Maps, Money, and Merchants in Colonial Singapore

Figure 1: Boat Quay with old statues of old trade on the Singapore River. Photo by the author.

The smell of spices, sight of Chinese labourers hauling gunny sacks from bumboats, and din from merchants haggling over prices of commodities are all part of the make-up of Singapore River in the early 1900s. That was the veritable hive of activity on land and in water then, and a microcosm of trade in Southeast Asia during colonial times.

Business owners, towkays as they were called, hailed from Malacca, Java or elsewhere to capitalise on Singapore’s free-port status, while many impoverished Chinese men risked the rough seas to escape grinding poverty in China, hoping for promising jobs in the island colony. In the beginning, everybody congregated here for a common purpose—to make a good buck.

From sinkeh to citizen
My paternal grandparents represented a tiny drop in the immigration wave when they left Fujian province in China for Malaya in the early 1900s. After settling in Johor, my grandfather laboured for some years and like typical “sinkehs”, or new immigrants, during those times, he ended up earning a modest living owning a provision shop selling rice, spices, condensed milk and other sundries, and small parcels of rubber plantations.

Growing up in Singapore, I would often hear family snippets related to the business landscape during the colonial days—my grandfather’s account books scribbled in ancient-yet-compact Suzhou numerals, my father’s mastery in clacking the abacus with speed and accuracy, mnemonic verses for kati weight conversions since dividing by 16 proved too much for the average Joe, and the fielding of rubber tappers in the cool hours before dawn to maximise latex collection.

Figure 2: Boat Quay with old statues of old trade on the Singapore River. Photo by the author.

Later in life, these personal anecdotes drew me closer to the modules I taught in NUS on Singapore’s economy, which usually started off with the economics history of Malaya. My personal memories of a bygone Singapore are now intimately connected with a wider tapestry of the history and development of Singapore, which came in handy as I now also volunteer as a heritage guide recounting stories about pineapple kings, rubber tycoons and toiling labourers—how fortunes were made and sometimes lost, and the colourful lives led by the privileged and the poor.

It was through the academia and heritage circles that I met like-minded friends who were keen to uncover more stories on Singapore’s business history. Among these were postdoctoral fellows Dr Yu Kang from ARI and Dr Wang Sisi from the NUS History department and together, we applied to the National Heritage Board for a two-year grant to study the business networks and trades of Chinese businesses in Singapore from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

Our mission is to study the evolution of Singapore’s business networks during that era, particularly the wider implications on socio-economic networks and trade links Singapore had within Southeast Asia and with China. In addition, many traditional shops of heritage value have since become extinct and those on the verge of disappearing need to change with the times to stay relevant. We hope the success stories we have gathered will offer the general public a glimpse of our precious past, inspiring lessons as a way forward.

Figure 3: Heritage gallery at the Ee Hoe Hean Club, Oct 2024. Photo courtesy of the author.

We approach the project, which began last year and is slated to complete at the end of this year, from various angles and sources: old record books, stone slabs at temples and clan associations, and colonial-era maps from the National Archives and other sources.

The record books include accounting ledgers, business directories, etc., of fast disappearing trades, such as traditional Chinese crafts shops, tea merchants, and clan associations. After brushing away layers of dust on these books, we usually spend hours each day taking thousands of photos of all the pages as a way of preserving and studying these records. Often, it is also a race with time to get the material on record before the bookworms nibble their way through the pages, some of which have been around for more than a century. A trained historian, Yu Kang would sometimes inform the owners ways to preserve and restore these books typically made of delicate Chinese xuan paper.

Epigraphic squeeze

The fieldwork, which brought me to new corners of Singapore, also involves some handicraft work in the form of an epigraphic squeeze, or rubbing, which I learnt from watching Yu Kang and Sisi carefully brushing, patting and peeling the imprinted paper off walls of inscriptions. Temples and clans typically have names of donors, their donations and major occasions literally cast in stone—a sort of time capsule erected for posterity. And so it was, the technique of epigraphic squeeze was much needed for records and analyses. But this begs the question—why not just snap a photo? As it turns out, the epigraphic squeeze produces a clearer picture of the stones and provides texture to the carvings that photographs are unable to reproduce.

