Hong Kong’s most comprehensive historical book was published back in 1957. It’s time for a new one
- Hong Kong Business Symposium had a commercial focus, but was packed with information and anecdotes from the most important people in the territory
- Written in 1957, it looked at local businesses and international shipping, going back to the first days of the colony in the 1840s
Once-in-a-generation works of history – entirely the product of a fortuitous confluence of time, place, available resources, and which reflect the distinctive personalities involved in their production, writing and research – are to be treasured.
Possibly the finest early local example of this genre is also the most unjustly forgotten. Hong Kong Business Symposium: A Compilation of Authoritative Views on the Administration, Commerce and Resources of Britain’s Far Eastern Outpost (1957), despite the dry-sounding title, is unquestionably the most comprehensive example of broad-ranging information on Hong Kong produced up until that time.
It provides multilayered snapshots of the colony as it then was, enriched and enlivened by contributions from most major contemporary public figures. Commercial focus was key, and so it should have been; after all, the principal reason for the volume’s existence in the first place – Hong Kong’s essential economic lifeblood – was business itself.
As brought together by Hong Kong-born José Maria (Jack) Braga (1897-1988), eldest son of prominent local Portuguese community figure José Pedro Braga and an eminent amateur historian of Hong Kong and Macau in his own right, Hong Kong’s urban evolution starts with the arrival of the British in 1841.
From there, he follows the then-usual periodisation of successive governors and their administrations, with allowances made for their personal enthusiasms and prejudices. Braga’s chronology thus concludes with the end of Alexander Grantham’s 10-year term as governor, in 1957 – a period defined by significant geopolitical and socio-economic challenges.
Certain inclusions indicate the volume had been in preparation for some years before publication, suggested by details of an extensive 1955 fact-finding visit by British secretary of state for the colonies Alan Lennox-Boyd and his wife, Patricia, and a section on Hong Kong written by Lennox-Boyd himself.
Eurasian comprador Robert Hotung – who died in 1956, the year before publication – wrote that “having been privileged to live through some 92 of the 114 years of Hong Kong’s history, I may perhaps be qualified to give an outline of some of the changes which have taken place since the days of my youth”. Edmund Blunden, the celebrated World War I poet who taught at the University of Hong Kong in those years, even contributed a new poem – Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Business Symposium was probably the first serious attempt to depict the colony as a matrix of disparate peoples from all over the world, rather than a British-Chinese binary society. Unsurprisingly, given Braga’s own heritage, the local Portuguese and their multifaceted roles in local life get extensive coverage, along with chapters on the French, Germans and other communities.
Unexpected details are interwoven into specific business entries; J.H. Ruttonjee and Co contains extensive information about Parsees, as well as the family’s Hong Kong Brewery at Sham Tseng, later sold to San Miguel.
Potted histories of diverse local enterprises abound; editorial direction pointed towards historical background to an individual company’s activities; businesses as diverse as shipbuilding and warehouses to Swatow embroidery, knitting and ginger processing are profiled.
Close reading offers insights that might otherwise be overlooked. Despite the name, The Hongkong Transportation Co Ltd – the successor of the Pure Cane Molasses Co (HK) Ltd – dealt almost exclusively in molasses; a useful reminder that sugar refining was one of early Hong Kong’s most important export industries.
Shipping lines are well represented; Hong Kong’s traditional entrepôt role – while challenged by the United Nations embargo on direct trade with mainland China after 1950 – remained critically important. Air cargo was barely in its infancy in 1957; almost all international transport from Hong Kong went by sea.
Nothing comparable to Braga’s groundbreaking Hong Kong Business Symposium has ever been attempted since; something similar remains long overdue.
