Singapore

A Moment of Anguish: Revisiting the Separation of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia Through British Library Newspapers

by

|By Liping Yang, Senior Manager, Academic Publishing, Gale Asia|

On the morning of August 9, 1965, a visibly shaken Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore, stood before journalists and television cameras. His voice trembled and his eyes welled with tears when he talked about the moment when the agreement “which severed Singapore from Malaysia” was signed. For him, it was “a moment of anguish.” His words marked the beginning of a new chapter for Singapore—a moment that would redefine two nations.

Sixty years on, the emotional weight of that day still echoes through the region’s political and cultural memory. But what did ordinary people know at the time? How did newspapers report the unfolding crisis, and what voices emerged in the public sphere?

Read more

Tracing the History of Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong through British Official and Non-Official Documents

by

By Liping Yang, Senior Manager, Academic Publishing, and Emma Harris, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

Gale has recently released Part IV in its State Papers Online Colonial: Asia series (SPOCA 4). This new module provides a perfect continuation of State Papers Online Colonial Asia Part I-III through a combination of major Colonial Office files featuring (East & West) Malaysia and Singapore as well as a curated collection of Hong Kong-related British official and non-official files selected from the archives of the Colonial Office, the Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence, and the British Council.

Consisting of around 380,000 pages of documents digitized from 15 series, this new module features a wide range of content types including correspondence, register of out-letters, registered files, government gazettes, sessional papers, and maps and plans, providing a wealth of valuable material for researching the history of Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong as former British colonies between 1844 and 1997.

Read more

The History of West Malaysia and Singapore as Refracted Through British Colonial Office Files

by

|By Liping Yang, Senior Manager, Academic Publishing, and Emma Harris, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources|

Please be aware that this blog posts includes primary sources which describe extensive violence and oppression; the decision to read the post is at your own discretion.

Gale Primary Sources’ State Papers Online Colonial: Asia digital archive welcomed its third instalment in September 2024 – State Papers Online Colonial: Asia, Part III: Malay States, Malaya, and Straits Settlements – providing a continuation of and perfect complement to Part II through a thematic collection on the history of West Malaysia and the earlier history of Singapore.

Made up of mostly original correspondence, as well as two series of maps and plans, and a series of historical photographs, Part III contains over 625,000 newly scanned pages from twelve Colonial Office series sourced from The National Archives, UK.

Read more

Decolonisation in the British Empire in Asia: The Malayan Emergency and Singapore

by

│By Dr Lucy Dow, Gale Content Researcher│

The recently published State Papers Online Colonial: Asia, Part I: Far East, Hong Kong, and Wei-Hai-Wei spans over four hundred years of British Colonial Office files, from the 1550s to 1970s. Britain’s colonial rule in Asia took various forms through the period and within different territories, with varying degrees of control, from local autonomy apart from defence and foreign relations, to full British administration. While some local people benefited from their involvement with the British, many colonised peoples suffered and resented colonial rule. This resentment led to resistance to British colonial authority, in various ways and to differing extents from territory to territory.

In the twentieth century, and particularly following the complete failure of the British to protect the local communities from Japanese invasion during the Second World War, the cumulative effect of this resistance, combined with other geopolitical factors, led to the rapid reduction in the size of British Empire, as former colonies secured their independence in what is now referred to as the period of decolonisation. The primary sources in this online archive document this change in the political landscape of Asia and Britain, as explored in the examples below.

Read more

Ngiam Tong-Fatt’s Essays Provide Great Insight into Mid-Twentieth Century Southeast Asia

by
Map of the Malay Peninsula

│By Rebecca Chiew, Associate Editor with the Gale Asia Publishing Team│

Ngiam Tong-fatt (嚴崇發 1917–?) was an overseas Chinese living in Singapore in the early and mid-twentieth century. He worked as a correspondent based in Singapore in the 1940s for The China Critic (中國評論週報, 1928–1946), a weekly periodical founded on May 31, 1928 by a group of Chinese intellectuals who had studied in the United States. Despite the editors’ avowed preference for “nonpolitical” discourse, The China Critic’s editorials and articles frequently discussed the presence of imperialism in Shanghai, debated the abolition of extraterritoriality, and advocated equal access to public facilities in the concessions. The editors also participated in wider-ranging discussions about urban affairs.

Read more

Who is the Founder of Modern Singapore?

by

By Vanessa Tan, Editorial Assistant with Gale Asia

In 2019, Singapore will commemorate her bicentenary since the landing of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) on the island on 28 January 1819. Raffles’ name now stretches beyond the widely known narrative of the nation-state’s genesis. Today, the name carries pomp and prestige—Raffles City and Raffles Hotel are both prominent landmarks situated in the richest areas of Singapore, while Raffles Institution remains the highest-ranked secondary educational institution in the country, having produced many of the country’s top-performing scholars and politicians.

Read more