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simply pushed back the social frontier of the New Territories, as is dramatically the case in Tsuen Wan, but affected the lives and ideas of large numbers of people in many parts of the region. Overseas migration, old in nature but new in pattern, has brought in much wealth. An agricultural revolution, no less dramatic than its industrial counterpart but less commented on in the world outside, has pushed the rice economy aside from the centre of the scene, created new kinds of settlement and broken up the image of an unhurried farming community. Land has now entered, or efforts are being made to bring it into, new markets for both agricultural and building uses. In these conditions it is not enough to study old-established communities and traditional institutions. How these changes have come about, how they are perceived and evaluated by the people they most closely affect, and how they in turn imply other kinds of changes should certainly stand in the forefront of studies of the New Territories at the present time.
9. On the other hand, it would be a mistake—as grievous as the error of neglecting what is new—to suppose that only the latest changes deserve attention. From the moment British administrators set foot in the New Territories a chain of changes was initiated: in land tenure, in political leadership, in social control, in economic life. The measure of modern change is not to be taken solely by a comparison between 1963 and 1949 or 1941; it must be gauged by the whole stretch of British administration. But, in turn, even this is too parochial a framework for the study of what was once a part of China. At this late date it is still possible to catch glimpses in the New Territories of how the area was governed before 1898 and to work out the implications of this form of government for social life. The New Territories, that is to say, have something to contribute to the historian's understanding of China in late Ch'ing times, and this understanding on the part of the historian of modern China can, reciprocally, help to build up a picture of 65 years of the New Territories against the background of their Chinese origins and under the influence of changes in China.
10. One of the problems I attempted to approach was the nature of local leadership in the New Territories. Let me, from this example, try to illustrate how changing institutions might be analysed to throw light on present-day concerns. I must stress the tentative and summary nature of my account, for the subject needs far more
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