Studying Singapore's Past: C.M. Turnbull and the History of Modern Singapore

Chapter 2: Framing Singapore's History

Framing Singapore’s History 17 2 ~ Framing Singapore’s History Karl Hack Interest in the history of Singapore as a separate entity is a relatively modern phenomenon , and until recently her story has been treated as part of Malayan history. — C.M. Turnbull, “Introduction to the First Edition”, in A History of Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989, first edition 1977), p. xii … during the Ice Age, Southeast Asia was a single huge continent — a land-mass which included Indo-China, Malaysia and Indonesia. After the Ice Age ended there was a dramatic rise in sea-level that split up the continent into the archipelago of islands we see today. — Stephen Oppenheimer, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), p. 17 Introduction: Turnbull’s Reframing of History MARY TURNBULL IS MOST ASSOCIATED WITH A History of Singapore (1977 and 1989 editions), and with its posthumously published replacement, A History of Modern Singapore, 1819–2005 (2009). This chapter argues that these works should be seen not just as the superbly crafted national histories that they are, but also as prime examples of how a geographical space’s history can be framed, and reframed, over and again. In A History of Singapore Turnbull talks about having written the history of a “young” Republic and “nation” that is referred to in anthropomorphised form as “she”: as if state and nation are evolving life-forms.1 17 18 Karl Hack When Turnbull began writing these books in the early 1970s, she selfconsciously set out to provide an authoritative, empirical, chronologically organised history for a country which had only been born on 9 August 1965: with Singapore’s traumatic exit from Malaysia. As such, A History of Singapore framed the entire of the island’s history with reference to the post-1965 nation it would lead to. The work is, in essence, a teleological exercise in endowing a modern “nation-state” with a coherent past that should explain the present. This is history with a purpose, both in providing for a new market and academic discipline (“Singapore history”), and in helping the process of creating the embryonic object of discussion: Singapore. In stark terms, when Turnbull wrote, the very idea of “Singaporean” (as opposed to overseas Chinese, Malayan, British subject and other categories) was still being formed. Even the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had assumed, before 1965, that the island’s inhabitants would and should become “Malayans”. Turnbull’s most famous works therefore embody a paradox. They adopt Rankean form — the empirical, chronological, story of how a nation and state evolved — to describe the origins of a nation that was palpably an objective, rather than a fact, when the work was conceived. They fit a pattern of “domesticated” western academics (notably those who taught in the University of Malaya) writing to the “nation-state” agenda of the first couple of decades after 1965. In this, Turnbull followed the approach of fellow University of Malaya lecturer K.G. Tregonning, with his 1972 book, A History of Modern Malaysia and Singapore.2 There is some similarity here between the role of the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) and that of these new “Singapore” histories. The Sejarah Melayu aimed to provide a suitable genealogy and origin for the MelakaJohor -Riau Sultanate rulers, during a 17th century when they had long ago lost Melaka, and were threatened by rising Dutch power in the Straits.3 The new histories of the 1970s also aimed to give Singapore a past or “genealogy” that would be meaningful and useful for the present. This past could have been traced back to the 14th century, or beyond that to geological times. The history of a place can be as old as the events that formed its rocks, climate, fauna and flora. Turnbull could have begun her national history anywhere from geological time to 1965, and could have emphasised its long history as part of the Malay maritime world. Instead, her preoccupation with the roots of the postcolonial state led her to favour 1819, as a break with that Malay world. In Turnbull’s uncompromising words, “Modern Singapore was founded in 1819 on the initiative of one individual, Sir Stamford Raffles.”4 Framing Singapore’s History 19 In Turnbull’s mind, it is the arrival of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the East India Company, and the policy of free trade, which is...