Reading colonies : property and control of the British far east   

• Product Details

  Product #

  2574763B

  Author(s)

  Price, R.B.E.

  City

  Hong Kong 

  Country

  China 

  Language

  English 

  ISBN

  9789629372972 

  Date of Publication

  2016 

  Publisher

  Xianggang cheng shi da xue chu ban she  

  Cover Type

  Soft cover 

  Pages

  214 

  Subject

  Foreign Policy / International Relations

  Subject

  Law

   

• Product Details in Original Language

  Author

  Price, R.B.E.

  Publisher

  香港城市大學出版社  

• Description

  By 1945, everywhere one looked in the Far East the British Empire was being openly questioned or was failing outright. Yet in the previous century, the British had been the pre-eminent imperial power from Weihaiwei to North Borneo. Reading Colonies: Property and Control of the British Far East investigates how the British held on for so long. Rent control legislation, and other measures of property law such as land improvement opportunities, are nominated as key tools used to frustrate decolonization in most Eastern colonies. British colonial administrations tried long and hard to inhibit the dialectical discord between their colonial hierarchism and local forms of nationalism with the prompts and plaudits of property policy. In cases where indigenous landlordism masqueraded as patriotism, independence came quickly (Ceylon and Burma). Where public housing established itself as a key post-war plank of social policy, freedom from British rule was a more gradual affair (British Malaya and Hong Kong). This study concludes that British colonial regimes did not offer a share of their industrial modernity to stay at the apex of political power, but readily adjusted old-style landlordism to keep nationalist usurpers at bay.