‘Practically An Act of War’: A Cross-Border Arrest in British Kowloon and Hong Kong-China Relations on the Frontier

In 1889 a patrol of Qing soldiers entered Hong Kong territory and arrested two villagers from the village of Sham Shui Po. The Hong Kong government launched an investigation. After correspondence and negotiations between the governments of Hong Kong and the Qing Empire, the two villagers were eventually returned alive. This paper will rely on the dispatches in the CO129 series in the Hong Kong government records and discuss the course of events, including the investigations by the Hong Kong police, the interactions between the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir William Des Voeux, the British officials in Canton and Peking and the Qing Governor of the Two- Kwang, Zhang Zhi Dong.

Through this incident, this paper intends to examine the Kowloon frontier in the context of Hong Kong-China relations, from day-to-day cross- border activities to the two governments’ attitudes towards the border. The latter also includes the sensitivity of both governments to the consequences that border issues could bring, their attitudes towards each other, the ideas on modern legal systems and the policies on extraditing fugitives.