The History of Hong Kong (Part 4)

Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Cost climb. Too little? Production slows. Grangers, two billion dollars in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving. Call 1-800-GRanger. Click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the once, who get it done. On Carvano, delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvano.com. Hey everyone, Luzzle Montgomery again, part four of our Hong Kong history overview series. We left off last time with the Treaty of Nanjing, June 26, 1843. It's all official and now the brand new British crown colony of Hong Kong is getting itself established and organized. Sir Henry Poddenger is appointed the first governor and the legislative and advisory bodies that survived to this very day, the legislative council and executive council. Legico and Exco are being set up, though not yet functional. Between January 1841 with the Convention of Twin B and February 1842, when Sir Henry returned to Hong Kong to take over formal leadership of the colony, the man in charge had been the superintendent of trade, Captain Charles Elliott. And more specifically, Elliott's deputy, Alexander Robert Johnston, immortalized in the Wanchai district with Johnston Road. It had been left up to Johnston and the chief magistrate, Captain William Cain, he I mentioned before, Cain Road Foam, to administer this barren rock with hardly a house upon it. By the time of Johnston's first informal census of Hong Kong, they counted 4,350 people on land and another couple thousand who lived on their boats. There were perhaps another 800 Chinese merchants who had immigrated to Hong Kong from China and set up shop there, mostly serving as cogs and the wheels of commerce to some extent or another. And every day a few hundred laborers came across the harbor from various points in Calhoun and worked in construction or just selling their muscles on a daily basis. This is going to change real fast. The largest Chinese community was at the time located out in Stanley. That was the center of the thriving market, serving all the fishermen and tradesmen who were part of the industry and inhabited the south side of the island. By 1842, just a year later, the population swelled to about 15 or 20,000. Real colonial looking buildings began to go up along Queen's Road in and around the central district. Not only Chinese were flocking to Hong Kong, but other British, Americans and Europeans as well. Even though in the 1840s it was still a little premature, people saw a Hong Kong had a potential multitude of uses from which profits could be derived, no matter in commerce, trade services or Christianity. Charles Elliott was further assured that using Hong Kong as the base of all British trading and commercial operations was a much better choice than the east coast of China. There were still plenty of people around south Guangdong and in London saying, "We never should have taken this place over Zhoshan. The fact that Hong Kong was as barren as it was. Actually made the job of the British. That much easier. Had they gone and done it like Lord Palmerston and others were calling for, they'd be trying to assume control over a place like Zhoshan that was already a mature place with people living there since ancient times. So going in and just taking the place over like they were now doing in Hong Kong was not such a sure thing. 1841 was a rough year in Hong Kong. Natural disasters, tropical sicknesses, fires, and you name it. The beginnings of colonial Hong Kong history were not so easy under the circumstances. In fact, it's really rough going in the early years and those who felt this whole thing was turning into a disaster were not a small minority. The first 10, 15 years of the Crown colonies existence were not easy at all. A lot of influential and high-up people in both Hong Kong and in England were still saying, "Should have gone with Zhoshan for such a glorious and spectacular harbor, such as Hong Kong." A harbour master was derigur. Therefore the governor was joined by one William Petter, who all local residents and frequent visitors to Hong Kong will know of from Petter Street and Central. As I mentioned last time, the first street that was built was Queen's Road, also in Central. This was waterfront property back then. Now of course, you know, after so much land reclamation, you have divot and kind of roads in between Queen's Road and Hong Kong Harbor. The first land sale was held June 14th, 1841. Up till then, and including these first land auctions, they were sort of a shoot from the hip kind of processes who knew in 1841 or even 1842 what this property would be worth one day. People caught on real fast, though, and there was a vast amount of confusion and acrimony to follow once the, how should we say, the proper authorities came in, and so what a mess had been made of this initial land auction and sorting everything out later on, as I said, was