商品簡介
This book reveals the British cultural engagement with Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century. It shows how the territory fit unusually within Britain's decolonisation narratives and at the same time served as an occasional foil for examining Britain's own culture during a period of perceived stagnation and decline.
In the British imagination, Hong Kong was a triumph of modernity. Once dismissed by Lord Palmerston as a 'barren island with hardly a house on it', in the late twentieth century it was recast as the site of one of British imperialism's greatest achievements. Hong Kong's unrestrained capitalism, propped up by good government and infrastructure projects, was posited as a healthy counterpoint to a metropole hobbled by a welfare state and high taxes, and a location in which British dynamism endured. At the same time, the colony was viewed as a man's playground with social and sexual opportunities not available at home.
The book examines the extent to which Hong Kong's Chinese embraced British culture, and analyses the optimistic and apocalyptic predictions made about Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. The primary sources include a wide range of archival collections from Hong Kong, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as novels, journalistic accounts, popular histories, economics textbooks and children's books. An epilogue considers the colonial hangovers of post-1997 Hong Kong.
Hong Kong and British culture, 194597 will be essential reading for historians of Hong Kong, British decolonisation, and Britain's culture of declinism.
作者簡介
Mark Hampton is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Cinema Studies at Lingnan University
