The fifteen or twenty years following WWII witnessed a very uneven pattern of decolonisation in Asia and Africa, with a number of the old European powers slow to cast off their coloniser mantle…the Belgians in the Congo; the French in Algeria and Vietnam and the Netherlanders in Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in the end were extracted only after engaging in costly and unpopular wars. As the global wave of decolonisation gathered traction and other colonisers from the Old World divested themselves of their imperial territories, the Estado Novo regime of Portugal steadfastly clung on to its possessions – Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Africa (Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe), Goa (plus four minuscule enclaves on the western Indian coastline), Macau and East Timor.
Portugal had been the first of the European powers to establish overseas colonies (enthusiastically followed closely by Spain), its earliest colonies date back to the 15th century. The Portuguese colonisers’ attitude towards the peoples they colonised in Africa, Brazil and elsewhere was really no different to any other rival European imperialist power of the time…undertake a Christian civilising mission to enlighten(sic) the “savages”, while economically exploiting them and their territories. In the 1950s with decolonisation starting to gain momentum, Portugal, a unitary, one-party state headed by dictator Antonio Salazar, looked for strategies to preserve its empire, aware that it faced a backlash from newly independent states in Africa and Asia who were a growing voice in the UN demanding it and other imperial powers decolonise ASAP. In 1952 Portugal effected a constitutional change, overnight the empire ceased to exist, Lisbon officially rebranded all of its overseas territories as províncias ultramarinas (overseas provinces). On paper it seemed Portugal had no colonies to decolonise, but the bulk of international observers saw the transparency of this, a technicality by Salazar to try to ward off criticism of the country’s failure to decolonise (a ploy that did buy Portugal some time but was always only a delaying tactic)[Bruno Cardoso Reis. (2013). Portugal and the UN: A Rogue State Resisting the Norm of Decolonization (1956–1974). Portuguese Studies, 29(2), 251–276. https://doi.org/10.5699/portstudies.29.2.0251].
Enter Freyre and Lusotropicalism
The Estado Novo in the Fifties turned to a Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre for guidance. The noted sociologist had developed a theory⦑ą⦒ in the 1930s concerning the effect of Portuguese culture on its former colony of Brazil, a phenomena that became known as Lusotropicalism⦑ც⦒. Basically, Freyre’s thesis was that Portugal and Portuguese culture diverged from other late-stage imperialist countries because of two factors, the first Portugal’s unique history as a “pluricontinental nation”, in the pre-modern era being inhabited by Celts, Romans, Visigoths and Moors et al resulting in extensive integration between the different groups⦑ƈ⦒. Freyre contended that (extensive) miscegenation in Portuguese metropolitan and colonial societies was a “positive” in that it led to the creation of “racial democracy” across the empire (ie, Portuguese and Lusophone society was “non-racist”)…as supposed evidence of this Freyre and conservative apologists could tender the de jure eligibility for Portuguese citizenship availed to non-white people, the attainment of assimilado status. The stark reality however is that the Portuguese authorities put so many obstacles in the way that made it virtually impossible for blacks from the colonies to ever secure the same legal rights and status as white citizens [Almeida, J. C. P., & Corkill, D. (2015). On Being Portuguese: Luso-tropicalism, Migrations and the Politics of Citizenship. In E. G. RODRÍGUEZ & S. A. TATE (Eds.), Creolizing Europe: Legacies and Transformations(pp. 157–174). Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gn6d5h.14]⦑ɖ⦒.
Just your warm and friendly colonisers?
The other component of the Freyre thesis concerns the Iberian climate. Portugal’s warmer climate, Freyre argued, made it more humane and friendly, and more adaptable to other climates and cultures⦑ꫀ⦒. The combination of these two factors led Freyre to conclude that the Portuguese were “better colonisers”. A question arises, given that Spain shares the same climate and its “biological stock” and culture has undergone the same process of multinational hybridisation over epochs of history as its contiguous neighbour, why wouldn’t Spain be equally good as assimilators and have a similar experience of inter-racial harmony?
