Nathan Road is one of the most famous streets in Asia.

Walk Nathan Road on any evening and you will find the whole world there. Mainland Chinese tourists with rolling suitcases. Commuters pouring out of the MTR. Shoppers moving between the jewelry stores and electronics shops. Visitors disappearing into the labyrinthine corridors of Chungking Mansions. The neon signs are famous. The density is famous. The road runs the length of the Kowloon Peninsula from the harbor to the hills, and it has been called Hong Kong’s Golden Mile.

Yet almost nobody can say who Nathan was.

Sir Matthew Nathan was born in Paddington, London, in 1862. He was the second of nine children of Jonah Nathan, a Jewish businessman of German origin, and his wife Miriam. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and trained as an engineer. He served in Sudan and India before entering Britain’s colonial service. In March 1899, Queen Victoria appointed him to govern Sierra Leone. It was the first time in the history of the British Empire that a Jew had been appointed to a colonial governorship. From there he went to the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana, before arriving in Hong Kong in 1904 as its thirteenth governor.

He was forty-two years old, single, and about to build something that would........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)