Singapore: The Unexpected Nation 9789812307972

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The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued almost 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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History of Nation-Building Series

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I5EA5 INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2008 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg The five-volume series of Nation-Building Histories was made possible with the generous support of the Lee Foundation, Singapore and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Taipei. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2008 Edwin Lee The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Lee, Edwin. Singapore : the unexpected nation. 1. Singapore—History. 2. Singapore—Politics and government. I. Title. DS610.4 L47 2008 ISBN 978-981-230-795-8 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-230-796-5 (hard cover) ISBN 978-981-230-797-2 (PDF) Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd

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For Harold Tan Zhi Yong

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Contents

Preface

ix

Introduction by Wang Gungwu

xv

Chapter One

Beginnings: From Temasek to Singapore

Chapter Two

Race, History and Nationalism

21

Chapter Three

Contestants and Contesting Visions

51

Chapter Four

The Accidental Chief Minister

99

Chapter Five

The Terminal Chief Minister

131

Chapter Six

The Embattled Prime Minister

159

Chapter Seven

Merger: Contesting Ownership and Principles

189

Chapter Eight

Terms of Disendearment

217

Chapter Nine

Dare to be Equal

239

Chapter Ten

The Way to Survive

265

Chapter Eleven

National Service: The Price of Independence

281

Chapter Twelve

Politics of Education

295

Chapter Thirteen

Home Ownership, National Stability and the New Middle Classes

323

University and Nation

359

Chapter Fourteen

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viii • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

Chapter Fifteen

Toh’s Nation-Building Thrust

387

Chapter Sixteen

Nantah: Between Community and Nation

417

Chapter Seventeen

Self-Renewal: Talents for a Tough Act

453

Chapter Eighteen

The Consensual Prime Minister

487

Chapter Nineteen

Confucianism, Christianity, Chineseness

533

Chapter Twenty

Singapore Dreams, Singapore Dilemmas

559

Chapter Twenty-One

The Hyphenated Singaporean

597

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Unexpected Nation

633

Bibliographical Note

667

Index

675

The Author

708

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Preface

The Second World War sealed the old era of British rule in Malaya, and opened a new final chapter. The new men who ruled Malaya came out with liberal, Fabian ideas of colonial stewardship. They aimed to remake Malaya into a unified multiracial country, a Malayan Malaya, to which they would eventually transfer power. But they had not reckoned with how Malaya would receive them. Malay nationalists opposed them, forcing them to put Malay sovereignty and Malay rights first, though agreeing to the unification of all the Malay states in a new Federation of Malaya. Then, the Malayan Communist Party, Britain’s Chinese ally behind Japanese lines in the war just ended, edged towards a war of insurgency in the uneasy peace-time. Concurrently, the British officials who started as liberals switched to advocating draconian laws. However, successive British proconsuls worked to keep the Malayan Malaya ideal alive until they had to accept defeat not by the guns of communism but by the politics of communalism. The young Lee Kuan Yew has his political education in this war-torn, troubled period, but from Britain where he was reading law after the war. His thinking was cast in the same liberal mould as the British political and colonial establishment. He arrived at a definition of the Malayan nation that mirrored theirs. Something else very important that Lee grasped very early was that Britain had no intention to leave Malaya in the hands of the Malayan Communist Party. Lee, like a group of young, highly intelligent radicals who came slightly before him, was also to work with the communists, but unlike them, who were drawn like moths to the flame, he reserved some space, playing on the ambiguity in the connection. And the connection enabled him to beat his right wing contemporaries, helped by their own wrong moves. It also helped Lee that the state of play developed such that, ironically, both the British and the Malayan Communist Party

ix

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x • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

had to take him as the only man who could further their cause. Later still, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the father of independence in Malaya, had also to deal with none other than Lee, as one prime minister (of Malaya) to another (of Singapore). It had become clear by this time that the initiative to act belonged less and less to the British than to the two leading contenders thrown up by history: Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew. They both had to face a third contender, the Malayan Communist Party. The merger of Singapore and Malaya in a Federation of Malaysia, which included the British Bornean colonies for a better ethnic balance, made for the triple entente, Singapore, Malaya, Britain, that decimated the communists. But post-merger, Lee could make no headway in his quest for a Malaysian Malaysia, just as British proconsuls had earlier failed in theirs for a Malayan Malaya. In the upshot, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, a profoundly bitter defeat for Lee. Yet this debacle also made Lee and his colleagues, the first generation PAP ministers, more determined to pull together and attempt to build the Singapore nation that they had once believed an impossibility. They were emboldened by desperation, did audacious things and with a severity that became their trademark style of governance. It was not until the time of Lee’s successor, Goh Chok Tong, that a gentler spirit presided over what was by then a different Singapore, affluent and more at ease with itself. At the time of independence, the English-educated were in charge. This made a big difference to the future of the nation, and therefore, to history. The first generation PAP ministers were English-educated, and likewise, the second generation too. The first generation looked to the civil service and the University of Singapore, which were the preserves of the Englisheducated, as their natural helpmates. But there was conflict with the university stemming from the scholars’ defence of their academic freedom and the government’s adamance that matters of national importance should take precedence. Another problem was that the university did not entirely sympathise with the government’s technological plans and take Engineering to itself as a faculty. It was not until Dr Toh Chin Chye, minister and academic, could be spared for the vice-chancellorship that significant progress was made. It took some time for Singapore’s “best and brightest” to see that they should be partners with the government in nation-building.

