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The article discusses the work of artist Ho Tzu Nyen and his art installation "Utama -- Every Name in History is I." His work contests the narrative put forth that Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles, and investigates the theory that there was another founder of Singapore named Sang Nila Utama.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses papers within the issue on topics including the implications of the images of colonialism in literary works and for Singaporean peoplehood, a reading of Munshi Abdullah's experience of empire and Singapore's image as an imperial hub.

1819 represents a highly charged moment in the Singapore imagination. It marks the birth of our modern city-state, yet it also signals the beginning of our colonisation: the domination of Malay and other Asian cultures by Western powers. Artists have thus responded to the event with widely variant attitudes, ranging from E.W. Jesudason's laudatory Raffles Institution Anthem (c.1963–66) to Isa Kamari's stridently anti-colonial novel, Duka Tuan Bertakhta / 1819 (2011). The prevailing sentiment, however, has been one of playful ambivalence. While accepting the fact of colonisation, artists have rejected a founding myth that glorifies our primary colonist, Sir Stamford Raffles. Instead, we have lampooned him in works like Robert Yeo's play The Eye of History (1991) and Colin Goh's film Talking Cock: The Movie (2002); raised ourselves to the height of his statue in Lee Wen's art event Untitled (Raffles) (2001); highlighted narratives of overlooked figures in the drama of colonisation: William Farquhar, Sophia Raffles, Nonio Clement, Sultan Hussein Shah, Munsyi Abdullah, and Sang Nila Utama. As a cultural researcher and author of the biographical drama The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles (2008), I shall examine trends behind these divergent representations of our colonisation. I argue that artists have chosen to retell 1819 not as a year of conquest, but as a polymorphous moment of transformative contact between East and West; one in which we may view ourselves, not as the victims of change, but as its agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research presented in this special issue questions the notion of a singular Singaporean story, and yet this narrative persists as a form of Gramscian common sense for most Singaporeans, whether young or old, and also for recent immigrants and international commentators. To understand the reasons for this persistence, I turn to American political scientist Rogers M. Smith's concept of narratives of peoplehood, and in particular his notion of ethically constitutive stories that are central to individual subject formation. The role of the colonial past in such stories of Singapore is contradictory, in that the relationship between colonialism and the nation-state is seen simultaneously in terms of rupture and continuity, and this conceals a further contradiction in terms of the relationship between individual and the collective. In exploring these contradictions, and in tracing reparative possibilities for new stories of peoplehood, I will, in conclusion, turn to recent literary narratives, and in particular recent historical speculative fiction that revisions the colonial past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles led the expedition that founded colonial Singapore in 1819 and conceptualised many of the early institutions that developed the trade port, it was the depiction and commemoration of his time in the region that made him an icon of imperial mythology. This was part of a process in which admiration of his name and exploits were exalted, ultimately representing a core element in the Victorian mentality, the need to create heroes to glorify the British Empire. This article will survey and analyse how the commemoration of Raffles in the first 75 years of colonial rule, through the commissioning of statues and the attachment of his name to establishments and institutions, solidified and justified a British presence in the region and larger imperial history, which continues to echo in the modern nation-state of Singapore and its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the idea of Singapore's repute as the 'Liverpool of the East' and the depictions of Britain's maritime empire in Asia. It does so via two important cruises related to the British Empire. The first is the Royal Tour of 1901 and the second cruise was the Empire Cruise of 1923 to 1924. By examining the reception afforded to both royal and naval visitors, this article argues that we have insights into what it meant for Singapore as a port city in a British maritime and imperial network. This article explores how Singapore was depicted as a maritime hub through these tours and concludes with a reflection that similar descriptions still hold a place in modern descriptions of Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial Singapore witnessed the movement and settling of Chinese, Malay, Indian, Arab, European and other mercantile groups as a free port and emporium of the British Empire. This social landscape was defined by boundaries between the different ethnic communities, often drawn up by the British, in contrast to the cosmopolitan exchanges of the market. This article focuses on the Indian business communities which had played a significant role in maritime trade networks since pre-colonial times and continued to be a part of Singapore's developing society and economy in the British period. A minority in the colonial era port city and largely confined within intra-ethnic economic and social circuits, Indians participated in the complex colonial structure of trade and credit alongside British, European and Asian traders and merchant houses, as brokers, agents, and retailers. British hegemony over the Indian subcontinent was both an advantage and a disadvantage for these Indian trading communities. This article brings to light the history of Indian networks in the colonial transnational flows of capital and entrepreneurship, and their patterns of integration into and role in the development of Singapore, a role marginalised in the scholarship and the national narratives alike by a focus on the large-scale Indian labour migrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient Singapore is often discussed exclusive of its cultural and historical context, a backward projection of the modern, independent city-state. Temasek is understood mainly in terms of being a maritime entrepôt with extensive trade connections. This research is interested in Temasek as a proto-historic Malay port-city, namely its social, political and economic organisation. It is an aspect of early Singapore, and of the Malay World, in general, we know very little about. However, more than three decades of archaeology have provided a wealth of data related to daily life in the settlement and the data has provided hints of a diverse sociocultural landscape. This study focuses on the relationship between metal production and social organisation, and employs a conceptual and interpretative framework that is both multidisciplinary and cross-cultural. Craft production is as much a social and political phenomenon as an economic and technological one, and studies of production systems can shed light on issues of power and control over resources and labour. The data suggest the presence of a social stratum that could generate and mobilise resources independent of the ruling elite. Metals were rare and valuable commodities during this period, however, the ruling class in Temasek did not appear to control nor restrict production of iron and copper-based goods as it did with glass. The results are by no means the final word on ancient Singapore or Malay society. Instead it provides a provisional model that can be tested with archaeological data, refined and expanded as more material becomes available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the international history of fourteenth-century Singapore have been hitherto limited to external trade conducted by local inhabitants, and material consumption patterns that this trade enabled them to develop. Broader regional cultural influences have been postulated though not clearly demonstrated, given scant textual records and limited material culture remains. This article seeks to examine the external influences, adaptation and assimilation in the production and consumption of fourteenth-century Singapore. In particular, it looks at three aspects of Singapore's pre-colonial existence — modes of economic production, patterns of consumption of international products, and the articulation of high culture vis-à-vis external entities. By examining available archaeological, epigraphic, art historical and cartographic data from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries, this article postulates how distinct consumption patterns may have developed among different riverside populations living north of the Singapore River. This study also questions the common view that Singapore developed as a cosmopolitan port-city only after the advent of British colonialism, demonstrating that its diversity and openness was likely a feature centuries before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the question of whether contemporary biography can be considered as history through a close examination of the political biographies (and autobiography) of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and the historiography of Singapore. According to the late British historian Benjamin Pimlott, widely respected for his contribution to the genre of political biography, it defies an easy answer. The answer remains complex and there is still no clear consensus. As Robert Jervis noted, however, "memoirs are as essential as they are misleading" (Jervis, 2013). For all its strengths and limitations, biography "is indispensable to understanding of motive and intention" and "the motives of individuals have some part to play in explaining historical events" (Pimlott, 1999). Through the historiography of Lee, this article also attempts to describe the on-going "history war" in modern Singapore history, between the dominant narrative promoted by the state and the alternative accounts. The master narrative is increasingly being challenged by the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British Malaya consisted the Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca, and Singapore), Federated Malay States (Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang), and the Unfederated Malay States (Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, and Johore). This study attempts to document the development of weightlifting into two periods. During the first period of the early twentiethcentury the wealthy Straits Chinese community promoted weightlifting in the Penisula. As the Malayan economy grew and produced a working class population, the other Chinese and Malay communities set up clubs to practice weightlifting. The Singapore Amateur Weight Lifting Federation (SAWLF) was founded in 1934 to organize competitions according to the British Amateur Weight Lifting Association (BAWLA) regulations. In 1936 a Chinese weightlifter represented China at the 1936 Olympic Games. The second period occurred after the Japanese occupation (1942–1945). Singapore was separated from the rest of British Malaya in 1946. The Singapore Olympic and Sports Council (SOSC) was established in 1947. The Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was founded in 1953 and Malayan Amateur Weight Lifting Federation (MAWLF) in 1955. The Malayan and Singapore weightlifters competed separately at the Asian Games, Empire and Commonwealth Games, and the Olympic Games. Later, Malaya and Singapore became independent states in 1957 and 1959. