Hong Kong (British)

British Hong Kong was a colony and dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a brief period under Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945.

The colonial period began with the occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841 during the First Opium War. The island was ceded by the Qing dynasty in the aftermath of the war in 1842 and established as a Crown colony in 1843. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when the UK obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898.

Although Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded in perpetuity, the leased New Territories comprised the vast majority of the total area. Britain did not see any viable way to divide the colony, while the People’s Republic of China would not consider extending the lease or allowing British administration thereafter. With the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which states that the social and economic systems in Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years, the UK agreed to release the entire territory to China upon the expiration of the New Territories lease in 1997.