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HISTORY |
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What little is known of Singapore's ancient history relies heavily
upon legend and supposition. In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo
reported seeing a place called Chiamassie, which could also have been
Singapore: by then the island was known locally as Temasek - "sea town"
- and was a minor trading outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire. The
island's present name - from the Sanskrit Singapura , meaning "Lion City"
- was first recorded in the sixteenth century.
Throughout the fourteenth century, Singapura felt the squeeze as the
Ayutthaya and Majapahit empires of Thailand and Java struggled for
control of the Malay Peninsula. Around 1390, a Sumatran prince called
Paramesvara threw off his allegiance to the Javanese Majapahit Empire
and fled from Palembang to present-day Singapore. There, he murdered his
host and ruled the island until a Javanese offensive forced him to flee
north, up the Peninsula, where he and his son, Iskandar Shah,
subsequently founded the Melaka Sultanate.
With the rise of the Melaka Sultanate , Singapore evolved into an
inconsequential fishing settlement; a century or so later, the arrival
of the Portuguese in Melaka forced Malay leaders to flee southwards to
modern-day Johor Bahru for sanctuary. A Portuguese account of 1613
described the razing of an unnamed Malay outpost at the mouth of Sungei
Johor to the ground, an event which marked the beginning of two
centuries of historical limbo for Singapore.
Raffles and the British
By the late eighteenth century, with China opening up for trade with the
West, the British East India Company felt the need to establish outposts
along the Straits of Melaka to protect its interests. Penang was secured
in 1786, but with the Dutch expanding their rule in the East Indies
(Indonesia), a port was needed further south. Enter Thomas Stamford
Raffles . In 1818, the governor-general of India authorized Raffles,
then lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen (in Sumatra), to establish a
British colony at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula; early the
next year, he stepped ashore on the northern bank of the Singapore River
accompanied by Colonel William Farquhar, former resident of Melaka and
fluent in Malay. Despite living and working in a period of imperial
arrogance, Raffles maintained an unfailing concern for the welfare of
the people under his governorship, and a conviction that British
colonial expansion was for the general good. Today he is the man whom
history remembers as the founder of modern Singapore.
At the time of his first landing there, inhospitable swampland and tiger-infested
jungle covered Singapore, and its population is generally thought to
have numbered around 150, although some historians suggest it could have
been as high as a thousand. Raffles recognized the island's potential
for providing a deep-water harbour, and immediately struck a treaty with
Abdul Rahman , temenggong (chieftain) of Singapore, establishing a
British trading station there. The Dutch were furious at this British
incursion into what they considered their territory, but Raffles - who
still needed the approval of the Sultan of Johor for his outpost, as
Abdul Rahman was only an underling - disregarded Dutch sensibilities. He
approached the sultan's brother, Hussein, recognized him as the true
sultan, and concluded a second treaty with both the temenggong and His
Highness the Sultan Hussein Mohammed Shah . The Union Jack was raised,
and Singapore's future as a free trading post was set.
With its strategic position at the foot of the Straits of Melaka, and
with no customs duties levied on imported or exported goods, Singapore's
expansion was meteoric. The population had reached ten thousand by the
time of the first census in 1824, with Malays, Chinese, Indians and
Europeans arriving in search of work as coolies and merchants. In 1822,
Raffles set about drawing up the demarcation lines that divide present-day
Singapore. The area south of the Singapore River was earmarked for the
Chinese; a swamp at the mouth of the river was filled and the commercial
district established there. Muslims were settled around the Sultan's
Palace in today's Arab Quarter.
Nineteenth-century boom
In 1824, Sultan Hussein and the temenggong were brought out, and
Singapore ceded outright to the British. Three years later, the
fledgling state united with Penang and Melaka (now under British rule)
to form the Straits Settlements , which became a British crown colony in
1867. For forty years the island's laissez-faire economy boomed, though
life was chaotic, and disease rife. More and more immigrants poured onto
the island; by 1860 the population had reached eighty thousand, with
each ethnic community bringing its attendant cuisines, languages and
architecture. Arabs, Indians, Javanese and Bugis all came, but most
populous of all were the Chinese from the southern provinces of China,
who settled quickly, helped by the clan societies ( kongsis) already
establishing footholds on the island. The British, for their part,
erected impressive Neoclassical theatres, courts and assembly halls, and
in 1887 Singapore's most quintessentially British establishment, the
Raffles Hotel, opened for business.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the opening of the Suez Canal and
the advent of the steamship had consolidated Singapore's position at the
hub of international trade in the region, with the port becoming a major
staging post on the Europe-East Asia route. In 1877, Henry Ridley began
his one-man crusade to introduce the rubber plant into southeast Asia, a
move which further bolstered Singapore's importance as the island soon
became the world centre of rubber exporting. This status was further
enhanced by the slow but steady drawing of the Malay Peninsula under
British control - a process begun with the Treaty of Pangkor in 1874 and
completed in 1914 - which meant that Singapore gained further from the
mainland's tin- and rubber-based economy.