Salazar, though initially wary of a controversial philosophy which had at its centre a “glamourised” miscegenation and pseudoscientific mythologising about race, eventually reshaped Freyre’s theory into his regime’s official doctrine, a framework staking Portugal’s claim to ideological legitimacy to continue its anachronistic practice of colonisation. Lisbon’s politicians and diplomats were unleashed in the UN to burst forth with volleys of rhetoric about the soi-disant “special” relationship between the homeland and the overseas provinces⦑ᠻ⦒: the two were indivisible; the provinces were an integral part of Portugal’s unique, singular, multiracial nation; Portugal’s very identity depended on their retention, etc. [Cristiana Bastos, ‘Race, Racism and Racialism in Three Portuguese-Speaking Societies’, in Luso-Tropicalism and its Discontents, edited by Warwick Anderson, Ricardo Roque and Ricardo Ventura Santos (2019)].
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Pariah state or defender of the West?
A spate of new decolonisations, speedily attained after 1960, leveraged even more pressure on Lisbon to decolonise – or at least to seriously begin a dialogue about a path to decolonisation, Salazar dugs his heels and refused to do either. Portugal was condemned in the UN as a practitioner of “colonisation in denial and in disguise” and was even more trechantly criticised after the coloniser engaged colonial rebels in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea in wars of liberation. Lisbon responded by making a Cold War pitch to try to shore up Western solidarity on the issue…Salazar claimed to be defending Western civilisation in Africa against the menace of communism. This earned them few brownie points in Washington where the Kennedy Administration was among those pressing Lisbon to decolonise, while at the same time not going too hard, remembering its own vested interests (US was using the Azores Islands as an military base courtesy of Portugal). To its UN detractors and to the international community, Portugal throwing itself in full-scale colonial wars to prevent decolonisation was not a good look, resulting in further condemnation (Reis). Portugal’s international position was further undermined when, first, India overran the Portuguese colony of Goa by force in 1961 and annexed it, and later in the decade, another blow to Portuguese prestige, it lost control of its tiny enclave Macau to Communist China. Portugal, against the tide of history, continued to cling doggedly to its small portfolio of overseas possessions long after it could be said to amount to anything worthy of the name empire.
Postscript: Old habits
Significantly, the Lusotropicalism mindset didn’t end with the overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorship in 1974, despite the new democratic government moving quickly to grant independence to the Portuguese colonies…conservative apologists in Portugal’s democratic era continue to celebrate and romanticise “mixedness” as “something inherently progressive” [‘Luso-tropicalism’, Global Social Theory, www.globalsocialtheory.org]. It seems the Portuguese politics has still not freed itself from the national myth-making that its long-dead leader Salazar had institutionalised in the 1950s…in 2017 the Portuguese head of state at an international meeting in Senegal was happily extolling “the virtues of Luso-exceptionality” (Bastos).
Endnote: Social integration myth The Lusotropical notion which claimed that Portuguese colonists integrated with the colonised subjects in a superior way was contradicted by the Portuguese town planning model for Africa, the colonatos. This scheme envisaged whites-only settlements which were intended to be “miniature Portugals”. When put into practice in Angola and Mozambique the colonatos were organisational disasters, poorly planned, little infrastructure and technical assistance, poor transport lines, etc. [Cláudia Castello, ‘Creating Portugal in Colonial Africa’, Africa is a Country, 25-May-2020, www.africasacountry.com].
