1 Introduction
This chapter reconstructs the history of refugee migration from China to the British colony of Hong Kong during the âtreaty portâ era of Chinaâs Anglo-British relations (1842â1943), broadly from soon after the foundation of the colony to the early stage of the Second World War, which for China started with the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.1 The Chinese refugees especially were one of the largest groups in the history of the British Empire and their arrival ended with shaping the social and economic development of the colony itself. Once Britain forced China to open to foreign trade with the First Opium War (1839â42), the latterâs economy was undermined, and its warrior Manchu (Qing) dynasty humiliated and delegitimated. Access to Western ideas, including Christianity and Western political and economic theories, inspired those who aimed at overthrowing it.2
As a result, China experienced several revolutionary events aiming at regime change. Even after a revolution was successful in 1911, different warlords continued to vie for supremacy and a civil war broke out. Last, but not least, China
All along, the Chinese refugees took advantage of the freedom of movement between China and Hong Kong embedded in the original Anglo-Chinese treaties regulating British access to Chinese ports and other concessions for trade purposes, as well as the associated regional and global trade routes developed by an increasingly inter-connected Hong Kong. However, their ability to settle in Hong Kong was conditional to their economic self-sufficiency. The same applied to non-Chinese refugees. As for the Chinese political refugees, their presence was tolerated in the name of British liberal tradition, unless their presence threatened Anglo-Chinese relations.
The chapter documents the routes, identity, and colonial management of selected flows of refugees in a colony of the British Empire. In particular, it analyses official policies and politics, arguing that, within one century, in Hong Kong a distinct ârefugee regimeâ overlapping with a migration regimeâboth originally âtransimperialââemerged, whose viability was first tested by the numbers of refugees produced by the Sino-Japanese War.3 In a trade-based colony where self-sufficiency and profit were embraced even by resident Chinese, its âdurable solutionsâ4 for Chinese refugeesâthe greatest group of allâwere highly differentiated: while the poor could expect to be systematically repatriated, the wealthier ones could easily settle in Hong Kong or resettle overseas,
As a special group of migrants, these refugees who escaped from China to Hong Kong have a place in the broader history of migration to and within the British Empire before the Second World War. Disparities in their treatment also confirm the restrictions imposed on the (re)settlement of certain, sometimes racialized, categories of migrants in Britain, its colonies, and the Commonwealth.5 The present chapter adds to the related literature by reviewing the management of diverse groups of (forced) migrants in a non-settler colony.6 Concurrently, the chapter engages with the burgeoning history of refugees in Britain and its empire,7 as well as Hong Kong
2 Hong Kongâs Interconnectedness and Refugee Mobility
Before investigating the kind of refugees who sought refuge in Hong Kong, it is worth noting how and why they chose to do so. Refugees could reach Hong Kong mainly by sea or by land, taking advantage of the colonyâs interconnectedness. Following its defeat, at the end of the First Opium War, China was forced to cede the island of Hong Kong to Britain âin perpetuityâ. With the same Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) (1842), it also accepted to open five other ports (âtreaty portsâ) to British foreign traders: Shanghai, Canton (Guangzhou), Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Amoy (Xiamen). As a result of further foreign pressure or straightforward attacks to a weakened China, subsequently the latter was to open to Britain and other foreign powers more river and maritime ports, cities and railways junctions for a total of 92 by 1917.9
In time the maritime ports and some river port towns (e.g., Hankow) became interconnected through trade. Foreign and even Chinese commercial ships moved in and out and between them all the time.10 The interconnectedness of Hong Kong with other ports and its role as a major link between China and the world was to have major implications not only for the movement of goods in and out of China, but also of people and these included periodically refugees.11
Meanwhile, industrial and technological progress enhanced refugee mobility by land. As a result of natural and made-made disasters, refugees from neighbouring provinces would regularly cross into the colony, only to return home once the worst was over. However, as communications improved, they could also arrive from further away. The colony was connected by railway to Canton by 1911. As more and more lines were built in China and became connected, Canton and, hence Hong Kong, could be reached from Hankow, which, in turn, was connected to several northern cities, including Beijing.14 These developments had both a qualitative and quantitative impact on the refugees making their way to the colony: by the late 1930s they could come from as far as North China;15
