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II

HISTORY

The Colony of Hong Kong dates from the second quarter of the 19th century, having been ceded by the Treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. It had been occupied some time earlier, on January 26th, 1841, as a result of an agreement between Keshen and Captain Charles Elliot, and though this agreement was subse- quently disavowed by both British and Chinese, the latter date is the one usually taken as the starting point of the Colony. Hong Kong is a product of history, the history of the relations between East and West; for it was out of the nature of those relations, and out of their commercial nature in particular, that Hong Kong came into being. It is part of the very fabric of historical conditions as they existed at the time of its birth. Before this Hong Kong had no history. The island is barren, and exposed to attack, and therefore never had any large population; there were indeed a few villages, in which peasants got a bare living from the scanty soil available, eked out with fishing. Archaeological work shows that settlements existed here from early times but there is no evidence to show that there was ever before any important centre of population or commerce. The only ancient monument in the district was a large granite boulder on a hill by Ma'tau Chung called the Sung Wong Toi and inscribed with those three characters; it commemorated the last of the Sung Emperors, the boy Ti-ping, who was driven to Kowloon in the fight- ing against invading Mongols, was defeated at Tsun Wan, and driven further west to his death. It is therefore difficult not to agree with the view expressed by Eitel, who wrote "and men had to come from the Far West to give it a name in the history of the East".

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