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

have been affected by events on and beyond the island over time, it is useful to view its historiography in broad phases. We will begin by examining the impact of the early colonial phase of history writing, from 1819 to 1942.

Into Modernity

The “prehistory” of Singapore, that is to say, Singapore prior to the establishment of the British trading post in 1819, has often been dismissed as being irrelevant to understanding “modern” Singapore. This is based on the descriptions of the island by colonial historians, who suggested that there was little of note on the island prior to the arrival of the English East India Company’s (EIC) vessels, save for a Malay fishing village and its eight hundred inhabitants. As Kwa Chong Guan observes, for writers such as Charles Burton Buckley, Kennedy Gordon Tregonning, William Skeat and Charles Otto Blagden, and RichardWinstedt, “modern Singapore…began in 1819. Nothing that occurred on the island prior to this has particular relevance to an understanding ofthe contemporary scene”. ⁵

The underscoring of 1819’s scholarly significance thus suggests that on a specific day, month, and year, the history of Singapore “began”. What historians must be concerned about in understanding the historiography of the island is thus the complete significance attached to the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles and others in the context of deciding when Singapore’s history begins.

The dismissive attitude toward Singapore’s “prehistory” by scholars at the time established a critical pattern for much of the early colonial phase of its history writing. Any attempt to divorce the early historiography of Singapore from a Malayan context is a tricky proposition at best. By not acknowledging the relevance of the “prehistorical” period, Singapore’s history was instead made part of a greater Malayan history that often obscured the city’s distinctive past. ⁶ The signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, just five years after the arrival of the Raffles expedition to Singapore, was to have far-reaching