Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Illustrations
- Foreword
- 1 Globalising the History of Singapore
- 2 Situating Temasik within the Larger Regional Context: Maritime Asia and Malay State Formation in the Pre-Modern Era
- 3 The Singapore River/Port in a Global Context
- 4 ‘Walls of Illusion’: Information Generation in Colonial Singapore and the Reporting of the Mahdi-Rebellion in Sudan, 1887-1890
- 5 The Littoral and the Literary: Making Moral Communities in the Straits Settlements and the Gold Coast in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
- 6 Social Discourse and Economic Functions: The Singapore Chinese in Japan’s Southward Expansion between 1914 and 1941
- 7 The Dynamics of Trans-Regional Business and National Politics: The Impact of Events in China on Fujian-Singapore Tea Trading Networks, 1920-1960
- 8 Rambutans in the Picture: Han Wai Toon and the Articulation of Space by the Overseas Chinese in Singapore
- 9 The Global Effects of an Ethnic Riot: Singapore, 1950-1954
- 10 The British Military Withdrawal from Singapore and the Anatomy of a Catalyst
- 11 Bringing the International and Transnational back in: Singapore, Decolonisation, and the Cold War
- 12 The Global and the Regional in Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought: The Early Cold War Years
- 13 A Brief History of the Hub: Navigating between ‘Global’ and ‘Asian’ in Singapore’s Knowledge Economy Discourse
- About the Contributors
- Bibliography
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Illustrations
- Foreword
- 1 Globalising the History of Singapore
- 2 Situating Temasik within the Larger Regional Context: Maritime Asia and Malay State Formation in the Pre-Modern Era
- 3 The Singapore River/Port in a Global Context
- 4 ‘Walls of Illusion’: Information Generation in Colonial Singapore and the Reporting of the Mahdi-Rebellion in Sudan, 1887-1890
- 5 The Littoral and the Literary: Making Moral Communities in the Straits Settlements and the Gold Coast in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
- 6 Social Discourse and Economic Functions: The Singapore Chinese in Japan’s Southward Expansion between 1914 and 1941
- 7 The Dynamics of Trans-Regional Business and National Politics: The Impact of Events in China on Fujian-Singapore Tea Trading Networks, 1920-1960
- 8 Rambutans in the Picture: Han Wai Toon and the Articulation of Space by the Overseas Chinese in Singapore
- 9 The Global Effects of an Ethnic Riot: Singapore, 1950-1954
- 10 The British Military Withdrawal from Singapore and the Anatomy of a Catalyst
- 11 Bringing the International and Transnational back in: Singapore, Decolonisation, and the Cold War
- 12 The Global and the Regional in Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought: The Early Cold War Years
- 13 A Brief History of the Hub: Navigating between ‘Global’ and ‘Asian’ in Singapore’s Knowledge Economy Discourse
- About the Contributors
- Bibliography
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
The basic premise of this volume of articles is that there is a need to respond to the challenge issued by Jerry Bentley – one of the pioneers of the now well-established field of ‘World History’ – for historians to attempt both to ‘globalize history’ and to ‘historicize globalization’. Though directed at historians, it is a challenge that raises broader questions about the interplay between the global and the local in all fields of endeavour. While the joint editors of this volume are both historians, the contributions are from specialists in history, political science, international relations, sociology, literature, art history and architecture, all of whom address this issue to a greater or lesser degree with regard to Singapore. A major aim of the contributors was to emphasise the contribution of the ‘local’ to the ‘global’.
Since the late 1990s there has been a proliferation of studies on Singapore. Initially, these works were written by non-professional historians and government bodies responding to the government's call as part of the official 1997 launching of the National Education Programme, which was intended to educate the people about the struggles that led to the success story that was Singapore’s. The response included publications on the “Singapore Story”, especially the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew and biographies of other political figures, such as S. Rajaratnam, Lim Kim San, and David Marshall. This form of historical writing culminated in the 2010 publication, Men in White. Professional historians then became involved not simply in producing the standard histories of the nation state of Singapore, but also in offering an alternative ‘history from below’. Of particular note is the 2008 publication entitled, The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Past. There has also been a trend towards giving greater emphasis to Singapore's international involvement from its earliest history, which has been reconstructed through archaeological finds, to the present day. The most recent example, published in 2009, is simply entitled Singapore: A 700-Year History, a book which discusses Singapore's position within a wider regional and global context.
This volume continues the latter trend by arguing that much of what has occurred in this island state is the result of powerful global forces that were adapted through local agency.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Singapore in Global History , pp. 9 - 10Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2012