Hong Kong and “Social Distance”

At the end of the Opium Wars, Hong Kong and Macau were closely connected as trading ports in the developing China Trade. That connection soon frayed, however, as restrictions on non-Europeans in Hong Kong were introduced during the first years of settlement. The widening divisions between British citizens, Portuguese from Macau, and Chinese from the mainland, in particular, were key features of Hong Kong’s colonial society that have not been fully explored.

The Founding of Hong Kong

The first Europeans to arrive in the Pearl River Delta that separates Hong Kong and Macau were Portuguese explorers in 1513 seeking trade. There followed several failed attempts to establish relations with Imperial China, beginning with Tome Pires’ in 1518 until the founding of Macau in 1557. The British East India Company ship “Macclesfeld” first traded in 1699 at Canton, 107 kilometers to the north, but the company was not allowed to build factories there until 1771.[1] The routine for the next seventy years was to use Macau as a seasonal residence after trading was conducted in Canton each year. As trade grew, the Pearl River became increasingly important to foreign merchants. The occupation of Hong Kong as a more suitable port was advocated as early as the 1830s. An English correspondent for the Canton Register once wrote with jingoistic fervor, and some insight:

If the lion’s paw is to be put down on any part of the south side of China, let it be Hongkong; let the lion declare it to be under his guarantee a free port, and in ten years it will be the most considerable mart east of the Cape. The Portuguese made a mistake: they adopted shallow water and exclusive rules. Hongkong, deep water, and a free port forever! [2]

By the 1840s, about one hundred traders representing European and American interests were operating in the region.[3] Most British “free” traders, unattached to the East India Company, were headquartered in Macau and involved in the sale of opium.[4] Nearly all obtained shipments up to 1833 from East India Company suppliers, and later from large traders such as Jardine, Matheson, and Thomas and Lancelot Dent, who sold the drug for silver to purchase other goods to sell in Europe. Opium, however, quickly became both a source of outrage to the Imperial Court and large profits among the mandarins overseeing foreign trade.[5] When Lin Zexu, a special commissioner with wide powers, arrived from Peking to halt the trade by jailing foreign merchants and seizing caches in Canton, tensions led to armed conflict. Despite employing Macanese as intermediaries to the Chinese, most merchants feared their factories in Macau were vulnerable to attack and regarded Portuguese authorities as too demanding. Eventually, the conflict pushed free traders to look east for a new trading site.

When the leading free trader, William Jardine, and others lobbied the English Parliament in 1839 for naval ships to force compensation for opium ceased in Canton, some form of “Chinese property” was proposed.[6] As one of the conditions of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 ending the Opium Wars, Hong Kong island was ceded as an alternative to Macau that Britain alone could control. Five other “treaty ports”, Canton, Ningbo, Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Shanghai, were also secured by the foreign powers for trade and residence.

Fear on the Rocky Island

Some early traders, unsure of how Hong Kong would be governed, initially ridiculed British attempts to auction off land for settlement.[7] Despite its deep harbors, the island appeared to have little to offer. Even with Macau’s drawbacks, it was considered a livelier, more established port with crowded streets and shops, and a quiet enclave away from the Chinese mainland. Hong Kong, on the other hand, had few buildings, and according to a preliminary census in 1841, only 4,350 inhabitants, mostly government workers and the military.[8]

The main thoroughfare, Queen’s Road, built along the northern shore in 1843, was then only four miles long, around which one observer wrote, “there had grown a straggling ribbon of a town”, which contained ship outfitters, twenty-four brothels, and one candy shop.[9] A British naval officer described Victoria, the island’s first city, as “the fearfullest hole in the world … inhabited by a den of thieves.” [10] Yet another visitor described “a bleakness of life and prisoner like sensation … arising in great measure from the difficulty experienced in moving more than a mile or two on either side of the town of Victoria,…” [11]

Conflicts with indigenous Chinese, many fleeing the Taiping Rebellion, and in competition with Europeans, only contributed to the turmoil. Hong Kong’s fifth governor, Sir John Bowring (1854-1859) was so alarmed by the resulting violence that he instituted a pass system among the Chinese, with violations punishable by incarceration, scourges, and “public exposure in the stocks”.[12] There was some evidence to confirm the fears, which may have been amplified by the poisoning of Hong Kong’s bread supply by a local baker in 1842. The last incident led to the death of Bowring’s wife some years later. [13]

To add to the tensions, Hong Kong and the surrounding islands were susceptible to pirate raids for several years. The “Hongkong Government Gazette”, published by the Macanese printer Delfino Noronha since 1849, reported frequent attacks on trading vessels to an anxious readership. During the period from 1856 to 1859 the Gazette reported actions between the British and crews of Chinese and Portuguese brigands over cargos of opium, rifles, tea, and other valuable commodities. [14] Later accounts documented the engagement of the Royal Navy with regular Chinese forces through the end of hostilities in 1860.

