For over two decades, Manchester Studies in Imperialism has been a trailblazer in the realm of imperial history. Positioned firmly at the forefront, this series has illuminated the annals of history and transformed our understanding of empire.
Pioneering perspectives
The Studies in Imperialism series has embarked on a transformative journey, reshaping not only British history but also the vast landscape of imperial histories. It has boldly expanded boundaries, delving into uncharted territories, and shining a light on subjects that were once overlooked. More importantly, it has masterfully unveiled the intricate and inseparable relationships between these domains.
A treasury of knowledge
Within the pages of Manchester Studies in Imperialism lies a treasure trove of scholarly exploration. It unveils the rich tapestry of cultural encounters between colonisers and the colonised, shedding light on the intricate web of power that flows through the production and organisation of colonial knowledge. It unravels the complex construction of identity, both at the heart and on the peripheries of empire.
2025 Manchester Studies in Imperialism
This chapter examines how utilities, ‘natural’ monopolies, were regulated in Hong Kong and how this affected consumer movements. In late 1974, it was rumoured that the monopolised Hong Kong Telephone Company would increase the telephone rate by 70 per cent. It soon sparked off colony-wide protests of an unprecedented scale. This chapter questions how social movements with an ant-colonial agenda affected consumption and government policies towards public goods. The increase in the telephone rate was regarded by the Governor as ‘potentially explosive’ as people of all social classes and age groups were affected. Organisations of different sectors and individuals of different social classes boycotted the Telephone Company, which reveals how the political culture was shifting, with civic organisations mobilising and actively lobbying the government. During the protest, shifting popular sentiment was observed by City District Officers, using mechanisms such as situation reports and Town Talk. The Home Affairs Department, the Division of Information Service and the Special Branch were involved in monitoring political activism and compiling special reports. By collecting intelligence on popular attitudes, the colonial government improved its decision-making capacity and sought to demonstrate that it was responding rationally to the protest. These social and political processes had a moderate effect: the increase was set at 30 per cent, lower than the 55 per cent that was first advised. This outcome was symbolically important: it showed that a reformist colonial administration was responsive to shifting public opinion, and thus had the potential to further encourage the development of civil society.
"The Golden Jubilee incident from 1977 to 1978 was ‘an eye-opener’ for the public, in particular those with a conservative mindset. To obtain attention from senior civil servants, the teachers and students exposed an example of ‘corruption’ to the public through the organisation of sits-in and hunger strikes. During the campaign, the activists displayed remarkable capacity for organisation. The networking capacity of activists gave them an effective way of communicating with post-secondary students, educational and religious organisations, and even MPs in London. Their campaigning pressurised the colonial government to set up a Committee of Inquiry, and to monitor public opinion closely. The campaign also showed how the political culture of the educated young generation was changing. These students engaged in different forms of political acts and gained support from their peers and politicians. Despite considerable support from the post-secondary students and educational sector, the campaign however failed to enlist support from the general public. Political conservatism was still prevalent, partly because of the 1967 riots, which cast a shadow on the society. Moreover, concepts such as ‘injustice’, ‘democracy’ and ‘anti-colonialism’ propagated by the activists were unappealing to people who were concerned primarily with their livelihoods. They lacked enthusiasm to engage in debates about how the state was governing a colonial society.
This chapter explores the changing immigration discourse and policy in Hong Kong in the 1970s. It explains how public opinion and other factors, such as international publicity and Sino-British relations, affected Hong Kong’s immigration policy. Throughout the 1970s, the scale of illegal immigration from China strained the colony’s limited housing stock and its under-developed welfare and education system. The shifting international and popular discourse regrading immigration influenced how the colonial government managed this ‘problem of people’ through implementing a new immigration policy. The colonial government departed from its ‘local integration’ approach adopted in the 1950s and introduced the ‘Touch Base’ policy in 1974, repatriating all illegal immigrants who failed to reach Hong Kong’s urban areas. Hong Kong Chinese of all social classes and age groups were engaged in an issue that affected their daily lives. This exclusionist immigration policy facilitated increased discrimination towards and stereotypes of mainland Chinese. The shifting popular sentiment, along with the constraints in land and resources, imposed tremendous pressure on the colonial government, driving it to affirm the necessity of new immigration controls to London in 1980. The problem was that the Foreign Office prioritised its relationship with China. Policy changes had long-term effects. They reinforced the emerging ‘Hong Kong political identity’, influencing the colony’s political culture in the 1980s and 1990s. They also laid the foundation for the emergence of a political definition of ‘Hong Kong permanent resident’ in the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 and the Basic Law in 1990.
