Book Talk: A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997

A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997, Edited by Florence Mok and Fung Chi Keung Charles (Hong Kong University Press, 2025)

Through analysing newly released archival records and underexplored published sources from London, Hong Kong and other parts of the world, this documentary fills the long-standing void in the existing scholarship by providing a thorough understanding of the history of colonial Hong Kong in the post-war period. The organisation of new primary sources will benefit researchers, teachers and students who research on, teach and study Hong Kong history as it provides an updated and improved understanding of various aspects of Hong Kong in a pivotal period. The book does not only address and revise familiar topics, such as governance, constitutional changes, political culture, economy and trade, fiscal and budgetary policy, education, cultural policies and migration, using new sources from a revisionist perspective, it also aims at investigating topics that are under-exploited in previous sourcebooks, such as transport and communication, the arts, medicine and healthcare, environment and natural disasters, gender and family and race and diasporas. This documentary therefore offers an innovative and comprehensive long-term perspective of colonial history in Hong Kong, providing useful insights into political developments in Hong Kong and political transformation of China before and after 1997.

Speakers:

Florence Mok is a Nanyang Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University. She is a historian of colonial Hong Kong and modern China, with an interest in environmental history, the Cold War and state-society relations. Her first monograph, Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97 was published by Manchester University Press (Studies in Imperialism series) in 2023.

Fung Chi Keung Charles is a PhD student in sociology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is a comparative historical sociologist and his research interests include state (trans)formation, fiscal politics, identity-making, geopolitics, and governance, focusing on how these processes unfold in the context of imperial/colonial rule. He is the co-author of Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985 (Hong Kong University Press, 2023), and has contributed articles to journals such as Asian Perspective, Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, and East Asia.

Carol C. L. Tsang is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. She is a historian of gender and reproductive health in Hong Kong, and has published articles in Twentieth Century British History and Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong. She coordinates and teaches courses on gender studies, motherhood, and family. Her forthcoming articles on family planning and social egg freezing will appear in Cold War History and World Medical & Health Policy respectively.

Reynold K. W. Tsang is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He earned his DPhil in History at the University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis examines the origin and development of museums in British East and Southeast Asia during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. Reynold’s research interests extend to Hong Kong history, modern Chinese history, and public history. His scholarly work has been published in the Museum History Journal and HKU Press.

Moderator:

John Carroll, Principal Lecturer, Chair and Chief Examiner, MA in Hong Kong History

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