Week 1: Orientation

I. Why Hong Kong?

II. Why History?

1. History as the past
2. History as a discipline
3. 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

1. Canvas/Course Blog
2. Weekly meetings
3. Schedule/Readings
4. Quizzes
5. Discussion Posts
6. Newspaper Column
7. Mid-term checkup
8. Book Review
9. Final take-home project
10. Virtual exhibition (optional)
11. Office hours

V. Approaches to Hong Kong History

1. “Borrowed place, borrowed time“
2. “City between worlds“
3. Hong Kong as a Subject

VI. The Settings

1. Periodization
2. 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)
3. Population (“guesstimates”)— 7,450 (1841) . . . 24,000 (1848) . . . 123,511 (1862) . . . 221,441 (1891) . . . 283,978 (1901)

VII. Fragments of Imagination

1. Visual
2. Archaeological
3. Textual

Exercise

1. Check out some of these resources:
   • Research Guide: Hong Kong
   • Old HK Newspapers (Hong Kong Public Libraries)
2. Why are you interested in taking a course on Hong Kong?
3. Fill in the blank: "The Story of Hong Kong: . . . ."

Maps

External Links to Maps:

Early Maps | Hong Kong(1860) | Early Maps(redrawn)

 

Images

External Links to Images:

Statistics

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.