Mark Hampton. Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–97

A Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China since the Handover in 1997, Hong Kong’s connection with Great Britain remains visible in the city to this day. Mark Hampton’s fascinating study on Hong Kong and British culture provides rich insights into key reasons for the endurance of that British legacy, documents British cultural engagement with Hong Kong, and demonstrates how Hong Kong Chinese embraced British culture, post–World War II. Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–97 is based on a broad range of rich primary sources, including manuscript sources from archival collections, as well as novels and popular histories, and it explores the permeation and reception of British culture in Hong Kong. Material from outside of Hong Kong, for instance, accounts from Australian tourists who visited Hong Kong and some U.S. material, enhances our understanding of Hong Kong as a place that brought diverse cultures and groups of people together. A limitation—but one the author recognizes at the outset—is that the book draws only upon English-language sources. This limitation notwithstanding, Hampton’s study makes an important contribution to scholarship, particularly given its focus on the period from 1945. Much of the existing work, for instance, that by Robert Bickers, looks at developments in the city before 1945. Hong Kong’s comparatively late decolonization makes its neglect in existing works all the more puzzling, and, consequently, Hampton rightly argues that assessments of Hong Kong’s relative irrelevance are misleading and “understate Hong Kong’s place within postwar British culture and national identity” (6).

Administration (probate law) · China · Media studies · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · World War II · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies