Matthew Hurst
Thesis
Thesis
Informal Diplomacy, Civil Society and the End of the Empire: The Secret History of How Hong Kong People Shaped the City’s Handover from Britain to Beijing, 1979-97
Supervisors: David Clayton and Jon Howlett
Research
Research
Recent large-scale protests have focused global attention on the public’s dissent in Hong Kong. However, political contestation during the Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong’s future and slow transfer remains overshadowed in the existing literature by a focus on elite political actors. This PhD goes beyond the elite political level to analyse how Hong Kong public opinion, civil society actors and business leaders interacted with the politics of Hong Kong’s decolonisation and explores political actors/civil servants responded to assess the extent to which Hong Kong people shaped the handover.
This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/R012733/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities.
Publications and presentations
Publications and presentations
Journal articles
2024. 'Negotiating with the Past: China’s Tactical Use of History, Emotion and Identity in the Sino-British Talks on the Future of Hong Kong' in the journal East Asia, available open access here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-023-09422-8
2024 'Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases' in the journal Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, available open access here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440123000294
2022. Britain’s Approach to the Negotiations over the Future of Hong Kong, 1979-1982. The International History Review 44(6) pp. 1386-1402. DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2021.2024588 – awarded the PSA Conservatism Studies Group 2022 Research Prize.
Presentations
March 2023. ‘The Remains of Colonial Power in Hong Kong History’. Historical Perspectives Roundtable, University of Glasgow.
March 2023. ‘Characterising the Activism of Hong Kong People during the 1980s Sino-British Negotiations’. Transnational Activism in a Divided World workshop, Northumbria University with support from the Royal Historical Society.
December 2022. ‘Public Pressure and the Politics of Decolonisation in Hong Kong’ (invited). Politics Department Colloquium, University of York
June 2022. ‘How to Place Hong Kong People at the Centre of Hong Kong’s Late-Colonial History’. Hong Kong Forum, Oxford University Hong Kong Scholars Association
June 2022. ‘How did Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping Feel about Hong Kong?’. Symposium on Emotions and Foreign Policy in Global International Relations, Universidad de Navarra
December 2021. ‘History, Identity and Hong Kong: A Constructivist Approach to the Decolonisation of Hong Kong’. Association for Asian Studies New England Conference, Harvard University
September 2021. ‘Power Asymmetry in the Future of Hong Kong’. British Association for Chinese Studies Conference, University of Birmingham
June 2021. ‘China’s Untapped Soft Power Opportunities’. British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies Conference, Lancaster University
Book reviews
March 2024. ‘Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the Freedom Struggle’ and ‘Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong’ by Brian Kern. Asian Affairs. DOI 10.1080/03068374.2024.
November 2023. ‘Among the Braves’ by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin. Asian Affairs 54(4): pp. 819-821 DOI 10.1080/03068374.2023.2277040
September 2023. 'Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong' by Louisa Lim. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 63: pp. 328-331. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27253513
July 2023. ‘Making Hong Kong China’ by Michael C. Davis. Hong Kong Studies 3(2). https://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/image/catalog/journal/jpreview/HKS3.2.08.pdf
