Singapore Stories: Language, Class, and the Chinese of Singapore, ...

meant that the island could also be used as a centre for entrepôt trading. Founded as a free port, Singapore reflected the growing positive attitude in Europe towards the idea of an “end to the old mercantilist system of trade”. ⁷

The need for labour to facilitate the island’s development meant that population growth would need to be accelerated through migration. Key individuals in the administration considered the local Malays as inefficient, unmotivated, and lazy, ⁸ content to live simply in their kampong, tending to their fishing nets, and therefore wholly “unsuited” to the toil involved in building and running a major port. Consequently, it was to the Chinese and Indians that the British administration looked to solve their labour crisis, for it was believed that both were “naturally built” for intense hard work. In 1823, John Crawfurd was appointed resident of Singapore. Crawfurd’s work as an amateur anthropologist, includingthe History of the Indian Archipelago published three years earlier, was typical of the scholar-administrators of the era. Of the Chinese, he writes,

By 1830, just four years after Crawfurd ended his tenure as resident, the population of Singapore had risen to 16,634. ¹⁰ The ethnic breakdown of the population was reported as 6,555 Chinese, 7,640 Malays, 1,913 Indians, and 526 “other races”, and during the next decade, the Chinese population reached a majority position. ¹¹ By the turn of the twentieth century, the ethnic Chinese percentage comprised 72.7 percent, a figure which has remained constant to this day.