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SIR HENRY POTTINGER: The First Governor of Hong Kong. By George Pottinger NewYork: St. Martin ' Press. 1997. 196 pp. (Photos.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 0-312-16506-4.
AT A TIME when so much has been said and written about the last governor and the ending of British administration in Hong Kong, it is a refreshing change to read about how it all started and the role played by the first governor, Sir Henry Pottinger.
In fact, he was more than a simple governor. At least after the Treaty of Nanking ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842, he was also superintendent of trade as well as plenipotentiary and minister extraordinary. Nor were these titles idle pomp. As plenipotentiary, he literally fought his way to become Hong Kong's first governor through his leadership of the British expedition which forced an ever weakening Chinese government to cede territory in their far south in an attempt to quieten the obstreperous foreigners who were disturbing the peace and isolation of the Qing Empire.
So much of the British Empire grew almost by accident, coupled with the ambitious determination of far-flung public servants whose expansionist ideas received only half-hearted support from the government in London. Distance and time helped. Pottinger took over two months to get from London to Macau when he was first sent to China. The reply to a dispatch seeking instructions from Lord Auckland, the governor-general at Calcutta nominally in charge of the...