Scribbles near Shaukiwan: Squatter Formalization and Everyday Colonial Relations in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong

Quinton Huang

doi:10.65961/hks-2026-52-009

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Hong Kong Studies ›› 2026, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (2) : 8. DOI: 10.65961/hks-2026-52-009

Scribbles near Shaukiwan: Squatter Formalization and Everyday Colonial Relations in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong

Quinton Huang

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Abstract

Scholars have identified colonial land reforms, beginning in 1890s Squatter Board and culminating in the 1900s New Territories Land Court, as “momentous” and “revolutionary” transformations in the history of Hong Kong and, indeed, China. But what did this transformation look like on the ground, during the mundane encounters between colonial officials and squatting residents? Inspired by Saidiya Hartman, this “critical fabulation” draws upon three pages of a Squatter Board notebook to sketch out the multiple actors that influenced the regularization of squatter landholdings into leaseholds in one neighborhood of Shaukiwan 筲箕灣. It then focuses on a unique doodle on the margins of the notes, marshaling various kinds of contextual and visual evidence to speculate on the role of gender and agency in the creation of colonial records. By comparing multiple accounts of the same encounter through three levels of the colonial bureaucracy, it reveals how vOffices and contradictions are erased and smoothed over by the final formulation of the new lease arrangements. This article ultimately complicates our understanding of these land reforms by exposing their underpinnings in mundane, negotiated, and exhaustive encounters between colonizer and colonized. Revisiting familiar events and processes through underexamined and unconventional sources beyond colonial officials’ reports can offer rewarding insights into the nature of colonial knowledge production and the agency of ordinary Hong Kong residents.

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Quinton Huang. Scribbles near Shaukiwan: Squatter Formalization and Everyday Colonial Relations in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong.Hong Kong Studies2026 , 5(2): 8. https://doi.org/10.65961/hks-2026-52-009

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