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⦑ą⦒ labelled a “quasi-theory” by some scholars (Cláudia Castello, ‘“Luso-Tropicalism” and Portuguese Late Colonialism’, Buala, 28-May-2015, www.buala.org)
⦑ც⦒ Luso = pertaining to Portugal + tropicalism
⦑ƈ⦒ with transference to Brazilian society through its coalescence and integration of Europeans, enslaved Africans and native Amerindians
⦑ɖ⦒ with regards to colonial Brazil Freyre in his best known work The Masters and the Slaves misrepresents slavery as “a mild form of servitude” and he has been further criticised for exonerating the absolving the colonisers of any racist practices in modern Brazil and glossing over the iniquities of the slave trade [Wohl, Emma (2013). ‘“Casa Grande e Senzala” and the Formation of a New Brazilian Identity’,
At the onset of the 20th century nationalist feelings were on the rise in east and central Asia. For the Chinese they were fuelled by the humiliations of the First Sino-Japanese War and the intervention of foreign powers and foreigner-imposed concessions in China following the Boxer Rebellion, allied with a powerful sense of anti-Manchurism towards the ruling Qing Dynasty. To the north in Outer Mongolia, also within the realm of Qing control, nationalism was also spiking. Hastening the sense of Mongolian nationalism was the recently introduced Qing government’s policy of Sinicisation, an attempt at Han colonisation and cultural assimilation of the Mongol people (subordination of the Mongolian language to that of Chinese, exploiting Mongolian natural resources including the converting of pasture lands into agricultural production fields). 1911 Xinhai Revolution (Chinese commemorative anniversary stamp) The spread of Chinese nationalism and aspirations to modernise China culminated in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the collapse of the Qing monarchy in February 1912, ushering in a new political landscape in China. While republicanism gripped China Mongol nobles and lamas took advantage of the upheaval to declare the independence of “Great Mongolia”, establishing a de facto absolute theocratic monarchy under the Bogd Khan (“holy ruler” or “emperor”). The newly established Beiyang government refused its recognition, affirming that Outer Mongolia was an integral and legitimate part of China’s territorial inheritance from the former Qing rulers. Under a 1915 agreement between Tsarist Russia and China Bogd Khan was forced to accept a status of “autonomy under Chinese suzerainty”…the deal also opened the way for Russia to colonise contiguous Tannu Tuva (an enclave within northwest Outer Mongolia which Tsarist Russia had established a protectorate over). Bodg Khan’s Green Palace, Ulaanbaatar Russian Civil War comes to Mongolia In 1919 Chinese troops under Xu Shuzheng occupied the Outer Mongolian capital Urga (or Niislel Khüree)⧼a̼⧽, deposing the Bogd Khan and ending Mongolia’s autonomy. Mongolian revolutionaries responded by organising themselves into a resistance group and a new political force, the Mongolian Peoples Party (MPP), emerged. The Mongol activists solicited support from the new Bolshevik government which had overthrown the Russian Romanov monarchy. Meanwhile, a White Russian (anti-communist) force under Baron von Ungern-Sternberg entered Outer Mongolia, sweeping away the occupying Chinese troops. Ungern restored the Mongol Buddhist leader to the throne while setting himself up as a warlord in Outer Mongolia. Soviet Red Army units eventually routed Ungern’s White Guards in southern Siberia and he was executed. Roman von Ungern AKA “The Mad Baron” (image source: 2.bp.blogspot.com) Mongolian Revolution The Mongolian Revolution that took place in 1921 was, according to Fujiko Isono, “a logical outcome of the declaration of Mongolian independence in 1911” (Isono, Fujiko. “The Mongolian Revolution of 1921.” Modern Asian Studies 10, no. 3 (1976): 375–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/311912.). Mongolian rebels, both of a nationalist and a socialist bent, in unison with external assistance from Ungern’s cossacks and the Bolsheviks, defeated and drove out the remaining Chinese troops occupying Outer Mongolia. Nationalist Dogsomyn Bodoo was elected prime minister in the new provisional government and the monarch’s powers were limited (upon Bogd Khan’s death in 1924 the monarchy was allowed to lapse). The MPP (renamed the MPRP – Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party) proclaimed independent Outer Mongolia a People’s Republic. A power struggle between nationalists and communists ensued, from which the Soviet-backed communists emerged triumphant and Bodoo was removed from the PM post, tried as a counter-revolutionary and summarily executed in 1922. 