Between 1873 and 1913 trade increased eightfold, a trend which continued
well into the twentieth century. Singapore's Asian communities found
their political voice in the 1920s. In 1926, the Singapore Malay Union
was established, and four years later, the Chinese-supported Malayan
Communist Party (MCP). But grumblings of independence had risen to no
more than a faint whisper before an altogether more immediate problem
reared its head.
World War II
The bubble burst in 1942. In December 1941, the Japanese had bombed
Pearl Harbour and invaded the Malay Peninsula. Less than two months
later they were at the top of the causeway, safe from the guns of "Fortress
Singapore", which pointed south from what is now Sentosa island. The
inhabitants of Singapore had not been prepared for an attack from this
direction and on February 15, 1942, the fall of Singapore (which the
Japanese then renamed Syonan, or "Light of the South") was complete.
Winston Churchill called the British surrender "the worst disaster and
the largest capitulation in British history"; cruelly, it later
transpired that the Japanese forces had been outnumbered and their
supplies hopelessly stretched immediately prior to the surrender.
Three and a half years of brutal Japanese rule ensued, during which
thousands of civilians were executed in vicious anti-Chinese purges and
Europeans were either herded into Changi Prison , or marched up the
Peninsula to work on Thailand's infamous "'Death Railway". Less well-known
is the vicious campaign, known as Operation Sook Ching, mounted by the
military police force, or Kempeitai, during which upwards of 25,000
Chinese males between 18 and 50 years of age were shot dead at Punggol
and Changi beaches as enemies to the Japanese.
Towards independence
Following the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945,
Singapore was passed back into British hands, but things were never to
be the same. Singaporeans now wanted a say in the government of the
island, and in 1957 the British government agreed to the establishment
of an elected, 51-member legislative assembly. Full internal self-government
was achieved in May 1959, when the People's Action Party (PAP), led by
Cambridge law graduate Lee Kuan Yew , won 43 of the 51 seats. Lee became
Singapore's first prime minister, and quickly looked for the security of
a merger with neighbouring Malaya. For its part (despite reservations
about aligning with Singapore's predominantly Chinese population), anti-Communist
Malaya feared that extremists within the PAP would turn Singapore into a
Communist base, and accordingly preferred to have the state under its
wing.
In 1963, Singapore combined with Malaya, Sarawak and British North
Borneo (modern-day Sabah) to form the Federation of Malaysia . The
alliance, though, was an uneasy one, and within two years Singapore was
asked to leave the federation, in the face of outrage in Kuala Lumpur at
the PAP's attempts to break into Peninsular politics in 1964. Hours
after announcing Singapore's full independence , on August 9, 1965, a
tearful Lee Kuan Yew went on national TV and described the event as "a
moment of anguish". One hundred and forty-six years after Sir Stamford
Raffles had set Singapore on the world map, the tiny island, with no
natural resources of its own, faced the prospect of being consigned to
history's bottom drawer of crumbling colonial ports.
Contemporary Singapore
Instead, Lee's personal vision and drive transformed Singapore into an
Asian economic heavyweight, a position achieved at a price. Heavy-handed
censorship of the media was introduced, and even more disturbing was the
government's attitude towards political opposition . When the opposition
Worker's Party won a by-election in 1981, the candidate, JB Jeyaretham,
found himself charged with several criminal offences, and chased through
the Singaporean law courts for the next decade.
The archaic Internal Security Act still grants the power to detain
without trial anyone the government deems a threat to the nation, which
has kept political prisoner Chia Thye Poh under lock and key since 1966
for allegedly advocating violence. Population policies, too, have
brought criticism from abroad. These began in the early 1970s, with a
birth control campaign which proved so successful that it had to be
reversed.
At other times, Singapore tries so hard to reshape itself that it falls
into self-parody. "We have to pursue this subject of fun very seriously
if we want to stay competitive in the twenty-first century" was the
reaction of former Minister of State George Yeo, when confronted with
the fact that some foreigners find Singapore dull. The government's
annual courtesy campaign, which in 1996 urged the population to hold
lift doors open for neighbours and prevent their washing from dripping
onto passers-by below, appears equally risible to outsiders.
However, adults beyond a certain age remember how things were before
independence and, more importantly, before the existence of the Mass
Rapid Transit (MRT) system, housing projects and saving schemes. But
their children and grandchildren have no such perspective, and telltale
signs - presently nothing more extreme than feet up on MRT seats and
jaywalking - suggest that the government can expect more dissent in
future years. Already a substantial brain drain is afflicting the
country, as skilled Singaporeans choose to move abroad in the pursuit of
heightened civil liberties.
The man charged with leading Singapore into the new millennium is Goh
Chok Tong , who became prime minister upon Lee's retirement in 1990. Goh
has made it clear that he favours a more open form of government.
Certainly, he has the mandate to make whatever changes he wishes.
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