Abstract
Like most places in Britain’s Empire, Hong Kong was not a sanctuary for persecuted Jews. Instead, it was a liminal space of transit, one positioned between flight from Nazism in Europe and uncertain new lives in Shanghai. This thesis draws upon extensive and wide-ranging primary and oral sources to provide the first scholarly study of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong before, during, and immediately after the Second World War. It examines this history from multiple perspectives – from that of the colonial government, the existing Jewish community, and the refugees themselves. While Hong Kong was primarily a waystation to Shanghai in the period leading up to the Pacific War, it was also a place of small-scale settlement. Jewish refugees emigrated to Hong Kong through familial, imperial, commercial, and Jewish diasporic networks. They interacted with Hong Kong’s Jewish and Chinese populations, and became active participants in Hong Kong’s British and non-British worlds. The British colony also played an important role in the identity-formation of Jewish refugees who found a sanctuary in Shanghai. Long ocean voyages via the Suez Canal and stop-overs in British-ruled ports – as well as later lived experiences of China – both influenced and shaped refugee memory of Hong Kong.The colony was also an active site of refugee humanitarianism, one that was deeply connected to Shanghai through the Jewish communities that lived in both port cities. The global political movements of the 1930s, including anti-fascism, socialism, nationalism, communism, and Zionism, shaped the ideas of diverse political and religious groups involved in Jewish rescue schemes as well as the local ‘Aid China’ campaign. As in Britain and its empire, Hong Kong was also a place of incarceration. Jewish refugees were interned as ‘enemy aliens’ at La Salle College in 1939, and most were eventually evicted from the colony in 1940. I argue that anti-alienism, levels of anglicisation and colonial racial hierarchies created a unique internment practice in Hong Kong. Two years later, the colony was occupied by Japanese forces. The thesis draws upon new sources to investigate the survival of a small group of Jewish refugees caught in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation (1941 to 1945). It finds a surprising continuity of British colonial classifications of Jews by the new Japanese administration. Finally, by examining Hong Kong’s immigration policy since the early 1900s, the thesis discovers commonalities in the colonial government’s dealings with all refugee groups who fled to Hong Kong’s shores both before and after the Second World War, especially with regards to stateless persons, and reveals the importance of Hong Kong as a place of flow for Jewish refugees more specifically. In uncovering Jewish refugee histories of Hong Kong, the thesis enriches existing studies of refugee survival and displacement at the geographical margins of the Holocaust.
| Date of Award | 1 Apr 2022 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Adam Sutcliffe (Supervisor) & Joanna Frances Newman (Supervisor) |