3 Refugee Identity
According to Steven Tsang, before the Second World War colonial Hong Kong was essentially populated by â[Chinese] sojourners, economic migrants [,] or refugees.â17 Yet, their arrival is hardly acknowledged in major histories of colonial Hong Kong from a British perspective.18 Although sporadically, the term was used in colonial Hong Kong since mid-nineteenth century for both political refugees and large group of ordinary Chinese people, starting with those displaced by the Taiping Rebellion.19 Hence, it anticipated metropolitan and European trends. In nineteenth-century liberal Britain the term was applied mainly to individual foreign revolutionaries in exile, seeking refuge on its soil from oppressive authoritarian regimes that they often plotted to overthrow.20 The label, therefore, was applied easily to Chinese revolutionaries, such as Sun Yat-Sen and others fighting the Qing Empire from the late nineteenth century to 1911.21 Likewise, for most of the nineteenth-century in Europe, mass refugee migration was not differentiated from other forms of emigration.22
When Britain first introduced immigration controls with the 1905 Aliens Act, it acknowledged the existence of a special category of people running
Some of the twentieth-century Chinese refugees were individuals or small groups of political refugees at risk of persecution, such as Manchus during the 1911 Revolution, or warlords leading rival factions in the 1920sâ civil war.27 The majority, however, were ordinary people seeking refuge from the impact of political upheaval. All along, unless specified, the majority of the refugees were always Chinese, but foreign refugees were also occasionally noted, such as Russian refugees in the 1920s and Jewish refugees in the 1930s.28 During the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War, refugees included British refugees removed from Shanghai to Hong Kong for their safety; these were joined by members of other nationalities.29 The difference between Chinese refugees and these non-Chinese âevacueesâ was partly a matter of agency, partly a matter of expected length of stay. Most evacuees were made ârefugeesâ when they were ordered by their government to leave foreign concessions exposed to
4 The Hong Kong âRefugee Regimeâ
As the member of a displaced population, the modern refugee is largely the byproduct to the introduction of borders that accompanied the formation of the international state system. In 20th Europe, refugees were often cause or consequence of the making of new nation-states out of crumbling empires. Refugees were created by the establishment or consolidation of new borders, which made many people stateless. To deal with them, the interwar League of Nations established a dedicated international refugee regime, consisting of special institutions, rules, and norms. However, this early international refugee regime was far from being universal and mobilised only for selected groups of refugees, such as the White Russians defeated in the Russian Civil War and the German Jews persecuted by the Nazi regime, some of whom, as we have seen, also ended up in Hong Kong.31 This protection failed to be extended to the refugees in or from China, as the League of Nations was not allowed to help refugees outside Europe.32
However, Hong Kong maintained open borders with China. This openness was embedded in the very Anglo-Chinese treaties that had marked its transfer to Britain and was necessary to the functioning of its entrepôt economy. For the Chinese the resulting Hong Kong ârefugee regimeâ overlapped with its âmigration regimeâ. On the one hand, Chinese political refugees could receive protection, but only as long as this did not undermine the good relations necessary to Britain to keep the Anglo-Chinese trade flowing in Hong Kong and in its other semi-colonial concessions elsewhere in China. This protection was often limited to merely rejecting forced repatriation (i.e. extradition) at the request of the Chinese authorities.33 On the other hand, all the other Chinese
Even if situated outside the international refugee regime, the Hong Kong ârefugee regimeâ presents us with a mix permanent and ad hoc institutions, agencies, and practices periodically involved in the management of and, to a lesser extent, humanitarian assistance to refugees. The quintessential permanent institution was the colonial Government, in that it was the one producing all laws regulating immigration and emigration, settlement (including land sale and housing), medical assistance, and relief. Then, there were Chinese and Western voluntary agencies, although the latterâs work with refugees is best documented in the late 1930s.36 Short-term committees could also be set up, such as the official Shanghai Refugee Committee to look after the British âevacueesâ from Shanghai or the voluntary Emergency Refugee Council to coordinate relief for the Chinese refugees during the Sino-Japanese War.37 Finally, in the course of a century a range of practices and short- and long-term solutions emerged, through the actions of the above-mentioned actors and the refugees themselves.