1921 Mongolian Revolution Mongolian sub-branch of the Soviet Great Terror The power struggle within the ruling MPRP for leadership and control continued, becoming increasingly violent and bloody. Purges of the party hierarchy and attacks on Mongolian Buddhism were stepped up…the upshot saw military strongman Khorloogiin Choibalsan gradually consolidate and then cement his hold on power in the 1930s. Having removed all of his political rivals one by one in classic Stalinist style Choibalsan waltzed into the leader’s job in 1939 uncontested. Choibalsan with his role model, Stalin Soviet satellite and internal terror The Choibalsan-led Mongolian communist regime freely aligned itself with Moscow to the point of becoming a puppet of the Soviet Union, with Choibalsan even taking direct orders from Stalin on internal Mongolian matters. Choibalsan identified with the Soviet supreme leader to the extent of almost cloning himself on the personality of Stalin…slavishly imitating the ruthless political style of Stalin right down to the cult of personality and the mass purging of “enemies of the Revolution” (including some former prime ministers and heads of state), show trials, gulags and executions⧼b̼⧽. Choibalsan’s unquestioning, all-the-way with the Kremlin stance entrapped Mongolia in a perpetual state of economic and political dependency on the USSR—a policy perpetuated after 1952 by Choibalsan’s Sovietphile protégé and successor Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal⧼c̼⧽—condemning the country to a client status relationship with Moscow. This dependency paradigm was only broken after the collapse of the Soviet Union, compelling Mongolia to move tentatively towards democracy, social reforms and economic liberalisation. Channeling Genghis (Chinggis) Khan : Gigantic Ulaanbaatar statue (photo: Viator.com) Footnote: The Pan-Mongolia pipe dream Pan-Mongolism was an irredentist idea that has been kicking round in Russian/central Asian circles since the late 19th century. It postulates the creation of a “Greater Mongolia”, a vast area comprising both Inner and Outer Mongolia, Buryatia, Dzungaria (northern half of Xinjiang), and sometimes including Transbaikal, Tuva and even Tibet, a theoretical geographical amalgam which has been described as a kind of “twentieth century Mongol Empire redux” (‘The Spectre of Pan-Mongolism’, Mongolink, 21-Feb-2017, https://mongoliainstitute.anu.edu.au/). One interested onlooker in the region who could appreciate the benefits of fostering a sense of Pan-Mongolism was imperial Japan. From the early 20th century it was eyeing off eastern Asia as an potential territorial acquisition to funnel surplus Japanese population into. The Japanese blueprint envisaged a client state stretching from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok which would include Outer Mongolia. Carving out one large united Mongolia, they reasoned, “would help exert pressure on China and create favorable grounds for the Japanese occupation of the Russian Far East” (‘Pan-Mongolia’, 29-Feb-2019, www.mongoliastore.com; (S.C.M. Paine, Imperial Rivals, (1996)). During WWI the Japanese gave to backing to Grigory Semyonov, a Russian Cossack ataman of Buryat descent with a Pan-Mongolian agenda…Semyonov’s plan was to unify Buryat-Mongolia, Khalkha-Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, but it floundered due to a Bolshevik counter-attack and seemingly also due to Khalkha Mongols’ suspicions of the Buryats (‘Buryatia: Residents Concerned about Moscow’s Intentions’, 23-Oct-2010, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, www.unpo.org). In the 1930s a composite, Mongol borderland state named Mengjiang was created comprising the central hub of Inner Mongolia. Supposedly an “autonomous or independent state” nominally ruled by a Mongolian nobleman Prince Demchugdongrub, it was in reality a puppet state of the Empire of Japan𓇽. Signing of the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship & Alliance (source: Peter Chen / endofempire.asia) Postscript: China and its interests were not represented at the 1945 Yalta Agreement (between USSR, USA and UK), leaving Stalin