Sir Matthew Nathan (1862-1939) was a British Jewish soldier and colonial administrator. Educated at the Royal Military Academy, he joined the Royal Engineers and served in India and Africa. Appointed Governor of the Gold Coast in 1900, he was the first Jewish person to govern a British colony, and on 29 July 1904 he arrived to become Hong Kong's thirteenth Governor. He pushed railways and infrastructure hard: construction of the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway from Tsim Sha Tsui to Lo Wu, some thirty-five kilometres, began in 1906 and opened on 1 October 1910 as the transport spine between Kowloon and the New Territories, while he extended roads, waterworks and urban planning and worked to improve Kowloon's transport and sanitation. Transport developed quickly under him: the Hong Kong tramway opened along the northern shore on 30 July 1904 and the colony's first single-deck buses arrived in 1906. Kowloon's widest artery, formerly Robinson Road, was renamed Nathan Road after him on 19 March 1909. On 18 September 1906 a typhoon struck Hong Kong head-on, one of the deadliest natural disasters since the colony's founding, wrecking coastal shipping and buildings and killing more than ten thousand people, after which an official review examined the Observatory's warning system and stronger storm warnings and shelters were introduced. He left in 1907 to become Governor of Queensland until 1913 and later served in Britain, including as Under-Secretary for Ireland; he died in 1939.
Nathan reshaped the spatial layout of Kowloon and the New Territories through railways and roads; the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the Nathan Road named after him became the axes of the city's later expansion, while the official review and stronger storm shelters that followed the 1906 typhoon strengthened the colony's disaster response.
Achievements
- 1900 · Became Governor of the Gold Coast, the first Jewish governor of a British colony.
- 1906 · Oversaw the start of work on the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the response to the 1906 typhoon disaster.
- 1909 · Kowloon's main artery was renamed Nathan Road from Robinson Road in his honour.