5 The Hong Kong Refugee Problem and Its Solutions
Internationally, the refugee problem received widespread attention in the twentieth century. The people displaced or made stateless by the First World War, revolutions, and the collapse of empires started to be seen as a problem requiring a concerted solution to be agreed through international agreements and humanitarian assistance and resulting in the repatriation, integration in the first country where the refugees had sought refuge (settlement), or emigration to a third country (resettlement).
For most Chinese refugees, entry in Hong Kong was relatively easy until 1940. At the time, the population reached almost two million and the colonial Government felt compelled to erect a border with China to prevent further refugees from entering the colony.39 Ordinarily, once in the colony, refugees could return home (repatriation) or take residence in Hong Kong (settlement). The Chinese tended to seek refuge in Hong Kong in an emergency, but they were also happy to return when the situation had improved. Even those immigrants who decided to settle could continue to travel regularly to China. Some even created cross-border families by sending their children to be raised by the grandparents across the border.40 Invariably, refugee inflows contributed to foster the unrelented growth of the colonial population.41
Still, like for all immigrants, refugee settlement was conditional to their ability to be self-sufficient. The colonial officials tended to classify Chinese refugees according to their social and economic status and to welcome especially the wealthy. This can be noted already with the refugees of the Taiping Rebellion, whose arrival profoundly altered a colonial economy that until then had struggled to take off. The colonial authorities especially appreciated the arrival of the wealthier refugees, who brought capital and skills, opened firms,
The refugees of the Sino-Japanese War were also classified clearly by wealth. They included a minority of wealthy refugees who moved âtheir commercial interests from occupied China to [Hong Kong]â and established âseveral hundred factories, workshops, printing presses and the likeâ. Another bigger group consisted of âartisans, small merchants and othersâ who could support themselves for a while, before âhav[ing] to fall back on reliefâ. Finally, the biggest group of all including refugees with âlittle if any savingsâ who easily became homeless.44 In between the Taiping refugees and those of the Sino-Japanese War, the presence of wealthy refugees can be inferred by references to pressure on housing and their ability to buy existing renters out of their homes in official records.45 All along, because of existing laws and occasional ad hoc arrangements alike, repatriation was the ultimate solution for all those who could not fend for themselves.46
Some Chinese refugees chose to move onward. Nonetheless, resettlement outside Hong Kong became increasingly problematic, as various countries embraced nationalism and racial homogeneity and started imposing restrictions on Chinese immigration in general. The first country to erect barriers to Chinese immigrationâon both economic and racial groundsâwas the United States in 1882. However, defying British treaties with China in the process, and seeking racial purity, all British settler colonies soon followed, starting with Australia (1901) and ending with Canada (1923).47 Even the British Straits Settlements, largely populated by Chinese immigrants, restricted access to curb competition in the labour market during the Great Depression.48 Britain
In adapting metropolitan immigration laws, in the 1920s Hong Kong made an exception for âpersons of Chinese raceâ, but foreigners had to present passports.50 These rules applied to both refugees and non-refugees. Even the movement of British refugees was regulated to a certain extent. In August 1937, after the bombing of Shanghai by the Japanese, some British âevacueesâ were temporarily relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong, but only after a three-way agreement between British authorities in London, Shanghai and Hong Kong.51 Some foreigners were also admitted to Hong Kong on this occasion, but only after the respective consulates agreed that they would not become a burden for the colony.52
Meanwhile, if allowed into the colony, foreign refugees were able to relocate from Hong Kong only if they had a country to return to or other countries accepted them. For example, British refugees went to Singapore or, if they could afford it, back to England, while some foreigners moved to colonial territories controlled by their own countries: the Portuguese to Macao, the French to Saigon, and the Americans to Manila.53 Stateless refugees, such as Russian refugees, are known to have moved to third countries with the latterâs permission in the 1920s, but a few Russians deported from Canton and elsewhere to the colony during the Sino-Japanese War were sent back to China.54 The foreign destitutes evacuated from Shanghai in 1937â38 were also expected to return there.55
No matter their race or nationality, terms of access to the colony, or further final destination, some refugees often required assistance at arrival in the colony. Because of the economic rationale of the colony, in Hong Kong official refugee relief was highly selective and private relief ultimately could only operate
6 Refugee Relief
Originally, the colony of Hong Kong was established as a trade post and all along its raison dâêtre remained financial self-sufficiency and making money for the empire. Humanitarian initiatives and welfare provisions for residents and immigrants alike were always limited and substandard. Furthermore, like elsewhere in the British Empire, strict vagrancy ordinances dictated the expulsion of the poor from this city-colony, associating their presence with disorderly behavior and crime.56 The colonial Government intervened directly only during the Sino-Japanese War, when the population reached intolerable levels. Otherwise, it generally limited itself to policy-making aimed at mitigating the impact of overpopulation, for example mitigating their impact on housing with regulations on rent controls or by encouraging additional building.57 In general, it rather expected the Chinese community to look after its own people.
