A ‘Medieval Menagerie’ in a Progressive Era: Captive Animal Welfare and Minimal British Interventionism in Hong Kong, 1950s–1970s

2025/03/04 by Catherine S. Chan · 1 voice · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2483841

openalex publication_date 2025/03/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

Using the urban encounter with wild animals as a point of entry, this study sheds light on the feature of minimal interventionism in British colonial governance through the miserable conditions of captive animals in British Hong Kong. It aims to reveal, behind the general image of a progressive and well-ordered colonial city in the post-war decades, oft-neglected segments construed through decades of British support towards an amusement facility deemed as highly modern and educational on the surface yet cruel and destructive towards wildlife animals from within. Through understanding what the poorly-managed zoo meant to Hong Kong citizens and the British colonial administration, this study not only restores the social positioning and sufferings of animals in post-war narratives of urban modernising and progress, but also sheds light on the practice of minimal intervention in colonial administration as reflected in British refusal to actively commit to and invest in improving the wellbeing of non-human animals.

Citations

• Infant Welfare, Family Planning, and Population Policy in Hong Kong: Race, Refugees, and Religion, 1931–61

Cited by

• Managing Bird Strikes to Aircraft at Kai Tak Airport in British Hong Kong, 1960–1980
• From ‘To Serve Hong Kong’ to ‘To be True to My Country’: The Girl Guide Movement in Late Colonial Hong Kong, 1950s–1997

Discussions

• Hot off the press! Check out 'A ‘Medieval Menagerie’ in a Progressive Era: Captive Animal Welfare and Minimal British Interventionism in Hong Kong, 1950s–1970s' by Catherine S. Chan: doi.org/10.1080/0 [bsky, 12 points, 0 comments]

Related

• Street dogs at the intersection of colonialism and informality: ‘Subaltern animism’ as a posthuman critique of Indian cities
• The biopolitics of animal being and welfare: dog control and care in the UK and India
• ‘Pig‐Sticking Princes’: Royal Hunting, Moral Outrage, and the Republican Opposition to Animal Abuse in Nineteenth‐and Early Twentieth‐Century Britain
• Covert Colonialism: governance, surveillance and political culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97
• ‘Alien’ Colonial Law, Anglo–Chinese Power Relations, and the End of the Hong Kong Refugee Regime