a real headache for some. So this first big land auction was a two-mile long parcel from where central market is up up the street from the IFC complex, and it ran all the way to Wanchai to where the Ratanji Hospital is near the Dayao building. There were Johnston and Hennessy Road start to come together. The sale was organized for something like 100-foot lots, you know, with road and frontage to the harbor. Now folks, Hong Kong real estate right now is the year of the drag and starts to wind down. Is some of the priciest in the whole world. Maybe the whole galaxy, and this tract of land that Johnston, serving as administrator of the colony, remember Pottinger is on his way, but he hasn't shown up in Hong Kong yet. So Johnston is in charge and he's getting mixed messages. And when all this was going down back in 1841, Alexander Graham Bell still had six years before he was born and 34 years to go before the telephone is patented in 1875. So Johnston is casually putting this tract of land on the market. Well, as far as Hong Kong commercial real estate goes, baby, this is the whole enchilada. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of other pricey parts of Hong Kong here and there, but this one, Queens Road from the IFC to Wanchai. I don't know if there are numbers high enough to add up to what that's all worth today. Well, probably. I can only say with the highest degree of certainty that the ones who own all that property today are millionaires for sure. So, A.R. Johnston helped this historic land sale, and I won't go into details, but when the folks back in London heard this, they weren't happy. You did what? You know, as far as the British crowd was concerned, land sales, that was going to be the greatest revenue generator of all. But Elliott and even Pottinger knew they needed some momentum to get this whole Hong Kong trading imporium idea up and running and holding this big land sale was a surefire way to get all the major players. Jardine, Matheson, Dent, everybody to get them to forget about Canton and see the future in Hong Kong. Some historians say Johnston was no fool. He was left in charge at a very dicey moment in time with respect to Hong Kong. In retrospect, you didn't do anything wrong. Anyways, as I said, this land sales thing is going to come back and haunt a few people later on. So, December 2nd, 1842, the ink has been dry on the Treaty of Nanjing for about 90 days now. This is when Sir Henry Pottinger decided to depart that great city, and he arrives back in Hong Kong. And he ruled with a cabal consisting of Johnston, Kane, and one John Robert Morrison, son of the legendary missionary in China scholar Robert Morrison. John Morrison, the son, died tragically young, 29 years old in August 1843. He was the China expert of the group administering Hong Kong and his loss left a huge vacuum as far as being able to effortlessly they reach out to the Chinese communities. This was an early blow to the wheels of initial progress and planning. That summer of 1843 was particularly dreadful for the disease that swept through Hong Kong. John Morrison was one of so many of these Europeans, just one after the other, dropping dead from all these tropical diseases, malaria, chief among them. Everyone on the island felt the ravages of these plagues that would hit time and time again. Anyways, Morrison Hill wrote everybody, named after John Robert Morrison. Both he and his father, who's amazing life, will feature later on in another podcast. They're both buried in a Macau cemetery. Potenture wasn't cut out for the challenges of being Hong Kong's chief executive. In 1843, he had had enough and resigned to Lord Aberdeen in July. Much to his chagrin, he had to remain in charge until 1845 when his successor could be, you know, in place to take over. One of the many executive decisions made by Potenture was the name of the settlement, basically central in those parts up and down Queen's Road that had up till 1843 been referred to as Queen's Town. Potenture renamed the area Victoria, and aside from the day-to-day drudgery of decision-making, Potenture's time was spent trying to figure out some sort of an equitable and face-saving solution to all the land sales, all parties with interest in this property, they had huge amounts at stake. You know, the military too, they just didn't sit by, let all the Jardines and Dents get all the choices, slices of the North shores of Hong Kong Island. You know, right on this magnificent harbor, Calune, the new territories, and all of China lying beyond the hills, they wanted their peace too. So Potenture was left to untangle this mess, and ultimately they came to a conclusion, you know, offering 75-year leases, and not everyone walked away happy. So his era ended quickly. Sir Henry Potenture was Hong Kong's first governor. However, Captain Charles Elliott, though not ever serving officially as governor, certainly carried out the responsibilities of the chief