As for private charity, the Tung Wah Hospital, the first and main Chinese charity, was established in 1872.58 However, complying with official policy, all along it was mainly involved in the repatriation of destitute people, who may or may not have include refugees. During certain emergencies, it could also provide relief, but only until the refugees could return to their homes across the border. For example, in 1916, it helped those escaping military clashes in the Tao Tung District of Canton, but shelter for refugee women and children
Meanwhile, although gradually, a number of Western churches and charities established themselves in the colony. Initially they invested in education to increase the number of their converts or orphanages for abandoned infants.60 Looking at the refugee crises that affected Hong Kong, significant organized relief was largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Furthermore, it seems to be associated mainly with the Sino-Japanese conflict. By 1938 the Street Sleepers Shelter Society, the Society for the Protection of Children, the Salvation Army and others had mobilised to help the new refugees61 The Anglican and the Catholic churches also jointly set up food kitchens for the poorer refugees and eventually formed an Emergency Refugee Council to co-ordinate humanitarian efforts.62 Nevertheless, like Chinese charity, when Western private relief was offered, it was also closely monitored by the colonial government.
In time, the following pattern emerged: at each refugee crisis from the Taiping Rebellion to the interwar civil war, and the 1911 Revolution in-between, refugees arrived, overstretched existing housing and endangered public health, but also stimulated land sale and housing development. After the crisis that had displaced them was over, some returned home, others settled in the colony. Those who could, emigrated. The destitute were invariably expelled. This pattern was broken only by the Sino-Japanese War when the refugees could not immediately return home. At this time, the colonial government also adopted different strategies to deal with Chinese refugees and British nationals and other Westerners evacuated from Shanghai. The following sections deal with the latter arrivals in chronological order; first with the evacuees from Shanghai, then with the Chinese ones.
7
The war between Japan and China started in early July 1937 and fighting soon extended to Shanghai. On 13 August 1937 the battle for Shanghai caused several casualties and the British authorities decided to evacuate their women and children to Hong Kong.63 On 15 August the colonial Government of Hong Kong received a telegram from the British Consul in Shanghai communicating the immediate evacuation of women and children, while on 16 August the Secretary of State for the Colonies informed them that the metropolitan Government would refund any costs incurred by the colony.64 In a matter of days, several âevacuationâ ships left Shanghai for Hong Kong. The first shipâRajputanaâarrived on 19 August, followed by others in a matter of days (the Empress of Asia, Patroclus, Maron, and the Empress of Canada).65
By the end of August 1937 alone, over 4,000 people had arrived in this way.66 Most were women and children, with a minority of men. Most were British, but there were also a number of nationals of other countries, such a few hundred refugees of Portuguese, French, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish nationality. The foreigners also included people who had acquired (or lost) British nationality by marriage and who were dealt with as British refugees.67 Between December 1937 and January 1938 more evacuees arrived also by three special trains from Hankow.68 Some Russians were deported into the colony from Canton and elsewhere.69 Refugeesâ mobility, therefore, demonstrates Hong Kong interconnectedness at work.
