Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Growing Pains
What would later be called the Second Opium War (or Second Anglo-Chinese War) broke
out in October 1856. The victorious British forced the Chinese to sign the Convention of
Peking in 1860, which ceded Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island to Britain. Britain
was now in complete control of Victoria Harbour and its approaches.
As the Qing dynasty slid into major chaos towards the end of the 19th century, the British
government petitioned China to extend the colony into the New Territories. The June 1898
Convention of Peking handed Britain a larger-than-expected slice of territory that included
235 islands and ran north to the Shumchun (Shēnzhèn) River, increasing the colony's size
by 90%.
Alarmed by the spread of addiction and the silver draining from the country to pay for
opium, the Qing emperor issued an edict in 1799 banning the trade of opium in China.
The ban had little effect and the lucrative trade continued.
A Sleepy Backwater
While Hong Kong's major trading houses, including Jardine Matheson and Swire, prospered
from their trade with China, the colony hardly thrived in its first few decades. Fever, bubon-
ic plague and typhoons threatened life and property, and at first the colony attracted a fair
number of criminals and vice merchants.
Gradually Hong Kong began to shape itself into a more substantial community. Nonethe-
less, from the late 19th century right up to WWII, Hong Kong lived in the shadow of the
treaty port of Shànghǎi, which had become Asia's premier trade and financial centre - not to
mention its style capital.
The colony's population continued to grow thanks to the waves of immigrants fleeing the
Chinese Revolution of 1911, which ousted the decaying Qing dynasty and ushered in sever-
al decades of strife, rampaging warlords and famine. The Japanese invasion of China in
1937 sparked another major exodus to Hong Kong's shores.
Hong Kong's status as a British colony would offer the refugees only a temporary haven.
The day after Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, its
military machine swept down from Guǎngzhōu and into Hong Kong.
Conditions under Japanese rule were harsh, with indiscriminate killings of mostly
Chinese civilians; Western civilians were incarcerated at Stanley Prison on Hong Kong Is-
land. Many Hong Kong Chinese fled to Macau, administered by neutral Portugal.
 
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