executive. Potenture's successor, Sir John Davis, arrived in Hong Kong in May, 1844. It was Sir John Davis who was second in command during the Napier mission. When Lord Napier succumbed to his fevers in October 1834, it was Davis, the future second governor who became the top guy. He was also ex-East India Company, so in short, he was perfectly suited to take over from Potenture. His job was to go clean everything up, make the place work, or get it on its way to working, and all the commercial interests were always disappointed. He was no friend of the Tai Pans. He would leave Hong Kong in May of 1848, a detested man in the community. He was detested because he had to make all the hard and unpopular decisions of the time. And not a consensus builder, that's for sure. Well, like I said in the last episode, I think he got a mountain named after him. One good thing credited to Governor Davis, the government donated a small tract of land where an ice house was built to manufacture ice that could be dragged back to the early inhabitants dwellings to help deal with the horrible, hideous heat. This is where ice house street winds around today. Happy Valley race course. Also have Governor Davis to thank for that too. Boy, they got that thing up and running fast. Hong Kong's first treasurer, Robert Montgomery Martin, he served from January 1844 to July 1845. He was a writer of some repute, and shortly upon his arrival in Hong Kong, he had expressed some rather negative views about the island's prospects in the 1840s. He said, "There was no trade of any noticeable extent in Hong Kong. The principal mercantile firms are those engaged in the opium trade, which they, frankly, admit is the only trade Hong Kong will ever possess. There is scarcely a firm in the island, but would be glad to get back half the money they have expended in the colony and retire from the place." There does not appear the slightest probability that under any circumstances, Hong Kong will ever become a place of trade. It is worse than folly to persist in a course begun in error, and which, if continued, must eventually end in disappointment and in national loss and degradation. Ouch, damn spiting words. Mind you, Martin had only been in the colony a few weeks. This was merely a first impression, but I think he'd get the main idea. Someone else had written of Hong Kong. This remote and completely unimportant settlement derives its importance only from it being a diplomatic and military station. Mercantile houses now reduce to 10 or 12 buildings, unoccupied. Canton and Shanghai are the principal, almost the exclusive, marks in China for imports from Europe and India, as well as for exports from China. The sad mistake committed by Sir Henry Pottinger in choosing for a British settlement in Ireland as Baroness Hong Kong. One of the early visitors to Hong Kong was a guy named Robert Fortune. He was a botanist credited with, he was the guy who brought tea plants from China to India and launched the whole tea industry over there. He wrote of Hong Kong, "Hong Kong Bay is one of the finest which I have ever seen. It is eight or 10 miles in length and irregular and breadth, in some places two and another six miles wide, having excellent anchorage all over it and perfectly free from hidden dangers. It is completely sheltered by the mountains of Hong Kong on the south and by those of the mainland of China on the opposite shore, landlocked. In fact, on all sides so that the shipping can ride out the heaviest gales with perfect safety. Despite this comment about Hong Kong, Fortune was among the naysayers who predicted Hong Kong as a trading center would never succeed. By early 1844, Leggo started to become somewhat of a functioning body and now ordinances and rules to make society somewhat orderly began to be passed. Until this time we can credit the Pottinger administration for the initial efforts and leadership in getting all those necessary things taken care of, like rules regarding trade, channels to handle contracts, a fair justice system. Yeah, you know that is both feared and admired. Police protection had to be addressed to the extent that there was some semblance of law and order on the streets and along the warves and go downs being built. The British maybe got it from the Romans, who knows, but they were good at this stuff, you know, getting a place set up and organized. The merchant princes, type hands, you know, whatever you want to call them, they had to be feeling pretty good so far. There were a lot of regrets, you know, after so many initial hiccups, that's for sure. But they are long hard one crusade to trade with China on their terms, was starting to happen. And Hong Kong was on the way to becoming the bedrock of future British commercial and political relations with China. It was also going to be an important military installation, which, you know, would always be the guarantor of the colony's safety. Even though the 1840s and 50s