May Chi Chi Huang, University of Strathclyde
Unified by typhoons: British discussions on extreme storms of Hong Kong
This paper explores British popular accounts of typhoons affecting Hong Kong during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In understanding how these storms were conveyed to a disconnected public back home, I ask how were the experiences of typhoons re-created and why? Documenting typhoons in and around Hong Kong were, of course, important for merchants and mariners, but the British press and travel writers transformed these often violent disruptions to shipping and commerce into a cultural experience of the tropics and of Hong Kong as an idealized colony: one that fostered international co-operation and one of colonial cohesion. Through this exploration, I also trace how ‘typhoons’ transitioned from an object of local knowledge to a technical European term. This act of claiming knowledge over ‘typhoons’ reverberated in British cultural outputs, specifically re-framing the Chinese populations, and their relationship with the weather.