Registration for RCCHC "China and the World: Historical Interactions" Talk Series - Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong

Topic: Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong

Speaker: Prof. Catherine S. Chan 

                Assistant Professor and Associate Program Director of the MA program in Digital History in Global Asia

                Lingnan University 

Date: 24 November 2026 (Tue)

Time: 14:30 - 16:00

Venue: DE309, PolyU Main Campus

Language: English

Abstract: 

    Savage explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s.

      Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals.

Speaker's Biography: 

       Catherine S. Chan is an Assistant Professor and Associate Program Director of the MA program in Digital History in Global Asia at Lingnan University. She is a social and urban historian of East and Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on diaspora, heritage, animals, and the connections between Macau, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Portuguese, British, and American empires.