The evacuees were meant to stay only until it was safe to return to Shanghai. To manage arrivals (and, later, departures), as well as relief, the colonial government set up a special committee. This Shanghai Refugee Committee was able to mobilise both public and private resources in cash and kind to assist the refugees, including a core budget of 200,000hk$ committed by the British metropolitan Government for the logistics of the entire operation.70 Because most evacuees were women and children, women of the colonial elites also
Early on, the Shanghai Refugees Committee set up a Records Office, which kept information about the evacuees who required subsided accommodation and, later, passages to return to Shanghai. The data were collected though questionnaires, which provided a profile of the families assisted (nationality, age, marital status) and the dates of their entry and departure from the colony. The Shanghai Refugees Committee identified the neediest refugees, by finding out establishing those could not afford to pay fully for accommodation, subsistence, and passages back to Shanghai or elsewhere.73
As known immigrants, once they arrived at Hong Kong, the evacuees were processed quickly, having travelled on what were effectively officially sanctioned evacuation ships. Some had friends or relatives and were allowed to join them immediately. The staff or relatives of major businesses with interest both in Shanghai and Hong Kong were even given priority to disembark. These were followed by those who had reserved accommodation independently. All the others were redirected to reception centres set up by the Shanghai Refugees Committee.74
Emergency assistance included shelter, food, medical assistance, and care and education for the children. The reception centres offered food and accommodation, but only for about 750 of the evacuees. The evacuees with means or friends and relatives in the colony were able to find accommodation independently and generally looked after themselves. The relatives of employees of British businesses in Shanghai also had all those firms arrange their accommodation and general maintenance. Jewish evacuees had a separate hostel set for them by the local synagogue âOhel Leahâ. The Shanghai Refugees Committee set up two reception centres for women and children and one for men.75 The evacuees had also access to a dedicated clinic or colonial medical services for inoculations against cholera and malaria and to relieve their
8 Chinese Refugees
In contrast to the British and foreign evacuees, the Chinese refugees displaced by the Sino-Japanese War were initially expected to fend for themselves. As for the foreign evacuees, the majority were able to do so. As we have seen, some of them had no means, though. In 1938, the Tung Wah Hospital stepped in to help the refugees from Canton, setting up shelters in buildings lent by the colonial Government.78 The situation became complicated as a result of more arrivals and the eviction of Hong Kong residents by landlords to make space for tenants able to pay higher rents. According to an official survey, already in the summer 1938 about 30,000 persons slept in the streets, including about 3,000 refugees (including 1,500 women and children). Furthermore, excluding the able-bodied, about 7,500 destitute individuals of both categories needed emergency shelter.79
As the homeless increased and created a hazard for both public health and order, the colonial government entrusted the coordination of their management to the Director of Medical Services supported by the police. The colonial government also took over the supervision of relief, co-opting (and controlling) the services not only of the Tung Wah Hospital, but also of the Emergency Refugee Council. In addition to the shelters of the Tung Wah Hospital, shelter, food, and medical assistance were provided to the homeless refugees and residents alike in three urban and five rural refugee camps, the first ever built in Hong Kong.80 These were managed by the Director of Medical Services with the collaboration of the Emergency Refugee Council. The members of the latter introduced basic industrial and educational activities to keep adults and children busy.81
In contrast to the evacuees, for the Chinese refugees the colonial government had to bear the majority of the costs of relief. Overall, they spent hk$3.5 million in 1937â41 in charitable services and about the same sum to build the refugee camps in 1937â38.84 Additional resources amounting to âhundreds of [Hong Kong] dollarsâ were gathered through public appeals and various fundraising activities, to which âall classes of the community ⦠responded.â85
9 Conclusion
This survey of the one-hundred-year engagement of Hong Kong with refugees from China leads to a number of considerations. Firstly, Hong Kong was on the frontline of several refugee movements from China, of both Chinese and foreigners living in foreigner concessions in China. The colony remained outside the new international refugee regime created in the twentieth century in response to mass population displacement, but it adapted to the colonial reality some of the views (and biases) developed in Britain vis-Ã -vis that regime.
Secondly, while the colony distinguished itself for its apparent openness to receive these refugees, a detailed, integrated, analysis of colonial immigration ordinances and ad hoc refugee policies shows that the colonial government imposed limits to their settlement. In particular, for the Chinese refugees, the typical colonial âdurable solutionsâ â repatriation, settlement in the colony, or resettlement emigration â were fluid and dependent on a variety of factors.
Thirdly, relief was offered in exceptional cases. It could even be subsidized by the colonial authorities when numbers became substantial. Nonetheless, relief was intended to enable the colonial authorities to separate, monitor, and eventually repatriate the poorest refugees. For example, during the Sino-Japanese War this was the main purpose of both the reception centres for evacuees from Shanghai and the charitable shelters and refugee camps built later for the Chinese refugees.
