The main thing you have to know is Hong Kong was a British colony, then in the following posts, you will see how the economy, culture, buildings, names and languages have been influenced by this.
12th century – Hong Kong was a sparsely populated area dominated by the Five Clans – Hau, Tang, Liu, Man and Pang.
1840 – The First Opium War broke out. The war was caused by the Chinese seizing an estimated half tonne of British imported opium and burning it.
1841 – The Chinese signed a peace treaty ceding the island of Hong Kong to Britain.
1843 – Hong Kong’s first governor, Sir Henry Pottinger was dispatched to take charge of the twenty or so villages on the island and conduct British trade.
1850 – The population of Hong Kong stood at 32,000.
1856 – The second Opium War broke out.
1860 – The Chinese found themselves on the losing side again and were forced to cede the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutter’s Island to the British.
1898 – Britain forced more concessions from the failing Qing Dynasty, gaining a 99-year lease of the New Territories. This lease would end in 1997.
1900 – The city’s population reached 260,000, this number continued to grow thanks to war and conflict in China proper.
1950 – The population of Hong Kong reached 2.3 million.
1950’s – Many refugees provided the labour for Hong Kong’s rapidly expanding manufacturing industry.
1980 – The population of Hong Kong reached 5 million.
1984 – Margaret Thatcher announced that the whole of Hong Kong would be handed back to China at midnight on June 30th 1997.
1997 – The Hong Kong Handover took place. Prince Charles and Tony Blair led the British party, while China was represented by Premier Jiang Zemin.
2008 – The Hong Kong population reached 7 million.
When you come to Hong Kong, you will be amazed by how densely it is populated - 7 million of people packed in such a small area!
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