By Baptiste de Vries
While the world is focused on reversing colonial and neocolonial trends, Singapore seems deeply attached to its British past. Parks, hotels, and roads proudly bear the names of their former colonial rulers. Monuments continue to be erected to commemorate the colonial and personal legacy of Sir Raffles, the British officer credited with founding Singapore in 1819, the latest of which was unveiled in May 2024, sparking debate. (Wee, S. 2024). Street naming and cultural policies regarding monuments may seem futile at first glance but are intrinsic to Singapore’s National identity.
Why does the Singaporean government uphold such legacies, and what does it mean for its national identity?
Common Ground
In 1967, two years after gaining independence, Singapore launched the Street-Naming Advisory Committee aiming to sever ties with Britain and colonial habits to foster a new local identity (Yeoh, B. 1996). The first attempt to create this new local identity via street naming focused on “Malayanising” the Landscape (Yeoh, B. 1996). On paper, this was a logical attempt to reconnect the city-state with its historical and geographical belonging to the Malaysian peninsula. However, if geographically and historically linked with Malaysia, modern Singapore was and still is predominantly inhabited by ethnically Chinese residents. The latter found the new names rather hard to pronounce and felt they did not represent their community’s history. The “Malayanising” of the urban landscape not only displeased the majority of the population it infringed on the newly forged concept of Multiracialism (ibid). Traumatised by the deadly 1964 race riots, Singapore prioritised constructing a Multiracial, Multi-lingual and Multicultural nation. Emphasising one language or one community seemed baffling, even though Malay is recognized as the national language. To appease tensions the second attempt to rename Singaporean streets adopted mathematical naming. Yet, it was soon clear that Singapore was not built in a grid plan manner, meaning ‘a fully-fledged numerical naming system was not feasible’ (ibid). The Third and final bid to rename Singaporean streets agreed to a “Standardisation” of names. All street names were to be Romanised, and colonial names remained. To further the process, in the 1980s, all Chinese names were translated into Pinyin (Latin Alphabet Mandarin) (ibid). Singapore did not reject the local languages it simply acknowledged its constitution, which states English as the ‘language of government, of the administration, of Justice, of trade and commerce’ (Keong, C. S., 2013). Colonial and English street names were perceived by both government and population as neutral, enabling a common space for Singaporeans of all backgrounds.
Culture and Luxury
If Singapore maintained English and colonial street names to pursue equality and multiracialism, it also maintained colonial buildings, neighbourhoods and habits to fuel its culture and luxury field. Indeed, the old
colonial buildings are no longer signs of power and rule but were transformed into cultural landmarks. The colonial district is well-visited and immaculately preserved, and the old neo-classical supreme court and city hall were repurposed to house the National Gallery (Dziedzic, S. 2020). These buildings, alongside the Victoria Hall allow for a splash of historical architecture and culture in a city enclosed by corporate skyscrapers. Singapore feared becoming a highly modern city that is more and more international in scale and style but also growingly faceless, homogeneous and lacking in indigenous identity (Yuen, B. 2005). As a result, with little pre-colonial history, Singapore attached itself to its British historical legacy. To make Singapore worth visiting in the minds of tourists and associate a certain “chicness” with the city-state, collective efforts were also made to pursue and maintain colonial-era clubs, restaurants and especially hotels. Indeed, high-end colonial-era hotels like the Fullerton or the Raffles are landmarks of their own and signs of sophisticated luxury, becoming the city’s ‘Crown Jewel of the tourist industry’ (Thirumaran et al., 2023). Furthermore, despite new recognisable landmarks like the Marina Bay Sands or Gardens by the Bay, colonial hotels like the Raffles remain a larger part of Singapore’s place-making imaginaries (ibid). Lastly, to a certain extent, even the old dichotomy between European and Asian residential Areas has shifted into an economic one. Many Upper-Class Singaporeans and expatriates prefer to live in old colonial Black and White houses or historic European Neighbourhoods such as Tanglin or River Valley.
The colonial aspect of Urban spaces in Singapore has thus been used through political, economic and cultural means to cement a new National identity locally and internationally. Finally, the attachment to colonial nomenclature and architecture is a physical testimony of the influence of British values within the legal and moral framework of Singapore, which, despite its image of modernity, remains a very conservative society.
Bibliography:
· Dziedzic, S. (2020). Singapore’s quarrel over colonialism. [online] http://www.lowyinstitute.org. Available at: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/singapore-s-quarrel-over-colonialism.
· Keong, C.S. (2013). Multiculturalism in Singapore – The Way to a Harmonious Society. Singapore Academy of Law Journal, [online] 25, p.84. Available at: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/saclj25&div=8&id=&page=.
· Thirumaran, K., Mohammadi, Z., Azzali, S., Eijdenberg, E.L. and Donough-Tan, G. (2023). Transformed landscapes, tourist sentiments: the place making narrative of a luxury heritage hotel in Singapore. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 18, pp.1–22. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/1743873x.2023.2169151.
· Wee, S.-L. (2024). A New Statue of a British Colonialist Exposes a Divide in Singapore. The New York Times. [online] 31 Aug. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/world/asia/raffles-statue-singapore-debate.html.
· Yeoh, B.S.A. (1996). Street-Naming and Nation-Building: Toponymic Inscriptions of Nationhood in Singapore. Area, [online] 28(3), pp.298–307. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20003708.
· Yuen, B. (2005). Searching for place identity in Singapore. Habitat International, [online] 29(2), pp.197–214. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2003.07.002.
Identity Hunters 