From its humble origin as little more than a swampy, thickly jungled island, populated by a handful of fisherman and sea gypsies, claimed by Sir Stamford Raffles for the British East India Company in 1819, Singapore has come a long way to the highly sophisticated city that I was about to explore of today. This small, strategically placed island off the tip of the Malay Peninsular in Southeast Asia, was, according to legend, given the name “Sinsa Pura” meaning ‘Lion City” (Very probably the origin too of the Merlion Fountain in Marina Bay of which more in a later posting) in the 14th Century by a visiting Sri Vijayan prince who saw an animal he mistook for a lion.
During the 18th Century Britain had a need for a strategic halfway house to refit, feed and protect the fleet of the growing empire as well as to disrupt the aspirations of the Dutch in the region. It was against this political backdrop that Sir Stamford Raffles established Singapore as a trading station.
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was a British colonial administrator. As Lieutenant General of Sumatra he persuaded the East India Company to purchase the undeveloped island of Singapore in 1819, undertaking much of the preliminary work for transforming it into a thriving centre of commerce. The policy of free trade attracted merchants from all over Asia and the Middle East and by 1824, just five years after the founding of modern Singapore, the population had grown from 150 to 10,000.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 together with the invention of the telegraph and steamships greatly increased Singapore’s importance as a centre of trade between East and West and the internationally renowned port that it is today. The container port is vast and just across the harbour from the cruise terminal (See photo). By 1911, Singapore had a population of 250,000 people, comprising 48 races and speaking 54 languages.
The Transformation to a Republic
In 1832 Singapore became the centre of Government for the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore and for many years was a key British defence base but the myth of the island’s impregnability was shattered when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. After Japanese occupation, it became a Crown Colony in 1946, but the growth of nationalism led to self-government in 1959 and federation with Malaysia in 1963 before declaring full independence in 1965.
Technically a city-state, Singapore is connected with manmade causeways to Malaysia and is made up of a main island that spans 42km east to west and 23 km north to south, and over 60 surrounding islets. T In the north it shares a border with Malaysia.
Today the population is over 5milllion and the official languages are Chinese, Tamil and English. Singapore enjoys a low crime rate, a highly sophisticated infrastructure of roads and mass-transit-system (MTR) and a state-of-the-art-airport at Changi. The city is also spotlessly clean, so much so that people are still forbidden to chew gum in the streets – neither are you allowed to take in gum as a tourist - and eating or smoking in any part of the transport system comes with a heavy fine of between 500 to 1,000 Singapore Dollars (SGD) - £250 to £500.
Everything else is just as expensive as I was about to find out!!
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