Projecting Britishness to Hong Kong: the British Council and Hong Kong House, nineteen-fifties to nineteen-seventies

Abstract

This article examines post-war British cultural diplomacy in Hong Kong, focusing on the British Council and Hong Kong House. Drawing on colonial office, British Council and Hong Kong government archival collections, it argues that neither the British nor Hong Kong governments placed a high priority on promoting British cultural values to the Hong Kong Chinese. Moreover, even this limited emphasis declined after the late nineteen-sixties, reflecting both Britain's retreat from what John Darwin calls the ‘empire project’ and the emergence of a more pronounced Hong Kong local identity.