seemed like a disaster and worst case scenario piled up into one, everything was slowly being put in place. Davis was followed by the popular governor, Sir George Bonham. Yes, one in the same as Bonham Strand and Shang Wan and Bonham Road in the mid-levels. He was an excellent governor and did a lot to stabilize things. He lasted until 1854 before he retired and was replaced by Sir John Bowring. He of Bowring Street and the Jordan District. And from these earliest days, this beautiful, indescribable, symbiotic relationship grew between those new British colonialists and the local Chinese community. Almost completely people with newly arrived thrill seekers from southern Guangdong and from as far away as Fujian. These guys who flooded into Hong Kong from China all knew a good thing when they saw it. They learned early on what kind of big plans Britain had for this place. So the rush to get in on the ground floor was intense to say the least. And the British knew right away for whatever job that needed to be done. If a Chinese can do it better faster or cheaper, they just turned whole matters and developments over to them. Now throughout this series, however long it runs, looks like forever at the rate I'm going, I might veer off into telling the story from the more Eurocentric point of view. All of the sources I'm using are in English. So right there, that says it all. There were two parallel universes going on at the same time in Hong Kong. And it all begins right here in the 1830s and '40s. Actually, it begins even early. Earlier, local Chinese interaction and cooperation with the British just didn't spontaneously start happening around the years leading up to the Opium War. Chinese who had the nerve to come face to face with these earliest westerners, in the 1600s, 1700s, these were the first to see there was something in it for each other if one could do certain services for the other, and vice versa. So by this time, 1840s and into the 1850s, several of these elite and powerful Chinese families who had worked with the westerners over the decades began to take shape. The Chinese were involved with everything the British were building and developing. The beauty of the system was that although they couldn't stand each other, both sides were always cognizant of the benefits and fortunes to be earned through mutual cooperation. Both local Chinese and European merchants absolutely love the idea of Hong Kong's laissez-faire style of capitalism and how the government's job was simply to make the place stable and workable. And capitalism would just take care of the rest. What a great idea. Way back in the 1840s, after these men who were all at the middle of this new Hong Kong operation, you know, from the beginning, going back to even before the Napier mission, some of these guys went back, even to the East India Company days. Once they felt secure that China had been sufficiently threatened enough that they weren't going to retaliate, they took stock of the situation. Even back then, they knew this place had unbelievable potential. In a multitude of ways, they knew they had to get this right. The Hong Kong Chinese, a number steadily growing daily, they saw this too. But one couldn't exist without the other. So this whole beginning was, you know, sort of like the ending of Casablanca when Rick says to Louis, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Well, this relationship had its ups and downs, but despite this, you know, good nature contempt for each other, it did work out well for both sides and, you know, the legacy lives on. Something that began right about now was the emergence of these compredors. This was derived from a Portuguese word. The compredor was the guy inside the European trading firm who was the principal interface with all the Chinese people who the firm was either buying from or selling to. These compredors were very powerful in their day and the ones who were associated with all the greatest hongs of the day, they went on to become pillars of Hong Kong society and amassed great fortunes and dynasties. Anyways, as the city planners began their great work, the nuts and bolts of how to build all these colonial buildings had already been figured out in Singapore as well as in India. So, a lot of them know how just got transplanted to Hong Kong. This was a golden time for the real estate developers and still is 170 years later. In 1849, with the start of California Gold Rush, Hong Kong became the launching pad for all those earliest Chinese immigrants who boarded vessels that took them across the Pacific to San Francisco to seek their fortunes and by extension that of their family in the gold mines of California and then later on after that to build all our railroads and highways. So while the governor and his team were busy making all the broad stroke laws and pronouncements and executive decisions, the whole of the Hong Kong commercial society began to evolve. That included the