Associational culture played an integral role in the reproduction of Britishness beyond the British Isles. Using the multiracial civil society in interwar Hong Kong as a case study, this chapter argues that middle-class residents there actively used civic associational culture to define and perform Britishness. It draws from five voluntary societies: the international networks of Freemasonry and the Rotary Club, as well as the League of Fellowship, the Hongkong Eugenics League, and the Kowloon Residents’ Association. In exploring the varying activities of these institutional networks, this Chapter demonstrates how Hong Kong’s colonial setting and its connections with China and other Asian port cities shaped the way urbanites in Hong Kong understood Britishness, and how these urbanites used their participation in civil society to define Britishness as a cosmopolitan belonging.

Freemasonry was one of the major conduits through which new ideas and political strategies spread during the Age of Revolution, connecting movements in Latin American regions not just with each other but with like-minded people throughout the Atlantic World. Nearly every major figure of the era has been named as a Freemason: emperors, viceroys, state ministers, archbishops, parish priests, royalist soldiers, insurgent generals, local politicians across the spectrum, women, urban workers, slaves and regular folk all could have been – and in many cases were – affiliated with Masonic Lodges or para-Masonic clubs. This chapter highlights the personal friendships and Masonic connections among this generation, bridging nationality, language and geographic space; discusses membership in a Masonic lodge as an open-ended, fluid experience that shifted and changed along with political conditions; and offers a new emphasis on the importance of Freemasonry as a vector for business, trade, and enterprise, including foreign investment, banking and the emergence of various national publishing industries – all of which were dominated by people with transatlantic Masonic connections.