Postwar Singapore Research Articles

The Football League in Post-War Singapore, 1947–1959: From Community Based Associations and Clubs to Cosmopolitan Clubs

The Football League in Post-War Singapore, 1947–1959: From Community Based Associations and Clubs to Cosmopolitan Clubs

Whirling into the World: The Duality of Dance Hostesses' Labor and Social Praxis in Postwar Singapore

Due to the ambivalent connotations propagated by print media, it is challenging to define the identity and positionality of Singapore dance hostesses. Since the advent of commercial dance halls in the 1930s, Singapore dance hostesses as a distinct social group has been subjected to public criticism for their sexualized image. At the same time, they have also established a positive social image for their enthusiastic dedication to social causes. This essay attempts to reconstruct Singapore dance hostesses of the postwar period from news articles and archives, discovering the historical and social features of the dance hostesses, and to observe the various dilemmas brought about by the ambiguity of dance hostesses’ social identity, and exploring the process of their self-empowerment.

‘An Hour Before Dawn’: Social and Political Awareness among English-Educated Students in Post-War Singapore

‘An Hour Before Dawn’: Social and Political Awareness among English-Educated Students in Post-War Singapore

Filling the Disaster Data Gap: Lessons from Cataloging Singapore\u2019s Past Disasters

International disaster databases and catalogs provide a baseline for researchers, governments, communities, and organizations to understand the risk of a particular place, analyze broader trends in disaster risk, and justify investments in mitigation. Perhaps because Singapore is routinely identified as one of the safest countries in the world, Singapore’s past disasters have not been studied extensively with few events captured in major global databases such as EM-DAT. In this article, we fill the disaster data gap for postwar Singapore (1950–2020) using specified metrics through an archival search, review of literature, and analysis of secondary sources. We present four key lessons from cataloging these events. First, we expand Singapore’s disaster catalog to 39 events in this time period and quantify the extent of this data gap. Second, we identify the mitigating actions that have followed past events that contribute to Singapore’s present-day safety. Third, we discuss how these past events uncover continuities among vulnerability bearers in Singapore. Last, we identify limitations of a disaster catalog when considering future risks. In expanding the disaster catalog, this case study of Singapore supports the need for comprehensive understanding of past disasters in order to examine current and future disaster resilience.

Singapore. The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 years Edited by Poo Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang and Hong Lysa Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2013. Pp. 542. Photographs, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 years Edited by POO SOO KAI, TAN KOK FANG and HONG LYSA Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2013. Pp. 542. Photographs, Notes, Bibliography, Index. The historiography of post-1945 Singapore is changing. For a long time the history of this tumultuous period has been dominated by narratives that have focused almost exclusively on the role of the People's Action Party (PAP) in leading Singapore's anti-colonial struggle and the perceived threat posed by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). However, more recently the foundational myths of what has become known as the 'Singapore Story' have been subject to greater historical scrutiny. Historians such as Loh Kah Seng, Thum PJ, and Hong Lysa have highlighted the way in which historical myths have been created and maintained by the PAP, while also rehabilitating the image of former leftist activists, arguing that leaders such as Lim Chin Siong were not proxies for the MCP but were anti-colonial nationalists, committed to building a democratic and socialist Singapore, where respect for civil liberties and racial diversity were paramount objectives. These historians have been joined in this endeavour by former activists, most notably Poh Soo Kai and the late Tan Jing Quee, who have set out to refute the charge that they were nothing more than communist radicals. The publication of The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore represents the culmination of these efforts. Combining chapters by historians, as well as accounts by former activists, the book was published to mark the 50th anniversary of Operation Coldstore, when 133 men and women were detained on 2 February 1963. The arrests, which were a precondition for Singapore's merger with Malaysia and were sanctioned by the British, Singaporean, and Malaysian governments, helped to consolidate the PAP's position, as well as decimate the strength of the political opposition. Since the arrests, with the left neutralised and with the threat of further persecution ever present, public debate concerning Coldstore has been limited. It is for this reason then, that this book is such a welcome addition to the growing body of revisionist literature on post-war Singapore. The first part of the book includes chapters by Geoff Wade, Thum PJ, and Hong Lysa. Wade's chapter provides a useful overview of the events leading up to Coldstore. Focusing on the 'high politics' of the operation, Wade demonstrates that Coldstore was a plot of convenience, which the governments of Britain, Malaysia, and Singapore agreed to in order to secure their own strategic interests. In this respect Wade's chapter is broadly similar to the work of Simon Ball, Tim Harper and Matthew Jones. Where the chapter is more revelatory is in terms of its consideration of the effects of Coldstore, documenting how the operation and the subsequent treatment of the detainees attracted criticism from both within and outside of Singapore. This is important as most historians have treated Coldstore as an end in itself or as simply a staging post on the road to the creation of Malaysia. What Wade's chapter suggests is that there is more detailed work to be done on the left's struggles within Singapore in the immediate aftermath of the detentions. The chapter by Thum examines the divisions within the PAP, explaining the reasons for the split within the party and the subsequent establishment of Barisan Sosialis. Making good use of Chinese language sources, Thum also investigates the Chinese population's attitude towards contemporary issues, such as the PAP's performance in government and the merger issue. This is a particularly useful approach for historians. In the wake of Coldstore and the subsequent curtailment of civil liberties, it is often forgotten that the post-war period was a time of relative political freedom--in spite of the restrictions imposed by the British authorities as a result of the Malayan Emergency. …

Reappraising the pedagogic device’s evaluative rules: state-reformed examinations of Chinese middle schools in Singapore

Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device has two under-developed elements as far as its treatments of evaluative rules are concerned. It has never explained the processes through which an assessment’s hegemony is erected, and it overlooks the fact that evaluations can also be crucial apparatuses in social selection and exclusion. Using the historical example of state exam reforms on Chinese middle schools from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s, I seek to rectify these deficiencies in this article. I contend that assessments could actualize official pedagogic discourse more effectively when they also exert profound impacts on allocation of valued social positions and educational opportunities. My contention is illustrated by the case of postwar Singapore, where the ruling regime had more success in replacing the Sino-centric pedagogic discourse of Chinese institutions with a more Singaporean-centered one after state-run exams targeted to students’ futures in education and employment were imposed.

Becoming professional artists in postwar Singapore and Malaya: Developments in art during a time of political transition

This article aims to recover the background to the post-Second World War growth of local art activities, art education and the rise of the professional artist on the island of Singapore and peninsular Malaya. It examines how the transitional period spanning the dissolution of British colonialism and the establishment of two independent nations stimulated unique conditions for the development of local art education and created an amateur–professional artist divide. The promotion and support of fine arts and related activities were in tandem with nation-building strategies that sought to construct a common ‘Malayan’ culture and identity.

Transnational Governances in Higher Education: New Universities, Rhetorics, and Networks in Postwar Singapore

At the close of World War II, Japan’s ouster from Malaya led to the resumption of British control and a new outlook toward political independence. Higher education would play a central role in this complex transition, where the forces of decolonization and nation-building converged with drives toward both interethnic competition and multiethnic cooperation. These tensions stimulated a multiplicity of new rhetorics and new networks for universities and university students. This paper uses the framework of governance to uncover the contrasting rhetorics and networks produced by postwar Singapore’s new universities. By examining their structures and mechanisms of governance, the paper demonstrates how the sudden catapulting of university education to a crucial socio-political position redefined the intersections between education, language, culture, and nation. In doing so, it reveals that these redefinitions forecasted contemporary discourse and mechanisms in higher education.

