The Hong Kong History Podcast

Shanghai and Hong Kong have been the starting point for more ‘sail a Chinese built junk across the seas’ than anywhere else. Hans van Tillburg has identified sixteen 19th century junks reported arriving on the west coast of North America. I’ve tallied thirty three reported on from around 1900 to c.1990. In Hong Kong the story starts with the Keying in 1846 and ends – maybe

There are various ways of choosing to look at the past. Some of them are not very intuitive and can seem almost arbitrary. You wouldn’t imagine it, for example, but looking at all the known ships that have had ‘Hong Kong’ in their names (about 127 of them) offers interesting perspectives on Hong Kong’s maritime story. Who called their ships after our home city? Not the big

Imperialist Britain spread modern-style, rules governed, organized sport – very much the creation of a newly leisured, comparatively affluent early Victorian world – all over the world. One of those sports, though never up there in popularity and participation like football and cricket, was sailing. Hong Kong was a home for recreational sailing almost as soon as the British gra

The English historian Edward Thomson once wrote of the “enormous condescension of posterity” towards those of us – overwhelmingly most of us – who are not movers and shakers. Yet it is those lives, humdrum and invisible though they often are, that actually make moving and shaking possible. In being moved and shaken, it’s we nobodies who actually do the moving and shaking.

Almost wherever you are there will be streets named after town worthies, or national eminences, or significant entities and events. Sometimes, particularly in larger towns, the names can reveal additional historical detail. What the main trades were and where they concentrated, for example. In Hong Kong over one hundred street names reveal details of Hong Kong’s maritime story, p

Over around a century and a half Hong Kong’s story has been told by professional and amateur historians. A few names became scores following the explosion in Hong Kong studies after the 1970s. Today there are as many and more netizens and bloggers. We don’t often know much detail about any of the handful of colonialist pioneers of the 1890-1960 period. They’re just authors’

In this final episode of season two Stephen Davies talks about Hong Kong as a port. He takes us through its gradual rise from after the Second World War up until 2010 when it registered as the world's largest port, and then its slow decline after that. Along the way we talk about Chinese junks and the general modernization of ships in general operated from Hong Kong.

In this episode Stephen discusses the social unrest in Hong Kong during the 1960s & 70s and follows with a look at how the issues were resolved during the 1970s. The episode includes an eyewitness account from Stephen himself, and a mystery of why his visit at the time was never recorded.  As always Stephen has a number of stories to tell along the way including a discussi

In this episode Stephen talks through the ups and downs of the Hong Kong Fishing Industry. He also discusses the kids of boats that were being used and why many continued to use traditional boats well beyond their years. On land he talks about the development of the fish markets associations that ensured the fishermen received a proper price for their catch.

In episode eight Stephen explains how after the Second World War Hong Kong became a global powerhouse in ship breaking and then how that slowly transformed into one of the world largest container ports. We discuss how shipping changed during the period including a story of a concrete ship.