In 1974, the Chinese language was recognised as the official language of Hong Kong under the Official Languages Bill. The Official Languages Bill was the result of a prolonged struggle led by a large number of organisations, student bodies and individual activists. The language movement was the largest social movement during the long 1970s. This chapter examines the organisation of the movement, the motivations of participants, the tactics employed by the activists and the significance of the campaign. The chapter reveals that the language campaign was not monolithic and contained a broad spectrum of public opinion. Although language activists and movement supporters often only identified themselves as Chinese culturally and rarely made direct political associations with the Chinese communist regime, optimism towards Hong Kong’s return to China was expressed. The movement also demonstrated that Hong Kong had many political cultures. University students and elites vigorously engaged in social movements. They were critical of the colonial administration and politically conscious. The middle-aged and elderly groups only joined the movement mostly due to instrumental concerns. The working-class and grassroots groups were predominantly indifferent. Lastly, the movement shows that a reformist colonial administration was responsive to shifting popular sentiment. In response to a coalition demanding legal status for the Chinese language, the colonial government set up the Chinese Language Committee to investigate the issue. To help the bureaucrats to better understand changing public opinion, City District Officers produced Town Talk every week, which was disseminated to policymakers.
Using under-explored archival records, this book constructs the relationship between political culture and policymaking in British Hong Kong from 1966 to 1997, bringing together the hitherto disjointed research on ‘state’ and ‘society’. As revisionists have rightly pointed out, the colonial government and the Chinese society interacted frequently. The colonial bureaucracy had both the desire and administrative capacity to reach the Chinese society; and the Hong Kong Chinese demonstrated increased readiness and organisational capacity to engage in informal political activities that sought to influence policymaking. The case studies have proved that covert opinion polling exercises were important mechanisms for the colonial state to understand shifting popular sentiment. These mechanisms, along with other situation reports, provided further intelligence for colonial bureaucrats, aiding governance and policymaking. The presence of ‘covert colonialism’ affirms the colonial government’s desire and organisational capacity to comprehend shifting sentiments of the Chinese society. However, simultaneously, this skillfully constructed colonial statecraft allowed ordinary people to take part in the policy formulation process in a state-controlled manner, which would not provoke China’s resistance and politicise the population. The importance attached to ‘covert colonialism’, however, gradually declined because the colonial government increasingly relied on scientifically organised overt opinion polls and the need to widen the channels of political participation covertly had been greatly reduced in the 1980s due to increased democratisation. The diverse attitudes towards political activism suggest that the political culture in Hong Kong was far from monolithic. The political culture varied in accordance with class and age.
This chapter reveals that the colonial government reformed its ruling strategies, shifting from indirect rule to covert opinion polling exercises. Before 1968, the colonial government gauged public opinion indirectly, primarily through the Public Relations Office and the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. In 1968, Town Talk, a covert polling exercise, was introduced under the City District Officer Scheme to improve political communications between the state and the Chinese communities. MOOD, a more sophisticated and scientific exercise, was introduced to replace Town Talk in March 1975. Throughout the 1970s, the bureaucracy invested considerable resources to improve the exercise’s methodology, polling a representative sample of opinions. The opinion poll became increasingly sophisticated and scientific and was used at least until 1981. This ‘constructed public opinion’ was disseminated and discussed among high-ranked civil servants, including the Governor and his policy advisers, and policymakers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. The Hong Kong masses took part in policy formulation through Town Talk and MOOD. The presence of these exercises was, however, concealed from the public. The implications of this device were two-fold. On the one hand, it provided the colonial government with the organisational capacity to conduct surveillance in the Chinese society, a manifestation of ‘covert colonialism’; on the other hand, it indicated that the bureaucratic mentality was moving towards ‘decolonisation’: the covert mechanism skillfully allowed ordinary people to take part in the policy formulation process in a state-controlled manner that would not provoke strong reaction from China or politicise the Chinese population.
