Movement in a Time of Disruption: Connected Colonies in Wartime South China, 1937–45

This presentation explores the role of three colonial territories in South China during the Second World War in East Asia with a focus on the movement of people, with particular attention to women. The British colony of Hong Kong, the French leased territory of Guangzhouwan, and Portuguese-ruled Macau were territories of strategic importance for a range of Chinese and other actors engaged in resistance and collaboration during China’s War with Japan between 1937 and 1945. Avoiding formal occupation by Japanese forces until the early 1940s (Hong Kong), the last year of the conflict (Guangzhouwan) or the end of the war (Macau), these territories’ nominal neutrality allowed for activities and communications disrupted or made impossible in occupied areas. Drawing on multilingual archival sources, this paper argues that the significance of these territories’ wartime experience needs to be understood through their connections rather than seeing them as isolated exceptions. Some of those connections were predicated on European colonialism, but others transcended it, made creative uses of some of its jurisdictional opportunities, and challenged it. Following the movement of refugees, escapees, spies, and others, this presentation explores spaces of temporary encounter between a range of people of different nationalities whose paths crossed because of wartime contingencies and that in those crossings blurred political, class, racial, and gender boundaries.