ABSTRACT
The anatomy of colonial Hong Kong advertised an idea that a balance was maintained by giving everyone something. The communists’ questions about the riot signalled re-emergence of their visibly anti-colonial anatomy in the colony, but not a conciliatory realignment of the colonial anatomy in light of communist grievance. Compelling ordinary people to continue to subscribe to colonialism when they had experienced the opposite of fair dealing made future enemies out of them. A colonial administration always ended a riot by calling in the troops at exactly the right moment, and minor riot criminality, such as breach of curfew, was usually the most widely punished. The duration of a riot and its aftermath were fraught times for any colonial government. The anatomy of a riot played its role in restoring government authority without entirely laying to rest tensions between rival political groups or the suspicions they felt about each other.
