On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years.  The Japanese occupation was a turning point in the slow historical process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from four centuries of influence in East Asia.  In this definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong, Philip Snow unravels the dramatic story of the occupation from the viewpoint of all the key players – the Hong Kong Chinese, the British, the Japanese and the mainland Chinese – and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of the colony in the light of this half-buried episode.

Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources across continents and across languages, Snow reveals what really happened: the widespread desertion of the British by Chinese personnel during the invasion; the acquiescence of the Asian upper class in the Japanese takeover; the vicious cruelty of the Japanese conquerors towards the Chinese masses; and the postwar British decision to draw a veil over the occupation’s murkier aspects.  After 1945 Britain never recovered its pre-war grip on the colony, and economic power was ceded successively to the Chinese, the Americans – and the returning Japanese.

‘Accessible and authoritative...this will surely stand as the definitive work on the subject in any language.’

Robert Bickers, University of Bristol