Anglo-China by Christopher Munn Hong Kong University Press, HK$225
James Clavell has a lot to answer for. As probably the best-known 'Hong Kong' English-language novelist, more than any other writer he promoted an image of the territory in its early days as a procession of stereotypes - Scottish pirates, pidgin Chinese - blown this way and that by fate, passing typhoons and their own preternatural inclination to swashbuckling skulduggery.
From trifling yarns to solid, and solidly entertaining, non-fiction: Christopher Munn's Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841-1880, which although flippant could be subtitled 'How the Barren Rock Learned to Rock'.
Within four decades Hong Kong had shifted from a scrubby trading outpost to a fully fledged, if not entirely respectable, foothold of empire. The path to prosperity was scarcely smooth sailing.
Officials were often incompetent, corrupt or both. Hordes of ne'er-do-wells infested the streets and alleyways, subject to rough justice and rougher punishments. China frequently viewed the newly arrived British administration with hostility, more often with mere suspicion.
An attempt to poison the entire foreign population by mixing arsenic with the bread supply might have worked had the dose not been so strong, inducing vomiting rather than immediate death. The government in Britain looked askance at these goings-on and Hong Kong acquired a reputation that was dubious at best.