British Hong Kong

Britain occupied Hong Kong Island during the First Opium War and received it formally under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Kowloon and the New Territories were added later, creating a colonial port whose economy depended on maritime trade, migration and connections with southern China.

The colony developed through unequal imperial relationships, commercial expansion and repeated crises, including war, occupation, refugee movements and Cold War confrontation. Chinese residents formed the overwhelming majority of the population while political authority remained in British hands.

Tai-Pan and Noble House place the Struan trading dynasty at the beginning and mature commercial height of the colony. The Asian Saga uses the changing city to connect nineteenth-century imperial trade with twentieth-century finance, espionage and decolonisation.