triads, who we spoke about in episode CHP 72, they thought they died and went to heaven when they saw the riches waiting to be had in this boom town called Hong Kong. That's what it was, a typical boom town like any other in some ways. Those first ten years, 1842 to 1852, like I said, they were not easy. Looking at it from their handicap of no hindsight, it didn't look so great. The devastation wrought by disease and by the weather was wretched indeed. Malaria and these other tropical diseases, they could strike anyone. A poor man's blood tasted no less sweet than that of a rich man. It was obvious the government was making this thing up as it went along. Jardine's partner, Alexander Matheson, had even gone as far as to admit had they not sunk so much money into this Hong Kong operation, they would have just given up the whole thing and walked away. Of course, later on, they were glad they didn't. Besides Hong Kong, vying to serve as an all-in-one solution to China trade, were five other treaty ports, so it wasn't like Hong Kong just replaced Canton. Shipping companies, they played no favorites. They went wherever they made the fastest and easiest money, and Hong Kong wasn't so quick out of the starting gates. I didn't mention the pirates yet. Yeah, the place was crawling with pirates. A map of the 200 or so various islands of Hong Kong would make the perfect pirate treasure map. So many places to hide, there were, for over a century, these pirates, some of them, these Tunka people who I'd mentioned in episode one of this Hong Kong history series, people who had come to these waters a very long time ago and had been living here. For generations, living on the water like they did, many of them just sort of naturally gravitated to piracy. There were some rich pickings moving back and forth between southern China and Europe, not to mention the Spice Islands. So piracy was rampant all over the South China Sea. So freely did the pirates rule the waters that it wasn't a natural to see pirate attacks against boats right off the coast of Hong Kong. The first several governors of Hong Kong had their hands full trying and vain to deal with this blight. It was a nice little system Britain had developed, it was going running quite well. It all had to do with raising money to buy cotton from the United States. And in order to do that, the British merchants had to sell a lot of British goods in order to buy this cotton and they did so by selling the British made goods to Indian merchants who sold the goods in India. And in order to raise the money to buy these British goods, the Indian opium producers sold opium to the British and then the British used the profits from the opium trade to pay for all this tea and silk. And the Chinese merchants, they bought the opium and they made their own profits and the profits the British made on the opium trade with China not only paid for the tea and silk, but it was enough left over to finance the British occupation of India as well. The whole thing was a nice, tight circle of trade controlled by Great Britain, but it still wasn't enough. The Treaty of Nanjing was hardly the grand bargain it was meant to be. So many things remained unanswered. And now, you know, late in the game, they were finding out the Chinese had outfoxed the British with respect to purposely allowing certain things to be written in or taken out of the Chinese versions and then some translations were not, you know, shall we say, up to snuff. So in short, the Treaty of Nanjing left a lot out on the British side and it still needed to be settled. Now before John Bowring became governor of Hong Kong, he served for four years as British consul in Canton. So he came with great aspirations to serve as an effective bridge between Britain and China. And to be the one to patch things up, which, you know, hadn't gone too smoothly. But by the time he arrived in Hong Kong in 1854, he knew the only thing that was going to work was the same thing as last time, an overwhelming show of force. And so we get the second opium war, our second Anglo-Chinese war for reasons as I explained in an earlier episode covering the opium war, it's also known as the era war. Let's take a quick revisit, just a skim through. The British received five new ports to trade at. Well, actually, Canton and four new others. The British still found this trade way too restrictive, as you know, all the action was on the interior of China, and these were just coastal ports. At a time the British bought their wares or sold their wares, too many other hands touched it before the end user purchased it. So they wanted more unrestricted trade. Governor Bowring, trying to curry favor with the Chinese merchant community, offered them British registry for their vessels. The thinking was, if they flew a British flag, you know, even a flag of convenience, they be less apt to get their ship ransacked by pirates, you know, who operated all around Hong Kong