Singapore

Singapore is strategically placed along the China-India trade route as it passes through the Straits of Melaka. It was thus a natural meeting place for Chinese, Arab, and Indian merchants dealing in a wide range of Asian commodities such as cotton and silk fabrics, rice, and ceramics. There are few records about its early history, but Singapore clearly played a significant role as an outpost under the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires until the fourteenth century. Although the region came under the control of the European maritime empires after the Portuguese acquisition of Melaka in 1511, the rapid development of Singapore beginning in the nineteenth century must be seen as an expansion of existing internal and external Asian trade. After Guandong in China was opened to European trade in 1757, the British East India Company's tea trade with China increased. It was against this background that Thomas Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819, while searching for a trading place along the Straits of Melaka that would be free from Dutch influence. He established a trading station in Singapore, and in 1824 it came under British control. Two years later, Singapore, Penang, and Melaka were made into a British colony of the Straits Settlements. The acquisition of Hong Kong in 1842 increased Britain's China trade. This, along with the advent of steamers and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, added to Singapore's significance as a free financial and trading entrepôt, and as a coaling station for Southeast Asian and East Asian shipping and the British navy. European commercial banks opened branches in Singapore, but Chinese moneylenders and Hindu Chettiars (moneylenders) were active in the financing of native trade, which provided funds and a strong commercial base for Asian merchants.

From the early twentieth century, the growing Western demand for tin and rubber encouraged British investment in mines and plantations in the Malay States. Chinese and Indian workers in the States, and their provisions, flowed in via Singapore, as exports of tin and rubber products increased. Chinese merchants dominated the distribution sector of the British colonial economy. Throughout this time the British Empire and the United States were Singapore's major trade partners.

After coming under Japanese military control from 1942 to 1945, Singapore was granted internal self-government in 1959, then gained full independence in 1965. From the 1960s the government encouraged export-oriented industrialization based on labor-intensive industries such as textiles. In 1967 Singapore joined ASEAN, which helped the new state in its development from an entrepôt of Southeast Asian trade to a dynamic industrial, financial, and commercial center. In the 1970s its major exports changed to value-added technological manufacturing goods such as electric products, precision equipment, and oil-refining machinery. Petroleum, crude and refined, also became important. Currently 60 percent of both export and imports are with Asian regions. The United States, Malaysia, and Japan are principal trading partners.

SINGAPORE'S BASIC FIGURES

SEE ALSO Agriculture; Cargoes, Freight; Cargoes, Passenger; China; Containerization; Drugs, Illicit; East India Company, British; Empire, Japanese; Empire, Qing; Ethnic Groups, Cantonese; Ethnic Groups, Fujianese; Ethnic Groups, Gujarati; Free Ports; GATT, WTO;Great Depression of the 1930s; Guangzhou; Harbors;Hong Kong; Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank; Import Substitution; Indonesia; Industrialization; Japan; Jardine Matheson;Lee Kuan Yew;Melaka;Nanyang Brothers Tobacco;Petroleum;Port Cities;Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford;Rice;Shipbuilding;Spices and the Spice Trade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chew, Ernest C. T., and Lee, Edwin, eds. A History of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Ding, Chiang Hai. A History of Straits Settlements Foreign 1870–1915. Singapore: National Museum, 1978.

Turnbull, C. M. A History of Singapore, 1819–1988, 2nd edition. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989.

S. Sugiyama