ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES
History of Hong Kong in maps
Hong Kong as it appears in 7 interactive history atlases, from 1840 to 2000: Hong Kong. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Hong Kong before it was Hong Kong? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Hong Kong · Industrial Revolution
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Colony or dependency |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Hong Kong (British from 1842) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
Hong Kong island was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the first blue on China’s coast on the Japan map, and Kowloon and the New Territories followed in 1860 and 1898. It became the model of a treaty-port economy under foreign law, and Japanese officials studied it closely as a picture of what could happen to their own ports if they lost control of the terms of opening.
| Independent neighbours — the opening position | |
| Western powers and allies |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Hong Kong · WWI
Hong Kong (British) · Chinese Revolution
The British colony at the revolution’s door: refuge for every era’s exiles (Sun Yat-sen was schooled and radicalized here), bank for every era’s capital flight, and target of the era’s greatest labor action — the Canton–Hong Kong strike and boycott of 1925–26 emptied the colony’s docks for sixteen months and taught the National Revolution its own strength. Taken by Japan in December 1941 and returned to Britain in 1945 (over Chiang’s objection), it ends the atlas as the aperture between red China and the world — a role it will play for forty years.
| Foreign empires — British, French, Russian, American — the opening position | |
| The Empire of Japan & its puppets | |
| Foreign empires — British, French, Russian, American |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Hong Kong · Cold War
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Hong Kong (British) · Refugee crises
The British colony of Hong Kong received the crisis’s first boat people in May 1975 and about 68,700 in 1979 alone, many of them Hoa from northern Vietnam. It kept the promise of first asylum longer than its neighbours, then closed its camps in 1982, began screening in 1988 and deported 51 people on 12 December 1989. Its last Vietnamese camp, Pillar Point, closed in 2000.
| Western bloc or democracy — the opening position | |
| First asylum open | |
| First asylum restricted | |
| First asylum open | |
| First asylum restricted |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Hong Kong (British colony) · Mao’s China
Hong Kong stayed a British colony because Mao judged it more useful as China’s window on the world and source of foreign currency than as a conquest. Hundreds of thousands of refugees reached it from the mainland, and in May 1962 some 60,000 hungry people crossed in a few weeks, most of them caught and sent back. In 1967 the Cultural Revolution spilled over into riots and bombings in the colony, which the British authorities suppressed.
| Neutral, non-aligned or colonial — the opening position |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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