Was knowledge always the basis of colonial power? If so, were colonial rulers invariably confident of the accuracy of their knowledge? Among the Victorian British, for example, there was widespread agreement that India could be known and represented as a series of facts (Cohn 1996, 4). Based on this agreement, the British colonial officials, missionaries, and entrepreneurs tried to demonstrate their power through what Bernard Cohn calls “officializing procedures”: counting, gathering, characterizing, ordering, and classifying the populations and their attributes in India. Such procedures offered numerous agents of colonization “seemingly immense culture-defining capacity” (Cooper and Stoler 1989, 609). Yet, their power was “never so omniscient nor secure to imagine itself as totalizing” (Dirks 1992, 7). Their insecurity may have been the result of their incomplete knowledge or even ignorance.

When the united states embarked on a campaign of overseas colonial conquest a century ago, it was for some Americans an unquestionably righteous venture in political tutelage. “[God] has made [the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples] adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples,” proclaimed Indiana Senator Albert J. Beveridge. “And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world” (Snyder 1962). The largest and most important U.S. colony was of course the Philippines, where a campaign of military conquest began in 1898 and continued into the early years of the new century.

An the spring of 1984, officials of Taishan County, Guangdong, erected a statue in the central square of the county seat to commemorate the man whose life represented the highest attainment of ambition, idealism, and patriotism in recent local history. The man so honored was neither a conquering general nor a communist zealot. Taishan's chosen hero was a master of commerce and industry, who overcame the early disadvantages of birth to an impoverished family to become a wealthy and successful businessman, a powerful labor contractor, a railroad engineer, and the owner of a thriving import-export business based in the American city of Seattle. Chen Yixi (1844–1928) was not distinguished by financial success alone, for many other Taishanese men went to America, where, by dint of hard work, determination, and luck, they also became wealthy men.

My lecture is a lecture on biology. Therefore we will not be dealing with venereal diseases or perversions but with perfectly normal sexual phenomena. From my experience during the past two semesters I know that most of my students, or about sixty percent, still live chaste lives. We will become familiar with many technical terms and foreign (European) words. On the one hand, using technical scientific terminology is unavoidable, and on the other, we use it to avoid making obscene associations … I expect you to be familiar with the textbooks in physics and naturalhistory and urge you to also take a look at the textbooks from girls' schools … I consider knowledge a product, lecturers like myself both the creators of knowledge and at the same time original researchers and brokers of knowledge.

Hong Kongs Political Development since the 1960s has seemed to indicate bright prospects for democratization, since Hong Kong had attained most of the “prerequisites” for democratization (Lipset 1994). Hong Kong had considerable wealth and a rising middle class, no extreme or intolerable inequalities, and a high level of socioeconomic development. According to the wealth explanation of Lipset (1959) and Huntington (1984), Hong Kong's robust economy should make possible high levels of urbanization, industrialization, education, literacy, and mass media exposure, all of which are conducive to democracy.