As you will find below, in this, the third quarter of our third year of Centre activity, we have hosted a number of academic talks and public-focused events, reflecting our commitment to advancing scholarly debates, and engaging with the broad wider interest in understanding Hong Kong’s diverse history. Two events have also showcased our commitment to working with individuals and families, to help people understand how to explore and understand their own family histories, and to supporting emerging scholarship from scholars in the early stages of their careers.
On 1 April, we were honored to have Prof. Kwong Chi Man at Hong Kong Baptist University, a leader in the field of digital history in Hong Kong, share his experience and insights on the prospect of AI and technology in historical research. Using the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-1945 as example, Prof Kwong showed us how spatial history as a method could help us reconstruct the urban space of Hong Kong during the occupation period.
On 12 April, Chi Man went on to give a Cantonese talk for our History Salon, on the topic of ’“Three Years and Eight Months”: Experiencing the Second World War in Hong Kong’. During the occupation, the Japanese established a military administration, that controlled Hong Kong’s political, economic, and social life, introduced a military currency, food rationing, and forced evacuations, as well as enacting strict regulations. Civilians faced hunger and the surveillance of the Kempeitai, the military police. Allied bombing of Hong Kong also resulted in severe casualties. Chi Man focused on the different experiences of people in Hong Kong during the war and recently discovered historical materials, discussing Hong Kong’s role and experiences during this turbulent period.
On 8 May, Dr. Stella Meng Wang from The Education University of Hong Kong gave a Speaker’s Series talk on ‘Space and Everyday Lives of Children in Hong Kong: The Interwar Period’. Touching upon women’s activism in the fields of philanthropy, public health, and medicine, the talk exposed the imperial, professional, and transnational philanthropic networks European and Chinese females helped to build.
On 17 May, Prof John Wong from The University of Hong Kong came to UK and introduced us the history of Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar in our History Salon. Depending on the global environment, Hongkongers have both benefited from and suffered due to the peg. While the peg ensures the city’s sustained connection with global economies, it also subjects Hong Kong’s financial landscape to fluctuations in US interest rates. John guided us through how we ended up with this arrangement in the first place and why the peg is still in place decades after 1997. The talk explored the historical origins of the peg, its continued importance in Hong Kong and beyond, and its implications for Hong Kong’s role in global finance.
On 23 May, Dr Jenny Huangfu Day at Skidmore College started the Speaker’s Series talk by asking why, historically, there were there no extradition treaties between China and most Western countries. She traced how the fugitive rendition clauses in the Opium War treaties evolved into informal extradition practices and argued that China’s inability to secure reciprocal treaties was rooted in the legacy of extraterritoriality and semi-colonialism. She challenged the notion that “political crimes” in modern China emerged solely as a domestic legal construct, instead situating them in transborder legal and diplomatic processes open to interpretation and maneuvering by both state authorities and the broader transborder population.
At the end of May we hosted our first Family History workshop, and took our participants on a journey in tracing their family’s past in Hong Kong. Led by Dr. Vivian Kong and our PhD students, participants had an opportunity to work with various publicly accessible research tools and databases to support their family history research. We are all very excited about the new directions that our participants had discovered during the directions, and look forward to supporting them further in this journey. The success of this first workshop has encouraged us to organise a new round of Family History workshop later this year: please stay tuned for more updates if you’re interested in joining us next time!
On 7 June, we had our last History Salon in this academic year. Dr Reynold Tsang from The University of Hong Kong talked on the topic ‘Tracing the First Museums in Hong Kong’. He took us back to nineteenth-century Hong Kong to explore how the city’s first museums were born and developed. He examined what these early museums displayed, how the public gained access to them, and why they eventually disappeared. He also delved into the relationship between these early museums and the British Empire, offering a fresh perspective to look into Hong Kong’s colonial past.
On 25-26 June, we held a Graduate Conference, with the theme ‘Emerging Paths in Hong Kong History’, with doctoral students from around the world joining us. The conference consisted of 21 papers by PhD students and young scholars from Europe, North America, Asia and Britain and a keynote speech by Dr Gina Tam; covering such topics as ‘Chinese Labour Migration and Mobility between Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, c. 1930s-1950s’, ‘Networks and Elites’, ‘Architecture and Urban History’, ‘Media and Culture’, ‘Banking and Monetary History’, ‘Commerce and Business’ and ‘Cold War and beyond’. It is always our pleasure to see young scholars exchanging intellectual ideas, mingling, networking, and befriending each other. You can find the programme on our website. If you would like to join our network of early career scholars on Hong Kong History, please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk
The highlight for me personally, was hearing about the discussions at the Family History Workshop, and thinking about how academic researchers can help people find out details about family pasts, and understand the journeys in time and place their ancestors travelled. There’s a great deal yet that can be done, but it’s clear that there is a great appetite for this type of work.
Robert Bickers
Professor of History, HKHC Co-Director
