The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History
Tangent Special Issue, 6 (2), 2007, edited by Loh Kah Seng
Synopsis
In this special issue of Tangent, the twelve contributors will examine an oft untold side of history. What follow are our reflections on ongoing or recently-completed research into Singapore’s history after World War Two. We write of our engagements with the “makers” and “keepers” of this history, of how, because the period is close to the present, both the archival and oral records are frequently difficult to obtain.
By “makers”, we refer to participants who had a hand in shaping the past, including the elites and ordinary people. By “keepers”, we mean public officials who manage access to government archives, and also the “makers” who, when interviewed, decide what and how much of their experiences are to be shared.
It is, we maintain, important to talk about our attempts to engage the makers and gatekeepers of history, because while history is about the past, an account of the research is invariably about the present. This issue, in other words, considers the uneasy, ambivalent relationship between present-day Singapore society and its past, and the mediating role of historians in between.
Huang Jianli opens the discussion of parleys at the gates of history with an examination of archival and oral history holdings in Singapore for the study of a complex and oft-misrepresented facet of Singapore’s history, student politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Huang’s observations set the context for the next four papers detailing journeys to the British, American, Dutch, Australian, Chinese, and Taiwanese archives by current or recent doctoral candidates.
Akin to a flanking manoeuvre, the authors arrive, so to speak, at the “back gates” or “side gates” of our political and social pasts: Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied in his pursuit of the iconic 1950 Maria Hertogh controversy, Joey Long and P. J. Thum on the little-studied American role in Singapore’s decolonisation and labour history in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jason Lim on the social and economic history of Chinese tea merchants in 1920–1960.
The second half of the issue concentrates on social history and oral history. Stephen Dobbs outlines his efforts to engage the elite and ordinary makers and keepers of the past in his study of the place of the Singapore River in our national history and the lives of lightermen toiling along the riverfront.
The next six chapters focus on the challenges and rewards of engaging the voices of the past. Through a linguistic analysis of his interviews, Ernest Koh uncovers the agency of Chinese workers in the period 1945–2000. Kelvin Low and Lai Ah Eng reflect on their conversations, respectively, with the samsui women and elderly women in general, noting ways to access the “semi-official” and “unofficial” gates to these crucial but underwritten parts of our history. Personal endeavour, luck and recent events are, as Lim Cheng Tju notes, important in engaging the artists and cartoonists of the postwar years.
The issue concludes with two papers on the history of the vanished: kampongs in Singapore city. C. C. Chin considers research into the anti-colonial rural associations in postwar Singapore, and finally, the editor for this special issues, Loh Kah Seng recalls his encounters with the makers and keepers of the documents and memories of the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961.
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