This book examines state–society relations in one of Britain’s last strategically important colonial dependencies, Hong Kong. Using under-exploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in Hong Kong impacted on policymaking. This book is framed around the organisational capacity of the colonial state to monitor public opinion, notably through the covert opinion polling exercises Town Talk and MOOD. Hong Kong people had extremely limited democratic rights but these exercises constructed ‘public opinion’, which was used by unelected officials to respond to public needs and to seek to minimise social conflict. There were two implications of this shift in colonial governance. On the one hand, Town Talk and MOOD provided the colonial government with the organisational capacity to conduct surveillance, monitoring the Chinese society closely: this was a manifestation of ‘covert colonialism’, a strategy to strengthen British control of Hong Kong. On the other hand, the presence of these exercises indicated that the mentality of the colonial bureaucrats was changing. This was an acknowledgment that Hong Kong, an atypical colony that was expected to retrocede to China rather than gain independence, was moving towards a new form of ‘decolonisation’. Significantly, covert colonialism allowed ordinary people to take part in the policymaking process in a state-controlled manner that would not provoke a hostile response from China. This effort by the colonial government to manage public opinion interacted in complex ways with a diverse variety of Chinese communities engaging with new political movements.
This introduction analyses the existing literature on decolonisation of the British empire and how Hong Kong fits in the general pattern of decolonisation. It summarises the existing scholarship on the dynamics between the political culture and public administration in Hong Kong, and examines the limitations of the theoretically driven approach adopted by political scientists and sociologists. Existing studies conducted by political scientists and sociologists were ahistorical. The contemporary context was neglected due to their over-reliance on social science theories and data generated through interviews. The definition of ‘political participation’ was also narrow. More importantly, the relationship between social class, age and political culture remains unexplored. We therefore have partial and inaccurate knowledge of colonial governance and political culture in colonial Hong Kong. Since the 1990s, revisionists have contested the notion of a ‘minimally-integrated social political system’ and have convincingly argued that it misrepresented state–society relations in Hong Kong. However, studies on ‘state’ and ‘society’ remained disjointed. They also relied on published sources, such as newspapers, student newsletters and government published reports to present case evidence. Standard historical sources, state records, have been rarely used. This book is timely and important. It is the first to use the comprehensive archival sources to explore the political culture and colonial governance in this crucial period of Hong Kong. This book poses the following questions: How did unorthodox mass political activities interact with the bureaucracy and alter the existing political establishment and order? How did political attitudes of Hong Kong Chinese of different social classes and age groups shift over time?
Archival records indicate that by the late 1970s, Town Talk and MOOD were no longer the only covert opinion monitoring mechanisms. During the 1970s, the colonial government introduced other similar covert exercises of different scales and with different areas of focus. The emergence of exercises, such as Squatter Talks, Estates Talk and Flash Points, suggested that the surveillance system developed by the colonial government to monitor public opinion had been expanded considerably and had become increasingly sophisticated. However, how did these covert consultative forms of colonialism, which were an imperfect substitution for democratic elections, evolve as constitutional reforms were discussed in the last years of colonial rule? This chapter investigates the introduction of the City and New Territories Administration and elections in District Boards in 1982. Although the reforms were not introduced with the goal of ‘democratising Hong Kong’, they widened the channels of political participation. The chapter also examines why scientifically organised public opinion surveys conducted by commercial firms and universities were commissioned by the colonial government. It explores constitutional reforms at the level of the Executive and Legislative Councils and how they affected ‘covert colonialism’. Lastly, it reveals changing popular attitudes towards constitutional reforms and explores to what extent political cultures varied across society.
This chapter continues the discussion of the evolving nature of the British approach to the princely states leading up to Indian independence and British efforts to create an All-India Federation under the Government of India Act of 1935, intended to ensure British control over India and undermine the strength of the Indian nationalist movement. It first discusses the intention of the British government in introducing plans for the All-India Federation and then analyzes the reasons behind the princes’ opposition to it, which ultimately blocked the federation from being implemented. The discussion of the princes’ refusal to accede to the Indian federation demonstrates their resistance to any external constitutional changes which might threaten their direct relationship with the British Crown, whose recognition as the paramount power in India served as the source of the princes’ sovereignty. This further demonstrates the princely order’s commitment to the layered sovereignty of British indirect rule and their opposition to any changes in the political status quo within the changing political environment of India, even in the face of efforts by British authorities to reform it. Under the federation scheme, the princes held grave concerns about the future strength of the central government and the extent of its authority over the princely states that acceded to it. Thus the federation, controlled by the political parties within British India, would become an intermediary between the princely states and the British government and could infringe on their political autonomy and sovereignty.