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Publications Series Edited Volumes 14 Singapore in Global History SingaporeDerek Heng is Assistant Professor at the History in Singapore in Department, Ohio State University. He specialises in pre-modern Sino-Southeast Asian economic interaction and early Southeast Asian state formation. Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied is Assistant Professor Singapore in at the Malay Studies Department, National University Globalof Singapore. His research History encompasses colonial Global History history, the history of ideas and social identities. Global History Heng | Aljunied (eds.) Singapore in Global History brings together scholars working in the fields of political science, international relations, history, sociology, literature, art history and architecture to explore ways in which Singapore’s history could be looked upon from a global perspective. The volume’s papers make a collective attempt at Edited by arguing, often in radically novel fashion, that Singapore Derek Heng and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied can be conceived both as core and periphery, and that the logic of the post-colonial nation-narrative, which attributes Singapore’s success primarily to the roles of big men and strong government, are inadequate. This volume locates Singapore as a central space between the major termini of maritime Asia and the world, and articulates the island as a strategic location where the global processes find their nesting place, where its society is fundamentally affected by these processes, and where the roots of global transformative processes eventually emanate to far reaching parts of a globalising world. This path-breaking and multidisciplinary collection of essays broadens the horizons of, and suggests new ways of approaching, Singapore history, from the fourteenth century to the present, by placing the island and its people in a larger comparative and global framework. Craig A. Lockard, Rosenberg Professor, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay 9 789089 643247 www.aup.nl ISBN 978 90 8964 324 7 Singapore in Global History P UBLICATIONS S ERIES General Editor Paul van der Velde Publications Officer Martina van den Haak Editorial Board Wim Boot (Leiden University); Jennifer Holdaway (Social Science Research Council); Christopher A. Reed (The Ohio State University); Anand A. Yang (Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Chair of International Studies at the University of Washington); Guobin Yang (Barnard College, Columbia University). The ICAS Publications Series consists of Monographs and Edited Volumes. The Series takes a multidisciplinary approach to issues of interregional and multilateral importance for Asia in a global context. The Series aims to stimulate dialogue amongst scholars and civil society groups at the local, regional and international levels. The International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) was founded in 1997. Its main goals are to transcend the boundaries between disciplines, between nations studied, and between the geographic origins of the Asia scholars involved. ICAS has grown into the largest biennial Asia studies event covering all subjects of Asia studies. So far six editions of ICAS have been held respectively in Leiden (1998), Berlin (2001), Singapore (2003), Shanghai (2005), Kuala Lumpur (2007), Daejeon, South Korea (2009) and Honolulu, Hawai‘i (2011). In 2001 the ICAS secretariat was founded which guarantees the continuity of the ICAS process. In 2004 the ICAS Book Prize (IBP) was established in order to create by way of a global competition both an international focus for publications on Asia while at the same time increasing their visibility worldwide. Also in 2005 the ICAS Publications Series were established. For more information: www.icassecretariat.org Singapore in Global History Edited by Derek Heng and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied P UBLICATIONS S ERIES Edited Volumes 14 Cover design: JB&A raster grafisch ontwerp, Westland Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 8964 324 7 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 437 3 NUR 692 © ICAS / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. Table of Contents List of Tables and Illustrations 7 Foreword 9 1 Globalising the History of Singapore 11 Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied & Derek Heng 2 Situating Temasik within the Larger Regional Context: Maritime Asia and Malay State Formation in the Pre-Modern Era 27 Derek Heng 3 The Singapore River/Port in a Global Context 51 Stephen Dobbs 4 ‘Walls of Illusion’: Information Generation in Colonial Singapore and the Reporting of the Mahdi-Rebellion in Sudan, 1887-1890 67 Torsten Tschacher 5 The Littoral and the Literary: Making Moral Communities in the Straits Settlements and the Gold Coast in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century 89 Philip Holden 6 Social Discourse and Economic Functions: The Singapore Chinese in Japan’s Southward Expansion between 1914 and 1941 111 Huei-Ying Kuo 7 The Dynamics of Trans-Regional Business and National Politics: The Impact of Events in China on Fujian-Singapore Tea Trading Networks, 1920-1960 135 Jason Lim 6 SINGAPORE IN GLOBAL HISTORY 8 Rambutans in the Picture: Han Wai Toon and the Articulation of Space by the Overseas Chinese in Singapore 151 Lai Chee Kien 9 The Global Effects of an Ethnic Riot: Singapore, 1950-1954 173 Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied 10 The British Military Withdrawal from Singapore and the Anatomy of a Catalyst 195 Loh Kah Seng 11 Bringing the International and Transnational back in: Singapore, Decolonisation, and the Cold War 215 S.R. Joey Long 12 The Global and the Regional in Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought: The Early Cold War Years 235 Ang Cheng Guan 13 A Brief History of the Hub: Navigating between ‘Global’ and ‘Asian’ in Singapore’s Knowledge Economy Discourse 269 Leong Yew About the Contributors 291 Bibliography 297 List of Tables and Illustrations List of Tables Table 6.1 The distribution of Chinese sub-ethnic groups in Southeast Asia 116 Table 6.2 Importers and wholesalers of Japanese shoes in Singapore 124 Table 6.3 Chinese textile wholesalers and retailers dealing in Japanese cotton cloth, sarong and rayon in Singapore, 1933 126 List of Illustrations Figure 8.1 Shen Nong Medical Hall at Bras Basah Road, now demolished (courtesy of Koh Nguang How) 160 Figure 8.2 Han Wai Toon, Marco Hsü and guests at the Han Rambutan Orchard (image courtesy of the estate of Marco Hsü) 162 Figure 8.3 Detailed sketch of the orchard by Lim Mu Hue (courtesy of the estate of Lim Mu Hue) 164 Figure 8.4 The “Han Rambutan Orchard” by Lim Mu Hue, 1964, Chinese ink on sepia rice paper, 6’ 3 4’ 165 Figure 8.5 A detail of Lim’s painting showing Han’s Inarch grafting method 168 Foreword The basic premise of this volume of articles is that there is a need to respond to the challenge issued by Jerry Bentley – one of the pioneers of the now well-established field of ‘World History’ – for historians to attempt both to ‘globalize history’ and to ‘historicize globalization’. Though directed at historians, it is a challenge that raises broader ques- tions about the interplay between the global and the local in all fields of endeavour. While the joint editors of this volume are both historians, the contributions are from specialists in history, political science, inter- national relations, sociology, literature, art history and architecture, all of whom address this issue to a greater or lesser degree with regard to Singapore. A major aim of the contributors was to emphasise the contri- bution of the ‘local’ to the ‘global’. Since the late 1990s there has been a proliferation of studies on Singapore.1 Initially, these works were written by non-professional his- torians and government bodies responding to the government’s call as part of the official 1997 launching of the National Education Programme, which was intended to educate the people about the struggles that led to the success story that was Singapore’s. The response included publica- tions on the “Singapore Story”, especially the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew and biographies of other political figures, such as S. Rajaratnam, Lim Kim San, and David Marshall. This form of historical writing culminated in the 2010 publication, Men in White.2 Professional historians then became involved not simply in producing the standard histories of the nation state of Singapore, but also in offering an alternative ‘history from below’. Of particular note is the 2008 publication entitled, The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Past.3 There has also been a trend towards giving greater emphasis to Singapore’s international involvement from its earliest history, which has been reconstructed through archaeo- logical finds, to the present day. The most recent example, published in 2009, is simply entitled Singapore: A 700-Year History,4 a book which dis- cusses Singapore’s position within a wider regional and global context. This volume continues the latter trend by arguing that much of what has occurred in this island state is the result of powerful global forces that were adapted through local agency. A subsidiary theme is the re-assessment of Singapore history not as the story of ‘big men and major 10 SINGAPORE IN GLOBAL HISTORY events’ but of the ordinary and the prosaic, which together provides an alternative version of the past. It eschews the laudatory tone adopted by some previous works on Singapore, which stress the nation’s remarkable economic success in the world. Instead, it situates Singapore within a larger picture as one of many societies attempting to cope with the global movement of a vast number of peoples, ideas, and businesses.

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