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are not only associated with incommensurable human diversity but also play a pivotal role in generating, assembling, and mobilizing differences. Alongside neoliberal processes that drive migrant-led diversification in global cities, we are witnessing growing inequality and precarity in populations of long-term residents that are themselves heterogeneous. Indeed, the diversification of peoples in the global city is also paralleled by the diversification of precarity. Yet, the ways in which new configurations of difference are producing more nuanced if still shadowy subjects of citizenship deserve more conceptual and contextualized attention. Although much has been written on the management of migration, far less attention has been focused on the management of multiplying forms of precarity resulting from insecure sociolegal status, disadvantaged labor market position, and deeply inscribed social prejudice. Even less has been documented on how these forms of management set up specific vernaculars about and subjects of citizenship, migrancy, and precariousness. This article addresses social inequality and the relationality of subject making in the context of diversification in Singapore, a city-state that has a particular historical understanding of diversity through a fixed formulaic “multiracialism.” Drawing on state narratives and interview data, we analyze organized social support for both migrants and citizens both by state organizations and nongovernmental organizations to demonstrate the limits and possibilities of change and continuity in the production of precarity in the diversifying city. In doing so, we aim to extend scholarship of the global city beyond the well-debated issue of social polarization in the global city and to highlight the diversity and relationality of precariousness in a contemporary non-Western global city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces conflicts and compromises over sounds associated with processions in colonial Singapore from the first recorded conflict in 1837 until tensions on this topic subsided in the late 1870s. Following the establishment of a British settlement there in 1819, Singapore became a meeting place for migrant communities of diverse cultural backgrounds as large numbers of workers arrived in the flourishing port. One of the stages on which intercommunal power dynamics were played out was the conflict over the right to make sound at particular times and places. Conflict over ‘noise’ ostensibly originated in the encounter between communities with fundamentally different sonic ideologies. British colonial authorities sought to control Asian sounds, while their colonial subjects resisted their attempts. If British principles of regulation had been enforceable, the conflict over processions would have been short-lived. In practice, the duration and complexity of the clashes demonstrates that the British were not decisively in control on this issue. Rather, a high level of compromise and negotiation between various ethnic communities was involved alongside simple colonial domination and resistance, frequently involving multilateral negotiations between Singapore’s Asian communities and comparisons with governmental policy elsewhere. The vigorous efforts of Singapore’s Asian inhabitants to defend their sounding traditions, and of the colonial authorities’ attempts to control them, demonstrate the significance and usefulness of sound in the context of this divided colonial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a synopsis of the history of Singapore and its adjacent straits during the early modern period, spanning from around the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511, until the founding of the British trading post by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819. Attention is focused on five points of general interest: the different maritime arteries known collectively as the Singapore Straits; the (imagined) location of the main island; Johor officials residing on Singapore during the 16th and 17th centuries; the port and settlements located on the southern side of the main island; as well as European visions for fortifying and colonising Singapore before 1800. The arguments show that, far from being a forgotten or neglected place, Singapore as a settlement, port, and strategic location was recognised and appreciated by both the local rulers and the early European colonial powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a brief period in the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, Malaya, including Singapore, was administratively placed with Sumatra under Japan’s 25th Army. From 28 March 1942 to April 1943, the two territories that had been separated by British and Dutch colonial rule since the mid-nineteenth century were considered one territory. This article explores how Malay intellectuals, through articles written in the magazineFajar Asia, took advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to strive for a Malaya-Sumatra and Malaya-Indonesia community. This article will analyse the various wartime imaginings of a joint archipelagic community within the pages ofFajar Asiaand highlight tensions within this project which resulted in an impasse as to how such a unity should or could be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history of Singapore over the course of about five centuries from the founding of Temasek-Singapura at the end of the thirteenth century until the establishment of a British trading post in 1819. Contrary to the dominant historiographical tradition during the period of British imperialism, Singapore not was not an obscure place devoid of history before Raffles created a British base on the island. An attack in the late 1300s destroyed the existing settlement, but Singapore subsequently passed through at least three long-term up- and down-cycles, each lasting for a century or more. In the early nineteenth century a new economic up-cycle was underway, and the link to the British Empire provided a significant stimulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idealism, as it was experienced in Singapore by the Chinese youths in the 1950s and 1960s, is seen by the ruling People's Action Party to be dangerous and disruptive to the postcolonial project of nation-building. This article therefore argues that Sandcastle (Boo Junfeng, 2010) recognizes idealism by immortalizing it in order to recreate renewed knowledge structures of the nation's histories. The film executes this through the politics of visibility qua the