"This book is the first systematic study of the experience of the Hong Kong servicemen in the British armed forces during the colonial period. It puts the Hong Kong servicemen in the contexts of Hong Kong history, the history of overseas Chinese, the history of the British Empire, and the military history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It details the agency of Hongkongers, who were more often than not portrayed as victims or beneficiaries during the two world wars and the Cold War, and highlights the relevance of Hong Kong in the modern history of East Asia. It also looks at how the intertwined issues of class and race played out among these servicemen, who came from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. It reveals the complexity of the colonial Hong Kong society by illustrating the interplay between the colonisers and the colonised of different classes and ethnicities, and informs the ongoing discussion about colonial Hong Kong by providing concrete examples of the collaboration between ethnic groups."--