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better social and political deal from the British rulers. The racial feelings whipped up by the press in 1884 are reminiscent of the hysteria created in 1878 by the City Hall meeting to discuss Governor John Pope Hennessy's "misgovernment".98 One cannot deny that racial tensions existed in 19th Century Hong Kong, and it is clear that the English newspapers played a critical role in maximising that tension. In turn this racial animosity drove the Chinese to look inward for mutual protection and leadership.
The 1884 events reflect the genuine, positive national feelings, as opposed to narrow anti-foreignism, of the Chinese. Governor Bowen observed that unlike the Arrow War when the Chinese coolie corps freely helped the British and French to attack Chinese positions, in 1884, Chinese artisans, coolies and boatmen in Hong Kong refused all offers of pay to do any work whatsoever for French ships. He attributed this to the awakening of a "common national spirit", something which had developed over the preceding twenty-five years and which was, he felt, a factor likely to prove the turning point of the modern history of China.
It is no coincidence that several figures closely associated with modern Chinese nationalism had lived for some time in Hong Kong including Wang TaoE, Ho Kai and Sun Yat-sen.95
There they acquired national identity through living side by side with foreigners. There, they could observe China as outsiders, and in relation to other nations. They could conceive of China as more than a village or province, as one sovereign nation among many sovereign nations. Although in 1884, Chinese intellectuals had not begun to question the sanctity of absolutism in the Chinese Imperial system, there was a slow groping toward something other than the court as the object of allegiance, viz. the vague, incipient concept of "nation". The Sino-French war became a focal point upon which these vague ideas coalesced. Sun Yat-sen himself is reported to have confessed that the courage of the Hong Kong dock workers who refused to work for the French inspired him to embark upon a career of revolution.96
In Hong Kong, Chinese could feel an affiliation with Chinese culture, and yet, through their contact with foreign cultures, they could distinguish what was of value, and perhaps, more importantly...