ENG-1972 — Page 264

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History

Hong Kong-‘a barren island with hardly a house upon it'

The Founding of Hong Kong as a British Colony 1841–2

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Lord Palmerston 1841

ARCHAEOLOGICAL investigation has shown that Hong Kong was inhabited from primitive times, but it has failed to reveal evidence of the existence of any previous centre of population. All that it would be safe to conclude is that in the early migra- tion of peoples along the Pacific coast, an island with a water supply and some cultiv- able land would naturally attract permanent or temporary settlement. Up to the 19th century Hong Kong remained sparsely populated. Small villages maintained themselves by fishing, by cultivation of the scanty soil available, and by casual preying on coastal shipping. The fishing ports of Shau Kei Wan and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen) were noted as the haunts of pirates from the time of the Mongol Dynasty. -

The Kwangtung area of the Chinese mainland was first brought under the suzerainty of China between 221 and 214 BC, but even after its conquest by the Han Emperor Wu Ti in 111 BC, it remained for some centuries a frontier area. The Lei Cheng Uk Tomb, which was discovered in Kowloon in 1955, probably dates from before the Tang Dynasty (620-907) and is evidence of Chinese penetration, although Chinese migration on a large scale did not come until the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). The oldest villages in the New Territories, those belonging to the Tang Clan, have a continuous history dating back to the 11th century, and other villages date from the Yuan Dynasty (1280–1368). Hakka and Cantonese, the two main Chinese groups, probably settled in the area over the same period.

In 1278, Ti Ping, the Sung Emperor, was driven by the invading Mongols to Kowloon and died there. A small hill crowned with a prominent boulder bearing the characters Sung Wong Toi (Sung Emperor Stone) was held sacred to his memory until the hill was demolished in 1943, during the Japanese occupation, to make room for an expansion of the airport. His brother, the last Sung boy Emperor, met with final defeat in an attempted stand in the New Territories and he and his ministers fled to Ngai Shan further south, but some of his followers found refuge on Lantau where their descendants are still to be found.

Trade relations between Britain and China originally centred on Canton. The first English ship to trade peaceably with the Chinese was the East India Company ship Macclesfield in 1699. By the end of the 18th century, the British dominated the