How did Britishness interplay with rising anti-colonialism and nationalism in twentieth-century Asia? This chapter draws on the experience of Chinese students from Hong Kong, mainland China, and British Malaya at the University of Hong Kong, to explain the transmission of Britishness to colonial subjects and its implications for anti-colonial movements. British officials and the university administration carefully crafted a curriculum and campus life that would, on one hand, educate young Chinese with Western knowledge and British values, and on the other, steer them away from rising Chinese nationalism. This left visible social effects on the students of the University. Using writings produced by officials, University staff, and students and graduates of HKU, I uncover how Britishness shaped the co-existence of various diasporic Chinese identities on campus, and its student body’s curious response to Chinese nationalism. It argues that colonial Hong education – and more widely a colonial milieu – gave birth to a non-radicalism in Hong Kong amidst rising nationalism.

Japanese occupation of British Asia challenged British prestige at an unprecedented scale, but what the War challenged about Britishness went far beyond the myth of white supremacy. This chapter explains how the Second World War shattered the cosmopolitan, inclusive notions of Britishness that developed in pre-war Hong Kong. Even before the outbreak of war, systemic discrimination involved in the 1940 evacuation scheme made colonial subjects realize that Britishness was reduced to a ‘race’ at moments of crisis. The chapter also explored the varied wartime experience of Portuguese refugees in Macau, students and graduates of the University of Hong Kong, and members of the British Army Aid Group (B.A.A.G.). Increased interactions with the British state made some acutely aware of the racism they experienced under British colonialism, and eroded their identification with Britishness. The practicalities of war, then, highlighted the fragility of the rhetoric of imperial cosmopolitanism, and put the diverse forms of Britishness articulated in pre-war Hong Kong to a severe test.