In 1899, a year after the Convention of Peking leased the New Territories to Britain, the British moved to establish control. This triggered resistance by some of the population of the New Territories. There ensued six days of fighting with heavy Chinese casualties. This truly forgotten war has been thoroughly researched for the first time and recounted in lively style by Patrick Hase, an expert on the people and history of the New Territories.
 
After brief discussion of British Imperialism in the 1890s and British military theory of that period on small wars, the heart of the book is a day-by-day account of the fighting and of the differences of opinion between the Governor of Hong Kong (Blake) and the Colonial Secretary (Lockhart) as to how the war should be fought. Dr Hase uses his deep knowledge of the people and the area to give a full picture of the leaders and of the rank-and-file of the village fighters. New estimates of the casualties are provided, as are the implications of the way these casualties are down-played in most British accounts.
 
As a small war of Imperial Expansion, fought at precisely the high point of Imperial thinking within the British Empire, The Six-Day War of 1899 is of interest, not only to historians of Hong Kong and China, but also to historians of the British Empire and the British Army, and to general readers interested in military, imperial and Hong Kong history.
 
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Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism
 
Hong Kong in 1899 was an extremely self-confident city. That self-confidence was based, on the one hand, on confidence in Britain’s Imperial role, a confidence Hong Kong shared with the rest of the British Empire, and, on the other, on Hong Kong’s obvious successes as a well-governed, highly prosperous, and outstandingly successful commercial and mercantile centre.
 
The City of Hong Kong had been born as a result of the First Anglo- Chinese War (the First Opium War), of 1841. Before that date, Western trade with China was confined to Canton, and was subject to a stifling Chinese Imperial bureaucratic monopoly. The British were determined to use their victory in this War to force open more Chinese ports to trade. They were also determined to get a British possession on the coast of China where the essential banking and financial services needed to support Western trade with China could exist free of interference from the Chinese Imperial bureaucracy, where Western trading houses could have their Headquarters on soil that was under Western law, and where the British could have a military and naval presence to ensure that trade remained free for the future. The island of Hong Kong was the place agreed on as this British possession: it was taken possession of by the British in 1841. In 1861, following the Second Anglo-Chinese War (fought to try to persuade the Chinese Government to implement in full the agreements reached after the First Anglo-Chinese War), the Kowloon Peninsula, on the northern shore of the Harbour, opposite the central part of the island, was added to the Colony.
 
In the early years of British rule of Hong Kong, the City was notorious as a crime and disease-ridden place, ill-lit and poorly policed, constantly rocked by scandal, very much a ‘Wild West’ town of unpaved streets, gangsters, pirates, and merchants often of doubtful morals. By the 1860s, however, this had changed dramatically. Great wealth was by then flowing into the City, and there was a steady movement to make of it one of the world’s great urban centres, modern, sophisticated, and a model for other places. By the end of the nineteenth century, there had developed a great feeling of civic pride in Hong Kong as a modern metropolis by a good number of its Western residents.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, however, considerable concern was felt about Hong Kong’s defensibility if some other Western power took control of the seashore opposite Hong Kong Island. Any such power might then place guns immediately overlooking the entrance to the Harbour, and within one mile or so of the central part of the island. The British military expressed their doubts as to their capacity to defend Hong Kong in such circumstances. Eventually the British Government persuaded the Chinese Imperial authorities to lease them an area of land inland of the Kowloon Peninsula, for ninety-nine years, so as to push the borders of the Colony out by a further twenty miles or so, and this was agreed in 1898. The area so leased was called the New Territories. The area leased was a rural area, comprising some 650 villages, and a handful of small market towns and fishing ports. The leased area was not seen as an economic advantage to the City (indeed, it was initially assumed that it would be a drain on the Colony’s finances), but it was seen as greatly strengthening the City’s security against attack.
 
Throughout the period from 1841 to 1899, Hong Kong was ruled by a Governor appointed from London (in 1899 Sir Henry Blake), and responsible to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The bureaucracy, which was responsible for the day-to-day governance of the City, was small. It was headed bytheColonialSecretary22 (in1899JamesStewartLockhart).TheGovernor was advised by an Executive Council, comprising the Colonial Secretary and one or two other senior officials and a few appointed leaders of the mercantile community. Legislation was a matter for the Legislative Council, consisting of a number of senior officials (“Official Members”), and a number of leaders of the mercantile community, by 1899 both Western and Chinese, appointed as “Unofficial Members” by the Governor. Judicial affairs were under a High Court, headed by a Chief Justice: as elsewhere in the Common Law world, the Judiciary were not subject to control by the executive. There was no democracy, no voting of anyone into any position of power. Taxation was low, and every effort was made to ensure that the laws were kept simple, to allow the mercantile community, both Western and Chinese, as much space as possible to make money.
 
By 1899, the City of Hong Kong (formally known as the City of Victoria), which had by then grown to 280,000 inhabitants, stretched along the north shore of Hong Kong Island from Kennedy Town (堅尼地城) to Shaukeiwan (筲箕灣), a distance of some seven and a half miles.
(to be continued)
 
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR | 
 
Patrick H. Hase (PhD, Cambridge, FSA, Hon.FRASHK, 夏思義) has studied the history and traditional life of the New Territories and its people for much of the 41 years he has lived in Hong Kong. His local historical research has led to his appointment as an Honorary Advisor to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong, to the Zhong-ying Street Historical Museum, Shataukok, and to the People’s Government of Kaiping Municipality. He is the author of numerous articles on local New Territories history.