Finally, in Hong Kong there was relatively limited distinction between public and private initiatives. While the colonial Government could become directly involved in humanitarian assistance, the latter also was completely subordinated to their priorities and these could be shaped by parochial concerns with public health or public order, as well as broad imperial and colonial interest of foreign and economic policy.
For the chronology of the âtreaty portsâ era, Gregory Bracken, âTreaty Ports in China: Their Genesis, Development, and Influenceâ, Journal of Urban History, 45(1), 2019, 168â76. In 1943, a more assertive and revanchist Chinese Nationalist government denounced the treaties imposed by foreign powers to the Qing Empire (1842â1943), unravelling the âtreaty portsâ system described below. This affected British economic interests in China, weakening the foundations of Hong Kong refugee policies and preventing their post-war full restoration for good. Although other refugees came to Hong Kong after 1945, their fate was to be shaped by the Cold War and new, extra-colonial, actors (starting with the United States) under different conditions; see Laura Madokoro, Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War, Harvard University Press, London & Cambridge, MA, 2016. For the international context facilitating Chinese wartime initiative, see Andrew Whittfield, Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance at War, 1941â1945, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2001.
On the formation of the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion and Sun Yat-sen, the leader who succeeded in overthrowing the Manchu, Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2nd edn., w.w. Norton, New York, 1999, 172â73, 226.
Hence the significant space dedicated to this particular refugee crisis, which is also better documented.
The possible âdurable solutionsâ to the refugee âproblemâ offered by the international refugee regime were identified as repatriation, local integration (or settlement), or emigration (resettlement) in the interwar years for largely European refugees and then became universal in the postwar ones; Claudena M. Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe: The Emergence of a Regime, repr. Edn., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995, 2011, 146â48, 185; Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, 5â7. However, even if not institutionalised, they are applicable to other groups and historical periods.
For example: Marjory Harper, & Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010; Kent Fedorowich & Andrew S. Thompson, Empire, Migration and Identity in the British World, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2013; David C. Atkinson, The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2016; Cecilia Morgan, Building Better Britains?: Settler Societies within the British Empire, 1783â1920, University of Toronto Press, North York, Ontario, 2017; Jeremy C. Martens, Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888â1907, uma Publishing Crawley, Crawley, Western Australia, 2018; Stan Neal, Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819â67, Boydell Press, Suffolk, UK, 2019; Andrekos Varnava, Marinella Marmo & Evan Smith, âBorder Control and Undesirables in Britain and Australiaâ, Immigrants & Minorities, 40(1â2), 2022, 1â12; Evan Smith, Andrekos Varnava & Marinella Marmo, âThe Interconnectedness of British and Australian Immigration Controls in the 20th Century: between Convergence and Divergenceâ, The International History Review, 43(6) 2021, 1354â74.
For examples of the still limited literature on migration and non-settler colonies; Evan Smith & Andrekos Varnava, âCreating a âSuspect Communityâ: Monitoring and Controlling the Cypriot Community in Inter-war Londonâ, The English Historical Review, 132(558) 2017, 1149â81; Andrekos Varnava & Evan Smith, âDealing with Destitute Cypriots in the UK and Australia, 1914â1931â, in Philip Payton and Andrekos Varnava (eds.), Australia, Migration and Empire: immigrants in a Globalised World, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019, 277â312.
John Slatter, From the Other Shore: Russian Political Emigrants in Britain, 1880â1917, F. Cass, London, 1984; Paul R. Bartrop, False Havens: The British Empire and the Holocaust, University Press Lanham MD, Lanham MD, 1995; Marilyn C. Baseler, âAsylum for Mankindâ: America, 1607â1800, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY, 1998; Alexis Rappas, âJewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933â1949â, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47(1) 2019, 138â66; Prakash Shah, Refugees, Race and the Legal Concept of Asylum in Britain, Cavendish Publishing Limited, London, 2000; Maya Jasanoff, Libertyâs Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, Vintage Books, New York, 2012; Caroline Shaw, Britanniaâs Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015; Jan C. Jansen, âAliens in a Revolutionary World: Refugees, Migration Control and Subjecthood in the British Atlantic, 1790sâ1820sâ, Past & Present, 255(1), 2021, 189â231; Becky Taylor, Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain: A History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021.