with the tricky task of settling Mongolia’s future directly with Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese republic. After tortuous negotiations with China’s premier Soong Tzu-wen Stalin brokered a deal – China would give up on its territorial claim to Outer Mongolia and (reluctantly) recognise Mongolia’s independence. In return Stalin gave the Chinese an assurance he would not (or no longer) support either the Chinese Communists or the separatists in Chinese Xinjiang⧼d̼⧽. Stalin’s accord with Chiang effectively snuffed out the last flicker of Choibalsan’s dream of achieving a Pan-Mongol state (‘Khorloogiin Choibalsan — Stalin of the steppe’, Sergei Radchenko, Engelsberg Ideas, 21-Jun-2021, www.engelbergideas.com). Moscow’s interests were well served by the outcome, geopolitically, an independent Mongolia would be a buffer for the USSR against China while also being open to influence from the Kremlin. Modern Mongolia (admitted to the UN, 1961) 𓇽 for the Mengjiang story refer to the July 2019 post on this blog, “Mengjiang: The Empire of Japan’s Other East Asian Puppet State in Inner Mongolia” at https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/07/02/mengjiang-the-empire-of-japans-other-east-asian-puppet-state-in-inner-mongolia/ ⧼a̼⧽ later renamed Ulaanbaatar (literal meaning = “red hero”) ⧼b̼⧽ called in Mongolia, Ikh Khelmegdüülelt (“Great Repression”) ⧼c̼⧽ Tsedenbal went one subservient step further than his mentor petitioning Moscow (unsuccessfully) in the 1950s for Mongolia to be incorporated into the USSR ⧼d̼⧽ when the Chinese Communists took control of the nation in 1949 Stalin had to debate the question of who owns Mongolia all over again with Mao who doggedly argued for Outer Mongolia to be unified with Inner Mongolia but as part of the PRC. Stalin refused to budge from the position that Mongolian independence was not negotiable and in the end Mao, with the PRC then a brand new Communist state needing to establish a good relationship with the world’s leading socialist state, had to acquiesce (Radchenko) ༓༓༓ Social unrest has been the norm in Hong Kong over the last decade as we’ve witnessed the clash between the centre and the the periphery, between mainland China and the people (or at least a very significant chunk of the people) of its regained territory. Such polarisation and disharmony is hardly without precedence in Hong Kong however as a cursory glance at the postwar history of this long-existing Pacific colonial outpost of the British Empire reveals. Confrontation between the state as represented by the colonial government and its unrepresented Chinese citizens has erupted and spilt over into violent rioting and conflict on several occasions. Double-10th riots (photo: scmp.com) ༓༓༓ “Double Tenth” Riots, 1956 (photo: toursbylocals.com) ༓༓༓ Star Ferry Riots, 1966 ༓༓༓ 1966, beginning of civic activism ༓༓༓ The 1967 Riots Military patrol streets after Macau riots, Dec 1966 (Video, Papa Osmubal Archive) ༓༓༓ Spillover from the Cultural Revolution and the Macau disturbances Riot police using tear gas against 1967 protestors (photo: scmp.com) ༓༓༓ Smouldering Pearl ༓༓༓ Trampling the seeds of democratisation
Endnote: Chinese takeover of Hong Kong?
↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼ (𝒶) along with a criminal element affiliated with the KMT (𝒷) the actual trigger for the riots was the spontaneous action of one HK vicenarian—inspired by urban councillor Elsie Elliott who dissented from the price hike decision and organised a petition against it—to stage a hunger strike at the TST terminal of the Star Ferry (𝒸) the Chinese Communists subsequently moved to eliminate all pockets of Kuomintang influence from Macau (𝒹) Governor Murray MacLehose was also of a reforming bent but he focused more on eradicating police corruption (establishing an ICAC) than on institutional reform ༺༻ ༺༻ ༺༻
Articles consulted: ‘What sparked Hong Kong’s Double Tenth riots’, Jason Wordie, South China Morning Post, 07-Aug-2016, www.amp.scmp.com ‘Fifty years on: The riots that shook Hong Kong in 1967’, Foreign Correspondents Club, 18-May-2017, www.fcchk.org ‘Whose Sound and Fury? The 1967 Riots of Hong Kong through The Times, Haipeng Zhou, global media journal.com Yep, Ray. “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Diplomatic and Domestic Fronts of the Colonial Governor.” The China Quarterly, no. 193 (2008): 122–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192167.
