Current Issue

It was not so much Raffles who made Singapore,
but Singapore which made Raffles!"

For more than a decade, in my teaching, research, and writing, I have tried to move my audience away from the idea that there was only one founder of Singapore, and that he is Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. It is hard to change this perception, based as it is on Raffles' historical achievements and reputation -- on a whole pile of books, on not one but two statues of Raffles in the civic heart of Singapore, and on a growing number of places and institutions named after him. I recall that in February 1994, the 175th anniversary of Singapore’s founding, The Times of London described me as a Singapore skeptic who "cast doubt over the Raffles legend" (I was in good company, for the other skeptic they mentioned was then Minister for the Arts, George Yeo.) The Times' report was based on a chapter I wrote in A History of Singapore, a book I co-edited with Edwin Lee (Oxford University Press, 1991).