Excerpt from Cities of Empire by Tristram Hunt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Introduction

On a sharp winter's day in December 2010, the Hong Kong Association and Society held its annual luncheon in London's Hyde Park. The venue, of course, was the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, part of the Jardine Matheson group, perched lucratively amidst the billionaires' playground of Knightsbridge, and all the great tai-pans of British corporate life were in attendance. However, the Association's guest of honour was not some old China hand, flown in from the Hong Kong Club, to wax lyrical about Britain's 'easternmost possession'. Instead, it was the tall, suave and studiously loyal ambassador of the People's Republic of China, His Excellency Mr Liu Xiaoming.

In syrupy diplomatese, Beijing's man in London spoke rhapsodically of the 'Pearl of the Orient' and the achievements of British business in building up the colony, and then reaffirmed his government's commitment to the vision of Hong Kong proclaimed by Deng Xiaoping: one country, two systems. Communist China would not impose 'Mao Zedong thought' on Hong Kong. Instead, it was determined to preserve freedom of speech, the rule of law, private property rights and, above all, the low-tax, free-trade model that underpinned the once-imperial city's prosperity. The future of this 'international city' was as a global finance centre and, for British companies, as a bridge to mainland China. A pleasing statement of business as usual, the message was smartly tailored to the merchant princes of the Mandarin Oriental.

Thirteen years earlier, when Britain's ninety-nine-year lease on Hong Kong came to an end, there was little evidence of such Sino-British harmony. Then, it was all tears and angst, pride and regret. At the stroke of midnight the Union Jack was lowered to the strains of 'God Save the Queen', the Hong Kong police ripped the royal insignia from their uniforms, and Red Army troops poured over the border. Britain's last governor, Chris Patten, recorded the final, colonial swansong in all its lachrymose glory: its 'kilted pipers and massed bands, drenching rain, cheering crowds, a banquet for the mighty and the not so mighty, a goose-stepping Chinese honour guard, a president and a prince'. Steaming out of Victoria Harbour, as the Royal Marines played 'Rule, Britannia!' and 'Land of Hope and Glory', on the last, symbolic voyage of the Royal Yacht Britannia, 'we were leaving one of the greatest cities in the world, a Chinese city that was now part of China, a colony now returned to its mighty motherland in rather different shape to that in which it had become Britain's responsibility a century and a half before'.1

In London, responses to the handover ran the gamut, from anguished to humbled, emblematic, in a way, of the conflicted reexamination of Britain's colonial legacy that has been underway for some years. At the shrill end of the spectrum: 'The handover of Hong Kong to China strikes many westerners as a disgrace and a tragedy,' thundered The Economist. 'Never before has Britain passed a colony directly to a Communist regime that does not even pretend to respect conventional democratic values.'2 Historian Paul Johnson, writing in the Daily Mail, concurred: 'The surrender of the free colony of Hong Kong to the totalitarian Communist government is one of the most shameful and humiliating episodes in British history.' The scuttle from Victoria Harbour gave Fleet Street just the cue it needed for an enjoyable bout of colonial self-indulgence. 'All the rest of our empire has been given away on honourable terms,' continued Johnson. 'All the rest of our colonies were meticulously prepared for independence, by setting up model parliaments. . . and by providing a judiciary professionally educated on British lines to maintain the rule of law.' Shamefully, the same could not be said of Hong Kong.3

Excerpted from Cities of Empire by Tristram Hunt. Copyright © 2014 by Tristram Hunt. Excerpted by permission of Metropolitan Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.