Marking the Enclosed Area Cartography, statute and clearance in the Taipingshan plague resumption, Hong Kong, 1894–1898
Research article Marking the Enclosed Area Cartography, statute and clearance in the Taipingshan plague resumption, Hong Kong, 1894–1898 Histsyn · Independent research Compiled 29 September 2026 · Endnotes and bibliography after The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th ed. Abstract A single linen sheet drawn in the Hong Kong Public Works Department— Plan Shewing Property in Enclosed Area in Taipinshan , preserved as HKRS 207-12-5 in the Hong Kong Public Records Office—was signed off in December 1894 as the working cartographic instrument of the Taipingshan Resumption Ordinance, 1894 (No. 8 of 1894). This paper reads that sheet against the statute, the Legislative Council debates, the Gazette notices of compensation, and the Director of Public Works’s progress reports, in order to reconstruct the full administrative sequence by which roughly ten acres of the densest Chinese quarter in Victoria were closed, walled, resumed, valued, demolished and returned to the land market between May 1...