Hong Kong studies Research Papers (original) (raw)

(The attached PDF file is the full text of the thesis, which can be downloaded also from the HKU Scholars Hub, at http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/141903).
This study deals with the history of Hong Kong Scouting from 1910 to 2007, both as a topic of enquiry in itself and as a analytical tool for better understanding of the social, cultural and political history of Hong Kong. Scouting, an innovative citizenship training scheme, came to the colonial outpost of Hong Kong a few years after it was started in Britain by Sir General Baden-Powell to prepare British youngsters, many of whom suffering from the perceived ills of urban living, for the grave threats then considered by some to be facing the British Empire. Over the years, the youth movement received growing support from a broad spectrum of stakeholders in Hong Kong, interested in promoting colonial and post-colonial governance, religious conversion, secular education, and military preparedness through Scouting. From a niche movement for a very small number of British boys in the early years it eventually grew to become a mass movement for most Chinese children and youth, its membership gradually expanding along lines of race, class, gender and age.
Yet, due to Hong Kong’s uniqueness as a hybrid migrant society with a predominantly Chinese population (frequently overshadowed by nearby China, controlled during the period under discussion either by the Nationalists or the Communists), the movement often assumed different characteristics from that in Britain, other developed nations, and even other colonies in Asia. The citizenship ideals of local Scouting were constructed and reconstructed over time in the contested space of youth education within the colonial and post-colonial contexts of Hong Kong. Over the years, the movement in Hong Kong displayed nationalizing, denationalizing, and renationalizing tendencies, while incorporating British, Chinese, local and cosmopolitan elements and accommodating an emerging Hong Kong identity.
In recent decades, despite an aging population and Scouting’s decline in many parts of the world, the local movement grew strongly as it became increasingly “Hongkongized.” However, ten years after the retrocession of sovereignty, it was still searching for a clear definition of its new roles in Hong Kong which had become a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China (the world’s most populous nation, and currently not a member of the world Scout body), largely reflecting the uncertainties and anxieties facing the underlying post-colonial community.
In tracing and analyzing the development of Hong Kong Scouting during the period under review, this dissertation fills a gap in historical research on the Scout Movement around the world and specifically in colonial contexts, and supplements other studies on the political, social and cultural history of Hong Kong. It also provides comparative insights into the history of (British) imperialism, colonial youth movements, citizenship education, decolonization and post-colonial citizenship.