investigates the ways in which 'Chinese history' has evolved as a subject in Hong Kong secondary schools since 1945, and the various social, political and economic factors that have shaped the curriculum, through an examination of a wide range of primary and secondary source materials and interviews. This book examines how the aims, content, teaching, learning and assessment of the Chinese history curriculum have evolved since 1945. It describes how Chinese history became an independent subject in secondary schools in Hong Kong despite the political sensitivity of the subject, how it consolidated its status as an independent subject during the colonial period, and how it has faced threats to its independence since the return of Hong Kong to China. An important element of the book is its in-depth analysis of the major socio-political and socio-economic forces that have been involved in the development of Chinese history.This book will be of interest to scholars (particularly those who are interested in history education and curriculum development), history teachers, curriculum developers, policymakers, undergraduate and postgraduate students and all who are concerned with history education generally and with the history of education in Hong Kong specifically. ... Read more

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Hong Kong's brief but crowded history has bequeathed to the world one of its major features of human endeavor. Lacking all natural resources other than a superb harbor, it built within its limited geographical constraints a centre of global commerce seldom matched in the infinitely longer history of mankind. Bound up with Hong Kong's achievements are its culture and architecture, each with landmarks of rapid progress and evolution extending to the post-handover era. All three defining aspects - history, architecture and culture - are treated by writers whose informed opinions lend a spectrum of authority to this recent FormAsia title. ... Read more