Mittwoch, 03. Dezember 2025, 18:30 - 20:00 iCal

Guest Lecture of Prof. Dr. Vivian Kong

Diasporic Chineseness and Colonial Nostalgia: Multiracial Britishness in 1910-45 Hong Kong and its contemporary implications

SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus
Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3, 1090 Vienna

Antrittsvorlesung, Public Lecture, Vortrag

How did British colonial presence shape Chinese diasporas and identities in the twentieth century? This talk addresses this question by focusing on the former British colony of Hong Kong. Using multi-lingual sources and oral history, Vivian Kong uncovers the diverse engagements that colonial subjects in Hong Kong had made with Britishness and its contemporary implications. Drawing from voluntary associations and the University of Hong Kong, she explains how the indoctrination of cultural Birtishness left visible social effects on Chinese residents in the colony, and shaped the way they identified with Chineseness. Hong Kong's colonial milieu and anxieties about rising anti-colonial sentiments in the interwar period also gave rise to a discourse of imperial comsopolitanism, a rosy rhetoric that asserted the benefits of British imperialism. Urbanites in Hong Kong used this rhetoric as a strategic tool to counteract Chinese nationalism. This left enduring impacts on the city even after its departure from British colonialism, as manifested in the colonial nostalgia prevalent in public discourse amongst Hong Kongers today.

Vivian Kong is Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Bristol, and the founding Co-Director of the University's Hong Kong History Centre. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Vivian is a social historian of colonial Hong Kong. Her research to-date has focused on Hong Kong and its transnational connections. She has published on migration, identities, and civil society in interwar Hong Kong, and is the author of Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in 1910-45 Hong Kong (Cambridge University Press). She is now working on the biography of an Anglo-Chinese Eurasian woman and her networks in Hong Kong, Cornwall, London, China, and Singapore in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Veranstalter

Department of East Asian Studies / Sinology

Kontakt

Dr. Liza Wing Man Kam
Department of East Asian Studies
Sinology
/
liza.wing.man.kam@univie.ac.at

Erstellt am Donnerstag, 13. November 2025, 15:19
Letzte Änderung am Dienstag, 18. November 2025, 10:25