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The talk sets the scene at Canton’s pre-1842 environment, where foreign merchants were confined to Thirteen Factories and unable to form autonomous institutions. Following the Treaty of Nanking, major trading houses — Dent & Co., Jardine Matheson, Turner & Co., and others — relocated to Hong Kong, establishing both commercial and social institutions that reflected British prestige and hierarchy.
Alan then looks ar the personalities and firms that shaped Hong Kong, many of them the Hong Kong Club’s founding and early membership. He details the rise and fall of Dent & Co., its rivalry with Jardine Matheson, and the influence of taipans such as John Dent, Francis Chomley and David Jardine, who were pivotal in both commerce and governance.
Through archival references, maps, and period illustrations - including satirical pieces from China Punch - Alan discusses 19th-century Hong Kong’s mercantile elite, blending architectural history, biographical sketches and commentary on the territory’s transformation from a trading outpost to a structured colonial society.
Alan Macdonald is from Glasgow, United Kingdom, and was educated at the University of Nottingham. He has had a varied international career in development planning, the master planning of human settlements and urban design. For the last 35 years in Hong Kong, he has been a Director of URBIS Limited, a multi-disciplinary design company established in Hong Kong. He is a member and a fellow of several local and international professional institutes.
In Hong Kong, Alan has specialised in the design and implementation of new development areas, new town design and urban renewal projects. He has also worked on many development and design projects in mainland China, Africa, the Middle East and India. His projects have won over 50 design awards and won the RTPI Award for Design Excellence in 2017. Alan is a past Chieftain of the Hong Kong St Andrew’s Society.
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