Hong Kong was ceded to the British in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the first Opium War (1839-1842) as Britain used its imperial muscle to obtain for itself one of the best harbours on the Chinese coast so that it could develop the opium trade. At the end of the second Opium War (1856-60), Britain forced China to cede Kowloon peninsula, and then in 1898 it forced China to lease the New Territories for 99 years. As a British colony Hong Kong developed as a major trading entrepot whose population reached 300,000 by the end of the nineteenth century and over 1.5m by the time of the Japanese invasion in 1941. It was returned to Chinese control in 1997, with China agreeing to respect its rich cultural identity as a meeting …

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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Treaty of Nanjing: Hong Kong ceded to the British". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 January 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1366, accessed 23 November 2024.]