Social foundations of public–private partnerships in education: the historical cases of post-war Singapore and Hong Kong

This paper compares public–private partnerships (PPPs) in education in post-war Singapore and Hong Kong. After the Second World War the Singapore government shied away from PPPs, while the state in Hong Kong collaborated extensively with the non-state sector in education. Singapore was a small city-state flanked by two Muslim nations, and its post-war regime faced challenges from the Malayan Communist Party. These pressures curbed the state’s involvement with missionary and Chinese bodies in education. Hong Kong, however, was a mono-racial society without any anti-Chinese neighbours, and its authorities were seldom challenged by a militant antagonist. Thus, its government was freer to involve non-state agents in education. This study reveals that PPPs are viable only when suitable non-state partners exist and when the state does not believe that such undertakings would expose the school system to an antagonist. It also urges scholars in future to explore the socio-political preconditions for PPPs.

A Taste of Singapore: Singapore Food Writing and Culinary Tourism

A Taste of Singapore: Singapore Food Writing and Culinary Tourism

The Decline of Pan-Indian Identity and the Development of Tamil Cultural Separatism in Singapore, 1856–1965

This paper explores the rise and fall of pan-Indianism as the dominant identity narrative amongst the Indian diaspora in Singapore in the mid twentieth century, and its replacement with a normative Indian identity based primarily on Tamil culture. It will analyse some of the reasons why a Tamil cultural separatism came to dominate negotiations of ethnic identity in early post-war Singapore. This will include an examination of colonial ethnographic representations, the effects of demographic trends in Indian migration to Malaya during the colonial period, transnational political linkages between Singapore and India, and the effects of the Japanese occupation on Indian identity during World War II. The paper will also focus on the growth of the Tamil reform movement and the ways in which it came to shape the framing of Tamil ethnic identity in Singapore.

De-Universalizing Hegemonies: Chinese School Policies in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong

Using the concept of hegemony, this article compares the policies used by state authorities of Singapore and Hong Kong to handle Chinese schools in the two postwar decades. After the war, Singapore transformed from a colony into an independent nation and Hong Kong became entrapped in the conflict between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese schools, imparting students with a Chinese nationalistic outlook, threatened political stability in both territories. These factors prompted the Singapore and Hong Kong governments to put Chinese schools under tighter control. The strategy of the Singapore regime is institutional incorporation without cultural accommodation: The ruling elites absorbed almost all Chinese schools into directly state-run or fully government-funded institutions, but they sought to remove elements of Chinese culture from the curriculum of these institutions. In sharp contrast, the hegemonic practice in Hong Kong was partial institutional incorporation with cultural accommodation: The ruling regime only transformed some Chinese schools into state-sponsored institutions, but they incorporated Chinese culture into the official curriculum and then remake it into a form agreeable with colonial rule. This paper analyses the genesis and ramifications of these two different approaches in Singapore and Hong Kong. Its finding suggests researchers should equip with a comparative perspective and refine the notion of hegemony into the dimensions of institutional incorporation and cultural accommodation when using this concept for education research.

Dangerous Migrants and the Informal Mobile City of Postwar Singapore

This paper examines the struggle between the state and urban kampong population over the form and content of the ‘mobile city’ in postwar Singapore. As large numbers of low‐income Chinese moved into an expanding belt of informal settlements on the urban periphery, there emerged a semi‐autonomous way of life, characterised by underemployment and co‐existence with free‐ranging pigs and poultry, which were deeply abhorrent to both the British colonial and People’s Action Party (PAP) governments. Both authorities discursively represented the kampongs as ‘insanitary, congested and dangerous’ in order to render the urban margin legible through clearance and resettlement. The state of emergency occasioned by the outbreak of massive fires, the suppression of leftwing rural organisations and the robust acquisition of land for public development enabled the state to relocate the dwellers to public housing estates built over the urban kampongs in the 1960s. The transformation of ‘squatters’ into model ‘citizens’ gave rise to a new high modernist mobile city, where mobility and housing were dictated on the terms of the state.

Kampong, fire, nation: Towards a social history of postwar Singapore

An important but little-studied act in the history of postwar Singapore was played out at the margins of the city. Here, the state was involved in a major campaign to socialise the ‘squatters’ of urbankamponginto citizens of a high modernist state. The fire hazard in these settlements also contributed significantly to the process, as the residents were mobilised into fire-fighting squads and politicians acted on behalf of the victims of infernos by rehousing them in emergency public housing. This article proposes a new approach to postwar Singapore historiography at the interface between politics and social developments. It underlines the social agents, spatial dimension and historical continuity uncovered in the venture.

