This is Dr Hase’s long-anticipated second volume, following Settlement, Life, and Politics, published in 2020. It comprises six essays, each providing a meticulously detailed account of the history of an area in Hong Kong from prehistoric times to recent decades.

The first essay focuses on the north shore of Lantau Island, located in western Hong Kong on the eastern side of the Pearl River. The second examines West Kowloon before its incorporation into the British colony of Hong Kong in 1861. The third essay turns to the Sai Kung Peninsula, which was geographically isolated and therefore experienced relatively close interactions between land and marine communities. The fourth identifies five “port-towns” in Hong Kong that prospered before the arrival of the British. The fifth studies the quarrying industry in East Kowloon and the closely connected market town of Shau Kei Wan, and the final essay looks at two squatter villages in post-war Hong Kong founded by Chinese refugees.

Readers unfamiliar with the field might be overwhelmed by the amount of detail that Hase provides for almost every single village, lineage, temple, and business. Given the scarcity of written sources, which include local gazetteers, stele inscriptions, genealogies, land deeds, missionary accounts, census statistics from a later date, and in some rare cases, archival materials of the colonial government, it is extraordinary that Hase could extract and compile so much information. He draws also on oral histories and archaeological evidence. The historical facts this book establishes are no trivial matter. On the contrary, it provides an extremely valuable basis for future studies of Hong Kong’s early history, as many informants he interviewed, together with their knowledge and oral traditions, are no longer available.

Although Hase’s research is on Hong Kong’s local history and often traces the development, relocation, and expansion of single villages and lineages, his studies nevertheless have significant relevance to the broader historical contexts of the Pearl River Delta and beyond. For instance, Lantau Island had been an anchorage on the sea route to and from Canton for millennia. It would not be surprising that this route deeply impacted the development of its north shore, from salt production and port-towns to the Portuguese possession and the Chinese fort. Other examples include the connections between the Yellow Croaker fish trade along the Chinese coast and the rise of port-towns in the late sixteenth century, the Coastal Evacuation Order of 1662–83 and the arrivals of Hakka migrants afterwards; and, of course, the establishment of a British colony and the rapid expansion of the existing quarrying industry.

Hase emphasizes that these six essays were standalone studies and that this book is not a monograph and does not advance a thesis. However, taken together, these studies provide groundbreaking insights into one of the most important issues in the study (and identity) of Hong Kong. The debate (in academia as well as in politics) on how colonial history should be seen by the colonizer and the colonized has always involved the question of whether colonialism had done anything good. For so long, the mainstream answer for Hong Kong had been “yes”. Throughout the past century, academics and the general public alike have accepted the colonial narrative that Britain built Hong Kong into a global metropolis from fishing villages on “a barren rock”.

Despite this popular narrative, many historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have researched Hong Kong’s pre-colonial history, including Patrick Hase, James Hayes, David Faure, Hugh Baker, James and Rubie Watson, Barbara Ward, Tam Sze Man, Liu Tik Sang, among many others. Thanks to them, we now know that Hong Kong has a long 7,000-year history of human settlement and had very sophisticated and diverse societies before 1841. One notion, however, has remained unchallenged: without the British Empire, Hong Kong would not even exist.

It was never Hase’s intention to confront this narrative, but one might read this book and be tempted to ask, “Could a city in Hong Kong still emerge if the British never came?” In most of the essays of this volume, Hase notes patterns among what he calls “proto-urban settlements” in pre-colonial and early colonial Hong Kong. He identifies four categories of such settlements. The first is the landward market-towns founded and managed by elders of agricultural villages that were deliberately planned, had clear grid layouts, and typically had hundreds of residents. The second is the port-towns that had no planning whatsoever, grew organically, were self-governed by merchant committees, and could have a population in the thousands. The third is the towns that were essentially suburban settlements outside the boundaries of Victoria City that emerged from the commercial opportunity to meet the new colony’s endless demands. The fourth is the towns that fell between the first and second categories, which grew organically and were self-governed like the port-towns, but also served agricultural communities like the landward market-towns.

As seen from Dr Hase’s studies, the establishment of the colony provided new opportunities as well as obstacles to the development of these proto-urban settlements. On the one hand, Victoria City’s massive demand for food, supplies, commodities, labour, and building materials gave a significant boost to many towns in Hong Kong, though some of them were already very prosperous by 1841. On the other, the colonization of Hong Kong Island interrupted the development of some of these settlements or even marginalized them: the original towns of Aberdeen, Yaumatei, Sham Shui Po and Shau Kei Wan were demolished by the colonial government; ports such as Tai O became “remote” as trade connections moved to the Victoria Harbour, which became the new political and economic centre.

Could any of these port and market towns eventually grow into an urban centre of some size on its own? This book gives no answer. By writing what effectively is a prequel to Hong Kong’s urban history, however, Hase provides a new direction awaiting exploration.