Social Distance in Hong Kong

To allay widespread concerns about the Chinese and the hostile conditions in Hong Kong, the new administration sought to create a more “hospitable” environment for British residents so that the business of trade could be conducted efficiently. To achieve this end, an informal system of racial separation and exclusivity began to appear. A conceptual description of these forms of “social distance”, effectively cloistering the English from local ethnic groups, was not articulated until 1924 by sociologist Robert Ezra Park in studies of American race relations.[15] Scholars before and after Park refined the concept over the years, suggesting that the practice of distancing groups from each other was not unique to Asia.[16] As others have written, methods of maintaining social distance in British India already had been common practice.[17]

The parallels to relations in Hong Kong seem unmistakable, suggesting how an ideology of ethnic division may have been maintained for specific purposes. In Park’s original phrasing, “social distance” was marked by  “… an insistence on social distinctions and differences, … condescensions, …for the express purpose of enforcing the reserves and social distances upon which social and political hierarchy rests.”[18] These distinctions were reinforced by institutions and social practices throughout Hong Kong’s colonial period. As a result, numerous examples of discriminatory policies and rules designed to block non-Europeans led to the virtual segregation of British citizens from the rest of the population, even as the colonial administration advocated a “free trade” policy that was to be impartially administered among all trading partners.[19]

The rationale for maintaining social distance in Hong Kong was complicated and not absolute. Early forms of segregation in Hong Kong began with housing. Residential restrictions aimed at the Chinese and enforced against the Macanese were first introduced in 1844 to protect a few hundred British expatriates and soldiers within the city of Victoria. All others were confined to living areas near the docks and warehouses along the northern shore. Small enclaves of houses protected by Indian troops were also common place in specific areas of the island. By the 1850s several large mansions for wealthy merchants and stately homes built for government executives began to appear on various levels of the “Peak”, the highest hill on the island, as a respite from the tropical heat. Residence on the Peak soon came to epitomize stratification in the colony, with the more elevated locations signifying degrees of social status.[20]

British institutions that facilitated these attitudes included the large number of exclusive clubs, recreational facilities, and protestant churches located within these segregated neighborhoods. Each not only insured isolation from “foreign” contact, but affirmed class positions, allowed the cultivation of business relations among English traders, and encouraged accepted forms of religious worship. Among these organizations were the elite Hong Kong club, the Masonic Lodge, the Hong Kong Cricket Club, the Botanical Gardens, the Hong Kong Jockey club, and St. John’s Anglican Cathedral.[21] The maintenance of these venues helped to secure the privileges of the small English minority over the much larger population of Chinese and other groups. It was no coincidence that these policies were enacted just as Hong Kong’s population began to swell due to civil wars and migrations from the mainland. [22]

The workplace was fertile ground for extending these forms of distance. The business of trade was marked by a well-defined division of labor required within the government bureaucracy, banking institutions, and merchant houses that separated British department heads from mid-level Portuguese clerks and Chinese workers. An interesting example is presented in descriptions of “protocols” at the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank in 1886, which included rules restricting contact with Portuguese and Chinese  workers, segregated use of bathroom facilities, and warnings about foreign food and “fraternization” outside the workplace.[23] Even partnerships between Chinese businessmen and British traders did not prevent segregation in the early years.[24] While there were accounts of British citizens having difficulty maintaining “civil” relations even among themselves due to the “foreignness” of Asia, pressures in the workplace and within social circles often discouraged contact across racial divides.[25]

Deeper concerns about racial mixing through personal contact and “contamination” of the English character have been suggested by other scholars.[26] A similar policy of racial division was apparently intended for all British institutions in colonial outposts: To insulate English subjects from the “foreign” environment by limiting contact with ethnic groups.

