Singapore Bicentennial 2019

Singapore Bicentennial 2019

Celebrating Racism, Slavery and Exploitation

By MIKOspace

Next year 2019 has been designated Singapore Bicentennial to mark the 200^th year of the founding of Singapore by the Englishman Sir Stamford Raffles, working for the British East India Company (EIC) on behalf of the British Colonial Empire. Singapore history is actually more than 200 years old with official verifiable records from the middle of the first century (about 100AD), some 1,800 years before Raffles.

Of course, Raffles did not “discover” Singapore. Singapore was neither lost, obscure nor an isolated and uninhabited island. Much documentary evidence points to events and activities involving ancient kingdoms, wars, communities and economic trade.

History has been revised to refer to Raffles as the founder of MODERN Singapore.  This attempt at re-creating history is even more dangerous and particularly disingenuous in the absence of any evidence that any specific past British Colonial policy was designed to create “modern” Singapore. 

In a 10 June 1819 letter to his friend Colonel Addenbrooke, Raffles stated that “Our object is not territory but trade, a great commercial Emporium, and a fulcrum where we may extend our influence politically, where circumstances may hereafter require. By taking immediate possession we put a negative to the Dutch claim of exclusion, and at the same time revive the drooping confidence of our allies and friends; one Free Port is these Seas must eventually destroy the spell of Dutch monopoly; and what Malta is in the West, that may Singapore become in the East.”  

Singapore colonial history has been carefully packed in chewable childlike lessons: a barely inhabited quite virgin island; Raffles’ landing (exact location unknown); promotion of free trade; growth of entrepôt trade; growth of immigrants from China and India; town planning; building of government centre; and the development of necessary infrastructure to support British rule over the local population and to preserve law and order so as not to disrupt British and EIC business interests.  The result is the erroneous conclusion that her 140 years of British colonial rule has been the springboard and foundation of today’s Singapore. 

Our school history textbooks have also propagated this alternative reality.  It was familiar and uncontroversial, also comforting without provoking any anti-colonial sentiments by fabricating false colonial history to foster an unthinking and uncritical mind-set that the tools of colonial subjugation have exceptionally moral good impact in Singapore, but not seen in any other British Colonies!

As Singaporeans enter the buzz and business of the Bicentennial, we need to deconstruct the myths of benevolent colonialism to discover for ourselves, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, the awesome truth that today’s MODERN Singapore would be impossible if we had continued with British colonial rule.

Racism

British colonialism, like the French, Dutch and American, is based in part on racism even as it is appears to be motivated by material wealth, financial gain and territorial expansion. They believe they have a God-given right to govern and subject indigenous people in continuous subjugation with their power and resources. The idea of a master race is inherent in imperial powers to justify their right to exploit, degrade, humiliate and rule over non-white peoples. 

Many racist comments in post-colonial Singapore can find its origins in British stereo-types, especially targeted at Malays.  A 1883 observation by Maj-Gen Sir George Leith, that “They (Malays) are incapable of any labour apart from the cultivation of paddy fields” sums up British sentiments regarding the Malays at that time.

Years earlier by the 1870s, the British had already placed Malays at the bottom of the racial competency order.  In the 1879 Commission Report into the Police of the Straits Settlements, the Singapore Attorney-General Thomas Braddell indicated that he preferred the “Klings” [Indians/Indian-Malay] to Malays as being more intelligent and more active, and better disciplined as a body” as more suitable to be as Police recruits.

A British tourist, Isabella Bird, also observed the Malay’s lack of interest in industry in The Golden Chersonese, 1883, p357: “The Malays won’t work except for themselves”

In May 1823, Sophia Hull, Raffles’ wife, founded the Singapore Malay Female-School. A report, betraying its racist bias and stereotype, expressed surprise at the progress made by some of the students "considering their native habits of indolence, and their want of energy." 

It is clear that race relations and racial conflicts in post-colonial Singapore are very much a result of nearly 140 years of British policies based on their racist altitudes and stereotypes regarding the Malays, Indians and Chinese communities. The various communities were also separated into spatial residential clusters and allocated to jobs based on “the ‘inherent’ biological traits of each race”. The consequence of deliberate geographical segregation and institutionalisation of jobs based on race effectively formalised the (artificial) differences among the races.  They also prepare the stage for the eventual economic inequality among the races with the Malays and Indians in lower pay jobs as compared to the Chinese.

Slavery

The growing workforce of colonial Singapore in the 19^th and early 20^th century composed of mostly indentured labourers.  The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought increased maritime activities to Singapore as the larger steam-powered ships became the major ocean ships.  Eventually, Singapore became the major port for the thousands of labourers brought by labour agents from India, China, Bugis (West Indonesia), the Malay Archipelago and the Dutch East Indies for the tin mines and rubber plantations in Malaya.  The Port of Singapore thus became the major slave labour hub in the region even though slave trading, but not slavery itself, was officially outlawed by the British in 1807.

