Throughout the media analyses leading up to the return of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997, one rarely, if ever, saw reference to the fact that Hong Kong was, historically and legally, divided into three parts. Analyses were preoccupied with the legislative and judicial mechanisms that were being put in place and with speculations about the transition to Chinese rule. The circumstances of Hong Kong's three-staged acquisition as a British colony were rarely considered. After reading Unequal Treaty, Peter Wesley- Smith's revision of his 1980 book with the same title, one can conclude that the circumstances of acquisition of the third piece of China's San On County were so complex, imprecise, and generally messy that they would defy easy media analysis. Only a legal scholar like Wesley-Smith could make sense of the muddle, putting it into the contexts of international law, British colonial policy and practice, and the competing colonial power relations of the time.

Wesley-Smith, professor of constitutional law at Hong Kong University, writes fluently, perceptively, clearly, and with occasional dry humour about a legal situation that was imprecisely defined from the beginning and potentially volatile to the end. He is writing, of course, about a relationship between two countries, Great Britain and China (later the people's Republic of China), on a topic of special sensitivity to China, the annexation of a portion of its territory without compensation, substantially increasing the presence of a foreign power on its shores. Given the sensitivity of the subject, Wesley-Smith shows the care of a legal scholar in substantiating his arguments with an impressive array of both primary and secondary sources, demonstrating his commitment to achieving as much accuracy as possible in analyzing a situation that was lacking in precision throughout its history. His book remains highly readable because much of this material is relegated to footnotes, so that the main text is clear and uncluttered. A criticism one might make is that he relies entirely on English language sources, with the result that Chinese perspectives are underrepresented and derivative. One might also have wished that he had given more consideration to the distinctive political status granted to, and claimed by, the people resident in the New Territories at the time of the lease, and their descendants.

The book's title conveys its primary focus, the concept of an unequal treaty and its place (or lack of place) in international law. According to Wesley-Smith, the Chinese have consistently maintained that the New Territories were ceded through such an agreement. Ironically, as power relationships changed, the possibility of China's reclaiming Hong Kong became more of a reality, but by that time the People's Republic of China chose to maintain the status quo and, eventually, to negotiate a return to China of the three parts of Hong Kong at the time when the lease of the New Territories expired. Although Hong Kong Island and Kowloon had been ceded ³in perpetuity² through earlier treaties, they were also returned.

Wesley-Smith's first five chapters are devoted to the negotiation of the treaty in its immediate political context, the resistance of the Chinese and the implementation of British administration. He then analyzes various legal problems: the unresolved definition of boundaries, the status of the walled city of Kowloon, and maritime customs and other legal matters. His ninth chapter is devoted to a chronology of the question of rendition and the tenth to the meaning(s) of the convention.

He leaves the reader at the end of chapter 10 with the problem of the legal definition of an unequal treaty, which is continued in his epilogue along with a lucid discussion of China's and Britain's delicate avoidance of the problem of legal precision. He suggests that it was this avoidance which enabled Hong Kong to continue in its ambiguous status until Britain decided in the 1980s that a more legalistic approach was necessary. This resulted, ultimately, in the end of British administration not only of the New Territories, but of all of Hong Kong.

Elizabeth Lominska Johnson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada