A Short History of South-East Asia

by Peter Church

  The Philippines argues its geographical proximity to the Spratly Islands as the main basis of its claim. Both the Philippines and China also lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China)—a little more than 100 miles from the Philippines and some 500 miles from China. Malaysia and Brunei also lay claim to territory in the South China Sea that they say falls within their economic exclusion zones, as defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Brunei does not claim any of the disputed islands, but Malaysia claims a small number of islands in the Spratlys.

  China has backed its expansive claims with island‐building and an aggressive naval presence. It has, for example, in recent years rapidly built artificial islands with military infrastructure, including on Mischief Reef, which is within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. Its forces also took over Scarborough Shoal and barred Filipino fishermen from accessing its rich fishing grounds.

  The Philippines, frustrated and infuriated with China's actions, sought international arbitration in 2013, taking the dispute to an arbitration tribunal under the auspices of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, to challenge China's claims. In July 2016, judges of the tribunal backed the Philippines' case, saying that China had “no historical rights” based on the nine‐dash‐line map and had violated the Philippines' sovereign rights. China had boycotted the proceedings and called the ruling “ill‐founded.”

  President Duterte seems likely to follow many of the economic policies of his predecessor as he is “pro‐business.” He wants to lift infrastructure spending, encourage higher investment in agriculture, reduce red tape, lower barriers to foreign investment, and give more power to the provinces, the last two of which will require constitutional amendments. While Duterte is nothing like president Joko Widodo of Indonesia in terms of personality (as Duterte is far more dominating and autocratic), there is a similarity insofar as both are from the provinces and are not part of the traditional power elite. It will be interesting to observe whether Duterte can push through those of his policies that potentially threaten that elite.

  9

  Singapore

  Singapore is an immigrant society. When acquired by Britain in 1819 it was populated by only a few hundred Malays living simple lives in fishing villages. It is now a thriving city‐state, with a population of 5.6 million and by far the highest per‐capita income in Asia outside of Japan.

  Geography is central to Singapore's history. Located at the foot of the Malay peninsula, separated from the mainland by a narrow stretch of shallow water, it is the pivotal island in the Straits of Melaka. Singapore's history has revolved around turning its strategic location to its commercial benefit while remaining on good terms with its larger neighbours.

  Singapore is a Chinese city‐state. There are minority Indian and Malay communities, but political, commercial, and cultural power is in the hands of the ethnic Chinese. A major theme in Singapore's history since the end of World War II has been the continuous effort to create a national identity. What does it mean to be a Singaporean? How can the predominantly Chinese cultural heritage be transformed into a distinctly Singaporean culture? How best can a small, ethnically Chinese island relate to its overwhelmingly more populous Malay‐Muslim neighbours in Malaysia and Indonesia?

  COLONIALISM

  Stamford Raffles hoisted the British flag on the island of Singapore on January 29, 1819. It was the second island in the region to be occupied by the English East India Company (EIC), following the acquisition of Penang in 1786. The EIC had a monopoly on the English trade between India and China, had acquired considerable territory in India, and was eager to ensure control of the Straits of Melaka, the crucial passage of water through which most of its trading ships to China sailed. Penang gave it the ability to control the northern entrance of the Straits; Singapore gave it the ability to control the southern exit.

  For nearly 200 years, the Netherlands United East India Company (VOC) had been the EIC's arch rival in the region. When Napoleon annexed the Netherlands in 1810, Britain occupied the major Dutch possessions in the Indonesian archipelago in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of the French. Melaka, Bencoolen on the west coast of Sumatra, and the island of Java were taken over by Britain. Stamford Raffles was appointed head of a civil government to run Java and Sumatra. The colony was added to the EIC Indian empire, reporting directly to Calcutta.

  When the Napoleonic war ended in 1815, Britain wanted to bolster the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Belgium) as a bulwark against any future French revival. Dutch pressure then for the return of its colonies in the Indonesian archipelago fell on responsive ears. In 1818, Java was returned to Netherlands rule.

  Raffles was extremely disappointed that wider European strategic considerations had forced him to return Java to the Dutch. He was an expansionist at heart, believing that Britain should acquire territory throughout the Indonesian archipelago and the Malay peninsula, should create European settler societies, and should reap the benefits of what he saw as enormous commercial opportunities. On being forced to leave Java, he turned to a small island off the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, known locally first as Temasek (Sea Town) and later as Singapura (Lion City), persuading the Sultan of Johor to cede it to Britain. Sparsely occupied by Malay fishing communities and by local Malay pirates, in 1819, the island had no more than 1,000 inhabitants. In 1826, the East India Company amalgamated Singapore, Penang, and Melaka into the Straits Settlements, administered from Singapore. The Straits Settlements remained in EIC control until 1867 when they became a Crown Colony under the control of a governor appointed by the Colonial Office.

  The British commercial community gave strong support to the acquisition of Singapore, seeing it as a boost to trade in South‐East Asia. In 1824, the Anglo‐Dutch Treaty settled territorial disputes between the two countries, with the Netherlands recognising Britain's possession of Melaka and Singapore, and Britain handing Bencoolen back to the Netherlands. By the 1830s, Singapore had become the major trading port. It was challenged by Manila and Batavia but had three crucial advantages over the other colonial port cities and over the major indigenous ports. First, its geographic location: most ships trading between China, India, and Europe had to pass Singapore. Second, its status as a free port: the Dutch in Batavia and the Spanish in Manila levied a range of tariffs and charges on imports, as did local rulers in the smaller ports. Third, its linkages into the British commercial and industrial empire: Britain was then the dominant colonial power.

  Singapore was an integral part of Britain's empire in Asia, which had its centre in India. Singapore's prosperity stemmed from its geographic advantages and from its place in the colonial network. British traders were attracted in ever‐increasing numbers and major trading houses, shipping lines, and service companies quickly emerged. Equally importantly, Chinese traders long resident in South‐East Asia were attracted to Singapore because of its free‐port status, the certainty of the British legal system, and the strategic position. Many came from Melaka and the Riau archipelago in the 1820s, relocating their trade to Singapore and thereby immediately linking Singapore into indigenous regional trading networks. Malay, Indian, and Arab traders were also drawn to Singapore from other ports in the vicinity. Singapore quickly gained a dominant share of the inter‐island regional trade as well as becoming the major victualling stop enroute to China. Chinese traders had worked in the region and had established a Chinese quarter in all of the major port cities well before the arrival of the Europeans. Their numbers increased greatly from the 17th century as first the Dutch and the Spanish and later the British and the French colonized the region. But it was not only colonised South‐East Asia that attracted Chinese traders, entrepreneurs, and labourers.

  Thailand's kings encouraged the migration of Chinese in the 19th century, as did the sultans of the Malay states. Indeed, the tin‐mining industry which developed in the Malay States from the 1830s was created by Chinese who worked under concessions
granted to them by Malay rulers. The tin miners imported their needs through Singapore and used Singapore to export tin ore to the world. Tin mining in the Malay states and in southern Thailand was the source of wealth for a number of Chinese families who later went on to become major traders and financiers in the region.

  The Chinese were the labour force on which British Singapore was built and Singapore was the conduit for the hundreds of thousands recruited to colonial Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. Most Chinese came to Singapore as impoverished indentured labourers. The forced opening of the Treaty Ports in southern China and Britain's annexation of Hong Kong in 1842 accelerated the migration of Chinese from southern China to South‐East Asia, Australia and the Pacific, and the United States. The migration flow was organised and exploitative, with male Chinese signed on as indentured labourers. In the 19th century, the Chinese population of Singapore was predominantly male. Most came to Singapore hoping to make a fortune, send money back to families in their home villages in China, and one day return home to marry, buy land, and live as prosperous farmers. Some succeeded. Most lived and died in Singapore as coolie labourers, reliant on prostitution for female company and dependent on secret societies, opium dens, and gambling parlours.

  Singapore's economic history is interwoven with the economic history of the Malay states. The Singapore merchant community started to advocate British acquisition of the western Malay states from the 1840s. Chinese and Europeans in Singapore were significant investors in the tin‐mining industry in the western Malay states and were increasingly frustrated at what they saw as the political instability there and the consequent lost commercial opportunities. Britain finally began to acquire control of the western Malay states in 1874, when the ambitions of the Singapore merchant and financial community were bolstered by imperial fears of French and German intentions in South‐East Asia. Singapore was a major beneficiary of the addition of Malaya to the British empire. On the eve of World War II, over two‐thirds of Malaya's imports and exports went through the port of Singapore.

  By the late 19th century, Singapore was an important financial and commercial centre. It was a major transshipment port, where the products of South‐East Asia were collected, packaged, and re‐exported and from where the products of industrial Britain and Europe were distributed. It had also become a major financial and commercial base for British companies in the region. Investment in tin mines in the Malay states was matched from the 1890s by investment in rubber plantations and in the transport infrastructure needed to get rubber to the ports for export. Investment finance came through Singapore, tin and rubber were exported through Singapore, and Singapore was the warehousing and distribution centre for the imported goods needed by the growing European population.

  The largest commercial firms were British‐owned and managed. But there also emerged a growing number of Chinese‐owned enterprises. Some were trading companies, some were financiers; and others were small‐scale food processors and distributors. By 1942, when the Japanese invaded Singapore, there were a number of strong family companies in Singapore owned by second‐ or third‐generation Chinese. While most Chinese immigrants who began life as rickshaw coolies or wharf labourers ended their lives much as they started, a few realised the immigrant's dream of making good. These Chinese enterprises were family companies linked into the commercial and financial network of the Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong and South‐East Asia.

  There was little manufacturing in Singapore before 1960. There was some food processing, primary processing of tin and rubber originating in Malaya, and simple manufacturing, such as shoes and clothing. However, as late as 1960 between 70 and 75 percent of Singapore's workforce was engaged in the service sector. In the early 1930s, a government‐appointed commission investigated the possibility of Singapore developing an industrial base but concluded that it would only be feasible with high levels of protection and if the Singapore and Malayan economies were united. It concluded that the losses to Singapore from abandoning free‐trade status would outweigh the gains from a protectionist industrial policy.

