Following the end of the first Opium War, the Treaty of Nan king in 1842 ceded Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity. Sir Henry Pottinger, whose name can be found on a street in Central district, was its first governor. Following additional conflicts with the Chinese in 1860 Britain gained Kowloon and Stonecutters Island. In 1898 Britain acquired the New Territories on a 99-year lease.
Settlement in the territory grew slowly with the population rose from 32,983 in 1851 to 878,947 in 1931. During the teens and twenties of this century, Hong Kong served as a refuge for exiles from China following the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912.
After Japan seized Manchuria in 1932, the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937. Throughout the late thirties, as Japan advanced into China, hundreds of thousands of Chinese took refuge in Hong Kong. It was estimated that some 100,000 refugees entered in 1937, 500,000 in 1938 and 150,000 in 1939 - bringing Hong Kong's population at the outbreak of World War II to an estimated 1.6 million. It was thought that at the height of the influx, about 500,000 people were sleeping in the streets.
World War II again disrupted the social and economic life of Hong Kong. On Christmas Day, 1941, the British army surrendered Hong Kong to the Japanese. U.S. submarines foiled Japanese plans to use Hong Kong as a staging area for assaults further into East Asia. Following Japan's surrender on August 14, 1945 Britain reclaimed the territory.
After the Japanese surrender, Chinese civilians returned at the rate of almost 100,000 a month. The population, which by August 1945 had been reduced to about 600,000, rose by the end of 1947 to an estimated 1.8 million. Then, in the period 1948-49, as the forces of the Chinese Nationalist Government began to face defeat in civil war at the hands of the communists, Hong Kong received an influx unparalleled in its history.
Hundreds of thousands of people - mainly from Guangdong province, Shanghai and other commercial
centers - entered the territory during 1949 and the spring of 1950, the population had swelled to an estimated 2.2 million. Since then, it has continued to rise and now totals six million.
History of Hong Kong (list)
| 1841 British flag raised |
| 1842 Hong Kong Island ceded by China under Treaty of Nan king |
| 1843 Governor , Sir Henry Pottinger |
| 1844 Governor , Sir John Davis |
| 1848 Governor , Sir George Bonham |
| 1849 Voyage of Keying |
| 1850 Population 33,000 |
| 1854 Governor , Sir John Bowring |
| 1857 Poisoned Bread Case |
| 1859 Governor , Sir Hercules Robinson |
| 1860 Population 94,000,Kowloon and Stonecutters Island acquired from China under first Convention of Peking |
| 1865 Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank founded |
| 1866 Governor , Sir Richard |
| 1869 Visit of Prince Alfred |
| 1870 Population 124,000 |
| 1872 Governor , Sir Arthur Kennedy |
| 1877 Governor , Sir John Pope-Hennessy |
| 1880 Population 160,000 |
| 1881 Visit of King Kalakaua of Hawaii |
| 1883 Governor , Sir George Bowen |
| 1887 Governor , Sir William Des Voeux |
| 1888 Peak tramline opened |
| 1890 Population 198,000 |
| 1891 Governor , Sir William Robinson |
| 1894 Bubonic plague |
| 1898 Governor , Sir Henry Blake |
| 1898 New Territories leased from China under second Convention of Peking |
| 1900 Population 263,000 |
| 1904 Governor , Sir Matthew |
ALL INFORMATION IS FROM (The History Project- The History of Hong Kong)
http://home4u.hongkong.com/education/secondaryschool/nwynwy/index.html