Another aspect of the project involves poring through old maps of the first half of the 1900s that show streets around the Singapore River, mainly in the vicinities of South Bridge Road and North Bridge Road, known colloquially as “Big Town” （大坡）since it is the first area for the early Chinese settlers, and “Small Town” （小坡）, when the area expanded.

Piecing all this information together is a project that could potentially take years, but as our NHB-funded project only has a duration of two years, we are focusing on the bustling waterfront of the Singapore River, where Stamford Raffles from the British East India Company first set foot.

Businesses that set up shop around the Boat Quay area include importers and exporters of everything from pepper and rice to charcoal and rubber, shipping agents, commission and remittance agents, salt merchants, boat makers, cargo forwarding firms, fish merchants and many others.

The aim is to place the firms in one of the business directories—there are more than 30,000 entries in our spreadsheet—onto the old maps to get a layout of where the various types of businesses gathered, and how they networked and interacted with one another in trade and other activities.

Figure 4: (From left) Yu Kang, Wang Sisi and the author at Bukit Brown Cemetary doing epigraphic squeezes, November 2023. Photo courtesy of the author.

Vanishing trades and streets

In the process of going through the business directory, we saw the rise and fall of certain trades as industries and habits change, more visibly the makers and owners of twakows and tongkangs or lightweight boats that were a common sight at the quays as they ferried goods from the ships at sea to the shores. In fact, there used to be roads named after these boats in Tanjong Rhu called Twakow Place and Tongkang Place.

Another trade that vanished was remittance shops that helped illiterate Chinese labourers write letters and remit money back to their families in China. We know Eu Yan Sang as a company that sells healthcare and Chinese traditional medicine products, but remittances once contributed a big part to their business. As time went on, immigrants started settling down for good in Singapore, and with improving literacy levels and technology advancement, remittance agents and shops gradually ran out of business.

Singapore also had rubber plantations dotted around the island such as Tan Kah Kee’s Chip-Bee School Rubber Estate and Layang Rubber Plantation whose local representative was Sime, Darby & Company. In fact, World War II battles were once fiercely fought in rubber plantations, such as those in the Beauty World area in Bukit Timah. Now, rubber plantations are hardly a driver of Singapore’s economy, and its trees are only found in Botanic Gardens as a reminder how its first director Henry Nicholas Ridley, nicknamed “Mad Ridley”, was a zealot in introducing rubber trees in Singapore, which paved the way for Malaya’s massive rubber industry.

Some businesses such as radio repairers, tailors, firewood and charcoal dealers, translators, coconut oil millers, and sawmills are still around today, but the numbers have since dwindled.

While searching through the old maps and juxtaposing with the current ones, we also found that certain roads have become defunct. The business directory I was working on had some companies based on Hallpike Street, a little road between High Street and North Boat Quay Road which has since disappeared. The defunct Hallpike Street is now part of the Parliament House.

Not too far off was Medeiros Building on Cecil Road, where Sino-Malayan Engineers, importers and exporters, and public accountants used to be based. In place of it today are towering skyscrapers.

Figure 5: Boat Quay with old statues of old trade on the Singapore River. Photo by the author.

Then, a few streets away, there was once a Wayang Street, aptly named because it was known for staging Chinese operas frequently and where businesses, such as lorry hire companies, earthen ware dealers, commissioners, merchants and sundry sellers, used to thrive. It is now called Eu Tong Sen Street.

Figure 6: A twakow on the Singapore River. Photo by the author.

Today, the bare-bodied Chinese labourers, commodities-filled warehouses and goods-laden bumboats are gone from the quays along Singapore River. The green-and-red twakows painted with eyes in the front now carry tourists instead of cargoes. The only workers and merchants we see nowadays are the bronze sculptures along the waterfront. As for the spices, they are probably found on the shelves of chefs’ kitchens in fancy restaurants overlooking the river—a mere passing whiff of the past.

The views expressed in this forum are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, or the institutions to which the authors are attached.