The Southwest, 1850 WEST BY SOUTHWEST ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖Outer Mongolia and the Dream of Pan-Mongolism: Caught in a Realpolitik Power Game Betwixt Russia and China
♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧♧Big Troubles in Little Hong Kong: Unrepresentative Government and Civil Unrest in a British Colony in the Shadow of Communist China
In the 1950s tensions developed between right wing pro-Kuomintang settlers (many of which had fled to the British colony(𝒶) following the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949) and pro-CCP inhabitants of Hong Kong. What triggered the riots that erupted in 1956 was to observers an act of “petty officialdom”. In the middle of National Day celebrations, an official tore down a Republic of China flag and decorations in a resettlement estate in the city. Enraged Nationalists railed against the police trying to defuse the tense situation but this eventually escalated into widespread rioting by the pro-KMT protesters with gang members joining in…attacks on property, arson attempts, looting, violence against the local police and against leftist workers and trade unionists across North Kowloon and Tsuen Wan. With the HK Police overwhelmed by the rioting the colonial secretary Edgeworth B David (acting on behalf of the governor Alexander Grantham) responded by bringing in a British army unit which eventually quelled the disturbances using force. Although brief in duration the riots resulted in 59 dead (including the wife of the Swiss vice consul) and around 500 injured. Although the Nationalist agents in the riots were politically motivated in their actions, another dynamic in the riots represented protests from the anti-communist refugees forced into overcrowded living conditions and blaming Chinese politics for “forcing them into Hong Kong in the first place”. (Wordie). 
The Star Ferry riots in 1966 started innocuously enough with a peaceful protest by commuters against the government’s decision to allow the company to increase fares for the cross-harbour journey by 25%(𝒷). As with what occurred ten years earlier, a heavy-handed reaction by the authorities to a minor kerfuffle provoked many Hong Kongers, especially its youth, to protest en mass which led in turn to widescale rioting and looting in Kowloon with police stations and other public facilities attacked and fire-bombed. The police fired tear gas into the crowds. Again, British forces were parachuted in to forcibly impose and maintain a curfew in the city. As a consequence of the disorder and rioting one rioter was shot and killed by police, dozens were injured and over 200 imprisoned. 
The 1966 riots lacked the involvement of Chinese Triad gangs and rightist KMT malcontents that had been part of the 1956 troubles. Underlying its eruption was a widening disaffection of residents with the status quo in 1960s Hong Kong…in part it can be seen as a protest against the widening discrepancy in HK society between rich and poor and the appalling living and working conditions the masses had to contend with (overcrowding, ongoing housing dilemma, etc.), and a manifestation of the public distrust engendered by the corruption of officialdom and police. 
The 1966 riots produced perhaps the colony’s first large-scale social movement, however they were a prelude for a much more serious disturbance to Hong Kong society just one year later. What started as a minor industrial dispute involving workers at a plastic flowers factory in San Po Kong, striking over unreasonable work conditions, escalated into full-blown demonstrations, protests and violence by the Chinese inhabitants against the “iniquities” of British colonial rule with the HK governor David Trench taking a hard line with the malcontents. 
The political climate in Communist China at the time—Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was very much on the upswing—played its part in stirring the pot of discontent among left-leaning Hong Kongers and emboldening them to defy their imperial masters. Another source of inspiration for the leftist rioters was the recent success of their counterparts in nearby Macau (themselves encouraged by the energy of the Cultural Revolution) in what became known as the 12-3 Incident. Conflict between the Chinese and the Portuguese authorities, brewing since July 1966, exploded at the end of the year…a dispute over a school building project triggered a series of Macau Chinese protests and rioting with the active participation of Mao’s Red Guards against corruption and colonialism in Macau. The Portuguese colonial police’s violent response to the Chinese protestors resulted in eight deaths and over 200 injuries. Under pressure from Chinese business owners and Beijing Macau’s Portuguese governor was forced into a humiliating public apology for the police crackdown and had to accede to the protestors’ demands. Consequently the balance of power in Macau was altered totally and irrevocably: Red China now had de facto suzerainty over the colony, reducing Portugal’s role in its governance to a nominal one only(𝒸). 
As the Hong Kong riots gathered momentum the demonstrators resorted first to strikes and property damage, then to the indiscriminate use of home-made bombs (branded by the government as “urban terrorism”). Governor Trench took a hardline in retailiation, imposing martial law in the colony, responding with tear gas and raiding the pro-CCP protestors’ strongholds like North Point. Whitehall took a laissez-faire approach to the 1967 riots leaving its management to the HK administration and the local police. The terrorist strategy adopted by leftist protestors—random bomb attacks coupled with some targeted assassinations—had the effect of alienating them from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. By October 1967 Beijing had had enough, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the Communist protestors to halt the bombing campaign, and by the end of the year things were quiet again in the colony. The riots resulted in 51 dead, 832 injured, numerous arrests and some provocateurs deported to China.
1967 witnessed the bloodiest, most violent riots in Hong Kong’s colonial history. The trauma of a succession of riots in the 1950s and 60s demonstrated one thing, the desperate need for reform of the political system and institutions in Hong Kong. While there was some labour reform and social improvements in the colony as a consequence of the 1967 unrest, overall HK governors overall contributed very little to this cause. One exception to this was Mark Young (governor in the 1940s) whose Young Plan called for wider political participation by creating a new Municipal Council to give the populace a greater stake in the colony. However Young’s plan was sabotaged when his successor Grantham opposed its implementation and it was blocked by the Legislative Council, never getting off the drawing board. Instead, it wasn’t until after 1984 with Hong Kong’s fate post-1997 firmly settled that HK governments made any overtures at all in that direction, by that time the horse has bolted!(𝒹).
At the height of the 1967 riots rumours were circulating in the colony that China was planning to seize Hong Kong, to which the current hostilities were a prequel. There had been such a plan however the top echelons of the Chinese regime had never seriously countenanced it. Beijing was content with adding to the HK authorities’ internal troubles by despatching Chinese villagers over the border into the New Territories to launch attacks on police stations…for Beijing it was not the time for anything more. Perhaps it was as one observer noted, “the Chinese had no desire to take over Hong Kong at that time in their history…their proxy intervention had been no more than a demonstration” (Jan Morris, Hong Kong). And a test! It’s plausible that Beijing through its proxies was testing the HK regime to see if it would bow to pressure as the Portuguese Macau authorities did six months earlier. Ironically, at the height of the riots, Whitehall investigated evacuating Hong Kong altogether but the idea was strongly opposed by Governor Trench and the British Army command in Hong Kong on the grounds that it was deemed logistically too hard to pull off. A further objection was the danger to British citizens in the crown colony if a full-on evacuation was attempted (Yep).The Nexus between the Southwest, the Confederacy, Slavery and Camels: Redux
History books tell us how the United States in the first half of the 19th century strove to fulfil its self-defined mission of “Manifest Destiny” by spreading its territorial reach on the continent ever more westwards. Having acquired the Southwest—comprising vast stretches of mainly dry, desert land—through highly profitable adventures south of the Río Grande, Washington found itself staring at a dauntingly formidable obstacle to exploration and settlement.
