John CARROLL
Principal Lecturer
Chair and Chief Examiner, MA in Hong Kong History
John Carroll is the founding director of the MA in the Field of Hong Kong History (MAHKH) and has been a member of the HKU History Department since 2006. He has also worked at The University of Texas at Austin, The College of William and Mary, and Saint Louis University, where he won the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. Raised in Florida, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, before entering academia he was a youth counsellor and advocate in Boston’s Chinatown and a freelance interpreter.
John’s scholarship has challenged conventional assumptions about imperialism and China’s encounters with the West by examining two main contact zones: Hong Kong and late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Canton (Guangzhou). His work has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. He is the co-editor of Critical Readings on the Modern History of Hong Kong.
At HKU, John has held a variety of administrative and leadership positions, including Associate Dean (Global) in the Faculty of Arts, Chairperson of the Appeals Panel, and Vice Chairperson of the Careers and Placement Committee. Beyond HKU, he has served on the executive boards of the Society for Hong Kong Studies and the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities; the advisory board of the University of Chicago Hong Kong Campus Heritage and Interpretation Center; the History Subject Committee for the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority’s Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) Examination; and the executive committee of the Hong Kong History Centre at the University of Bristol. He frequently offers interviews on Hong Kong history to local and overseas media.
Room 10.37, Run Run Shaw Tower
EDUCATION
BA, Oberlin College
MA, University of Iowa
PhD, Harvard University
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Modern Chinese History
Hong Kong History
Colonialism and Imperialism in Asia
Tourism and museums
Books
China Hands and Old Cantons: The British in the Middle Kingdom
Rowman & Littlefield
2021
Canton Days: British Life and Death in China
Rowman & Littlefield
2020
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BOOK AWARDS
COURSES TAUGHT
- HIST1017, Modern Hong Kong
- HIST2091, The British Empire
- HIST3076, Tourism and History
- HIST4033, Museums and History
- HIST4024, Writing Hong Kong History
- HIST7008, Doing Hong Kong History (MA)
- HIST7018, Hong Kong in History (MA)
- HIST7999, MA Dissertation in Hong Kong History
FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS
- RGC General Research Fund, 2018
- Seed Funding for Basic Research, 2017
- Louis Cha Fund for East-West Studies, 2011
- Hsu Long-sing Research Fund, 2011
- Seed Funding Research Grant, 2007
EXTERNAL AFFILIATIONS
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- The Hong Kong-China Nexus: A Brief History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
- China Hands and Old Cantons: Britons and the Middle Kingdom. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
- Canton Days: British Life and Death in China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
- “The Amherst Embassy to China: A Whimper and a Bang.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 1 (2020): 15–38.
- “Shiyong zhuyi” 實用主意 [Pragmatism]. In Chu Yiu-wai 朱耀偉, ed., Xianggang guanjianci: xiangxiang xinweilai 香港關鍵詞 [Hong Kong Keywords: Imagining the New Frontier], 57–68. Translated by Tse Wing-hin 謝穎軒. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2019.
- “Sorting Out China: British Accounts from Pre-Opium War Canton.” In Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton, eds., The Cultural Construction of the British World, 126–44. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
- “‘The Usual Intercourse of Nations’: The British in Pre-Opium War Canton.” In Robert Bickers and Jon Howlett, eds., Britain and China: Empire, Finance and War, 1840–1970, 22–40. London: Routledge, 2015.
- “Slow Burn in China: Factories, Fear, and Fire in Canton.” In Robert Peckham, ed., Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties, 35–55. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015.
- “The Peak: Residential Segregation in Colonial Hong Kong.” In Bryna Goodman and David Goodman, eds., Twentieth-Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World, 81–91. London: Routledge, 2012.
- “The Canton System: Conflict and Accommodation in the Contact Zone.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 50 (2010): 51–66.
- “Ten Years Later: 1997–2007 as History.” In Kam Louie, ed., Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, 9–23. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010.
- “A National Custom: Debating Female Servitude in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong.” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 6 (2009): 1463–93.
- “A Historical Perspective: The 1967 Riots and the Strike-Boycott of 1925–1926.” In Ray Yep and Robert Bickers, eds., May Days in Hong Kong: The 1967 Riots, 69–86. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
- “Contested Colony: Hong Kong, the 1949 Revolution, and the ‘Taiwan Problem’.” In Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong, and Wang Shouren, eds., Critical Zone 3, 75–93. Hong Kong and Nanjing: Hong Kong University Press and Nanjing University Press, 2008.
- A Concise History of Hong Kong. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007/Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007.
- Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Paperback reprint, Hong Kong University Press, 2007.
- “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Difference: Reassessing the Role of Hong Kong in Modern Chinese History.” Chinese Historical Review 12, no. 2 (2006): 92–104.
- “Colonial Hong Kong as a Cultural-Historical Place.” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 2 (2006): 517–43.
- “Displaying and Selling History: Museums and Heritage Preservation in Post-Colonial Hong Kong.” Twentieth-Century China 31, no. 1 (2005): 76–103.