This article analyses the Welsh presence in twentieth-century Hong Kong, with a special focus on the Second World War and the post-war period up to the present day. Drawing on archival sources from Wales and Hong Kong, newspapers and fieldwork, the article explores community activities in times of conflict and peace, shedding light on the resilience of Welsh associations – the St David's Society and the Welsh Male Voice Choir – across the 1997 handover divide. It also zooms in on the diverse experience of Welsh POWs and civilian internees in Hong Kong during the Second World War and its aftermath. The Welsh experience in Hong Kong reveals contrasting trends: both unity and divergent interests as Welsh, and both close interaction and separation from the majority Chinese population and other nationals. The article argues that the Welsh presence in Hong Kong is one marked by longevity and different global connections.
This article examines the pivotal role of Welsh Baptist missionary Timothy Richard (1845–1919) in facilitating transcultural knowledge exchange during China's late Qing reform era (1891– 1915). As head of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge Among the Chinese (SDCGK) in Shanghai, Richard translated seminal texts, for example Robert Mackenzie's The Nineteenth Century: A History (1880) among others, thus shaping China's discourse on history and modernisation as well as paving the way for later reformers and historians to reimagine history beyond both dynastic and imperialist narratives.
This article presents the first case study of the cultural enmeshing of Welsh and imperial ideologies as a result of Empire encounters by analysing the visits of zamindar and Calcutta businessman Dwarkanath Tagore and his nephew Chunder Mohun Chatterjee to the Abergavenny eisteddfodau at the invitation of Lady Augusta Hall of Llanofer. The celebrity cult surrounding Tagore will be compared to the unsuccessful diplomatic campaign of Maratha sardar Rungo Bapojee Gupte on behalf of the deposed raja of Satara, and Gupte's political association with radical Whig MP Lord Benjamin Hall of Llanofer, demonstrating fundamental differences in the contemporary treatment of different regions and rulers of the Indian subcontinent, and their reflection in the Anglophone historiography on India. This essay will lay the groundwork for attempting more differentiated approaches to researching imperial influences on smaller European cultures and different regions of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century.
This chapter sets out the background and content of this special issue of articles on the theme of 'The Welsh in Asia: New Perspectives on Global Wales in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries'. It begins by assessing the impact of the rise of imperial and global histories on the study of Welsh people and communities worldwide, before setting out the methodological approaches and sources adopted by article authors in this issue. By examining the lives of individual actors and the communities and associations they formed and sustained, the contributions to this volume seek to reposition Wales as an independent actor with its own agency in an Asian and global context.
Between 1945 and 1946, a Welsh Society was active within the British armed forces in Rangoon, formed by members recently engaged in Burma and India, and awaiting repatriation or redeployment. Based on bilingual materials from the National Library of Wales, this article traces the development of this shortlived society, examining its organisational formation, key events, and expressions of Welsh identity. Situated within the broader context of British colonies in Asia, I argue that this wartime edition of an ethnic society from the British Isles was both a conscious assertion of Welshness, and a product of colonial exclusivity and privileges tied to Britishness.