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Preface • xi

For the Chinese-educated Chinese, who were the majority of the people, independence held an unexpected reason for disillusionment. The economic development which followed, with multinationals playing a dominant role, caused Chinese language and education to decline in importance. The Chinese-medium Nanyang University ceased to exist in the form the Chinese community intended it. This was the inevitable result of the scramble for the rewards of economic development which many believed would come through an education in English as the first language. The irony was that at a later stage of economic development the government began to worry that the Chinese who chose English as their first language were losing the Chinese cultural values believed to have underpinned East Asian economic success, including of course, Singapore’s. Ironically too, the Chinese-medium schools which had inculcated these values had disappeared, save for the few specially supported as premier bilingual institutions. Other ways to reconnect the Chinese to their ancestral culture had to be found, and were, as seen over time in the promotion of Confucian ethics in school and society, in the national values initiative, and in the Speak Mandarin Campaign in which Mandarin was equated with tradition, (an ironic reversal of the May Fourth’s identification of Mandarin with modernity). The Malays, Indians and Eurasians each had their own perspective on independence. For the Malays, it meant losing the numerical edge they had in Malaysia. For the Eurasians, it aroused fears about a future without the British “protector” around. The common worry of all three minority races was that they would be marginalized. Ethnic divisions mattered more than class, despite economic modernization and the burgeoning growth of middle classes. They had another worry when they witnessed the government’s later initiatives to revivify Chinese tradition. The building blocks for constructing the Singapore nation were sufficiently complex for the master builder Lee Kuan Yew to wish that he could have had something simpler to work with. This book contains the political narrative up to Singapore’s unexpected independence and the sequel describing nation-building in Singapore which spans the rule of two prime ministers, Lee Kuan Yew and his successor, Goh Chok Tong. The book deals with the making of a national service army;

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xii • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

with the PAP way to economic development, trade unionism, education, housing and home ownership; with the position of two pre-existing universities in the new nation, a story of decolonization, depoliticization, and demise, as the case may be. The book deals with PAP ideology: how that changed from an understated Anglophone Fabian-flavoured socialism to a highly articulated American Ivy League-stamped Neo-Confucian culturalism. It shows how the culture-based thesis of the Neo-Confucian school fed into the PAP leaders’ later self-image as modern Asians, and their conviction that economic vibrancy was compatible with a consensual political culture. As well, the book deals with issues of ethnicity and national identity in the context of challenges from within and without, in the latter case from globalization and global Islamism.

This book is one of a series on nation-building in Southeast Asia. Professor Wang Gungwu, who conceived this series, invited five historians from the region each to write a book on their country. I am privileged to have been the one for Singapore. It has been a great stimulus and learning experience for me to share in this enterprise with Professor Wang and four other distinguished historians: Charnvit Kasetsiri, Cheah Boon Kheng, Reynaldo C. Ileto and Taufik Abdullah. Professor Wang chaired many discussions with us on the challenges historians face in writing nationbuilding history. He then held a conference involving more Southeast Asianist historians which resulted in another book in the series, Wang Gungwu, ed., Nation-Building: Five Southeast Asian Histories (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005). In it, Professor Wang defined (again) the problem we faced as that of engaging with both the national and the contemporary. Another contributor, Craig J. Reynolds, commented on our attitude to the idea of the nation, saying we celebrate and embrace the nation, and believe the nation-state capable of giving expression to our political, social and economic aspirations. It has been heartening for me to be in such company. Ours is an attitude, Professor Reynolds observed, that is not universal among societies around the world which had attained independence from colonial rule.

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Preface • xiii

Yet another contributor, Albert Lau, discussed the lack of sources, of perspective, of probably objectivity, and the encumbrance of a dominant official version. But Professor Lau continued: don’t let that stop you from trying and being true to yourself, citing the late Raffles Professor Wong Lin Ken’s axiom on the historian’s integrity. This too is an encouragement to me, and also a reminder, finally, to state my authorial responsibility for the finished product. Huge thanks go to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies for supporting this project. I have in mind in particular, Mrs Y.L. Lee, who heads the secretariat; Mr Tee Teow Lee, administrative officer; Mrs May Wong and Mrs Betty Kwan who typed my manuscript so beautifully; Mrs Triena Ong, Managing Editor for her useful advice, Ms Fatanah Sarmani and Mrs Celina Kiong for their kind assistance. My deep appreciation extends to the Central Library of the National University of Singapore, and to the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library in the National Library Building. I have received excellent help from their librarians and other staff. Edwin Lee

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Introduction Wang Gungwu

The Series This series of histories on nation-building in Southeast Asia had its beginnings in Bangkok at the 14th Conference of the International Association of the Historians of Asia (IAHA). At that meeting, I noted that nation-building in Southeast Asia began fifty years ago and suggested that it was time for historians to write about that phenomenon. Most books on the region’s new nations have been written by journalists and social scientists. I asked whether historians would tell the story differently. Decades of anti-colonial nationalism came to a climax with the Japanese invasion of 1941–45. New states like those of the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma were born immediately after the war, followed soon by those of Malaysia and Singapore. The independence of a unified Vietnam was delayed by a bitter war and this held back the liberation of the two other Indochina states, Cambodia and Laos, but the independence of all three was only a matter of time. Many of the protagonists of the early phases of nation-building have described their roles in this new process. Political commentators and journalists provided up-to-date accounts and analyses. But historians of the region have been concerned not to write prematurely about this subject. Many were, like me, fascinated by the first generation of nationalist leaders, men like Sukarno, Tengku Abdul Rahman and Ho Chi Minh, followed by Lee Kuan Yew, Soeharto, Ferdinand Marcos and Ne Win, but hesitant to take on full-length studies about the nations they had set out to build. Through their leadership, their peoples were offered sharply distinct visions of their countries’ future. Would historians wait, as they are wont to do, for xv

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xvi • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

all sources to be available before they began research on their countries? How long would it be before the story of each country in Southeast Asia is told by the historians themselves? When I returned from the Bangkok conference, I brought the question to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (lSEAS) and was gratified when the then director, Professor Chan Heng Chee, encouraged me to try and find out. With that support, I approached five of the leading historians of the original members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN in 1968 consisted of Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore). They were Taufik Abdullah, Charnvit Kasetsiri, Reynaldo Ileto, Cheah Boon Kheng and Edwin Lee. We met to discuss the feasibility of a joint project to write the contemporary histories of these five countries. They agreed that this was worth doing and I sought ISEAS and other funding to allow us to proceed. The support we received enabled us to meet and hold a series of meetings to define the scope of the project. We began our meetings by focusing on the common features of the Southeast Asian “nation-state”. We knew that there had been attempts to study the early products of new nationalisms in the region. It was clear that some of the peoples of each country were less prepared than others to be citizens of these nation-states. Furthermore, the unfamiliar models taken from Europe have seemed alien, and each of the leaders who advocated using these models often had great difficulty explaining why anyone of them should be adopted. We also noted that historians in these countries have closely observed the stresses and strains that were generated, and some have felt the urge to study the actual business of nation-building more systematically. The five historians who met with me to discuss this phenomenon felt that they would not wait any longer before they began their task. They agreed that they would use their historical skills to take on this project. We first decided on the kind of a series we should write. Very early, we agreed that each country had its own story and each author would write a volume about his own country. At the same time, we should try to find out how much the five countries had in common and whether we should adopt a common approach to the subject. From the discussions over several months outlining the main features of the nation-building story in the

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Introduction • xvii

region, it became increasingly clear that there were several kinds of stories here. Despite their coming together in a regional organization like ASEAN, each of the five had very different experiences inside their countries. While we were not surprised by this fact, it was astonishing how contrasting their respective stories were. The more we surveyed what each country had to do to define the kind of nationhood it wanted, the more it seemed that the ingredients each started with had forced their leaders to seek very different routes to achieve their goals. We agreed that it would be a mistake for us to try to treat them as if they were different examples of some given model or models. Although the foreign models that each country used may have appeared to share common characteristics, what each country inherited from previous regimes at the point of independence was so different that we had to think afresh what needed to be done to capture the essence of each experience. We agreed that these differences justified our adopting distinct and separate approaches to each story. Ultimately, each volume would follow the dynamics of change that each country encountered and allow that to determine the shape of the history that the country should have. This series of histories is the result. The writing has taken longer than we first anticipated. We are grateful to Professor Chan Heng Chee’s successors, Professor Chia Siow Yue and Ambassador Kesavapany, for their sustained support for our project. In addition, the Lee Foundation, Singapore, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Taipei, helped to fund the project and I would like to thank them for their generous support. Let me place the series in a broader context. The study of modern nationalism was the work of European historians. The historians of the American and French Revolutions were the first to underline the global significance of the nation-state project while others looked further back to study the evolutionary stages of earlier nations like The Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Portugal. During the nineteenth century, historians worked with linguists, philosophers and lawyers to shape narrower kinds of nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe. Their work stimulated social scientists later to embark on theoretical explanations of what the nation-state system meant to the world. The work of historians, however, continued to be influential, most of all by providing ideas for many of the Asian nationalists of the

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xviii • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

twentieth century. Those who studied in Western universities, in particular, were inspired by these histories to use the ideas in them to prepare their platforms for political leadership. For the post-World War II period, nationalism was largely seen in the region as a positive development, an organized quest for independence, freedom, and modernization. The Cold War determined that leaders of the newly independent countries could look in at least two different political directions. Some chose to build their nations with the help of capitalism and liberal democracy. These would use the Western European models as the basis for nationhood and, for them, the best way to modernity was through an open market economy. Soon, they found the United States more than willing to help them along that route. Others chose to follow the socialist path either against the capitalist democracies or seeking some kind of neutralism in the Cold War. These were encouraged by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to contest the global economic and military power represented strongly in Asia by the United States. The more radical among them went further to advocate the overthrow of neo-colonial and feudal structures by mobilizing the working poor who were the majority in each of their countries. The new leaders soon discovered how difficult nation-building was. It was not enough to proclaim independence. They needed outside help if they wanted to modernize quickly. Large amounts of capital were needed to build a new infrastructure for industrial development. Basic literacy was essential, so were the skills that could only come from secondary and tertiary education for the next few generations. But the nation-state as a new kind of polity was more alien than most people realized at the time. Learning from Western and Eastern Europe, or Japan, China or the United States, may have looked easy for the small group of elites who captured power in the post-colonial states, but building a stable and prosperous nation has been much more elusive. The responses by historians in the former colonial territories of Southeast Asia have varied from country to country, from those in older countries like the kingdom of Thailand to that of the Philippines, and from those in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore to those of war-torn states like Burma (Myanmar), Vietnam and Cambodia. Up to now, these different national

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Introduction • xix

experiences have largely been studied professionally by political scientists, and the dominance by political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists has continued to the present day. On the whole, there have been few academic historians of the region who have ventured into the period after 1950. This is understandable. The first generation of historians had enough to do to write the story of national origins, often to meet a teleological need, because they realized that the task of nation-building from scratch was a painful one. Some felt it their duty to delineate the contours of the future by giving a new and greater certainty to their countries’ more distant pasts. However, I believe that historians here, as in Europe and elsewhere, will have an important part in shaping future understanding of the phenomenon of nation-building in this part of the world. It is now more than fifty years since many of the new states began making their respective nations. There is now a rich record for historians to study and some official files are open for the first decades of nationhood. Those who wish to bring history closer to the present can now begin to do so. Theirs is a different kind of training, and their intellectual make-up and methodology have much to offer the subject. Therefore, it is time for more historians to take up the challenge and tell the story of the nation-building that many of them have themselves lived through. More than ever, we should not depend on existing theories of nationalism and what they do to the actual task of building nations. The study of each national history should take into account the specific conditions of the nationalism found within its borders. When more historians write their countries’ contemporary nation-building history, other social scientists may look at the subject afresh, examine new facts and interpretations, and re-assess the theoretical work done so far. They might find that a new set of theories would be needed to make sense of what the new nation-states of Southeast Asia have achieved. Or, they might find that the simultaneous development of nations in the context of an exceptional regionalism like ASEAN has rendered previous ideas of nationalism inapplicable, if not irrelevant, and a new paradigm is needed. Until we have done the work, it is premature to talk about a borderless region, least of all a new world order in which nation-states and nationalisms will begin to fade away. From what is known so far of the modern history of “a world of nation-states”, it would seem that

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xx • Singapore: The Unexpected Nation

nation-states are here to stay, if only as basic units of regional groupings that will increasingly play a major role as distinct protagonists. Therefore, the sooner we have the more recent developments of aspiring nationstates fully studied by historians in their regional setting, the sooner we will know how to live with them and even how to make them serve the cause of peace in our region.

Singapore The story of Singapore as a colony that had to change its borders several times but in the end became one of the world’s most successful developmental states has attracted much attention. Some of that attention is focused on the speed and direction of the republic’s economic growth. Some others choose to regret the policies used to ensure political control. This has led to lively debates about ends and means, and to accusations and refutations. Invariably these have led to growing interest in how decisions are made at each stage, not least in the way battles by leading protagonists are lost and won. The number of social scientists, public policy specialists, management experts, business analysts and journalists who have examined Singapore’s progress is growing. Despite Singapore’s reputation as a technocratic state that kept its secrets well, there is in fact more information available about how the city-state works than most people realize. But one part of the country’s story has been more difficult to tell. It concerns the complex and sensitive efforts to nurture a harmonious multicultural society in which its several ethnic groups are ready to work for a common goal. There is also the ongoing but crucial task to inspire young Singaporeans to keep focused on a single national future. The political leaders are keenly aware of the problems they face in order to sustain their vision of a Singapore nation and this is obvious in the attention they pay to this theme year after year ever since the colony metamorphosed from a state in federal Malaysia to an independent country. Their success in building a strong and stable state cannot guarantee that there will always be a Singapore nation, but they are keenly aware that the state’s determination is a necessary condition if such a nation is to emerge and thrive. However spectacularly its economic goals are achieved and even surpassed, the

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Introduction • xxi

social bonding and sharing of cultural values that provide a nation with strong political foundations cannot be engineered. Unlike nuts and bolts and the basic needs for food, clothing and shelter, this sharing needs the willing participation of the people living in Singapore. In order to be deeply felt, the hearts and minds of all levels of society have to be engaged in a sustained discourse about the kind of country they would like to see for them and their children. This issue was recognized at the start of Singapore’s unexpected independence in August 1965. Ever since then, there have been no illusions that preparations to enable the island’s people to acquire a common ideal of nationhood would have to begin afresh. No one failed to notice that three quarters of the population were of Chinese descent. And it was known that many of them hoped that, however pluralistic the rhetoric, the aspirations of the majority community should be allowed to shape the nature of that state. How that fact would impact on the minority ethnic groups of Singapore was, therefore, of immediate concern. Among the first steps towards nationhood that were taken by the new government was one that clarified to the whole world that Singapore would not be a “third China” but a Southeast Asian state that knows its place among the nations of the neighbourhood. By declaring that its national language was Malay specifically identified it as a historic part of the Malay Archipelago. All the same, the leaders knew that nation-building would have to be a long process. Their people would have to resolve to live and work together in peace while at the same time trying to formulate a new national identity. In the meantime, the country would need legitimate and effective governance, its sovereignty would have to be protected, and everybody’s livelihood assured. It is only when its people can see a long-term future together that nation-building can be deemed to have taken off. In this series on the history of nation-building, all authors agreed that it should be written as contemporary history and not to go too far back in the past to start their stories. The challenge was to concentrate on the post-colonial policies and decisions that helped to make modern nationhood possible. The assumption was that the leaders of each country gave high priority to creating a new nation. At each point of time, the governments responsible faced pressures both inside and outside the

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country. Under those circumstances, key decisions were made that had a direct bearing on the nation to be built. Edwin Lee has held firmly to that focus and has set out to tell the many strands in that story. He shows the many layers of change that must occur before the process can take firm root as he points to the multitude of policies that could shape the nation. He underlines how much more there is to tell before it can safely be said that the task is done. Coming after the country volume for Malaysia by Cheah Boon Kheng, Singapore’s unexpected nationhood dictates that the contrasts be made. Malaysia’s nationhood seems to have been carefully planned from above, precisely because its communal lumps and socioeconomic divisions looked the most precarious. Must these unruly ingredients be urgently channeled into a national oneness? From the results of the national elections of 2008, it would seem that the chosen trajectory of the late 1960s is to be closely re-examined. Singapore had to face other kinds of futures. Suddenly inheriting a great imperial harbour and a commercial centre located at a major crossroad between empires and oceans, it needed to consolidate its place as one of the nodes of rapid globalization. Under the circumstances, if nation-building turns out to be laborious, the process can perhaps live with the idea that a nation-state is not so vital, at least not so urgent, after all. Edwin Lee’s story shows that, even if this proved to be true, Singapore’s leaders are leaving nothing to chance as they strive systematically to determine the kind of nation that would best suit their long-term needs.

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Beginnings: From Temasek to Singapore • 1

C H A P T E R

O N E

Beginnings: From Temasek to Singapore

Temasek

A

trading settlement began to form in Singapore in the late thirteenth century and grew in importance in the fourteenth century. This was Temasek, whose people were Malays, Orang Laut and Chinese. The Malays were the rulers who opened the port, for trade generates taxes and gifts and attracts foreign traders and people, increasing the population, all of which would contribute to the wealth and prestige of their kingdom. The Orang Laut, Malay for “Sea People”, were directed by the Malay rulers and chiefs to man war fleets and to harvest produce from the resource-rich marine environment. There was a market for this produce in China. This is important because the trade of Temasek depended on imports of Chinese silks, cottons, ceramics, iron cauldrons, and other goods brought by the junks of the “Chuan-chou traders”.1 Temasek also had resident Chinese merchants interested in, among other items, the “black wood” found on the island. Chinese writers of the fourteenth century knew of a place they called Lung-ya-men, the “Dragon’s Tooth Strait”. It is on record that the Yuan dynasty of China sent envoys to this place in 1320 “to obtain tame elephants”, and that “the people of Dragon’s Tooth Strait” sent a tribute and trade mission to the Yuan court in 1325.2 Some five years later, the Dragon’s Tooth Strait appeared again in the itinerary of a Chinese merchant who came to Southeast Asia. He has given the fullest contemporary account of the place of which the point that will be highlighted here is his culture-centric reference to “the Tan-ma-hsi

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barbarians” which helps to clinch the identification of Temasek with the Dragon’s Tooth Strait.3 Where in modern Singapore is the Dragon’s Tooth Strait? One scholar states that it is “the western entrance to Keppel Harbour, the narrow stretch of water which passes between Labrador Point and Sentosa Island”.4 Another scholar locates it at “the Singapore Main Strait, about 15 km south of Singapore”.5 In either case, the inference is that, by the fourteenth century, a waterway at Singapore had become the main route for ships going from the South China Sea to the Straits of Malacca and beyond. The people of Temasek had the Singapore River as an artery of trade. Intriguingly, they erected a thick protective wall from the coast to the foot of the hill above the river. The wall ran along what is today’s Stamford Road.6 This suggests an awareness of their vulnerability in the region, with good reason, as to the north the Siamese kingdom was in an expansionist mode, and to the south, the Javanese empire of Majapahit listed Temasek among its vassals in 1365. Malay annals ascribed to Temasek the reigns of five rulers, the last of whom came under attack from Majapahit. Differing from this account, Portuguese sagas described how a Malay prince of Palembang, southeast Sumatra, came to Temasek and took over the kingdom, which he renamed Singapura, “lion city”, by murdering its ruler. Then, in 1396 or 1397, he was driven out by an expedition sent by the King of Siam, to whom the murdered ruler was related by marriage, and probably by vassalage as well. But before long, the ousted usurper, helped by his Orang Laut followers who indicated the spot to him, founded a new kingdom at Malacca.

Malacca Malacca was founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century. When the news reached China, the reigning Ming dynasty despatched a mission to open relations with this new port arising in a region vital to the passage of Chinese shipping and trade. The Ming envoys arrived in the middle of 1404. They returned to China in early 1405 on the change of monsoon and wind direction.7 Representatives of the Malay prince who founded Malacca went with them and were presented to the Chinese court.

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The rulers of Malacca forcibly diverted ships to Malacca that used to call at Temasek. Hence, with Malacca’s advent, Temasek’s prominence was over: it had lasted a little more than one hundred years. Naval power was a complement to trade, used to compel passing ships to stop over as well as, paradoxically, to maintain security on the sea route. This consideration drove Malacca to establish control over both sides of the Straits of Malacca, bringing under its suzerainty certain parts of east coast Sumatra, and the west coast of the Malay peninsula from Perak, through Pahang to Johore, Singapore and the Riau-Lingga archipelago. The centre of the kingdom, Malacca, was where the Malay ruler held court, the traders congregated and the four harbour masters serving four major foreign and regional communities officiated. Such was the habit inculcated by commerce and brands that Chinese traders and mariners did not completely forsake Temasek. Another reason was Temasek’s great location. The name stood out in a map derived from the voyages of the Ming dynasty admiral, Zheng He, undertaken between 1405 and 1433. “At least one of Zheng He’s voyages, the sixth, which took place in 1421–1422, went through (the Dragon’s Tooth Strait)”.8 However, no legend regarding Zheng He has passed down in Singapore as it has in Malacca. But there is a current sign of interest on the part of a group in Singapore, “the Friends of Admiral Zheng He”9 who marked the six hundredth anniversary of his first epic voyage with a lecture and the opening of a maritime gallery in his honour in January 2004. Malacca was famous as the central market for the spices of the region consumed throughout the world. From Malacca, the spices were carried all the way to Venice by a relay of traders operating in different sectors of the trade route, across the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean zone. The Venetians controlled the spice trade from the European end. By the time the spices reached the households of Europe, their prices were so high as to lure the Portuguese to pioneer the sea route to the fabled East. The Portuguese seaborne empire in Asia consisted of a string of conquered and fortified bases, notably Kilwa (1505) and Mozambique (1507) in east Africa, Goa (1510) in India, Malacca (1511), and Ormuz (1515) in the Persian Gulf, to which list should be

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added two more bases where the Portuguese were there on sufferance: Macau and Nagasaki.10

The Kingdom of Johore The loss of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 was not the end of the world for the Malay rulers who were famously able to make a comeback at another place and another time. For the next several hundred years, they survived by shifting their capital back and forth between the upper reaches of the Johore river and the island of Bintang in the Riau-Lingga archipelago. In this new territory, which was a part of the Malacca realm, Malay power and the international trade on which it was based, proved as fluid and resilient as the maritime environment itself. The Malacca line of rulers continued as the rulers of the kingdom of Johore. Johore, Portuguese Malacca, and Acheh, a new power emerging in north Sumatra in the sixteenth century, contested for supremacy over the Straits of Malacca. Johore and Acheh, separately and at different times, attacked Portuguese Malacca but without capturing it. The Portuguese and Acheh, also separately and at various times, devastated the Johore capital. Acheh’s aggressiveness suddenly subsided with the death of its most powerful ruler in 1636. This would appear to leave Johore and the Portuguese to face each other but for the fact that, by the seventeenth century, the Dutch had entered the picture. However, with two European powers at odds in the region, Johore was able to form an alliance with one of them, the Dutch, against its old enemy, Portuguese Malacca. After three earlier failed attempts, the Johore-Dutch alliance finally dislodged the Portuguese from Malacca in 1641, which then came under Dutch control. Fortunately for Johore, the Dutch were more focused on Java to the south, where they had a headquarters at Batavia (Jakarta), and were prepared to live and let live with Johore in the Straits of Malacca region. So for the first time after about 130 years, the kingdom of Johore could breathe easier. The next challenger to Johore was a new Malay kingdom, Jambi, located in southeast Sumatra. Jambi attacked and destroyed the Johore capital in

