Colonization by Exception: Legitimizing Colonial Rule in Hong Kong and Macao during the Cold War in the 1950s

Meng Hin Ng, McGill University

How do colonial powers legitimize their late colonial rule? As an uneven global process, decolonization began earlier in some territories than the others in the form of formal political independence. For territories continued to be ruled by a colonial power, the advent of the Cold War complicated the question of decolonization. Although colonialism became an increasingly illegitimate political mode, geopoliticized Cold War politics at times summoned colonialism as defense against ideological adversaries. How then do colonial powers navigate such tensions? This paper examines the cases of colonial Hong Kong and Macao during the 1950s, a period when their colonial rule encountered immense uncertainties. Situated at the Cold War frontline between Communist China and the U.S. first island chain in East Asia, British and Portuguese authorities sook ways to maintain their colonial rule in both territories while attempting to balance geopolitical pressures. This has led to the shift in colonial policies in what I termed exceptionalization, in which particular colonies were understood as “exceptions” vis-à-vis other colonies within the empire. British colonial authorities justified the inapplicability of devolution in Hong Kong by drawing colonial parallels within the empire to highlight the former’s difference. For Portugal, although it provincialized all colonial territories in the attempt to circumvent decolonial pressure, the “national” status of Macao was often questioned in comparison to other overseas territories. The exceptionalization of Hong Kong and Macao provided the political ground for metropoles to “freeze” colonial rule in those territories, in which their colonial political structure remained largely intact throughout the latter half of the 20th century. By examining cases where colonialism was deliberately preserved, this paper explores how entangling global and colonial political processes paradoxically contributed to the consolidation of coloniality within these territories.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 190. Governing by Classification: Archives, Imperial Time, and the Long Life of Colonial Rule