Content area
Full Text
Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842–1997) Michael Ng. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, xvi + 211 pp. £29.99 (hbk). ISBN 9781108830027
For some historians of the British empire, one of the key justifications for imperial expansion was its legacy of civil and economic liberty and the rule of law. According to this interpretation, British colonial rule might have been authoritarian, but it nevertheless laid the groundwork for subsequent democratization and individual and market freedoms. Yet, this has always been a difficult story to swallow. Often, ideas about promoting Westminster-style democracy in the colonies only became a feature of British imperial rhetoric very late in the day. They generally emerged on the eve of constitutional decolonization, as a response to growing nationalist political mobilization, and as a means of promoting the sorts of successor states that the British wanted to see established during the transfer of power. Sometimes they were only deployed in hindsight, as a post-facto justification for British rule.
The idea of press freedom and freedom of expression more generally always sat uncomfortably with the authoritarian nature of British colonial rule. How was it possible to sustain liberal ideas about free speech, in essentially illiberal political settings? One organization to grapple with this dilemma was the Empire (later...