The basic premise of this volume of articles is that there is a need to respond to the challenge issued by Jerry Bentley – one of the pioneers of the now well-established field of ‘World History’ – for historians to attempt both to ‘globalize history’ and to ‘historicize globalization’. Though directed at historians, it is a challenge that raises broader questions about the interplay between the global and the local in all fields of endeavour. While the joint editors of this volume are both historians, the contributions are from specialists in history, political science, international relations, sociology, literature, art history and architecture, all of whom address this issue to a greater or lesser degree with regard to Singapore. A major aim of the contributors was to emphasise the contribution of the ‘local’ to the ‘global’.

Since the late 1990s there has been a proliferation of studies on Singapore. Initially, these works were written by non-professional historians and government bodies responding to the government's call as part of the official 1997 launching of the National Education Programme, which was intended to educate the people about the struggles that led to the success story that was Singapore’s. The response included publications on the “Singapore Story”, especially the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew and biographies of other political figures, such as S. Rajaratnam, Lim Kim San, and David Marshall. This form of historical writing culminated in the 2010 publication, Men in White. Professional historians then became involved not simply in producing the standard histories of the nation state of Singapore, but also in offering an alternative ‘history from below’. Of particular note is the 2008 publication entitled, The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Past. There has also been a trend towards giving greater emphasis to Singapore's international involvement from its earliest history, which has been reconstructed through archaeological finds, to the present day. The most recent example, published in 2009, is simply entitled Singapore: A 700-Year History, a book which discusses Singapore's position within a wider regional and global context.

This volume continues the latter trend by arguing that much of what has occurred in this island state is the result of powerful global forces that were adapted through local agency.