Re-writing Hong Kong History

Has Hong Kong ‘always been a Chinese city’? Was it a model British colony? Or was Hong Kong something else – a Eurasian city with its own distinct history and flavour? Do the answers to these questions help explain Hong Kong’s current conniptions?

These and other questions – about the no less controversial topics of race, sex, and empire – are the subject of Vaudine England’s PhD at Leiden University and her recently published book: Fortune’s Bazaar – The Making of Hong Kong.

This is the product of many years of research – in archives, in attics, and in new interviews with descendants of some of Hong Kong’s very first families. The well-known histories of people such as the Jardines and Swire families, or the many more numerous Chinese dynasties, are put to one side, in favour of a close-up look at who lubricated the intersections between the many different ethnic, cultural, and trading worlds of early Hong Kong.

The argument is that without the Armenians, Parsis, Jews, Portuguese and above all the Eurasians of Hong Kong, this place would not have become the throbbing Asian port city it once was. Looking at the complex pasts of people as diverse as Emanuel Raphael Belilios or Sarah Endicott who raise her husband’s children from his Chinese Protected woman Ng Akew, Hong Kong emerges as a place built out of intense cultural intermingling, becoming a cosmopolitan city, open to all comers.

So real was this community of people from around the world that it was their sacrifice – of Eurasian soldiers during World War Two, of Portuguese, Chinese and other agents behind the lines, of Bohra traders protecting western bankers, Parsi women feeding all comers – that laid the groundwork for postwar Hong Kong.

About the speaker

For three decades Vaudine England was a journalist in South East Asia and Hong Kong working with the BBC, Reuters, the Far Eastern Economic Review and several London newspapers. 

She has authored The Quest of Noel Croucher - Hong Kong’s Quiet Philanthropist, Kindred Spirits - a History of The Hong Kong Club, Arnholds - China Trader, Empire’s Children - A Hong Kong Family, and Hari Harilela - Made in Hong Kong. Her history of Hong Kong’s formative first century, focused on the multiple peoples who came to build Asia’s last port city — Fortune’s Bazaar, The Making of Hong Kong — was published by Scribner and Hachette in May 2023.

Based in Amsterdam, she is completing a PhD in Asian History through Leiden University. She is also a research associate with the Hong Kong History Project in the UK, and a co-founding director of the archives and history-making consultancy, History Ink Limited. She brings her journalistic skills of investigative reporting and interviewing to delve deeply into the archives and the hidden stories of the past. Her work sheds new light on Hong Kong and its peoples in interesting times. 

Chair: Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute)

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. 

Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.

Organiser

• SOAS China Institute

Contact

• Email: sci@soas.ac.uk