Glen Peterson, âForced Migration, Refugees and Chinaâs Entry into the âFamily of Nationsâ, 1861â1949â, Journal of Refugee Studies, 31(3), 2018, 274â91; Helena F.S. Lopes, âThe Impact of Refugees in Neutral Hong Kong and Macau, 1937â1945â, The Historical Journal, 66(1), 2023, 210â36.
Spence, Search for Modern China, 160â63, 180â83; François Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China Japan and South Asia 13th-21st Century, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham UK, 2011, 145.
Gipouloux, Asian Mediterranean, 146â55.
Jung-Fang Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History: Community and Social Unrest in the British Colony, 1842â1913, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993, 244; Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MA, 2008, 111â12.
Elizabeth Sinn, âEmigration from Hong Kong before 1941: General Trendsâ, in Ronald Skeldon (ed.), Emigration from Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1995, 11â34.
Christopher Munn, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841â1880, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2009 pbk; 2011 repr., 49, 70â71, 163.
Thomas Spain & Oliver Betts, ââDeveloping Chinaâs âInternationalâ Railway: The CantonâHankow Line, 1898â1937â,The Journal of Transport History, 40(3), 2019, 322â40; Elizabeth Köll, Railroads and the Transformation of China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019, 212â18.
Hong Kong Government [henceforth: hkg], Report of the Director of Medical Services 1938, Government Printer, Hong Kong, n.d., M12-M13.
Her Majestyâs Government [henceforth: hmg], Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Hong Kong, 1938. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1939 [henceforth: Progress of the People of Hong Kong 1938], co 1071/167, tna.
Steven Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2011 repr. edn, 180.
The major histories of Hong Kong acknowledge as ârefugeesâ only the immigrants of the Taiping Rebellion (1854â60) and the 1949 Chinese Revolution; besides, except for John M. Carroll, they hardly identify ârefugeesâ as a distinct category of migrants before the Sino-Japanese War: G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, 2nd rev. edn., Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1973; John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong,Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2007; Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, rev. edn., HarperCollins, London, 1997; Tsang, Modern History. On the other hand, social historians adopting an integrated view of Hong Kong and China include them, see Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History.
Despatches 1859, January 1- May 31, 579f-579v, co 129â73, The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth: tna). The identity of ârefugeeâ of Taiping rebel leaders was initially challenged by the colonial authorities, though; Despatches 1865, Aug-Sept, 237â244, co 129â106, tna.
Shaw, Britanniaâs Embrace; for the context, Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 14â15.
Peterson, âForced Migration,â 277.
Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 15.
Becky Taylor, Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain: A History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, 7.
Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 18.
hkg, Administrative Reports 1912, 25â26, hkgro,
âReport on the Census of the Colony for 1911,â hkg, Sessional Papers 1911, 103 (4)-103 (5), hkgro,
Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 244; Diana Lary, âThe Guangxi Clique and Hong Kong: Sanctuary in a Dangerous Worldâ, in Pui-tak Lee (ed.), Colonial Hong Kong and Modern China: Interaction and Reintegration, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2005, 154â67.
On Russian refugees, Reports of the Meetings of the Legislative Council of the Government of Hong Kong (henceforth: Hong Kong Hansard), August 30, 1923, 70â71, hkgro
âReport by the Chairman (Mr W.J. Carrie) of the Shanghai Refugees Committeeâ, hkg, Sessional Papers 1938 [henceforth: âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ], 129, hkgro,
This policy was later applied to British women and children in Hong Kong itself; Tony Banham, Reduced to a Symbolical Scale: The Evacuation of British Women and Children from Hong Kong to Australia in 1940. 1 edn., Hong Kong University Press, Aberdeen, 2017.
Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe.
John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Question, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940, 15.
Peterson, âForced Migration,â 277â78.
The related law did not apply to âpersons of Chinese raceâ; Schedule 5(2) in 1923 Passport Ordinance, Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online, The University of Hong Kong, accessed December 18, 2023,
Agnes S. Ku, âImmigration Policies, Discourses, and the Politics of Local Belonging in Hong Kong (1950â1980)â, Modern China, 30(3), 2004, 334.
hmg, Progress of the People of Hong Kong 1938, 117.
hmg, Progress of the People of Hong Kong 1938, 184; âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 129.