waters. A good number of Chinese who owned boats took advantage of this special offer. And one of these vessels was called the arrow. You see, a lot of pirates, they too took advantage of the offer and registered their ships in Hong Kong, too. The arrow was supposedly one of these pirate vessels, or smuggling vessels, that flew a British flag, but they were just, you know, they were just pirates and smugglers. So they got caught up in Chinese waters. near Canton, and the local authorities raided the boat and arrested a bunch of the crewmen. Who knows exactly how it happened? There's a number of stories about who said what where they actually flying the flag, etc., etc., etc. The British consul in Hong Kong at the time was Sir Harry Parks. He started a tit for tat diplomatic argument that ignited the whole war. December 1857, the British forces, along with help from both the Americans and the French, they take the port of Canton and set up an interim government there. And this all led to the Treaty of Tianjin, signed in June 1858. Again, this is all rehash from episode CHP6 on the opium war. All the guys picking on China, except Japan. See, Commodore Perry had only sailed into Edo Harbor five years prior. So Japan hadn't yet morphed into the militaristic nation of the early 1900s. So Britain, France, the US, and Russia, they all signed this treaty with China and Tianjin. Then 10 more ports were opened. So now, essentially, the traders finally, finally got what they wanted. Christian missionaries were allowed unfettered access to all of China. And after all, the arguing and moral wrangling and years and years of discussion, after all that, opium was effectively legalized in the Treaty of Tianjin, or it was legal to sell it. You know, if no one wanted to buy it, you know, that was another matter. During Governor Davis's term, the opium monopoly for Hong Kong had been sold for $8,520. And the purchaser, by the way, was George Duttle. Think of that next time you pass Duttle Street. The fighting between Britain and France teaming up against China continued on in the north. You know, this is all a topic for a future podcast. But it was during this fighting that in October 1860, the French and British troops sacked and destroyed the old summer palace. You see, as payback for some acts of violence carried out by the Chinese side to get some British troops and diplomats, the British wanted to burn down the forbidden city. Instead, it was negotiated that they sacked the old summer palace instead. Prince Gong, in one of his debut performances, is forced to sign the Convention of Beijing shortly after the old summer palace had finished burning. On March 26, 1860, the awesome Kaolin peninsula was officially leased to Britain. The portion from Boundary Street to Hong Kong was seated in perpetuity. However, in 1860s, Convention of Beijing, the lease was negated and Kaolin was simply taken in perpetuity. The new territories still not on the table yet. Still belongs to China. We'll get to that later. Russia took some land adjacent to Manchuria. Now, the British gave their lands back. Russia kept theirs. This first Convention of Beijing in October 1856 settled most outstanding issues, but it will be the second Convention of Beijing in 1898 that sort of finishes everything. Okay, 1850 to 1864 in China, while all this is happening between China and the Western powers, there's this little thing going on called the Typing Rebellion, and you know, 20 million or more people are going to die in this upheaval. A lot of them ended up finding refuge in Hong Kong. Prior to handing Kaolin to the British, the Qing Dynasty troops actually were fighting these Typing rebels as far south as Kaolin City. Boweringhead said in 1858, quote, "My constant thought has been how best to prevent a large Chinese population establishing themselves at Kaolin, and as some native population is indispensable, how best to keep them to themselves and preserve the European and American community from the injury and inconvenience of intermixture with them." The population of Chinese, that is, was narrowing 85,000 by the end of the Typing Rebellion. Critical mass had been reached by the 1860s, and Hong Kong's Chinese community now joined that loose affiliation of overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia. Long based in the trading centers visited even before the times of Zhenghe, the great Ming Dynasty, Unic Admiral. Hong Kong in the 1860s, this was the time of the Governor Sir Hercules Robinson. Yes, Robinson rode. Robinson, his accomplishments during his tenure, September 1859 and March 1865, included Puk Fu Lam Reservoir, aka Hong Kong Island's water supply, and the establishment of the venerable firm, who I used to send a check to every month, good old town gas. The first gas street lamps were lit on New Year's Day, 1865. Also under Robinson's tenure was the founding of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Up till this