Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Shawna Tang, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This seminar is held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s independence from Britain and its merger with the Federation of Malaya, North Borneo, and Sarawak to form Malaysia.

The merger of Federation of Malaya and Singapore in 1963 originated from Singapore’s domestic political difficulties. The nature of these difficulties, however, has never been adequately understood; due to a paucity of sources, communist subversion has been generally uncritically accepted as its root, and Operation Coldstore presented as the solution to a security problem. Using newly declassified documents, as well as a mix of vernacular sources, this seminar will analyse the domestic political factors that inspired Singapore’s merger with the Federation. It demonstrates how a combination of internal party strife and a decline in popularity led the People’s Action Party to seek to restore their political authority, via achieving the widely popular but extremely difficult goal of the reunification of Malaya; why – despite a complete lack of evidence for any communist subversive activity – communist subversion was blamed for necessitating merger; and how the process of the negotiation of Coldstore sowed the seeds for Singapore’s separation from Malaysia. It concludes with a discussion of the continuing consequences of how Coldstore continues to define the contours of Singapore politics today.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Thum Ping Tjin (“PJ”) is a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and Co-ordinator of Project Southeast Asia at the University of Oxford. His work centres on decolonisation in Southeast Asia, and its continuing impact on Southeast Asian governance, politics, and international relations. Recent publications include “The New Normal is the Old Normal: Lessons from Singapore’s History of Dissent,” in Donald Low (ed.), Singapore Contested: Reframing Debates in the New Normal. Singapore: NUS Press (forthcoming); “Flesh and Bone Reunited As One Body: Singapore’s Chinese-Speaking and their Perspectives on Merger”, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies Vol 5 (2011 – 12); and two chapters in “Studying Singapore’s Past: CM Turnbull and the History of Modern Singapore” (NUS Press: 2012).

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg