One of the most persistent myths on Singapore’s history is that Stamford Raffles somewhat “discovered” this tiny island – seemingly a “backwater” and a “sleepy fishing village” of little significance in the region. This view that is repeated ad nauseam in national narratives posits Singapore as a “no-man’s land” before the British “founded” it and developed this island into a bustling and prosperous entrepôt. 

Only within the last few decades have this view being challenged, primarily through archaeological evidence that revealed a much older and thriving kingdom that had traded with civilisations as far as China and India. 

Of course, this view did not go well with the British colonisers’ attempt to wrestle Singapore from Dutch control in the Riau archipelago. The British had eyes on the Straits of Malacca and wanted to exercise a monopoly over it. Raffles knew the strategic importance of Singapore. To legitimise his annexation, he had to rewrite history – one that suits his colonial agenda. 

In his assessment of Raffles in Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer? (1972), sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas thoroughly debunked the view that Raffles was a humanitarian and a reformer; on the contrary, he was proven to be a conniving imperialist with blood on his hands. 

 

Indigenous History and Historical Amnesia 

The existence of a formidable Kingdom of Singapura should not be surprising if one were to take the Malay records seriously instead of dismissing it as mere lore and legends. This should have been a part of our historical consciousness beyond the paltry mention in school textbooks about Sang Nila Utama and his encounter with a “lion” that got the island’s name – Singa-Pura, or Lion City.  

But somehow, the need to establish a national identity at the point of independence had severed Singapore’s history from the region, along with her split from Malaysia.

 The idea that was perpetuated then was that we are a migrant society where every race came to ply their trade in a once desolated area. Of course, the founding principle of multi-racialism is a noble one and should be cherished and continued. 

But we can certainly do without the ideological erasure or distortion of history. How else can we understand Article 152 of the Constitution that described the Malays as “the indigenous people of Singapore”? But ask the Malays how well they know of indigenous history prior to 1819? It seems that historical amnesia cuts across all races. 

Thankfully, we do have serious historians who are challenging the inherited colonial-centric history in order to reconstruct the 700-years of history of Singapura prior to the British’s arrival. 

The landmark publication was Kwa Chong Guan, Tan Ta Yong and Derek Heng’s Singapore: A 700-Year History. Aside from these topmost historians of Singapore, two other notable contributors to the reconstructionist project are Peter Borschberg and John Miksic. 

Important works in this aspect are Miksic’s Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea (2013) and Borschberg and Kwa Chong Guan’s edited volume, Studying Singapore Before 1800 (2018). 

More recently, Benjamin Khoo and Borschberg had published a stunning survey of European knowledge about Singapore circa 1500-1819, titled Knowing Singapore (2023). 

Based on solid evidence, the authors conclude that: “Contrary to a deeply entrenched and commonly held belief, Singapore and its straits was not an obscure, forgotten, or unknown locale. Europeans had ready access to published information about the region immediately surrounding Singapore, if not about the island itself.” (p. 13) 

Hence, the early British colonial writers’ claim that 1819 Singapore was a neglected backwater and virtually uninhabited had “a vested interest”, given its “legally contentious founding” as mentioned by Khoo and Borschberg. (p. 49) 

Sadly, later British historians, notably K.G. Tregonning and Mary Turnbull – both having served in the History Department of the University of Singapore – continues to parrot the colonial bias and exerted much influence in modern historiography of Singapore post 1965. 

 

Singapore in European Circulation of Knowledge 

What did Khoo and Borschberg surmised in Knowing Singapore?  

Firstly, “a wide variety of texts published before 1819, from poetry to navigational instructions, touched on Singapore and its straits”. (p. 22) 

These texts were not restricted to the English language, which had the most records, but also in French, Latin, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and Czech – i.e. almost all the vernacular languages of Europe. These records described Singapore as a place of great danger to navigators, posed by weather, geography of the straits and piracy. 

Secondly, Singapore was a geographic marker – “a dividing point between east and west” (p. 34), which separates the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. 

Hence, Singapore was key to European power competition to dominate the spice trade – a vantage point that were to “tore apart the political, social, and economic unity that had existed over centuries in the Singapore and Melaka straits region.” (pp. 36-37)  

Thirdly, Singapore was a place of antiquity. The story of medieval Singapore’s decline after an attempted coup d’état and the subsequent flight of Parameswara who then founded the eminent trading centre of Malacca, was known in places as far as Venice in the 16th century, and later on England, the German lands and France. (p. 39) 

These stories were known through Malay manuscripts, such as Sulalatus Salatin and Hikayat Hang Tuah, both of which acknowledged in the Preface of Dutch cleric, François Valentijn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (Old and New East Indies, 1724-1726). (p. 40) Raffles was certainly not the first to study Malay literature! 

Fourthly, the strategic importance of Singapore could be discerned from the concentration of military forces. Both the Portuguese and Spaniards had tried to secure the Singapore Straits in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. So did the Dutch, who engaged with the Portuguese squadron in the Johor River estuary in 1603. (p. 42) 

 

Debunking the Colonial Narrative 

Knowing Singapore is one of the most important works in recent attempts to decolonise Singapore’s history and historiography. But it will take a few more years, even decades, for this critical knowledge to enter public discourse and chart a new history curriculum in schools and textbooks. 

Echoing Kwa Chong Guan, Khoo and Borschberg acknowledge this long and arduous process of changing the narrative and dispelling entrenched historical myths.

“Serious and insidious flaws in the colonial narrative continue to haunt Singapore historiography,” they wrote. “The island’s history is the subject of debate , both academic and public, but it has become abundantly clear that the ‘1819 and all that’ narrative is factually inaccurate and does a great disservice to the contemporary history landscape in Singapore.” (p. 50) 

But it is a critical scholarship that has taken shape, a debate that has started, and a desire to reconnect with the region that has taken root. 

Change may be slow, but it is happening. 

Raffles, even if he still stands tall by the banks of the Singapore River, is certainly looking a lot smaller now in the eyes of many Singaporeans!