Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent early years of settlement growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the islgained a terrible reputation as a diseased deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapour miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical political landscape, though not necessarily fthe better.
Caught in a frenzy to rebuild the city in the devastating aftermath, this book charts the complex interplay between a cast of figures, from military surveyors, naval doctors, Indian sepoys, corrupt paranoid officials to opium traders, arsonists, Chinese contractors, sojourner architects artists. However, Hong Kong’s ‘construction’ was not just physical but also imagined. Architecture, cartography, epidemiology, urban infrastructure offer a critical forensic lens through which to examine the shifting ideologies of public health space, race place-making, commerce politics, all against the radical ation of the settlement—from shore-hugging to climbing city—in response to miasma theory, a pre-bacteriological belief in gaseous emanations from a sickly environment.
This kaleidoscopic study draws upon many unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, advertisements. As this history is a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of nate visual evidence—from previously lost watercolour illustrations of the city to maps, plans, drawings— that individually in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange rapidly evolving society. Form Follows Fever sheds new light on a period often considered the colonial Dark Ages in the territory’s history.
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Christopher Cowell’s account of British Hong Kong offers the most detailed account yet of the crucial first decade of the colony’s ence. His engagement with the medley of actors, from across the globe, that contributed to the colony’s ultimate success is both intriguing revealing. It is a brilliant miniature of colonial urban development in action.
—Alex Bremner, Edinburgh School of Architecture Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh
This is a beautifully written book. Cowell offers fresh perspectives on how malaria played a decisive role in shaping the forms of the colonial built environment the future course of the city. It is a must-read fanyone interested in Hong Kong history urbanism.
—Cecilia L. Chu, School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
A wonderfully rich detailed architectural history of Hong Kong’s first decade as a British colony that sheds new light on the consequential effects of disease climate on what was built, by whom, why.
—Cole Roskam, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong
Form Follows Fever shows how Hong Kong’s path from a so-called ‘barren island’ to a thriving port city was often a perilous one. It is a wonderfully original insightful study that weaves together an unlikely melange of urban history, military engineering, medical history.
—John M. Carroll, Department of History, The University of Hong Kong