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1000 inhabitants
- It seems that the region had only about 1000 inhabitants; mostly tribesmen and Chinese merchants.
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Feb 12, 2020 · In 1969, Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, said that before the British arrived, “there was no organised human society in Singapore, unless a fishing village can be called a society”. Contemporary leaders also give the colonial regime measured praise.
History books are replete with examples of how these new immigrants lived difficult lives in Singapore, how many made their names or filled their purses, and how each in their own way contributed to building up Singapore.
- Overview
- History of Singapore
- East India Company
- Development of the port
- World War II and the end of colonialism
- First decades of self-government
Singapore Island originally was inhabited by fishermen and pirates, and it served as an outpost for the Sumatran empire of Srīvijaya. In Javanese inscriptions and Chinese records dating to the end of the 14th century, the more-common name of the island is Tumasik, or Temasek, from the Javanese word tasek (“sea”). Rajendra Chola I, ruler of the southern Indian Chola kingdom, attacked the island in 1025, and there was another Chola raid in 1068. In 1275 the Javanese king Kertanagara probably attacked Temasek when he raided Pahang on the east coast of the peninsula. According to a Chinese traveler, Wang Dayuan, just before 1349 about 70 Tai (Siamese) war boats besieged Temasek for a month but had to withdraw. The Javanese epic poem Nāgarakṛtāgama (written 1365) includes Temasek among the conquests of the Javanese empire of Majapahit. At the end of the 14th century, Temasek fell into decay and was supplanted by Malacca (now Melaka). Yet in 1552 it was still a port of call from which St. Francis Xavier dispatched letters to Goa, and João de Barros described its busy shipping activity in his history Décadas da Ásia (1552–1615).
Rajendra may have named the city Singapura (“Lion City”), later corrupted to Singapore, or the name may have been bestowed in the 14th century by Buddhist monks, to whom the lion was a symbolic character. According to the Sejarah Melayu, a Malay chronicle, the city was founded by the Srīvijayan prince Sri Tri Buana; he is said to have glimpsed a tiger, mistaken it for a lion, and thus called the settlement Singapura.
Singapore Island originally was inhabited by fishermen and pirates, and it served as an outpost for the Sumatran empire of Srīvijaya. In Javanese inscriptions and Chinese records dating to the end of the 14th century, the more-common name of the island is Tumasik, or Temasek, from the Javanese word tasek (“sea”). Rajendra Chola I, ruler of the southern Indian Chola kingdom, attacked the island in 1025, and there was another Chola raid in 1068. In 1275 the Javanese king Kertanagara probably attacked Temasek when he raided Pahang on the east coast of the peninsula. According to a Chinese traveler, Wang Dayuan, just before 1349 about 70 Tai (Siamese) war boats besieged Temasek for a month but had to withdraw. The Javanese epic poem Nāgarakṛtāgama (written 1365) includes Temasek among the conquests of the Javanese empire of Majapahit. At the end of the 14th century, Temasek fell into decay and was supplanted by Malacca (now Melaka). Yet in 1552 it was still a port of call from which St. Francis Xavier dispatched letters to Goa, and João de Barros described its busy shipping activity in his history Décadas da Ásia (1552–1615).
Rajendra may have named the city Singapura (“Lion City”), later corrupted to Singapore, or the name may have been bestowed in the 14th century by Buddhist monks, to whom the lion was a symbolic character. According to the Sejarah Melayu, a Malay chronicle, the city was founded by the Srīvijayan prince Sri Tri Buana; he is said to have glimpsed a tiger, mistaken it for a lion, and thus called the settlement Singapura.
In January 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles of the English East India Company, searching for a trading site, forestalled by the Dutch at Riau, and finding the Carimon (Karimun) Islands unsuitable, landed at Singapore. He found only a few Chinese planters, some aborigines, and a few Malays and was told by the hereditary chief, the temenggong (direct ancestor of the sultans of present-day Johor, Malaysia), that the company could purchase land. The temenggong, however, was a subordinate of his cousin Abdul Rahman, sultan of Riau-Johor, who was under Dutch surveillance. Furthermore, Abdul Rahman was a younger son and not a sultan de jure. Raffles, disobeying instructions not to offend the Dutch, withdrew his own recognition of Abdul Rahman’s suzerainty over Singapore and installed Abdul Rahman’s elder brother, Hussein (Husain), to validate the purchase of land there on behalf of the company. The Dutch protested. In London the company’s court of directors, though it decided that Raffles had contravened instructions, took no action.