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1673. Johore recovered, exacted revenge on Jambi, and regained its preeminent position in the Malay world of the Straits of Malacca in the late seventeenth century.11 The Dutch continued to be benign towards Johore, tolerantly observing the thriving international trade at its capital. The problems of Johore were now internal ones and came to a head with the assassination of the sultan in 1699. As the slain ruler had no direct heirs, the Malacca-Johore line of rulers died with him. This act of regicide had dire consequences. Firstly, the Orang Laut lost their special tie to a distinguished Malay dynasty whose patronage had given their lives a focal point, stability, and esteem, and inclusion as one of the major components in the Johore power structure.12 As well, the Orang Laut had received from the Malay rulers in exchange for their services, highly prized imported items like the ceramics and glassware, which archaeologists have found in Orang Laut burials. Although the Orang Laut were able to transfer their allegiance to the new bendahara line of rulers (so-called because the bendahara or principal minister in Johore was made the sultan) their ties with the new non-royal rulers were never to be free from tension and ambivalence. Secondly, the weakness in the Johore kingdom exposed it to exploitation by a new immigrant group coming into the Malay peninsula. This was the Bugis from south Sulawesi. The Bugis, whose arrival dated to the late seventeenth century, were able to influence the power equation so much that the eighteenth century has been regarded as the Bugis century in Malaysian history.13 They began as mercenaries in the employment of Malay rulers and ended as their masters. Thirdly, the regicide gave the chance to a pretender from Siak, a part of the Malacca-Johore realm in east Sumatra, to lay claim to the throne of Johore in 1717. Instead of calling his bluff, many Johore subjects irked by Bugis bullying, saw him as the best hope for the resurgence of Malay power once more. When this pretender, who was backed by the Minangkabau ruler in Sumatra, came “with a large Minangabau force” to take the Johore capital at Riau in 1718, many Orang Laut deserted to his side.14 He succeeded and ruled for a period until his ouster by the Bugis who then became the de facto rulers of Johore. The Bugis adopted the title Yang Dipertuan Muda

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(junior king) to the Malay ruler whom they styled Yang Dipertuan Besar (great king). The Johore kingdom acquired a dual identity — Malay and Bugis. T.S. Raffles in the nineteenth century deftly took advantage of the complex Malay-Bugis politics of succession to secure the legitimacy of his founding of Singapore. The English and Dutch ventures in the East were backed by joint-stock companies: the English East India Company formed in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. In the ensuing rivalry, the Dutch effected the closure of every English trading outpost in the Malay archipelago save the one at Bencoolen in the pepper growing, insalubrious coast of southwest Sumatra. The English redirected their resources to the Indian subcontinent, a good move in the long term. For as the seventeenth century wore on, the game was not solely about spices, but finding new products to promote in Europe and Asia, and in so doing, to foster new trends, fashions, tastes and cravings. The introduction of the fabrics of India to Europe by the Dutch and the English led to a full blown craze for calicoes in the late seventeenth century.15 Another product which met with wild success was Chinese tea, and it established the teahouse and leisurely gossip as a permanent social institution in Europe. In terms of the volume of these two commodities traded and the profits realized, the English East India Company beat its Dutch counterpart into a decidedly second place.16 The winner faced a problem too: the amount of silver needed to pay for the tea from China was a serious drain on the nation’s wealth. The company resolved this problem by exporting Benares opium to China. The flow of silver was reversed in England’s favour. The company also learned about the produce which the Malay world had been supplying the Chinese market for centuries. A nineteenth century list of this produce, collectively described as “Straits produce”, included edible bird’s nest, rhinocerous horn, hornbill bird beak, tortoise shell, pearl, beeswax, seaweed, gambier, pepper, tin, antimony and gold dust.17 So, both to protect the China trade route in the Straits of Malacca sector, and to gather Straits produce for the Chinese market, the English East India

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Company returned to maritime southeast Asia, founding Penang in 1786 and Singapore in 1819.

Singapore Raffles was a servant of the English East India Company with a keen interest in Malay studies and in natural history. He discovered in an old Malay manuscript, the Malay Annals, that an ancient city once existed in Singapore. This furnished a historical angle to his project to establish a base that was otherwise conceived on geopolitical and commercial principles, and it eventually led him to Singapore, and afterwards was a solace to him in the personal tragedies and illness that occurred as he wound up his remarkable career in the eastern isles. The snag about choosing Singapore was that an agreement with the resident Malay chief, whose domain it was, was not good enough in international law. Raffles needed the sanction of the sultan of Johore who was at Lingga in the Riau-Lingga archipelago. The sultan was under the control of the Bugis faction in the kingdom of Johore, and worse, the Dutch who had recently strengthened their grip on Riau were certain to exercise their veto against Raffles. However, the succession to the throne of Johore had been in dispute since 1812. The sultan who had died in that year “left no male heirs by his royal wives, but had two sons by commoner wives of Bugis stock”.18 The Bugis faction supported the younger son as sultan, but he had not gone through the proper ceremony, which required the use of a regalia that was withheld by the Bugis royal wife of the late sultan, who favoured the elder son. The Malay faction in this dispute also supported the elder son. Raffles arranged for him — stalemated and living in obscurity in Riau — to come to Singapore, proclaimed him sultan of Johore, and concluded a second agreement regarding Singapore, with him and the resident chief on 6 February 1819. The agreement entitled the English East India Company to use a defined area as a port and settlement, but gave away no territory. The cession of territory came later, in 1824, and it included the whole of Singapore and adjacent islets.

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In the same year, the Anglo-Dutch treaty settled the respective spheres of influence for the English and the Dutch. Malacca, which had passed from Portuguese to Dutch control by conquest in 1641, now changed hands from Dutch to British by diplomacy (in 1824). The British ceded Bencoolen to the Dutch in exchange. Together, the three British outposts, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang were known as the Straits Settlements on account of their being constituted as a single administrative unit in 1826. The East India Company ruled them from its Calcutta headquarters in Bengal, India, until 1858. The British raj in India took over from 1858 to 1867. In 1867 the Straits Settlements were transferred to the control of the Colonial Office in London, and their status changed to that of Crown Colony.