Colonial Singapore would not have prospered without the forced labour needed to build roads and bridges, work on the booming rubber plantations and tin mines, as well as providing prostitutes, concubines and domestic maids to serve the rich businessmen, British and Anglophile elites for nothing or pittance.

Under the British, Singapore became a prominent network hub of slave traders which linked villages in China and Japan to procure slaves and prostitutes. Even before Raffles, Bugis ships have also regularly brought slaves captured from the Indonesian Archipelago for trading or as gifts for government officials.    

True, we did not get to where we are today by accident or natural evolution.  However, we also did not get here through British Colonialism.  The transformation of Singapore from a fishing village to modern metropolis was not driven by the vision and foresight of British politicians in London and their colonial administrators.  True again, independent Singapore on 9 August 1965 did inherit a collection of laws, institutions, structures and processes after a brief 2-year “marriage” to Malaysia. These colonial legacies however were neither appropriate nor designed for nationhood and nation-building.

For example, the economy of Colonial Singapore was centred on entrepôt trade, which became obsolete in the post-war global international trade faced by a fledging Singapore economy.  The journey to modernity was not easy for an independent Singapore.  As with Hong Kong on July 1997, the British colonial masters had not actively address the critical issues of housing, education and health because their only goal was economic and the only interest was a British, not Singaporean, future. Raffles’ 10 June 1819 letter (see above) clearly attested and confirmed as much. 

The notion that British colonialism was a tool for the moral good of Singapore, and therefore should be celebrated as the driver of our modernity and as the catalyst of Singapore nationhood is sorely misguided.  It is a fallacy and has no historical truths.

As we carefully deconstruct our long history of more than 2,000 years, we will realise that most of us today (80%) came or were born after the British surrendered to the Japanese in 1942.  And about half (50%) of us are born after Independence.

Singapore was in fact abandoned by the British in the greatest surrender by the powerful British military to a much inferior Japanese Imperial Army on bicycles.  Colonial Singapore ended on 15 February 1942, ostensibly the best Chinese New Year “ang-pow” present if not for the subsequent Japanese unmitigated pogrom of cruelty, rape, killing and torture of all things Chinese.  The epiphany of Singaporeans during the 1942-1945 war years was the realisation that we could only depend on ourselves, and not the British or any outsiders.  This is now deeply ingrained in Singaporeans and drives the motivation of our National Servicemen and the indomitable Singapore Armed Forces.

The Japanese surrender on 12 September 1945 saw the shameless return of British colonial masters who thought, wrongly, that business would be as usual with her former colony. In April 1946, Singapore became a British Crown Colony to be ruled directly from London. Again, Singapore was treated like a commodity not unlike the prostitutes in her ‘red-light’ districts of Change Alley, Geylang, Keong Saik and River Valley to be mounted by any conquerors.

The Japanese war years have toughen Singaporeans to resist the restoration of Rule Britannia. The British imposed martial law – The Malayan Emergency - from 1948-1960 on security grounds to counter the emergence of communism, whose fighters were bred and trained in the Anti-Japanese Army during the war.  During the Emergency, the British suppressed legitimate civil and political protests through legislations controlling the newspapers and radio, introduced arbitrary detention with trial, banned workers unions and legitimate trade union strikes, deny ordinary civil rights (enjoyed in Britain!), and banned legitimate anti-colonial societies eg student unions, old boys association, farmers associations and trade unions.  All forms of challenge to British colonial rule were ruthlessly struck down and make illegal.  

Know that the celebration of 2019 Bicentennials would also glorify the failed measures of the Malayan Emergency.  Ironically, if these measures were successful, there would be no MODERN Singapore!   

It is clear that British rule over Singapore was never fully and effectively restored after the War.  And the battle for MODERN Singapore began in 1945 with the Japanese surrender. 

MODERN Singapore is the creation of a small group of politicians and activists of various political parties with somewhat conflicting ideologies, and NOT the natural outcome of British colonialism.

The People’s Action Party (PAP) led by Lee Kuan Yew eventually won the electoral right to flesh out and actualise the aspirations of Singaporeans for a free, sovereign, just, prosperous and equal nation. All the infrastructures, education, human talent, social services and armed forces needed for MODERNITY were built from scratch from the ground up.  Nothing needed for MODERNITY was inherited from the British colonial past. In repeated fair and transparent general elections over the past 50+ years, the PAP has assured and ensured that Singapore will never again be subjugated and subjected to the humiliation and indignity suffered under the British and the Japanese.    

The proposed Singapore Bicentennial celebrations must provide the true history of Singapore’s journey to MODERNITY which began in 1945.  Otherwise, it would be just a celebration of misplaced and wronged history! Suggest we should wait for 2045 to truly commemorate 100 years of MODERN Singapore.

“Until very recently Singapore’s past was a matter of supreme indifference for most Singaporeans simply because they believed this island never really had a history worth remembering…” – S. Rajaratnam, ‘The Uses and Abuses of the Past’, 1984.

 .