Economic Supports

Protecting the status of the English population had implications for the local economy and Britain’s colonial policies as well. In Hong Kong, it was crucial that British managers, Portuguese clerks, and Chinese laborers knew their roles in the workplace, since the economy, which these restrictions supported, was expected to run smoothly as part of England’s broader strategy connecting India, China, and Europe. As Tak-Wing Ngo wrote: “The aim of the colony was … to serve as a foothold for British trade in the Far East, especially in China. … administering the colony and administering the China Trade were seen as two sides of the same coin.” [27] Deviations from the way Hong Kong was governed, including a change in employing Portuguese “middle men” as bulwarks and supervisors of Chinese workers, would likely have negative effects on the economy.

The commercial vehicle that justified these policies during in the early years was almost exclusively the sale and distribution of opium. As more foreign traders operated through Hong Kong in the 1850s, both England’s national interests and the China Trade grew increasingly dependent on large exports of opium sold for silver, the main currency that kept foreign commerce flowing, allowing England to maintain a superior position in global markets.[28] By agreement, Hong Kong was the only distribution port in Southeast Asia. Richard Grace writes that throughout the 1860s Hong Kong’s largest merchant firms, including Jardine, Matheson and the Dent Brothers, remained heavily invested, earning the bulk of their income by producing opium on their farms in India and from sales to other traders. [29] It was not until an early banking crisis and the diversification of exports in the late 1870s that Britain’s economic dependence on opium began to change. [30] By then the Dents were bankrupt and forced to consolidate their business in Shanghai.

We could speculate that had economic or political disruptions in Hong Kong occurred earlier or were allowed to go unchecked, more companies may have failed. If the division of labor had been upended as a result, British supervisors would no longer be able to count on the reliability of Portuguese and Chinese labor. Such upheavals could have led to dissension, a breakdown in the workplace, and racial antagonism. Each would likely have impeded commerce. Given Hong Kong’s history of political tensions, banking crises, and increased competition from other European powers, an economic recovery may have been difficult.

Conclusion

There was so much was at stake in early Hong Kong that within twenty years the foundation of a permanent system to institutionalize “social distance” was set in place. In 1861 it appeared in the form of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, which joined its political counterpart, the Hong Kong Legislative Council established in 1843. Each institution was the exclusive domain of British-born executives. The Chamber was created “… to watch over and protect the general interests of Commerce”, and founded with government approval by Jardine, Matheson & Co., the largest trading house in the colony, which provided leadership for nineteen years. Over the next century, the chairmanship of the Chamber was passed on to a representative of P & O Steamship Navigation for twelve years, to the merchant house Butterfield & Swire for ten years, and to Turner & Co., another commercial house, for another 10 years.[31] Together, these institutions introduced a pattern of control that virtually guaranteed British interests would dominate Hong Kong’s society, economy, and civil affairs through the end of the 20th century.

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Notes

[1] Austin Coates, op. cit. p. 36-37. See also, Zhidong Hoa, Macau: History and Society, Hong Kong University Press, 2011:22, 211.

[2] Canton Register, April 25, 1836, as quoted by Ernest John Eitel, Europe in China, A History of Hong Kong from the beginning to the year 1882, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1895: 127.

[3]  John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007:12.

[4] John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 34.

[5] Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2014, 223, 228-229.

[6] The actual reference was for the seizure of Chinese property to compensate for twenty thousand chests of opium (estimated to be worth 2 million sterling) destroyed at Canton in 1839. Hong Kong was later added to the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, op. cit.: p.189-195.

[7] Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, op. cit.: p. 326.

[8] Frank Welsh also points out that other populations were not counted, including 2,000 Chinese boatmen and their families, 800 “immigrant merchants”, who could be Indian-Parsee or Portuguese, and 300 “labourers from Kowloon”, probably Chinese mainlanders. Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, HarperCollins, 1997, 137.

[9] Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, UNC Press, 1975, 322.

[10] Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 214.

[11] Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 215.

[12] Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 215.

[13] Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 214.

[14] The Hongkong Government Gazette, Feb. 23, 1856, March 28, 1857, April 25, 1857, Sept. 6, 1858, and March 17, 1859.

[15] R. E.  Park, (1924). The Concept of Social Distance as Applied to the Study of Racial Attitudes and Racial Relations, Journal of Applied Sociology 8 (1924):, 339-344.

[16] For example, see Georg Simmel, (1908/1976) The Stranger, The Sociology of Georg Simmel’ New York: Free Press, and Nedim Karakayali, (2006). “The Uses of the Stranger: Circulation, Arbitration, Secrecy, and Dirt”. Sociological Theory. 24 (4): 312.

[17] In India, as a response to anxiety about the effects of colonization on the English character created during British rule, Sudipta Sen describes the segregation of Britons from their Indian subjects as “… a distance that was made formal as the company-state (referring to the East India Company) became more firmly entrenched in the Indian soil.” Sudipta Sen, A Distant Sovereignty, op. cit., 2016: XXV and p.140.

[18] Robert E. Park, The Concept of Social Distance,: 342.

[19] Welsh mentions that the structure of Hong Kong society included Portuguese and Eurasians who fulfilled “essential clerical and minor administrative roles”, as well as being “habitually slighted (by racial attitudes), and confined to the lower ranks” of government service. Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, 380 and 382.

[20] In 1885, 10 year old Annie Oakes Huntington, the daughter of an American executive working for Russell & Co., described her residence at Brockhurst on the Peak. She wrote “… the house is very large, with a wide veranda on three sides of it and at the back, is called a bungle [sic] because there is no upstairs. We keep 9 servants, a butler and Amah, a boy, house Coolie, cook and four chair coolies,.” Hong Kong, July 11th 1885. https://gwulo.com/node/31235. See also Hong Kong’s “Peak District Reservation Ordinance 1904”.

[21] For a discussion of “Institutional Racism” in Hong Kong, see Barnabas H.M. Koo The Portuguese in Hong Kong and China, Their Beginning, Settlement, and Progress to 1949, Vol. 2, Macau and Hongkong, International Institute of Macau, 2013: 76-79 (based on Jose Pedro Braga’s original research and manuscript published in 1944).

[22] In 1853 the government counted 32,800 inhabitants. Britons and Americans totaled only 467 (1.4%). The Portuguese numbered 459 (1.3%). The Chinese made up the bulk of the population at 31,865 (97%). By 1881, the proportion of British subjects to the Portuguese and Chinese were much lower due to the influx of Chinese from the Taiping Rebellion on the mainland. The total population was 160,402, broken down as: British – 785 (.005%); Portuguese – 1,869 (1.1%); Chinese – 150,690 ( 94%). Hongkong Government Gazette, 22 August, 1891, Government Notification No. 361, Report of the Registrar, J.H. Stewart Lockhart, Dated 15 August, 1891, 745-746.

[23] Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Protocols for New Employees, 1886, excepted in Gwulo: Old Hong Kong, https://gwulo.com/node/8912.

[24] These commercial alliances did not lead to the representation of Chinese on Hong Kong’s Legislative Council until an appointment in 1880. A Macanese representative was not appointed until 1929. Both were “Non-Voting” members. For more information, see John Carroll, “Chinese Collaboration in the Making of British Hong Kong”, p. 13-29, in Tak-Wing Ngo (ed.), Hong Kong’s History: State and Society under Colonial Rule, Routledge, 1999.

[25] Social attitudes toward ethnic communities appeared early on. A Royal Navy officer visiting Hong Kong in 1855 described his compatriots as “all more or less rowing the same boat … striving to amass as many dollars as opportunity would admit …” but “absurdly snobbish”, displaying “much nonsensical narrow-mindedness and unsociability.” Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, op. cit., p.216.

[26] The fear apparently originated from the potential for racial mixing between Britons and Indians in the 18th century, creating an aversion toward Eurasians in colonial India. Sudipta Sen, A Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins British India, Routledge, 2016: XXV and p.140.

[27] Tak-Wing Ngo, Hong Kong’s History,128.

[28] The primacy of the opium trade to the British economy is described in some detail by Richard Grace to the point that the East India Company by the 1820s was highly dependent on drug sales to support its governing of India and looked to China as its principal market. Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire, 86-87.

[29] Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire, 301-302. Appropriately, among the first landmarks in Hong Kong were James Matheson’s opium store in Victoria and separate British, Portuguese, and Chinese cemeteries. Austin Coates, Macau and the British, 1637 – 1842: Prelude to Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1966, 214.

[30] The origins of banking crises in Southeast Asia is analyzed by W.E. Cheong, The Beginnings of Credit Finance on the China Coast: The Canton Financial Crisis of 1812–1815, Journal of Business History, Vol 13, Issue 2, 1971:87-103.

[31] Tak-Wing Ngo, “Industrial History and the Artifice of Laissez-faire Colonialism”, p. 128-129,  in Tak-Wing Ngo (ed.), Hong Kong’s History: State and Society under Colonial Rule, London, 1999.