Jefferson Davis
SHIPS OF THE DESERT” FOR THE SOUTHWESTERN DESERT
The idea of using camels to meet the massive challenge of traversing this harsh terrain was first floated by Quartermaster captain George H Crosman in the 1830s but it was later taken up with full enthusiasm by Jefferson Davis (later to be the breakaway Confederacy’s president during the Civil War) who advocated tirelessly for the superior efficacy of camels over mules and horses as “beasts of burden” ideally suited to the Southwest. As well as the being the optimal pack animal for the arid New Mexico territory plains, the camel, it’s proponents claimed, would help soldiers hunt down troublesome native peoples impeding westward progress (‘The sinister reason why camels were brought to the American West’, Kevin Waite, National Geographic, 27-Oct-2021, www.nationalgeographic.com). Davis, after being appointed secretary of war in the Pierce Administration, eventually got approval to purchase a caravan of 40 camels through Congress in 1855 and the US Army Camel Corps came into existence.
Pack-carrying dromedaries in the desert (Photo: Getty Images/Stockphoto)
The plan to import camels itself was not Davis’ idea but the brainchild of Major Henry C Wayne , also an early convert to the camel cause. Wayne was selected to collect the army’s first batch of camels from West Africa, however his public role in the camel saga soon became secondary to the private capacity he fashioned for himself as the number one publicist in promoting the virtues and utility of camels for America…proclaiming a multiplicity of uses in addition to transportation, including plantation chores (eg, hauling cotton, corn, etc.) which were more cost-effective than comparable equine alternatives. Wayne’s efforts ignited a craze for camels and dromedaries especially among Southern planters (‘The Dark Underbelly of Jefferson Davis’ Camels’, Michael E. Woods, Muster, 21-Nov-2017, www.thejournalofthecivilwarerw.org).
‘Southwest Passage’, a 1950s Hollywood B-movie purportedly about the Camel Corps
CONSPIRACY AND OPPORTUNISM
With camels, if not quite thick on the ground very much conspicuously present, the Camel Corps HQ was established at Camp Verde, Texas, and army camel experiments were undertaken in the Southwest. What eventually emerged though were other, non-military uses for the importation of camels. Behind the enthusiasm of slaveholders to acquire camels lay a deeper scheme. Jefferson Davis and the slaveholders were determined to expand slavery westward into the new territories of the Southwest even to “free” states like California, and they certainly saw the camel, capable of going without water for long periods while still hauling great loads, as instrumental to the conquest of the southwestern deserts and the securing of a safe route to the far west. Though Davis himself denied this was his intention historian Kevin Waite asserts that “camels were part of his broader fantasies for the western expansion” of the slave industry. Michael Woods offers a different viewpoint, arguing that Davis did not envision this outcome when he initiated the camel project nor did he collude with the “Slave Power” which steered the scheme, but his crucial championing of the project did trigger the chain of events that led to it.
MASKING THE BANNED SLAVE TRADE
The importation of these humped, cloven-footed creatures by Southerners likely served another, even more nefarious purpose of the slaveholding class. Suspicions were high in anti-slavery circles that the influx of camels in the 1850s was being used as a smokescreen to shield the smuggling in of African slaves—an activity made illegal in the US since the 1808 ban—probably funnelled into the country via the Texas coastline where a raft of slave traders were based (Woods).
With the outbreak of war between North and South in 1861 plans for their extensive use were pretty much shelved notwithstanding that the Confederacy now had sole control of the camels. Post-bellum, interest was not revived for a number of reasons – the camels didn’t catch on partially due to the creatures’ undesirable personal traits and their being not easy for Americans to handle. Besides, the completion of the Transcontinental Railway in 1869 made their utility for long distance transport more or less obsolete. Consequently, owners were quick to dispose of their stocks of camels, some were sold off to travelling circuses or zoos, others were simply released to roam into the wild leading to random sightings of the creatures decades afterwards.