ABSTRACT

After acquiring Hong Kong through the treaty of Nanking in August 1842, the colonial government focused on developing the administrative edifice of the governance structure of the colony. The colonial administration thus was not a despotic one, rather a benevolent one, if we set apart the causes and consequences of the ‘Opium War’. The Charter authorised the Governor to proclaim the territory as a separate colony and entrusted him the task to set up a Legislative and Executive Council. The appointment of the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council was made in 1880 on the initiative of Sir John Pope Hennessy, who was the Governor of the Colony from 1878 to 1882, as part of his policy of co-opting and conciliating the Chinese section of the population. The continued pressure brought into existence a Constitutional Reform Association of Hong Kong, which was launched in May 1917.