This is the first serious history of Hong Kong to cover the whole period of British rule, from its first occupation in 1841 to the handover in 1997. Steve Tsang is well-equipped to write it. A respected Oxford scholar brought up in Hong Kong he has drawn on a vast array of sources, Chinese as well as British, to produce a thorough and well-crafted study which should appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist.



Hong Kong's survival as a British territory for nearly 150 years is a remarkable story. It owes something to luck, something to the vicissitudes of Chinese history, much to the generations of Chinese who built its prosperity, and a good deal to the British administrators who made that prosperity possible. Luck came into the equation at the beginning when Captain Elliott chose Hong Kong (with its magnificent harbour) as the first settlement. It also played a part in the reestablishment of British （rather than Chinese）rule when the wartime Japanese occupation ended in 1945. The weakness of successive Chinese governments in the face of foreign invasion and civil war allowed the British to consolidate their hold over the territory and gave the successive waves of Chinese immigrants good reason to seek refuge there.



The nature and quality of British administration evolved over the years. In the 19th century it was rudimentary, its purpose to advance British interests; for the Chinese population it was enough to be left alone. By the 1980s the colonial administration had been transformed into (in Tsang's words) "a government that met all the requirements for the best possible government in the Chinese political tradition" which he defines as "efficiency, fairness, honesty, benevolent paternalism and non-intrusion into the lives of ordinary people". From the 1970s onwards the desire to control their own destinies gradually became part of the aspirations of Hong Kong people ? a process well described by Dr. Tsang in charting what he calls "the rise of the Hong Kongers".



It was always clear that Hong Kong was ? to use the hackneyed but apposite phrase ? a borrowed place living on borrowed time. The greater part of the land area was literally borrowed ? through the 1898 agreement under which the New Territories were leased for 99 years. In the early 20th century there was intermittent debate about trying to convert the lease into a permanent cession. Later on it came to be accepted that while China would no doubt seek the return of the whole of Hong Kong eventually, the day might be postponed into the indefinite future so long as Hong Kong was useful to China in British hands. That usefulness survived the communist takeover on the mainland in 1949. But by the late 1970s it was becoming increasingly apparent that 1997 was a political deadline for the Chinese just as it was a legal one for the British. Dr. Tsang describes well the manoeuvrings and negotiations which led to the signature in 1984 of the joint Declaration providing for the return of Hong Kong to China. He brings the story up to date with a generally balanced account of Mr. Patten's governorship, and of the disputes, mainly about elections which dominated the run up to the handover in 1997.



Dr. Tsang has his favourites among the governors of Hong Kong, and (perhaps because the official papers for the last 30 years are not yet open) he underrates the personal contributions of some of the more recent ones, notably Sir Edward Youde (1982-86) and Lord Wilson (1987-92), both of whom led Hong Kong skillfully through times of great difficulty. But this is to carp. For those who want to understand the importance of the territory's British legacy in its continuing success, Dr. Tsang' study is likely to remain the best guide for some time to come.
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