Tales of Old Singapore

By Iain Manley

Old Singapore was an eclectic trade emporium, where an ethnically and culturally diverse populace coalesced, and sometimes clashed, under the aegis of the British Empire. It was a fascinating world filled with traders of all nations, roving bands of pirates, murderers running amuck and even the occasional flesh-hungry tiger. Using a patchwork of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books Ltd
• Release date: Jan 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9789888107131

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Introduction

Old Singapore was the greatest emporium in Asia, and perhaps the world—a city organised like an immense department store, in which you could buy and sell just about anything. Established by a nation of shopkeepers, it welcomed anybody who came to work or trade: opium dealers, prostitutes and coolies, along with merchants and tradesmen from Europe and every corner of the East. Some made vast fortunes, and the self-made man was accorded the utmost respect; others were worn down by hard labour, killed at sea by pirates or assassinated by triad thugs. But for over a century, Singapore boomed. And although few ever thought of it as home, their individual pursuit of riches built an Asian city of unrivalled diversity and prosperity, and eventually invented a nation.

The settlement was an immediate, almost overnight, success. Founded in 1819 on the ruins of Temasek, capital of Malay king Parameswara, it had a population of 5,000 and trade tallying up to eight million Spanish dollars by 1821. In 1825, its population surpassed 10,000 and trade reached $22 million, exceeding that of the much older British port of Penang.

Chinatown from Pearl’s Hill, 1847

Its rapid success is usually attributed to its perfect location and near-perfect founder, Stamford Raffles. The Strait of Malacca is the natural conduit for ships sailing to and from China and Japan, and Singapore, at its narrow southern entrance, has a natural deep-water harbour. Geography alone might have been enough, but also Raffles made Singapore a free port in a time when the Dutch, colonial masters of much of the region, levied onerous duties on ships not flying their flag. Laissez faire British rule was so popular that the Dutch unsuccessfully blockaded their own harbour at Malacca to prevent the merchants there—a diverse mixture of Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Indians, Malays and Straits Chinese—from moving to Singapore.

Raffles did not preside over the pell-mell rush to settle the island. Instead, he installed Colonel William Farquhar as Resident and returned to Bencoolen, where he was Lt. Governor. Farquhar was perhaps too easygoing: he turned a blind-eye to slavery, licensed vice and allowed houses to be built in an area Raffles had reserved for commerce. When Raffles returned in 1822, he had Farquhar removed and carefully reorganized the town, but Singapore soon sprawled beyond even Raffles’ optimistic expectations.

Immigrants started arriving from further afield—some convicts, others coolies, soldiers, merchants or administrators—and by 1827, Chinese residents had overtaken Malays to become the settlement’s largest ethnic group. In 1860, Indians knocked Malays into third place. Singapore also became a part of the Straits Settlements, created in 1824 after Britain and the Netherlands divided the region between themselves along roughly the same lines that separate Malaysia from Indonesia today.

Raffles Hotel in the early 1900s. Singapore’s last tiger was shot underneath its billiards hall.

Responsibility for the Straits Settlements and its diverse peoples fell on governors appointed by the British East India Company, who often knew little about the region and were primarily concerned with the bottom line. In 1850, despite widespread lawlessness caused by powerful criminal societies, 12 police officers were responsible for some 60,000 residents. Singapore’s administrators also ignored the importance of cultural differences—the misnomer ‘native’ was regularly applied to Chinese, Indians and Malays alike—and not a single British official could speak Chinese.

In 1867, two years after Singapore became a Crown Colony, the Suez Canal opened, drastically reducing the length of the journey from Europe to Asia. The world’s shipping was, at the same time, exchanging sails for steam and steamships needed bigger, better equipped ports, where they could take on coal. In 1877, rubber was introduced to the island and just 30 years later, when automobiles reached a mass market for the first time, Malaya was the largest producer of plantation rubber in the world. Singapore prospered. Between 1873 and 1913, the volume of trade handled at the port increased eight fold, making it the second busiest port in the world after Liverpool.

It became a modern, industrial, hugely unequal and exceptionally cosmopolitan city. Its towkays and tuans – wealthy Chinese merchants and Europeans, respectively—lived lives of giddy excess. Europeans started work at 10am and finished at 4:30pm, with an hour for lunch. Their copious free time was filled with tennis, cricket, horse racing, rugby and fives, as well as tea dances and banquets served by liveried servants in the breeze of punkah fans pulled by men labelled ‘peons’. Guests at the city’s luxury hotels, the world’s first global tourists, were waited on by teams of servants without which they couldn’t get on and between whom they couldn’t distinguish. Tigers were a menace—until the last was killed underneath the billiards room at Raffles Hotel in 1921—but nobody worried much, because man-eaters seemed more interested in the flesh of coolies than Europeans. Coolies, on the other hand, had more than tigers to worry about. Mostly indentured labourers from southern China or India’s east coast, they lived short, hard lives away from home, and many died at the Paupers’ Hospital from malnutrition or opium addiction.