In 1824 an Anglo-Dutch treaty left Malaya and Singapore in the British sphere, and in August the whole of Singapore Island was ceded to the British for a monetary payment. Two years later Singapore, Penang, and Malacca (Melaka) were combined as the Straits Settlements to form an outlying residency of India. In 1830 they were reduced to a residency under Bengal, and two years later Singapore became their capital. When the East India Company lost its monopoly of the China trade (1833), it also lost its interest in Malaya. The settlements were transferred to the direct control of the governor-general of India in 1851. In 1867 they were made a crown colony under the Colonial Office in London.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s trade had suffered after 1842 from British development of a rival port, Hong Kong, as later it was to suffer from the French occupation of mainland Southeast Asia and their development of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and Haiphong in Vietnam and from the establishment of Dutch ports and shipping lines in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the advent of steamships, however, an era of prosperity began that led eventually to the construction of 3 miles (5 km) of wharves at Tanjong Pagar and finally, in 1921, a naval base. The economic growth of the Malay states after they became British protectorates enlarged transit trade.
The demand of the industrial West for tin and rubber was what made Singapore one of the greatest ports in the world. After World War I, steps were taken to modernize Malayan defenses and, with the lapsing of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, to build a large naval base in Singapore.
In early December 1941 the Japanese landed in northern Malaya and southern Thailand on the Malay Peninsula. They quickly gained air and naval superiority in the region, and by the end of January 1942 they had overrun the peninsula and were opposite Singapore Island. The Japanese crossed the Johor Strait on February 8, 1942, and the British command surrendered the island and city one week later. Singapore remained in Japanese hands until September 1945.
Postwar British political plans for Malaya excluded Singapore from a proposed Malayan Union and later from the Federation of Malaya, mainly because it was thought that Singapore’s predominantly Chinese population would be an ethnic obstacle to common citizenship. As a separate crown colony (from 1946), Singapore made constitutional progress despite the communist insurrection in Malaya. Elected ministers and a Legislative Assembly with an elected majority assumed government responsibility in 1955, except for matters of defense and foreign policy. In 1959 the official and nominated elements were eliminated, and Singapore became self-governing, although Britain still retained control of defense and foreign policy.
Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia on its formation in September 1963. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), led by Lee Kuan Yew, had refused in 1959 to form a government until extreme left-wing leaders of the party who had been detained by the colonial authorities were released. Those leaders opposed the concept of Malaysia and broke away from the PAP to form the Socialist Front (Barisan Sosialis), which was accused of being a communist front organization. The PAP faced fresh dangers of subversion when Indonesian opposition to Malaysia took the form of military and economic confrontation (1964).
Confrontation ended in 1966, but Singapore had seceded from Malaysia in 1965 (at the invitation of the Malaysian government) because of political friction between the state and central governments. That conflict had ethnic overtones and continued to affect relations between Singapore and Malaysia until the mid-1970s, when relations became more cordial.
In January 1968 the British government had announced that all British defense forces would be withdrawn from East and Southeast Asia (except Hong Kong) by the end of 1971. In April Singapore’s unprepared major opposition parties boycotted an election called seven months before it was due. The ruling PAP termed its sweep of all parliamentary seats a mandate for its plans for reducing the economic effects of the British military withdrawal.
At the end of October 1971, British military presence in Singapore came to an end. The Anglo-Malayan treaty concluded in 1957, which had committed Britain to the defense of the region, was terminated, and in its place a five-power defense arrangement—involving Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore as equal partners—came into force.
question of the role of colonialism in Singapore’s history. The exhibits show the different perspectives about different episodes in Singapore’s colonial history.
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Aug 24, 2009 · The records of Singapore abound in population censuses which have been quoted by demographers, historians and other writers. These censuses can be broadly divided into those taken before 1871 and those conducted since that year.
- Saw Swee-Hock
- 1969
Jan 31, 2019 · By 1821, the population in Singapore had grown to 5,000, many of whom were Malaccans who had followed William Farquhar when he moved here to become Resident of Singapore (he was previously Resident of Malacca). 11 In addition, the EIC brought prisoners from India to build local infrastructure. Therefore, diverse peoples from around the region ...
In 1867, the Straits Settlements became a separate Crown colony, directly overseen by the Colonial Office in Whitehall in London. The period saw Singapore establish itself as an important trading port and developed into a major city with a rapid increase in population.