Peterson, âForced Migrationâ, 277.
Ku, âImmigration Policiesâ, 333; Rosaria Franco, âInfant Welfare, Family Planning, and Population Policy in Hong Kong: Race, Refugees, and Religion, 1931â61â, Journal of Contemporary History, 55(2), 2020, 253 (Table 1).
âReport on the Census of the Colony for 1931â, hkg, Sessional Papers 1931 [henceforth: âReport on 1931 Censusâ], 124, Hong Kong Government Reports Online (1842â1941), The University of Hong Kong [henceforth: hkgro].
âReport on 1931 Censusâ, 88, 89; hkg, Administrative Reports 1916, M9, hkgro,
Despatches 1855, July 1-Sept 4, 28v-29v, co 129/51, tna; James Legge, âThe Colony of Hong Kongâ, China Review, 1(3), 1872, 171.
Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2013, 2.
hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1939, Government Printer, Hong Kong, n.d., M7.
hkg, Blue Book 1854, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1854, n.p.; hkg, Historical and Statistical Abstract of the Colony of Hongkong, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1911, Appendix, 2â3; Hong Kong Hansard, June 30, 1921, 79, hkgro,
On repatriation during the Sino-Japanese War, see the purpose of the refugee camps below.
Skran, Refugees in Inter-war Europe, 22â23; Kuhn, Chinese among Others, 205â36; Varnava, Marmo & Smith, âBorder Control and Undesirablesâ.
C.M. Turnbull, A History of Modern Singapore 1819â2005, nus Press, Singapore, 2009, 145â6.
Taylor, Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain, 8â13.
Schedule 5(2) in 1923 Passport Ordinance.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 129.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 138.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 137, 154.
Hong Kong Hansard, August 30, 1923, 71; âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 138.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 138.
The first vagrancy ordinance was introduced in 1844 and repeatedly updated afterwards. Ku, âImmigration Policiesâ, 333; Christopher M. Roberts & Hazel W.H. Leung, âGovernance Through Vagrancy Law in Hong Kong, 1841â1939â, in Cerian Griffiths & Åukasz Jan Korporowicz (eds.), English Law, the Legal Profession, and Colonialism: Histories, Parallels, and Influences, Routledge, London, 2023, 174â202,
For example, for the 1920s, see Hong Kong Hansard, June 23, 1921, 61â62, hkgro,
On its history, Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong, repr. Edn., Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2011.
Tung Wah Group of Hospitals [henceforth: twgh], One Hundred Years of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, 1870â1970. Book i, The Group, Hong Kong, 1971, 180â81.
hmg, Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Hong Kong 1931, H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1932, 24, co 1071/167, tna.
hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1938, M86.
Moira M.W. Chan-Yeung, The Practical Prophet: Bishop Ronald O. Hall of Hong Kong and His Legacies, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2015, 63.
Marcia R. Ristaino, The Jacquinot Safe Zone: Wartime Refugees in Shanghai, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2008, 47â49.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 129.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 130â31.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 134.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 131, 137â38.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 132. Hankow the British (and other foreign powers) had obtained rights to trade and concessions; hence, logically, the special evacuation trains.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 138.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 138â41.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 151, 153, 155.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 151, 155.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 144â50.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 131â32.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 130â31, 134â35.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 132, 136.
âShanghai Refugees Committeeâ, 137.
twgh, One Hundred Years, 185â86; hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1938, M87.
Hong Kong Hansard, July 28, 1938, 64â65, hkgro,
hmg, Progress of the People of Hong Kong 1938, 183.
hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1938, M87.
twgh, One Hundred Years, 186; hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1939, M7; Hong Kong Hansard, August 29, 1940, 132, hkgro,
âRestrictions on Alien Combatants, Refugees and Othersâ, (Emergency) Ordinance No 794, Government Gazette, October 12, 1938, hkgro,
hkg, Blue Book 1937, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1938, 92; hkg, Blue Book 1938, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1939, 92; hkg, Blue Book 1939, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1940, 94; hkg, Blue Book 1940, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1941, 12.
hkg, Report of the Director of Medical Services 1938, M87.
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