British Hong Kong

British Hong Kong was the Crown colony the United Kingdom held on and around the island of Hong Kong from 1841 to 1982, and a dependent territory from 1983 until 30 June 1997. British rule began with the occupation of Hong Kong Island under the Convention of Chuenpi in 1841, during the First Opium War; under Article III of the Treaty of Nanking of 1842 the island was ceded in perpetuity to Great Britain, and the settlement was established as a Crown colony in 1843, administered from the city of Victoria. In 1860 the colony was enlarged with the Kowloon Peninsula after the Second Opium War, and in 1898 Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories, which comprised 86.2 per cent of the colony and more than half of its population. Through the 1500–1945 period shown on the map Hong Kong grew from a naval coaling station into the entrepôt of South China, its harbour drawing merchants from across Asia; from December 1941 to 1945 it was occupied by Japan during the Second World War. As the New Territories lease neared its end, the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 fixed the terms of the handover, and on 30 June 1997 the whole territory passed to the People's Republic of China.