Matthew Hurst
Entry to sources determines what can and can’t be researched. Outdoors of academia, entry additionally impacts the general public’s capability to keep up a tangible hyperlink to the previous. Collections are particularly necessary for expatriate communities. On this publish, I describe how Hong Kong’s diasporic communities are being denied entry to 88,000 information created throughout the colonial period.
In a latest Lively Historical past contribution, June Chow wrote a few profitable collaboration between teachers and archivists that resulted in a constructive end result for the Chinese language Canadian neighborhood. Chow submitted an Entry to Info and Privateness request to Library and Archives Canada, which in flip advised {that a} block request can be extra applicable. This block request led to the opening of a major variety of recordsdata referring to the 1923 Chinese language Exclusion Act and revealed hitherto unknown tales of injustice, activism and household reunion. In Chow’s case, researchers and data professionals labored collectively to unlock information which have introduced insights to the Chinese language Canadian neighborhood. This was a hit story; nevertheless, not all makes an attempt to entry data finish on this approach.
Britain colonised Hong Kong within the nineteenth century by means of two treaties, which lasted in perpetuity, and a lease, set to run out in 1997. With the expiry of the lease on the horizon, in 1983 and 1984, British and mainland Chinese language officers negotiated the way forward for Hong Kong. Negotiations concluded that Britain would hand Hong Kong to China in 1997. In my PhD analysis, I study how the Sino-British talks have been influenced by Hong Kong individuals, by which I imply individuals who have been resident in Hong Kong on the time and who related town’s future with their very own.
My analysis is predicated on the College of York in the UK (UK). The UK has a protracted historical past on the subject of Hong Kong and higher China tainted by racism, colored by Empire and formed by the Commonwealth. Within the nineteenth century, Chinese language communities usually grew round ports equivalent to Limehouse, Liverpool and Glasgow regardless of racist efforts to inhibit entry and settlement. On the flip of the twentieth century, Chinese language individuals within the UK have been vilified when the xenophobic ‘yellow peril’ gripped the nation. After the Second World Battle, successive British governments sought to restrict migration from throughout the Empire and former Empire. The 1981 British Nationality Act, as an illustration, was condemned for treating the (largely white) individuals of the Falklands and Gibraltar otherwise to the (largely Chinese language) Hong Kong individuals. Lastly, as soon as Britain agreed to provide Hong Kong to China, it was criticised as “inherently racist” for refusing to supply proper of abode to Hong Kong individuals.
Canada additionally has an ignoble historical past with regards individuals from Hong Kong and higher China. Within the 1850s, 1000’s of individuals have been tempted from China to Canda and different gold rush nations. As Elizabeth Sinn and Graham E. Johnson have famous, Hong Kong grew to become a key hub for transit and commerce throughout the rush. Because the Qing Empire collapsed, Hong Kong and Chinese language individuals have been additionally pulled to Canada by the prospect of labor and alternatives. However over many a long time, Chinese language individuals in Canada have been harshly discriminated in opposition to. Constructing on a long time of punitive capitation taxes, the aforementioned 1923 Chinese language Exclusion Act largely prohibited Chinese language migration to Canada till 1947.
Following Beijing’s imposition of a Nationwide Safety Regulation in 2020, the Canadian and British governments each created de facto refugee routes to allow individuals to depart Hong Kong. Historical past was on the forefront of officers’ minds. When Canada created two pathways by which Hong Kong residents may finally acquire everlasting residence in Canada, the federal government famous its “longstanding ties with the individuals of Hong Kong”. In the meantime, Britain modified its guidelines for British Nationals (Abroad) standing holders to create the prospect of acquiring indefinite depart to stay and full British citizenship, equally citing a have to “honour [… a] historic and ethical dedication to the individuals of Hong Kong”. Canada and the UK are actually residence to a few of the largest Hong Kong diasporic communities on the earth.
As these communities have grown, so too has public and tutorial curiosity in Hong Kong, particularly after Hong Kong was handed to Beijing in 1997 and China’s promise to grant town a excessive diploma of autonomy was put to the check. The College of British Columbia hosts the Hong Kong Research Initiative – the one multidisciplinary community for Hong Kong Research outdoors of Asia. The UK, in the meantime, has a higher quantity and number of Hong Kong-related analysis centres than wherever on the earth. Canada and the UK due to this fact each have rising Hong Kong diasporic communities and an rising urge for food for tutorial analysis into Hong Kong.
A lot analysis into Hong Kong’s colonial historical past depends upon information held at The Nationwide Archives in London. The information obtainable have been created by British Authorities departments in Westminster. They supply a view of Hong Kong as seen from London – a big step faraway from Hong Kong itself. Hong Kong’s Public Information Workplace holds recordsdata from the colonial period however not the entire catalogued information are open. Some are topic to an ‘Entry Utility’ type and plenty of of these which might be open are of a low safety grading providing solely shallow insights into the workings of the colonial authorities.
There’s one other cache of Hong Kong information within the UK nevertheless it stays unavailable to researchers and the broader public. In 2011, the British Authorities admitted it was holding tens of 1000’s of recordsdata created by colonial governments and shipped to the UK on the eve of decolonisation. It subsequently dedicated to releasing all of those recordsdata (save for these exempted on authorized grounds). Over the course of some years, some 20,000 information originating in 40 former colonies have been made obtainable at The Nationwide Archives as sequence FCO 141, often called the ‘migrated archives’. But recordsdata from Hong Kong weren’t amongst these opened.
In my latest paper, I uncover that the British Authorities continues to carry round 88,000 recordsdata from the previous colony of Hong Kong. Indications are that they’re a combination of originals and copies, got here from many branches of the federal government secretariat, have been made between the Second World Battle and the 1997 handover, and vary in safety grading from the bottom to the very highest degree of ‘prime secret’.
For my paper, like Chow and colleagues, I used entry to data laws as a analysis technique, which within the UK is known as the Freedom of Info (FOI) Act. Over the course of two years, I submitted nearly 20 FOI requests. Some requests have been for particular paperwork; others have been for solutions to questions. My success was, nevertheless, considerably much less spectacular than that of Chow and colleagues with just a few requests completely fulfilled, one barely fulfilled (solely scraps of knowledge have been launched) and most denied or redirected to a different division.
To piece collectively the story of the Hong Kong information within the UK, I mixed my profitable FOI requests with open archive materials from collections scattered throughout London, Oxford, Hong Kong and Australia. I additionally drew on newspapers and autobiographies, and carried out interviews. I discovered that because the British withdrawal from Hong Kong approached, the colonial authorities established a group to repeat and transport information. Officers within the UK additionally sought a authorized foundation for retaining the recordsdata, hoping to maintain components of the gathering closed till 2047 when the Sino-British Joint Declaration’s protections over Hong Kong’s methods and lifestyle are set to run out. In the meantime, officers negotiated additionally with their mainland Chinese language counterparts in regards to the colonial authorities’s archives and the way they might be dealt with after 1997.
There’s mild on this in any other case gloomy story, nevertheless. Firstly, Chow and I each benefitted from our respective nation’s entry to data laws. Though I couldn’t get hold of all 88,000 Hong Kong recordsdata by means of FOIs, British authorities departments have been useful in offering recordsdata or titbits of knowledge. Secondly and relatedly, Chow and I have been each lucky that the supplies during which we have been have been protected underneath laws. Hong Kong, against this, has no archives legislation and reams of presidency papers have already been destroyed, as I describe in my latest paper. Lastly, there are some indications that the Overseas, Commonwealth and Improvement Workplace might start engaged on the gathering as early as 2027. It’ll take a few years to evaluate the recordsdata for launch however we’d anticipate to see a few of the Hong Kong information obtainable earlier than 2047.
As Catherine Clement notes on the subject of the 1923 Chinese language Exclusion Act, it was not solely the Act that damage Chinese language Canadians but in addition the continued denial of entry to historic information about their previous. Our relationship with the previous is delimited by the sources we will entry. In one other publish, Chow reminds us of how damaging it’s to a neighborhood – whether or not diasporic or tutorial – when “information stay restricted, inaccessible, and hidden” or are destroyed altogether. Notably in colonial and postcolonial contexts, energy will be wielded by means of what’s and isn’t obtainable. A neighborhood that can’t entry information about their historical past is denied part of that previous. Hong Kong diasporic communities in Canada, the UK and elsewhere on the earth – in addition to those that transited by means of Hong Kong or made Hong Kong their momentary residence – are more and more desirous about Hong Kong’s previous as a approach of understanding the current. But this want stays inhibited by the truth that some sources stay unavailable.
Matthew Hurst is a PhD scholar on the College of York funded by a studentship from the White Rose School of the Arts and Humanities. His paper ‘Hong Kong Colonial Authorities Migrated Archives at Hanslope Park’ (DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2025.2561196) received the British Affiliation for Chinese language Research 2025 ECR Prize and was printed open entry in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Historical past. Matthew has additionally printed his analysis in The Worldwide Historical past Evaluate, Transactions of the Royal Historic Society, East Asia and the latest edited quantity A New Documentary Historical past of Hong Kong.
Assets
Matthew Hurst, ‘Hong Kong Colonial Authorities Migrated Archives at Hanslope Park’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Historical past (open entry) https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2025.2561196.
Overseas, Commonwealth and Improvement Workplace Archive Stock – a listing of the division’s information that haven’t been moved to The Nationwide Archives https://www.gov.uk/authorities/publications/fcdo-archive-inventory
FCO 141 – the recordsdata of former British colonies which might be at present obtainable at The Nationwide Archives https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/particulars/r/C12269323
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