interaction between film and photography. Ultimately, Sandcastle reinforces and recognizes the multi-dimensionality of a nation's memory by mediating the uneven interfaces of image and conflicting historical narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering environmental themes at memorial sites for the late Lee Kuan Yew in comparison with environmental themes at National Day 2015 and SG50 (celebrating Singapore's fiftieth year of independence), this paper focuses on two images of water: the Singapore River Clean-up and Water Wally, the iconic Public Utilities Board mascot. Have themes of sacrifice turned to themes of changing habits and rational pleasures? The National Day celebration, though entwined with memorials, and by design invoking postcolonial memory, was also a future-oriented celebration. Where they appeared, green and blue visions of the environmental good delineated necessities, but also hopes. Bringing together analysis of symbols and power, ritual and history, this article considers Singapore's key environmental and postcolonial history in relation to a palette of red, green and blue cultural politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholars have demonstrated that affluent societies have a disproportionate environmental impact. A focus on wealth, however, can obscure how poverty also propels ecosystem destruction, particularly when combined -- as in colonial Singapore - with uncaring administrators and the ruthless logic of imperialism. In this colony, poor Chinese, Malays, archipelagic South-east Asians and Indians struggled to eke out a living by razing rainforest, because they possessed no better options. As these workers struggled to transform forests into farms, houses and roads, they created an ecology of poverty that had catastrophic consequences for humans and tigers alike. Finding ever less forest in which to hide from humans, the mighty cats instead began to regard some people as prey. Unable to lee, poor Chinese, Malays, archipelagic South-east Asians and Indians sought to protect themselves by killing tigers. In the end, the humans vanquished the cats, but not without enduring hundreds of fatalities. Colonial Singapore's environmental history reminds us that the people who carry out the work of eradicating nature often do so because they possess limited alternatives for survival. As a corollary, caring for and protecting the environment is inseparable from aiding and respecting people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role of biography in contemporary remembrance of the moment of decolonisation in Singapore. To challenge a hegemonic developmental narrative told through the biography of Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, many popular and academic historians have focused on the lives of political figures previously written out of history. Most notable among these is the opposition leader Lim Chin Siong, who was detained in 1963 in Operation Coldstore, one of several waves of detentions by the security forces during Singapore's transition from internal self government in 1959, through membership of the Malaysian Federation in 1963, to independent nationhood in 1965. Such acts of storytelling, however, while having an important status as testimony, often simply invert the dominant narrative, trapping their protagonists in a new series of historical binarisms. In contrast, life writing in media less closely wedded to narrative, such as poetry and photography, has perhaps a more radical ability to ask questions of history, through a focus not on storytelling but on images extracted from contexts, on the moment before narrative starts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Nepalese Gurkhas have often been regarded as brave warriors in the scheme of British military recruitment since the 1800s. Today, their descendants have settled in various parts of South East and South Asia. How can one conceive of a Gurkha diaspora, and what are the Gurkhas and their families’ experiences of belonging in relation to varied migratory routes? This paper locates Gurkhas as migrants by deliberating upon the connection between military service and migration paths. I employ the lens of methodological transnationalism to elucidate how the Gurkha diaspora is both constructed and experienced. Diasporic consciousness and formation undergo modification alongside subsequent cycles of migration for different members of a diaspora. The article thus evaluates the transnational lives of migrants, and how these are connected to re-territorialized dimensions of identity and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to recover the background to the post-Second World War growth of local art activities, art education and the rise of the professional artist on the island of Singapore and peninsular Malaya. It examines how the transitional period spanning the dissolution of British colonialism and the establishment of two independent nations stimulated unique conditions for the development of local art education and created an amateur–professional artist divide. The promotion and support of fine arts and related activities were in tandem with nation-building strategies that sought to construct a common ‘Malayan’ culture and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What “Malaya” is or what it means to Singaporeans today has a history. Revisiting the historical and contemporary scenes where “Malaya” is a subject allows for the fleshing out of the politics underlying the conflict between those who desire and those who despise it. Whether Singapore's history of the 1950s and early 1960s is the striving for a dream or the forestalling of a nightmare situation is fiercely debated today, after a few decades of quiescence and amnesia, in the face of the hegemonic state narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A review of several articles, which includes "The ruling elite of Singapore: Networks of power and influence" by Michael D. Barr, "Goh Keng Swee: A legacy of public service" by Emrys Chew, and Chong Guan Kwa, and "We also served: Reflections of Singapore's former PAP MPs" by Chiang Hai Ding and Rohan Kamis.