I. Why Hong Kong?
II. Why History?
- History as the past
- History as a discipline
- The “life-cycle” of thinking about the past
- Reading
- Existing claims/arguments
- Question
- Sources
- Contexts
- Sources
- Interpretation
- New claims/arguments
- Narrative
- More questions
- Reading
IV. By the end of the course, students should be able to . . .
- offer historically-informed analyses on the changes, continuities, and challenges Hong Kong society has encountered since the mid-nineteenth century;
- work with confidence with a range of primary historical sources;
- elevate their abilities to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of historical claims;
- articulate how the transformations of Hong Kong should/could be understood in world-historical contexts.
V. Course Structure
- Canvas/Course Blog
- Weekly meetings
- Schedule/Readings
- Quizzes
- Discussion Posts
- Newspaper Column
- Mid-term checkup
- Book Review
- Final take-home project
- Virtual exhibition (optional)
- Office hours
V. Approaches to Hong Kong History
- “Borrowed place, borrowed time“
- “City between worlds“
- Hong Kong as a Subject
VI. The Settings
- Periodization
- Geography—80 miles from Canton (Guangzhou), Hong Kong Island (~30 sq mi), Kowloon Peninsula (1860; ~ 8 sq mi), New Territories (1898, ~365 sq mi) . . . cf. Greater Vancouver (~1,100 sq mi)
- Population (“guesstimates”)— 7,450 (1841) . . . 24,000 (1848) . . . 123,511 (1862) . . . 221,441 (1891) . . . 283,978 (1901)
VII. Fragments of Imagination
- Visual
- Archaeological
- Textual
Exercise
- Check out some of these resources:
- Research Guide: Hong Kong
- Old HK Newspapers (Hong Kong Public Libraries)
- Why are you interested in taking a course on Hong Kong?
- Fill in the blank: "The Story of Hong Kong: . . . ."
Maps
Images
Further Readings
- Atha, Mick, and Kennis Yip. Piecing Together Sha Po: Archaeological Investigations and Landscape Reconstruction . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016.
- Hase, Patrick H. Custom, Land and Livelihood in Rural South China: The Traditional Land Law of Hong Kong's New Territories, 1750–1950 . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
- Hayes, James. South China Village Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Meacham, William. The Archaeology of Hong Kong. Rev. ed. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
- Ng, Peter Y. L. New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983.