FROM NINETEENTH CENTURY LAISSER-FAIREISM TO TWENTIETH CENTURY STATE INTERVENTIONISM Singapore possessed an advantageous location whose potential was vastly enhanced by the application of free trade principles and advances in technology. Raffles thought of free trade for Singapore as a way to beat the competition in the ports under indigenous rulers, such as Riau, or under the Dutch, notably Batavia (Jakarta), where traders were encumbered by all sorts of taxes and restrictions. Free trade when Raffles decreed it was “virtually unknown” in the region, and he scored handsomely by being the first mover.19 Yet his move was also dictated by necessity as, apart from its geographical position, Singapore had few natural resources and no products to tempt the trader. Singapore’s trade, as the British merchants coming long after Raffles realized, “was an artificial creation”.20

The Entrepot Port This artificial creation was entrepot trade. This means that the goods transacted were not produced in the island (gambier excepted), but brought in from the outside: sarongs and Straits produce borne by Bugis prahus;

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silk, nankeen (yellow cotton cloth), ceramics, cassia and camphor laden in Chinese junks; Siamese salt, sugar and rice; American firearms, British cottons, Indian textiles, opium, etc. Firearms and ammunition were a hit with the Chinese junk traders, Bugis, Siamese and Sumatran traders who returned home with them. Perhaps the most important part of the trade of the Chinese junks which called seasonally “was not in commodities but in Chinese immigrants”, the human cargo of coolies who were the manpower of the entrepot and were also re-exported to neighbouring countries.21 The business of the Singapore entrepot was to finance trade and commerce — the traditional role of the British and local Chinese banks here; to receive goods on commission from manufacturers for distribution — a role played by British and European agency houses; and to store, grade, process, repackage, transport and tranship goods — the role of Chinese middlemen who constituted the link between the hundreds of native traders and the few Western import and export firms.

The Meaning of Free Trade The British merchants believed that free trade was essential to keep the Singapore entrepot going. But what was their idea of free trade? They took it to limits which would amaze Singaporeans today. These merchant pioneers of Singapore were not only opposed to the imposition of duties on imports and exports. They were against the fees normally charged at any port, namely, tonnage and port dues, pilotage, wharfage and anchorage duties, and port clearance fees.22 Most astonishing of all, the merchants paid no personal or company income tax. Nor did they pay stamp duties, until 1863, on documents relating to business or the sale of property. The government needed money to carry out special measures: an expedition to suppress piracy, and the construction of the Horsburgh Lighthouse at Pedra Branca, completed in 1851, and of the Raffles Lighthouse, opened in 1855. The government of the Straits Settlements and the Calcutta Government thought up proposals to collect port dues to help defray expenses. But the British merchants of Singapore put up

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spirited resistance and would allow only one compromise specific to the Horsburgh Lighthouse.23 What were the permissible areas of raising revenue? They were excise revenue, licences and property taxes. Market stallholders, pawnbrokers and gunpowder manufacturers paid for licences. There were periods before 1829 when gambling houses and cock fighting were taxed, and times when pork and betel nut were also taxed. Opium and local brews called “arrack” and “toddy” were other revenue earners. Opium was farmed out to Chinese syndicates until 1910 when the government sold it directly.24 Thus, the vices, pleasures and necessities of the Asian people paid for most of the local expenses of government, and a “share of the general administration” of the Straits Settlements.25 The British merchants’ refusal to be taxed meant that “The Straits Settlements were run at a loss and the deficit had to be met from the general revenues of India.”26 This was so until the merchants finally and grudgingly accepted paying stamp duties on their documents in 1863.

The Staple Port: A Centre for Tin, Rubber, and Petroleum The geographical location of Singapore became more important with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Steamships began to call more often and used it as a coal bunkering centre. Then, in 1871–72, telegraphic communications linked it to Europe, Australia and Hong Kong. These improvements prepared Singapore for the boom in the three leading primary commodities of the twentieth century. Free trade also helped, as before. Tin was the first boom commodity, happening around 1880s and 1890s and continuing into the next century, followed by rubber and petroleum in the interwar period between 1918 and 1939. These were products of the hinterland, meaning British Malaya and also Netherlands India (Dutchruled Indonesia). It is not often realized that Netherlands India was a hinterland for Singapore.27 In this connection, the barter system used by Chinese merchants in Singapore to procure rubber from smallholders in Netherlands India was very important.

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Tin from Malaya and the Sumatran islands of Banka and Billiton made Singapore a world market for this mineral. The smelting of tin ore into exportable ingots at Pulau Brani, an island off Singapore’s southern shore, and the import and, later, the manufacturing of tin dredges, were further linkages which benefitted Singapore. After 1900, tin mining in Malaya shifted from a Chinese activity to a highly capitalized and mechanized western enterprise. With it went a trade which Singapore had of supplying foodstuffs and simple tools to the upcountry Chinese tin miners. The British smelting company which obtained tin ore from Sumatra paid cash, and so Singapore did not have a two-way trade here either.28 Rubber, on the other hand, produced more linkages. It was not an exclusively western enterprise although agency houses raised capital in London to open and manage big plantations in Malaya. The Chinese participated too, owning large estates and smallholdings. Rubber encouraged Chinese banks to form, Chinese industries like rubber milling and manufacture of rubber-based goods, and accelerated Chinese immigration, transforming Singapore into a Chinese city. As Singapore became the leading world market for rubber, the Chinese also had an important role in it29 as witness the Lee Rubber Company’s opening of a selling office in New York in the late 1930s. Under the barter system, Chinese merchants in Singapore sent rice and manufactures on credit to middlemen in various ports in Sumatra and Borneo to be passed on to growers against future deliveries of rubber. The social and financial ties built into the system linking the Chinese rubber traders in Singapore to the growers in remote rivers and jungles in Netherlands India, proved so strong that when the Dutch tried collecting rubber to mill in their outports, they could not get enough of it for the mills to be viable. Boat Quay in Singapore remained the centre for “the daily market (in) Netherlands India rubber”.30 Petroleum was produced in Netherlands India and British Borneo. The islands near the western entrance to Singapore harbour made it possible for Singapore to host the oil industry with safety. Oil was not refined at Singapore in the prewar period. Other services like the financing of the oil business

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and the marketing of oil were also not based at Singapore.31 The oil companies chose Singapore because it was well connected by shipping routes to the world and the region, and it was where they could store, blend, distribute and ship the oil, all at one convenient centre. Singapore gained from the sheer volume of oil handled, the repair of oil tankers and the bunkering of oil-fired ships.

