Historic Overview Of Hong Kong

Evidence suggests that the earliest that man was on these islands in the Neolithic age. Only a small fishing community and sundry pirates inhabited Hong Kong, till the British finally got here in the early 19th century and made the island their base for conducting trade with China.

The British opium trade attracted Chinese censure by 1839 and soon the region was plunged in what was called The Opium Wars. They ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking and the British coming off victorious. The British traders turned expansionist and in the face of waning Chinese power, they managed to acquire several islands around Hong Kong as well as Kowloon Peninsula in 1860. The 99-year lease was signed in 1898 and Hong Kong passed into British hands where she remained till 1997, the last bastion of British imperial power in Asia.

The first major wave of immigrants from Mainland China came to Hong Kong in 1911 during the Revolution. The second wave was that of people escaping the Japanese invasion in the 30s and the last was during the civil war 1945-1949. During the Second World War Hong Kong was attacked by the Japanese at the same time as Pearl Harbour and the Japs held the island for 4 years from 1941 to 1945.

By the 60s the economy, so far largely dependent on the opium trade and fishing, diversified and industrialisation began in right earnest. The Hong Kong of today, leader of the South East Asian financial success, has its seeds in those early years. 

In 1997 the British returned Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China with the expiration of the lease at the end of 99 astoundingly successful years. Today Hong Kong is one of the Special Administrated Regions of China and apprehensions about communist China’s interference have been quite conclusively allayed.