  Singapore was an immigrant colony. However, the 1931 census revealed that 36 percent of its residents had been born in the Straits Settlements. As a result of immigration restrictions introduced in the 1930s in response to the Depression, by 1947, 60 percent of Singapore residents had been born in the Straits Settlements. However, with the exception of the elite, the mother tongue and language of day to‐day communication for the Chinese remained southern Chinese dialects.

  By the early 20th century, there were nationalist movements demanding independence in most South‐East Asian colonies, from Burma through to the Philippines. Singapore was an exception. There was no sense of being Singaporean: people identified themselves as Chinese or Nanyang Chinese. There was, therefore, no clearly articulated movement seeking the creation of an independent nation‐state. Although the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) operated in Singapore in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as in British Malaya, and was involved in organising among Chinese and Indian workers, it made no attempt to develop a specifically Singapore identity or nationalism.

  Political activity in Singapore in the 1920s and 1930s was focused on the struggle between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) for control of China. Both the CCP and the KMT gained ideological and financial support from the overseas Chinese. Singapore was a particular focus of propaganda and recruitment. Politically aware Chinese in Singapore were far more concerned about the great events convulsing China in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s than events in Singapore. Whatever their ideology, they were united in opposition to Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s.

  Chinese communities throughout South‐East Asia were caught up in the events of their homeland and the battle for the hearts, minds, and pockets was waged throughout the region. One important difference in Singapore was that because the dominant culture was Chinese, and to all intents and purposes there was no indigenous society, Chinese nationalism could focus on the ideological struggle in China unencumbered by an indigenous nationalist movement. Chinese communities elsewhere in South‐East Asia were equally concerned about events in China but were forced by the existence of strong nationalist movements to ask fundamental questions about their individual and communal identities and their place in an independent nation.

  Colonial Singapore was a European city. Its ruling elite, its commercial core, and its official ethos was British. But beyond the European homes, clubs, and offices, the island was culturally predominantly Chinese. There was, however, a significant Indian minority, varying from 6 to 12 percent of the population. This minority was large enough to create its own communities, where the visitor would be clearly aware of moving out of the dominant Chinese society into a “little India.”

  The Indian community was far from united with the major divisions between Hindus and Muslims and between southerners and northerners. These were crosscut by further divisions of caste and region. Some of the early Indian settlers came from Penang, where there was a thriving Indian commercial community. Others migrated from India or were recruited as indentured labourers. Many thousands were forcibly transported from India as convict labourers. Until 1873, Singapore was used by British India as a penal colony. Indian convicts built the early government buildings, roads, bridges, and drainage systems. In the 19th century, free Indians were primarily in public employment as clerks, teachers, and policemen, or were merchants and moneylenders.

  As with the Chinese majority, the political attention of Indian residents in Singapore was focused on the motherland, where Indian nationalists were locked in struggle with the British Raj. The political divisions which opened up in India in the 1920s and 1930s were reflected in the Indian community in Singapore. Muslim and Hindu, Sikh and Bengali, to name but a few, each had their own, often conflicting, view of Indian politics. While there was considerably more crossing of caste and ethnic divides in the Singapore Indian community than in India itself, neverth
eless, these divisions remained important barriers. Indian communities in Singapore were linked by region, language, caste, and family to the much larger Indian community in British Malaya, adding yet one more strand to the interconnection between Singapore and Malaya.

  On the eve of the Pacific War, Singapore was a multiracial, multilingual, and multi‐religious society governed by a British elite. Social control was maintained not merely by the police and court systems but also by the pro‐British Chinese business and clan heads and by the wealthy leaders of the Indian community. It was a key part of the British empire: arguably the most important commercial possession east of India and, from the 1920s, a major naval base guarding British interests in South‐East Asia and providing a defence shield for Australia and New Zealand.

  JAPANESE OCCUPATION

  Singapore fell to the Japanese Imperial Army on February 15, 1942. The loss of this strategically important island quickly led to the capitulation of the Netherlands East Indies. Thousands of Europeans, civilians as well as soldiers, were trapped in Singapore. Many were dispatched to build the infamous Burma railway. The death rate was high. More than 45,000 soldiers in the Indian and Malay regiments were urged by the Japanese to transfer their loyalties. Most refused and many paid with their lives. About 20,000 Indian soldiers joined the Indian National Army in the belief that it would be prepared by the Japanese to drive the British out of India and establish Indian independence.

  While the Indian and Malay communities in Singapore suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese, none suffered more than the Chinese. The Japanese military distrusted all Chinese and, in particular, sought to root out all who were Kuomintang supporters. Arbitrary arrests, torture, and executions were commonplace. Special taxes were imposed on Chinese incomes and assets. For the residents of Singapore, the Japanese occupation was a time of struggle for survival. British rule was benign by comparison.