The Centre for Japanese Textiles In addition to being a staple port, Singapore was a centre for the import and distribution of manufactures. In this area, the British and European agency houses were supreme, but the Japanese undercut them in the interwar era. The Japanese opened a commercial museum and many shops in Singapore dealing exclusively in their nation’s manufactures. The prime Japanese manufacture on offer was textiles. The competitive edge which the Japanese had was price: the cheapness of their rayon and cotton piece goods and cotton sarongs compared with established British brands of cotton piece goods. Like the manufacturers in the West, the Japanese depended on the local Asian traders to act as distributors. The big difference was that the entry of the Japanese into the Singapore market created an opening for the local Asian traders to become importers too. This was possible for two reasons. Firstly, the Japanese Commercial Museum, located at the site of the present Carlton Hotel in Bras Basah Road, operated like a business centre, showing samples, taking orders, and facilitating contacts with Japanese manufacturers. Secondly, Japanese business “is conducted on an ‘open market’ basis, as opposed to the system of agents and sub-agents upon which much of (Singapore’s) trade in manufactured goods with other countries is conducted”.32 The Chinese who distributed Japanese textiles were Cantonese. Another dialect group, the Teochew, distributed branded British cottons. The Indians in the textiles trade were Sindhi, Gujarati and Sikh merchants. One Indian company had a branch in Japan, and another was the agent “for a big cotton mill in Glasgow” though it had by the 1930s switched to importing from Japan.33

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Threats to the Entrepot Politics and War Politics and war introduced a deleterious factor. The Japanese attack on Manchuria in 1931 elicited an intense nationalist response from the Chinese in Singapore, as elsewhere. But, as the city was a multiracial one, the Chinese boycott of Japan meant that Indian and Arab firms were free to enjoy the boom in Japanese textiles, at least, until September 1937, when the Japanese assault on China itself aroused such fury as to reduce the Japanese share of Singapore import trade seriously.34

The Great Depression and its Consequences The breakdown in international order edging the world into total war was preceded by a global economic collapse of colossal proportions. Originating in the United States, the Great Depression of 1929–31 undermined “the twin principles of free trade and free immigration” which Singapore held sacred.35 A massive repatriation of Indian and Chinese coolies took place, and an ordinance enacted in 1933 limited, for the first time, the entry of male immigrants from China. In 1934, the British Government forced the Straits Settlements legislature to pass a measure setting quotas on the import of Japanese textiles, while British officials in the Malay States raised tariff barriers against Singapore’s re-exports of Japanese textiles to them.36 Elsewhere, “the Netherlands Indian Crisis Import Ordinance of 1933… permitted the taking of all kinds of measures” which hurt Singapore’s entrepot trade.37 The re-export of Japanese manufactures, particularly textiles, to Netherlands India was more severely restricted than similar re-exports to the Malay States. From mid 1934, consequent on the International Rubber Restriction Scheme, Singapore’s rubber trade with the hinterland was “adversely affected”.38 The volume of rubber from British Malaya and Netherlands India fell. The Dutch authorities also imposed a prohibitive tax on exports of smallholder’s rubber to Singapore. The Singapore Chinese in the barter trade responded by relocating to Netherlands India and exporting directly from there.

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In 1931, a Dutch oil company which had been using Pulau Sebarok for storage and distribution shifted their operations to Bintang.39 This may be seen as another hit at Singapore’s trade in an atmosphere of self-sufficiency and protectionism.

Reactions to Japanese Competition in Rubber Exports and Shipping Roland Braddell, the third generation in a local British family of barristers, described Singapore in the 1930s as “a Clapham Junction of the world” served by eight shipping lines.40 Three things, namely, location, free trade, and a primary producing hinterland covering British Malaya (the Malay States) and “even more, Netherlands India” had come together to make Singapore so important.41 By the 1930s the staunchest supporters of free trade were the British and European firms which depended on rubber exports and shipping. The logic of the business was that, in order to get rubber from the hinterland to re-export, Singapore must have cheap imports for the hinterland: “Freedom for both exports and imports is necessary because of their reactions on each other…”42 The exporters and shippers were therefore not in sympathy with the British textiles manufacturers and their lobby who cried for quotas on Japanese textiles imports into Singapore. Then, entered Japanese competition in rubber export and shipping, and “by 1935, Singapore’s (British) exporters and shippers began to support some form of trade restriction”.43 By this date, the Japanese were not just supplying Singapore with cheap textiles, which were dominant in “the bazaar trade”.44 They were giving strong competition in rubber exports and shipping from Singapore. The British business community stepped up their pressure in 1936. This pressure decreased “at first… because the Japanese directed their competitive efforts elsewhere”,45 and dissipated because of the East Asian crisis of 1937.

Post-war Nationalism and Independence in the Region After the war, tin exports in Singapore “regained pre-war levels until after the mid-1950s”.46 The reason for the decline from then on was the

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transfer of tin smelting from Pulau Brani to Butterworth, opposite Penang island. Singapore’s trade in the 1950s “still depended” on rubber, with fourfifths sourced from Indonesia and “ the rest mainly from Sarawak and North Borneo”.47 But nationalism and independence in Indonesia and Malaya threatened to “cut (Singapore) off from its natural