Prior to the official handover of sovereignty to the People's Republic of China on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was administered as a British Crown Colony and later a British Dependent Territory. British governance began following the First Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which ceded Hong Kong Island in perpetuity, followed by the subsequent leasing of the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories under the 1898 Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory.