The German Community in Hong Kong 1880s to 1914

Abstract

The paper deals with the ‘ethnic minority’ of German speakers in South China, especially in the British crown colony of Hong Kong from the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. Interwoven in the general history of their own country but also in Chinese and British colonial history, Germans consuls, merchants, seafarers, and missionaries played an important role in the development of Hong Kong’s economy and social life. As one of many expatriate groups residing in Hong Kong, the paper will treat the Germans as an integral part of the colony’s society having close interactions with other inhabitants such as Chinese, British, or French. Their respective consular, business, maritime, and missionary networks also went beyond the borders of Hong Kong and extended far into China and South East Asia. By making use of primary and secondary sources of different origins the paper intends to present a strongly contextualized history of the German expatriate community in Hong Kong treating it as case study of a non-Chinese group in the colony’s Chinese-dominated society.