New York: I.B. Tauris [an imprint of Bloomsbury Press], 2019. xxxv, 257 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$40.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-78076-305-7.
In this new history of modern Singapore, Michael Barr takes aim at the Raffles-centrism and People’s Action Party-centrism of the “Singapore Story”—the national narrative of Singapore’s modern history propagated by Singapore’s political leadership from the mid-1990s onwards. This narrative lionized British East India Company official Stamford Raffles, who signed a treaty with local Malay rulers to establish a British factory in Singapore in February 1819, and the Lee Kuan Yew-led People’s Action Party (PAP) government, as the founder and makers of modern Singapore respectively. Barr seeks to make 1819 “a punctuation mark, not a headline in Singapore’s story” (202) by illuminating other foundational moments and formative developments in the making of modern Singapore. His chapters show that, far from being a “Third World” awaiting the PAP’s incorrupt and excellent leadership, Singapore was, by the 1950s, an advanced colonial port-city with a developed economy, a cosmopolitan and socially pluralistic society, and an extensive state apparatus. Barr’s approach is nuanced and balanced. Even as he undermines “the legitimizing narrative of the country’s current ruling elite,” he credits them for steering its transformation from “successful colonial port city” to “successful global city” (203).
Barr devotes more space to discussing developments before 1945 in his eight thematic chapters. This is, of course, congruent with his objective of foregrounding Singapore’s pre-colonial and pre-PAP past. In chapter 1, Barr contextualizes his motivations and objectives in writing this “alternative national history” (9) within the PAP government’s promotion of nationalist histories from the 1980s onwards and the resulting revisionist histories that questioned these nationalist histories. Some readers may come away with an impression that the PAP government did not care for history until the 1980s. Barr’s chapter in fact underlines that they have constantly viewed history as a powerful, evocative medium—hence their desire to control the Singaporean public consumption of historical narratives. The broad contours and template of the Singapore story could also be dated even earlier to the PAP’s commemoration of Singapore’s sesquicentennial in 1969, and not only the 1980s.
In chapter 2, Barr explores the ideas of Singapore articulated by different PAP leadership at various points in its post-1965 history—from the idea of Singapore as an exceptional city-nation boasting of an exceptional system of rational government and an exceptional socio-political order founded on meritocracy and multiracialism—to the idea of Singapore as a global city enjoying regional and global connectivity. Chapter 3 situates Singapore within the longue durée of its geographical location in a dynamic region at the crossroads of trans-oceanic trade. Barr provides an interesting revelation in that Raffles selected Singapore not because the island itself was strategic or politically significant, but because it was the one available location in a strategically vital region not claimed or controlled by the British’s rival, the Dutch.
In chapter 4, Barr shows that it was only in 1867, when Singapore was transferred to the Colonial Office in London for direct administration, that Singapore gained “modern governance” (87). Previously left on their own by a minimalist colonial administration, the different communities in Singapore then had to face the increasing intrusion of the colonial state into their commercial affairs and private lives. Chapters 5 and 6, on politics and governance in modern and independent Singapore, highlight 1942 when the Japanese replaced the British as overlords of Singapore; 1946, when Singapore was left out of the British’s ill-fated Malayan Union plan; and 1965, when Singapore left Malaysia to become an independent nation, as key turning points. In chapter 7 on Singapore’s economy, Barr traces, in broad succinct strokes, the beginnings and growth of Singapore from a regional trading centre for the processing and distribution of Malayan-produced tin, rubber, and oil, to a ubiquitous model of state-driven capitalism under the Singapore PAP government. In chapter 8, Barr traces the evolution of Singapore society from a small Malay settlement established in 1811 to the current nation-state populated by Singaporean citizens. Usefully, he highlights the centricity of language, race, and education in shaping identities and divisions in colonial, decolonizing, and post-colonial Singapore.
Singapore: A Modern History is a weighty complement to the late C.M. Turnbull’s A History of Modern Singapore, 1819–2005. I would include the book as compulsory reading in survey courses on modern Singapore history. I have minor disagreements with Barr’s interpretations of specific events or policies, however. In one instance, he rather cursorily asserts that the introduction of racial quotas in Singapore’s public housing policies (the Ethnic Integration Programme in 1989) was due to Lee Kuan Yew’s desire to “dilute the Malay community’s political power” (135). In the same chapter, he gives too short a shrift to the fourteen-year tenure of Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s second prime minister (1990–2004), characterizing it as the “interregnum” of a care-taker holding the fort while Lee Hsien Loong recovered from blood cancer (137).
None of this makes me appreciate Barr’s contribution any less. He has synthesized a wide array of seminal works and more recent research to offer thought-provoking perspectives and insights that any student of Singapore history should consider and reflect on. These include questions about how we frame key events and moments, and who we valorize and downplay, in Singapore’s modern history. I personally agree with his recognition of transient workers and migrant labour as vital contributors to Singapore’s economic development (161). They, like many other groups submerged by the Singapore story, merit greater space in a narrative that the mythic figure of Raffles has dominated for too long.
Ironically, Barr’s new history may no longer be as “alternative” as he intends. The Singapore government launched its bicentennial commemoration this year shortly after the book’s publication. The main highlight is the multi-sensory exhibition, “From Singapore to Singaporean: The Bicentennial Experience.” Its narrative was partly based on new research extending Singapore’s history back 700 years. Barr himself credits Peter Borschberg, a Singapore-based historian at the forefront of this new research, as having “a fundamental impact on the shape and scope” of his book (xx). Unsurprisingly therefore, the bicentennial’s narrative, which goes some ways towards complicating the centricity of Raffles and 1819 in Singapore’s modern history, is partially consonant with Barr’s arguments.
Edgar Liao
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver