Abstract: In 1965, after a tumultuous two-year union, Singapore was unilaterally expelled from the Federation of Malaysia and unwillingly became its own sovereign state overnight; however, whether Singapore existed as a nation remained of question. This essay will explore two key research questions related to the Singaporean nation: firstly, to what extent did this nation exist around the creation of the independent Republic of Singapore in 1965? Secondly, what role did Singapore’s multiracial past and political elites’ nation-building efforts thereof play in explaining the presence or absence of a Singaporean nation at the time of the state’s inception? For the former, scholarly and elite consensus alike generally agree that the Singaporean nation was largely absent when the Republic was established. As for the latter, I argue that the multiracial nature of Singapore’s colonial history, as well as political elites’ fear of bringing this history to the fore in the wake of deadly racial riots, both contributed to the lack of a collective past—an essential component of the nation.
Keywords: Malaysia, Singapore, Southeast Asia, nation-building, post-colonialism
1. Introduction
The dismal news from Malaysia could not have been easy to hear for Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister and one of the primary architects of the state’s merger with the Federation of Malaya. After a tumultuous two-year union, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman had unilaterally made the decision to expel Singapore from Malaysia in 1965 against Lee’s wishes. To be clear, this break was far from monocausal; entire tomes have been written on the complex of factors leading up to this bitter divorce, ranging from contestations over several seats at the 1964 federal elections to disputes over the 1965 federal budget, disagreements over ethnic policies, and even personal differences between the two leaders.[1] What was clear, however, was the one-sided nature of the expulsion—in Lee’s own words, “we didn’t want an independent Singapore.”[2] Devastated, Lee fought back tears and paused to regain his composure during the televised formal announcement of Singapore’s unwanted new independence. But while Singapore had undeniably become its own sovereign state overnight, whether Singapore existed as a nation remained of question.
This essay will explore two key research questions related to the development of the Singaporean nation: firstly, to what extent did this nation exist at the creation of the independent Republic of Singapore in 1965? Secondly, what role did Singapore’s multiracial past and political elites’ nation-building efforts thereof play in explaining the presence or absence of a Singaporean nation at the time of the state’s inception? To address the former, scholarly and elite consensus alike generally agree that the Singaporean nation was largely absent when the Republic was established. As for the latter, I argue that the multiracial nature of Singapore’s colonial history, as well as political elites’ fear of bringing this history to the fore in the wake of deadly racial riots, both contributed to the lack of a collective past—an essential component of the nation.
My sole focus on the significance of Singapore’s racially diverse history is in the interest of analytical depth and because of the unique salience of race in the state. Singapore is rather exceptional in that, while some consider ethnic Malays to be native to the island, it does not have its own distinct indigenous peoples. This, coupled with centuries of history as a port city and generations of immigration, have naturally resulted in a melting pot of races and cultures among its inhabitants. Of course, this is not to say that Singapore’s past and elite interactions thereof are the only explanatory factors relevant to the early development of the Singaporean nation. For instance, the existing scholarship on Singaporean nation-building efforts also covers the influences of mandatory military conscription, public goods distribution, education, and residential integration, among a myriad of other elements, on nation-building in the island state (see Cheng (2008) and Hill and Lian (1995) in particular).
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 analyzes the first research question, discussing scholarly and elite consensus on the issue. Section 3 concerns the second research question, first establishing the theoretical importance of a shared past for nation-building in section 3.1, then exploring how Singapore’s multiracial colonial history and political elites’ rejection of this history influenced the absence of a nation in sections 3.2 and 3.3, respectively. Section 4 concludes and proposes areas of future research.
2. The Existence (or Lack Thereof) of a Singaporean Nation
According to scholars and Singaporean political elites alike, Singapore was a state without an accompanying nation at the time of its independence. Most academics familiar with this topic concur that Singaporeans were forced to face the daunting reality of “the infrastructure of a state without an accompanying nation” once sovereignty was granted.[3] In the bluntest of terms, “it was the ‘state’ which preceded and was instrumental to the development of the idea of a [Singaporean] ‘nation’… ‘Singaporean nationalism’ as such did not exist.”[4] On the topic of Singapore’s political power players, Lee’s aforementioned bleak assessment of Singapore’s lack of a nation was widely shared within his elite circles. For instance, Dr. Toh Chin Chye, Singapore’s first Deputy Prime Minister and the Chairman of the People’s Action Party (PAP) from 1954 to 1981, strongly believed that “we [Singaporean citizens] were not a nation at all” in 1965.[5] Even decades after Singapore attained its sovereignty, doubts remained as to whether the Singaporean nation had truly come to fruition. In an interview conducted in 1990, Lee openly admitted that “after all this time he still could not say that Singapore was a nation”; this doubtful sentiment was later echoed by his son (and Singapore’s third Prime Minister) in 2001, when he stated the country was “still trying to build a national identity.”[6]
With that said, Singapore’s situation as a nationless state was hardly unusual among its regional neighbors, as many other modern-day Southeast Asian countries with colonial pasts similarly spent their nascent years as nationless states. Because colonial boundaries were often drawn “without any reference to, and sometimes without the knowledge of, their inhabitants,” “the formation of such states had no significance for their populations, except, perhaps, for their colonial-educated and Westernized native elites.”[7] In fact, Malaysia itself was a nationless state when it was first established in 1963, having been assembled out of four pre-existing entities: the Federation of Malaya and the British Crown Colonies of North Borneo (present-day Sabah), Sarawak, and Singapore. Indeed, Prime Minister Lee and the Tunku both acknowledged that Malaysia did not conform with an “existing, demonstrable nationhood” and was, at the time of its inception, a state without a nation.[8] Though the incidence of a nationless state may seem puzzling, the legacies of colonialism meant that Singapore was far from the only state in its region to be faced with such a predicament. However, the question naturally arises: what accounted for this predicament in the case of Singapore?
3. Explaining the Absence of Nationhood
Ultimately, Singapore’s lack of a nation circa 1965 is at least partially attributable to the fact that a collective history did not exist, the product of both Singapore’s multiracial colonial past and elites’ unwillingness to embrace this history at a time when bloody racial conflict was at an all-time high.
3.1. Theoretical Importance of a Collective History
Before delving into Singapore’s history, we must establish why the possession of a shared past is essential to the process of nation-building at all. This essay primarily utilizes Miller (1997)’s definition of a nation, which states that a nation is “a community (1) constituted by shared belief and mutual commitment, (2) extended in history, (3) active in character, (4) connected to a particular territory, and (5) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture” (17). To elaborate upon the second criteria, which is most relevant to our upcoming discussion, Miller writes that “the historic national community is a community of obligation. Because our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work, which we discharge partly towards our contemporaries and partly towards our descendants.”[9] Others scholars have also pointed to the importance of a collective history as the basis for a nation. In line with Miller (1997), Wimmer (2019) defines members of a nation as “a group of equal citizens with a shared history and a future political destiny,” while Billig (1995) claims that “every nation must have its history, its own collective memory.”
Of course, not all academics agree with this line of reasoning. Snyder (2000)’s definition of a nation as a group of individuals that “see themselves as distinct in their culture, history, institutions, or principles” and aspire to “rule themselves in a political system that expresses and protects those distinctive characteristics.”[10] Here, history is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for the establishment of a nation. This essay assumes the stance of the former camp—that is, that shared history is a necessary foundation of the nation—but the academically contested nature of the topic should be kept in mind as we proceed.
3.2. Singapore’s History as a Multiracial Colony
Firstly, Singapore’s long-established status as a colonial entrepôt prior to its brief inclusion within Malaysia directly contributed to the absence of a shared past, as the state was dominated for centuries by a multiracial diversity of transient inhabitants with strong historical allegiances to other countries. Over the 16th to 20th centuries, Singapore transferred ownership from the Portuguese to the Dutch, and finally, the British. During these years of imperial rule, Singapore’s geographically-ordained standing as a center of trade in the region meant most of its inhabitants maintained their historical attachments to other lands, thus preventing the active creation of a shared Singaporean history:
“The colony of Singapore was culturally, demographically and politically an extension of Britain, Malaya, Indonesia, China and India as these early settlers came to make money before returning to their homelands… There was no social cohesion to bind these ethnic groups together. They did not comprise a nation, and it was unlikely that nation-building instincts would arise from these competing and disparate groups which felt no allegiance to this British trading colony.”[11]
This issue was compounded by the fact that there were no “indigenous Singaporeans,” with ethnic Malays being the closest to claiming this title. Evidently, the majority of Singaporean inhabitants had little incentive to relinquish their existing attachments to these other states or colonies and begin forming a new collective history as Singaporeans.
Given that Singapore’s 452-year colonial history far outweighed its brief two-year stint within Malaysia, it is perhaps unsurprising that this lack of shared past also applied to Singapore’s postcolonial experience. Singaporeans hardly considered themselves to be members of the same nation at the time of the Republic’s establishment, with many citizens still identifying with their ethnic homelands or other preexisting nations:
“The Malays in Singapore identified with Malay society and culture on the peninsula and in the archipelago… most of the Chinese and Indians considered themselves merely sojourners, [so] no Singaporean identity or sentiment emerged among them. A few Chinese… identified wholeheartedly with the British. Others remained primarily Chinese in their sentiments.”[12]
In the same vein, the fact that Singaporean independence was unwillingly gained suggests that a fair number of citizens continued to identify with the Malaysian nation. Newspaper articles from the time mourned the fact that the unexpected expulsion could not be undone, stating that the public’s reaction was “one of cruel shock and profound regret… separation was the last thing the public expected. What has happened is sad beyond words… It is too late for appeals to reconsider [the split].”[13] Other articles revealed a sense that the separation from Malaysia was not a wish as much as it was a curse: “the dominant mood is of grief and regret.”[14] Again, we see here that citizens had not yet surrendered their historical bonds with other nations, hindering the creation of a shared Singaporean past. It becomes clear, then, that Singapore’s multiracial history contributed to the curious phenomenon in which Singaporean citizens neither considered themselves a distinct nation with a collective history nor aspired to become one.
3.3. Political Elites’ Rejection of Singapore’s Multiracial Past
Singaporean political elites eschewed referencing the state’s history altogether for fear of stirring up racial tensions during a period when domestic racial divides manifested as deadly conflict. At the time, racial divisions between the main three ethnic groups living in Singapore (including 1.44 million ethnic Chinese, 277 thousand Malays, and 140 thousand Indians) were already highly salient, as Singaporeans “viewed success not as one people, but as one group of people in comparison with another.”[15] The two series of racial riots that erupted during the summer of 1964 between ethnic Malays and Chinese, which have been described as “the worst and most prolonged in Singapore’s postwar history,” only aggravated the existing animosity.[16] The first series of riots broke out during a public celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, while the second was instigated by Malay retaliation against the Chinese following “the mysterious killing of a 57-year-old Malay trishaw rider.”[17] Cumulatively, the riots resulted in 36 deaths, 560 injured citizens, and over 5,000 arrests.[18]
With racial conflict at the forefront of political elites’ minds, “Singapore’s leaders who were apprehensive about dealing with their peoples’ past,” thus resulting in the rejection of history as “a threat to nation-building.”[19] The following quotation from S. Rajaratnam, Singapore’s first post-independence Minister for Foreign Affairs who later assumed the post of deputy Prime Minister, encapsulates how such conflict factored into elites’ decision not to champion the racial histories of its citizens:
“Singapore’s genealogical table, alas, ends as abruptly as it begins. However we could have contrived a more lengthy and eye-boggling lineage by tracing our ancestry back to the lands from which our forefathers emigrated — China, India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East and Indonesia. The price we would have to pay for this more impressive genealogical table would be to turn Singapore into a bloody battle-ground for endless racial and communal conflicts.”[20]
While highlighting Singapore’s past would certainly provide some shared historical basis for the nation, elites evidently perceived the risk of increasing the salience of race during this time to be too great. In fact, the decision to keep Singapore’s diverse history on the backburner post-independence lasted until the mid-1970s, a decision influenced by the fact that bloody racial riots flared up yet again in 1969. With the fate of the fragile federation of Malaysia (and later, the newly independent state of Singapore) in the balance, it is no wonder that political elites worried bringing attention to Singapore’s multiracial history would only spell further death and disaster.
4. Conclusion
Overall, Singapore’s long-lived history as a multiracial colony, along with political elites’ conscious rejection of embracing this past due to the violent racial climate of the time, both led to the absence of a collective past, a key element of the foundation of the nation. This, in turn, contributed to the absence of the Singaporean nation circa 1965.
This essay is far from comprehensive and raises many other questions about the development of the Singaporean nation, both pre- and post-independence. For example, what other non-history-related factors contributed to the lack of a Singaporean nation, and how did political elites interact with such factors? Relatedly, did political elites’ eventually champion Singapore’s past, and what motivated this marked reversal if so? Even more generally, was the lack of a pre-existing nation a wholly detrimental phenomenon in the first place?
To briefly touch upon this last inquiry in the hopes of spurring further discussion, the absence of a nation enabled political elites to promote their own specific vision of a nation that accomplished pertinent state objectives. While developments during the post-independence timeframe largely lie outside the scope of this essay, nation-building efforts throughout the rest of the 60s and into the 70s are particularly indicative of how elites took advantage of the unusual circumstances. With no preexisting nation as an obstacle, state officials were free to actively promote an image of a nation that rested on equal racial opportunity of economic advancement, hoping to mitigate Singapore’s precarious economic condition and calm racial divisions in the process.[21] Thus, the nonexistence of the Singaporean nation had a small silver lining, though the extent to which the costs outweighed the benefits—along with the multitude of other questions associated with the topic of Singaporean nation-building—remain topics of future research.
Renee Ong graduated from Yale University in Spring 2021 with a degree in Political Science. She is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of politics and economics within and among states in East and Southeast Asia.
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[1] R. S. Milne, “Singapore’s Exit from Malaysia; the Consequences of Ambiguity,” Asian Survey 6, no. 3 (1966): 175, doi:10.2307/2642221.
[2] Edwin Lee Siew Cheng, Singapore: The Unexpected Nation (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008), 597.
[3] Gungwu Wang, Nation Building: Five Southeast Asian Histories (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), 211-2; Michael Hill and Kwen Fee Lian, The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 2.
[4] Selvaraj Velayutham, Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), 10.
[5] Cheng, Singapore: The Unexpected Nation, 387.
[6] Ibid, 650; “Commanding Heights: Interview with Lee Hsien Loong,” PBS, May 5, 2001, accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_leehsienloong.html.
[7] Hill and Lian, The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore, 18.
[8] Wang, Nation Building, 210.
[9] David Miller, “National Identity” in On Nationality, edited by David Miller and Alan Ryan(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23,Oxford Scholarship Online, doi: 10.1093/0198293569.001.0001.
[10] Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 23.
[11] Velayutham, Responding to Globalization, 26.
[12] Willmott (1989), 582 as cited in Velayutham (2007), 26.
[13] “Now Look to the Future,” The Straits Times, August 10, 1965, accessed May 12, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19650810-1.2.2.
[14] “Foes and Friends,” The Straits Times,August 11, 1965, accessed May 12, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19650811-1.2.71.1.
[15] Population and Population Structure: Population, Annual: Singapore Residents By Age Group, Ethnic Group And Sex, End June, Annual, 1957-2020, Department of Statistics Singapore, accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/publicfacing/createDataTable.action?refId=14911#; Cheng, Singapore: The Unexpected Nation, 487.
[16] Jamie Han, Communal riots of 1964, Singapore Infopedia: a Singapore Government Agency Website, accessed May 12, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_45_2005-01-06.html.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Velayutham, Responding to Globalization, 25; Loh Kah Seng, “WITHIN THE SINGAPORE STORY: The Use and Narrative of History in Singapore,” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (1998): 2, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40860676.
[20] Wang, Nation Building, 225.
[21] Velayutham, Responding to Globalization, 56; Hill and Lian, The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore, 101.