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on their experiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village) to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learned much about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorized settlement and the individual and social transformation following their rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiences meant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. This paper treats the testimonies as both source and social memory and seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians, oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallen in their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history, when used in conjunction with other historical sources, the reminiscences are patently useful for understanding the role of public housing in transforming a marginal population into an integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new social history of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursive official accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno. At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerful social and political influences on individual memory, being marked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward the imagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on the rumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however, constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society, revealing a more critical side to the social memory.

Education and state formation reappraised—Chinese school identity in postwar Singapore and Hong Kong

After World War II the Singapore government, wishing to blend the island’s several ethnic communities into a national whole, endeavored to replace Chinese schools, which imparted students with cultural‐linguistic traits sharply different from those promoted in other schools. This policy, nevertheless, elicited tough resistance from Singapore’s ethnic Chinese population. The government, finally, was forced to recognize Chinese schools as a discrete and integral section within the educational system. This approach reduced the tension between the government and the Chinese masses. However, it allowed Chinese schools continue to produce social fragmentation and slowed state formation. In contrast, although the government of Hong Kong had never aimed to replace Chinese schools, many of its policies unintentionally Sinicized non‐Chinese schools and blurred the cultural distinctiveness of Chinese institutions; this, consequently, prevented Chinese schools from becoming a catalyst of social disintegration and helped consolidate state domination. This study suggests the connection between state formation and the educational system is reciprocal and interactive. It also urges scholars to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of state intervention when examining state formation and education.

Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography

SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthropology, sociology, and history.

Institutionally incorporated, symbolically un‐remade: state reform of Chinese schools in postwar Singapore

When Singapore underwent decolonization after World War II, its government—keen on constructing a Singapore‐centered identity—sought to replace Chinese schools, which taught a China‐centered worldview. This attempt provoked tough resistance from the local Chinese. Succumbing to this pressure, the ruling regime accommodated Chinese schools as part of the state education system. Afterward, the authorities, eager to make sure the now‐incorporated Chinese institutions would not unleash symbolic effects detrimental to their position, endeavored to transform the curriculum of Chinese schools into a locally centered one. This attempt, however, failed, because the state was unable to curb influences from non‐local pedagogic agents and, without a strong indigenous intellectual tradition, the Singapore authorities found it difficult to produce a genuinely local curriculum. This historical case suggests that we should consider the incorporation and remaking of subordinated culture as two distinct processes of hegemonic strategies necessitating analytical distinction. It also urges us to differentiate conceptually the institutional and symbolic dimensions of culture when using a theory of hegemony to examine education and power.

Comparing state hegemonies: Chinese universities in postwar Singapore and Hong Kong

After World War II, Chinese residents of Singapore demanded the establishment of local Chinese universities. The ruling regime, however, which was under the shadow of the neighboring Malay‐dominated Malay Peninsula, was forced to suppress the development of such schools. In Hong Kong, the British needed to install a Chinese university to counter Beijing’s and Taiwan’s campaigns for recruiting students from the colony. As Hong Kong was a monoracial Chinese society, the government, not having to worry about the reaction of other indigenous groups, met this challenge by founding a fully recognized Chinese university. This research demonstrates that under diverse backgrounds of racial politics, state authorities have unequal latitudes to accommodate the educational institutions of subordinated racial groups. It also reveals that state education policies in small and dependent settings, unlike those in big and sovereign nations, are more susceptible to pressures from external powers and influences from the metropolis. These findings urge scholars to pay more attention to the factor of race and use comparative methods when employing the theories of state and hegemony to investigate education and power.

Hegemonies compared: state formation and chinese school politics in post-war singapore and Hong Kong

Hegemonies compared: state formation and chinese school politics in post-war singapore and Hong Kong