moment in July 1864, when the bank was founded, Hong Kong hadn't a bank of its own. Trade was financed and negotiated using, you know, bank branches and subsidiaries and, you know, associated merchants, no local bank. That was until now. With the establishment of Hong Kong Bank, as it was known, or HSBC, the colony now had its own financial institution, and this bank, founded with 5 million dollars capital, was no ordinary bank. Not only was it a private institution, it also served a very large public service, and that was to serve as the quasi-central bank of the crown colony. All of the local Hong Kong currency was printed by Hong Kong Bank. Hong Kong Bank opened its doors to the public on March 3rd, 1865. Robinson's tenure as governor was quite short. During the last years of his predecessor, John Bowring, the day-to-day administration of the colony fell into a ditch. Bowring had alienated so many officials and had been so difficult to work with. Governor Hercules Robinson was able to clean things up during his short stint in the governor's mansion. The old guard, who had been around since the earliest days of Hong Kong, you know, were all either. They had been pensioned off or it retired. So Robinson had more or less a clean slate to work with when he started. The task to get Colloon all organized and set up that felt a Robinson. Because the west side of the peninsula was where you had the best deep water. This is where the port was set up and where it still stands today in fact. December 8th 1862, the first Hong Kong postage stamps were issued. Step by step, all the most horrible ills of Hong Kong were being addressed. Hygiene and sewerage, hospitals, prisons, schools, the water supply. Robinson saw improvements in construction of all public necessities. It was all carried out during his time. The population had grown so quickly in such a short time. But a time Robinson became governor. There were 86,941 people already living in the colony. 98% were Chinese. By the time Robinson left the governor's ship in 1865, the population had risen to 125,504. Of these figures, there were 2034 Europeans and 1,645 people of color. This massive influx of Chinese into the colony was mainly due to one thing. That was the Tai Ping rebellion. For the first time, many Chinese were figuring out in times of great chaos. There was a safe haven down south in Hong Kong. The Tai Ping rebellion wasn't the first time of chaos and China that sent refugees streaming into Hong Kong. This is something that would repeat from time to time. The other thing that drew so many Chinese to Hong Kong was that in the 1860s, words spread about all the success stories of Chinese who had gone to Hong Kong with nothing and were now filthy rich, living like mandarins with European style comforts. Many heard about this and came to strike at rich in this boom town called Hong Kong. The fact that China was seemingly imploding from the Tai Ping rebellion was just a further inducement. The gold rush of 1849 in California and in 1851 in Australia didn't hurt either. Thousands poured through Hong Kong as the springboard to riches overseas. Governor Hercules Robinson, the first barren rose made left Hong Kong in March 1865, leaving it in much better shape than when he first found it. He had been able to restore the local government's soiled name and pushed through a whole slew of reforms and saw many public works carried out to the benefit of society. From the time of Sir George Bonham, the third governor to Sir Hercules Robinson, Hong Kong had the worst barren rose. The naysayers and most outspoken voices against Hong Kong were silenced or, you know, had left the scene. You know, taking that despondency with them. The local Chinese were on a roll and their numbers swelled which provided a huge boost to the economy. Hong Kong also began to play a role as a central market for China goods, exported to all the booming overseas Chinese centers of trade between the Malabar coast and Macau. Besides all this, Britannia ruled the waves and was the most powerful force on Earth, at least economically. As Britain grew, so did Hong Kong's importance and the local Chinese on nothing but dollar signs and good times ahead. The port grew steadily during the time from Bonham to Robinson. More and more ships called at the port and the annual tonnage increased steadily. Starting around the mid-1860s, anyone who had earlier said that Hong Kong was doomed to failure had to start nibbling on those words. Things were beginning to look up. Next time in Part 5, we'll pick up with the "Governorship" of Sir Richard Graves McDonald and continue our little historical overview of Hong Kong. That's it for now. This is Las La Montgomery once again, signing off from the Pleasant Little Town of Claremont, California, 917-11, here on the easternmost edge of Los Angeles County in the Golden State. Join me next time, won't you, for another exciting episode of the China History Podcast.