Despite minor setbacks during WWI and the Great Depression, life continued gaily until WWII, when the Japanese defeated the British and began a brutal occupation of the island. A month after the Japanese surrender, the British returned a diminished power—beatable, exhausted by war and guilty of incredible hubris—to a colony in a mess. The people of Singapore began to call for independence, and Britain agreed to gradually grant it. In 1946, the Straits Settlements was dissolved. Singapore became a separate colony and limited elections were held, but just two years later, British troops began battling Communist guerrillas on the Malayan Peninsula. It was not until 1955 that the next step was taken towards self government, including almost complete control over domestic policy. In 1956, the Chief Minister, David Marshall, went to London to appeal for full independence. He was rejected. Frequent riots had brought the legitimacy of his party’s rule into question and the British felt that, without their continued involvement, communists might take over the island. Marshall resigned. His replacement, Lim Yew Hock, cracked down on leftwing parties and, in 1959, Singapore was granted full internal self-government under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew.

Lee believed that Singapore’s future lay in a united Malaya and, despite strong opposition, achieved his goal in 1963, when Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak merged, creating the Federation of Malaysia. It was not to last. Malays feared Chinese dominance and bloody race riots broke out. On August 9, 1965, the short lived federation ended with the expulsion of Singapore. Lee received the news with tears, but declared the full independence of Singapore, and Singapore would—in time, under his guidance—prove exceptional. It would become the world’s greatest port city and a beacon for the potential of Asia.

Much that was colourful about old Singapore was, inevitably, left behind. It has been almost 200 years since Raffles left the island’s shores, but, despite the intervening busts and even more transformative booms, Raffles would still recognise his creation, and probably approve. Singapore is still a well-administered free port—it is still charting the course on which he set it. I hope that you will enjoy tracing its journey as much as I have.

Iain Manley

October 2010

Shanghai

Singapore Ahoy!

From Glimpses into Life in the Far East by JT Thomson, 1864

Singapore ahoy! exclaimed the man at the mast as the white houses and shipping rose above the horizon while we were abreast of the large red cliffs. We hailed the Queen of the East with no small pleasure… In the foreground, busy canoes, sampans, and tongkangs bore their noisy and laughing native crews about the harbour. The stately Hyacinth showed the pennant amongst numbers of English merchantmen. Hundreds of Chinese junks, and Malay prows, lay further in shore. Behind these, stretched a sandy beach, glistening in the sun, and overhung by the graceful palm trees, the glory of Singapore planters. In the centre of the landscape was Government Hill, with its verdant lawns and snug bungalow; and at its base were the warehouses and mansions of the merchant princes. Behind these was to be seen the comely undulating background, alternately covered with the mighty forest trees, and gambier and pepper gardens.

Captain Whalley seemed to be swept out of the great avenue by the swirl of a mental backwash. He remembered muddy shores, a harbour without quays, the one solitary wooden pier jutting out crookedly, the first coal-sheds erected on Monkey Point…He remembered the things, the faces, and something besides—like the faint flavour of a cup quaffed to the bottom, like a subtle sparkle of the air that was not to be found in the atmosphere of to-day.

Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether, 1902

The Smiling Peace of the Eastern Seas

From Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Lord Jim. Jim, the protagonist, is thought to have been inspired by a resident of Singapore.

The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,—at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon.

The greatest sign of vitality in Singapore Europeans that I can see is the furious hurry in writing for the mail. To all sorts of claims and invitations, the reply is, ‘But it’s mail day, you know,’ or ‘I’m writing for the mail,’ or, ‘I’m awfully behind hand with my letters,’ or, ‘I can’t stir till the mail’s gone!’ The hurry is desperate …

Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither

Singapore’s Population

The history of Singapore is written mainly in statistics.

Sir Richard Winstedt, Malaya and its History, 1948

The present population of Singapore amounts to 30,000; of which there are only 7229 females. Of Europeans, there are 105 males and 36 females; Malays, 5122 males, 4510 females; Chinese, 12,870 males, 879 females; Klings, 2246 males, 102 females. The rest are Bugis, Balinese, Bengalese, Negroes, Javanese, Arabs, &c.; with a few Indo-Brittons, Armenians, &c.

Howard Malcom, Travels in South Eastern Asia, 1839

The United States Treasury Department gives the trade of Singapore (April, 1898) as $210,000,000, consequently larger than that of all Japan ($195,000,000), or all of the Dutch East Indies ($147,000,000). Only the Empire of China ($277,000,000) rivals this little British port in the total of its commerce.

Poultney Bigelow, The White Man’s Rule in Singapore, 1899

The Handiest City Ever

From Two Years in the Jungle by William Temple Hornaday, 1885

Singapore is certainly the handiest city I ever saw, as well planned and carefully executed as though built entirely by one man. It is like a big desk, full of drawers and pigeon holes, where everything has its place, and can always be found in it.

For instance, around the esplanade you find the European hotels and bad enough they are, too; around Commercial Square, packed closely together, are all the shipping offices, warehouses, and shops of the European merchants; and along Boat Quay are all the ship chandlers. Nearby, you will find a dozen large Chinese medicine shops, a dozen cloth shops, a dozen tin shops, and similar clusters of shops kept by blacksmiths, tailors, and carpenters, others for the sale of fruit, vegetables, grain, notions, and so on to the end of the chapter. All the washerwomen congregate on a