The Singaporean middle class aspired for the 5Cs — career, condominium, car, club, and credit card. To get them, Singaporeans focused on education and hard work. Their attitude to education was utilitarian, to give themselves the requisite qualifications which meant they must score good grades in examinations.

Their singlemindedness had paid off. It was well adapted to the kind of economic strategy that the government had been pursuing since independence. It had brought them in less than a lifetime to first-world status. But from this point on they needed to change. They should realize that there is more to education than they had so far had the inclination or time to explore. They must know that they cannot have university education without a learning and research culture, nor technology without entrepreneurship. They must start thinking imaginatively like the middle classes of the first world if they want to keep abreast of them.

The culture of the Singaporean middle class was such that they were not the prime mover of change. The government was the prime mover, and had to act like some benevolent but hard-driving latter day Moses, leading a timorous, complaining middle class into the new frontier of global competitiveness. The government launched all the new business ventures, which became established household names. It forced people to save through the CPF system, and encouraged nationwide home ownership through a public housing board, which was to bill itself as the biggest real estate office on earth.

The government was not short on visions of the future drawn up with the participation mainly of the English-educated middle class. However, it could not foresee that one of its dearest (in more than one sense) schemes, home ownership, could be in conflict with another scheme deemed crucial some twenty years downstream, the nurturing of entrepreneurship. It allowed another massive inflation in property values in the early to mid-1990s.

In July 1997, the Asian Financial Crisis struck and, in a flash, revealed to a whole region the danger of moving way out of sync with the forces of globalization. The affected countries which appealed to the International Monetary Fund had to comply with conditions about opening up their home markets and transparency issues. Although Singapore was not badly hit, the PAP Government swung into action to liberalize banking, telecommunications, educational, legal, and health care services.

Singapore's strategic location has ensured it an importance which meant that it was never alone throughout the ages of history. In the Temasek era, it was involved with rising powers in Thailand and Java, and a fading empire in Sumatra. Later, Singapore was a part of the Malay empires of Malacca and Johore. In the age of European overseas expansion, Singapore was a vital link in Britain's maritime route to China. From 1874, as Britain extended its control to the peninsular Malay states, Singapore became the capital of the expanding imperial frontier known as British Malaya, and the main port for the trade in Malayan staples, tin and rubber.

The administrative and economic ties between Singapore and Malaya were further enhanced by social and even familial ties, for both territories had a population characterized by the same ethnic diversity, though in different proportions. Singapore was the site of colleges which the British opened and later combined as the University of Malaya. Students from all over Malaya came to study in these institutions and many stayed on, giving the city state an extra layer of talent in all departments — commerce and the professions, the civil service, the judiciary, and not least, the executive branch of government, as PAP cabinet ministers. But, on the other hand, from Malaya, there also came many troublemakers and conspirators.

For all the above reasons, Singapore was often included when people referred to “Malaya” as a place or a state (generally speaking, and not specifically the “Federation of Malaya”) and to things “Malayan”. Even when, after the Second World War, Singapore was reconstituted as a Crown Colony by itself, it was still considered inseparable from Malaya, and was expected to be merged with Malaya some day. The experience of separate independent statehood was completely new for Singaporeans when it happened, abruptly, on that fateful 9 August 1965.

The ethnic variety of Singapore is greater than is suggested in the broad classification used by the PAP Government, and more or less followed here. In this book the ethnic components are, in order of size, the Chinese, the Malays (including their compatriots in the faith, the Arabs and Indian Muslims), the Indians and the Eurasians.

The economy, the army, and now education, were important pillars of nation-building under PAP rule. As democratic socialists, PAP leaders believed in education as a social good, and sought to bring it to as many as possible through promoting universal primary education and the expansion of secondary education. But the PAP Government did not begin on a clean slate. It had to deal with the system it inherited as a colonial legacy. At the same time, it had to carry out its own objectives. What it inherited were schools in four different languages, together with their attitudes, and in the case of Chinese-medium schools, entrenched suspicions and resistance to governmental interference. What it sought to create, with new principles in mind, was an education system that was responsive to the demands of industrial and business growth and modernization, and supportive of multiracial national integration. The pursuit of these objectives and principles brought in train consequences which were predictable to some extent, but the scale of these consequences, and the magnitude of the impact on key constituencies were not, and were overwhelming like a river at full flood.

Once in power in 1959, the PAP endorsed the 1955 All-Party Committee Report on Chinese education, which laid down the principle of equal treatment for the four streams of schools, English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, in existence in the then British colony. This principle, as applied to Chinese-medium schools, meant that the school buildings and resources were upgraded, the teachers received training at the Teachers' Training College for the first time, several Chinese teachers' unions gained recognition, and the Ministry of Education started to appoint officials knowledgeable about Chinese education.

The PAP Government also carried out the All-Party recommendation that the four streams of schools should use textbooks with a common content, but written in their respective languages. In 1960, it introduced a common examination at the primary level, the Primary School Leaving Examination, sat for by students of all four streams of schools.

At the secondary level, the Chinese Middle Schools were restructured on the lines of the English-medium secondary schools, amid much controversy.

The Second World War sealed the old era of British rule in Malaya, and opened a new final chapter. The new men who ruled Malaya came out with liberal, Fabian ideas of colonial stewardship. They aimed to remake Malaya into a unified multiracial country, a Malayan Malaya, to which they would eventually transfer power. But they had not reckoned with how Malaya would receive them. Malay nationalists opposed them, forcing them to put Malay sovereignty and Malay rights first, though agreeing to the unification of all the Malay states in a new Federation of Malaya. Then, the Malayan Communist Party, Britain's Chinese ally behind Japanese lines in the war just ended, edged towards a war of insurgency in the uneasy peace-time. Concurrently, the British officials who started as liberals switched to advocating draconian laws. However, successive British proconsuls worked to keep the Malayan Malaya ideal alive until they had to accept defeat not by the guns of communism but by the politics of communalism.

The young Lee Kuan Yew has his political education in this war-torn, troubled period, but from Britain where he was reading law after the war. His thinking was cast in the same liberal mould as the British political and colonial establishment. He arrived at a definition of the Malayan nation that mirrored theirs. Something else very important that Lee grasped very early was that Britain had no intention to leave Malaya in the hands of the Malayan Communist Party. Lee, like a group of young, highly intelligent radicals who came slightly before him, was also to work with the communists, but unlike them, who were drawn like moths to the flame, he reserved some space, playing on the ambiguity in the connection. And the connection enabled him to beat his right wing contemporaries, helped by their own wrong moves. It also helped Lee that the state of play developed such that, ironically, both the British and the Malayan Communist Party had to take him as the only man who could further their cause. Later still, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the father of independence in Malaya, had also to deal with none other than Lee, as one prime minister (of Malaya) to another (of Singapore).

Malayan Repercussions on Singapore

The Alliance Party made the winning of independence the foremost issue in the federal election which swept it to power. But the Emergency consequent on the communist insurgency, now in its eighth year, could be a pretext for the British to delay the constitutional process. The Alliance saw this issue as both obstacle and opportunity. The Alliance manifesto set out the aim to end the Emergency and bring peace through an offer of amnesty to the communists.

The MCP had been watching the political scene and concluding about the same time as the British did, that the Alliance was the rising contender. It befitted the MCP, therefore, to respond to the offer of amnesty.

Why was the MCP willing to discuss amnesty? It was because the guerrilla war was all but lost, and the guerrillas were starving in the jungle. Food denial was the simple idea ruthlessly implemented by Lieutenant- General Sir Harold Briggs, director of operations in Malaya from 1950–52. In less than three years, the Briggs plan moved 470,509 rural squatters into 440 new villages. Templer improved on it by ordering centralised cooking facilities. This reduced the chances of people carrying food supplies intended for the guerrillas through village main gates.

Chin Peng replied to the amnesty offer in May 1955, choosing the moment when the federal election had been announced, and the date set for the dissolution of the federal legislative council. Chin Peng addressed his letter to the Federation Government headed by the British high commissioner, as the Alliance, the proposer of the amnesty, was not yet in office. A copy of the letter was sent to the newly elected chief minister of Singapore, David Marshall (who is the main subject of this chapter, and whose appearance here indicates the integral oneness of Malaya and Singapore in history). Chin Peng's letter asked to discuss amnesty terms, but High Commissioner MacGillivray, after consultations in London, declared that the MCP must first surrender. So nothing came of Chin Peng's response.

The federal election in July brought the expected Alliance victory. Tunku Abdul Rahman became the chief minister (a title which was changed to prime minister on independence).

Singapore had two universities, and their story epitomizes two different worlds of language, culture, and politics. The University of Singapore, opened in 1949, on the basis of pre-war colleges, was colonial-sponsored, and taught in the English medium. The staff consisted of a high proportion of expatriates, mostly British nationals during the colonial era, but more international thereafter. The graduates went on to jobs in the civil service, statutory boards, and the private sector comprising western banks and commercial houses.

Nanyang University was the unwanted child of the colonial era. It was born at a time of resurgent Chinese pride in their language and culture, inspired by Maoist China. Operational in 1956, Nanyang University offered monumental proof of how Chinese self-help could overcome British objections, but also of how the university could be turned into a symbol of the anti-colonial revolution.

Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock had the first crack at the Nanyang University problem, but his party was soon defeated in the May 1959 election. Then the task fell on Prime Minister Lee. In fact, Lee had two universities to think about, and two different types of problems. Nanyang University needed recognition for its degrees, and job outlets for its graduates. The degrees of the University of Singapore were recognized and jobs were ready-made for its graduates, but it was a colonial university which needed to be made relevant to the post-independent Singapore.

This chapter deals with Lee's ideas and actions on the remaking of the University of Singapore, occasioned by his encounters with the staff and students of this institution. Lee had often envisioned to himself and his cabinet colleagues the kind of university he would like to have. His envisioning should be understood in relation to the socio-political milieu of the emergent Afro-Asian world to which he belonged. He was at the younger end of the first generation of national leaders which included, in the order in which he named them, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, Don Senanayake, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Dr Hastings Banda, Julius Nyerere, and Milton Obote. “They have all been through universities”, he said, setting an example to their people of the efficacy of university education and inspiring them to emulate.

The London talks of July 1962, based on the Cobbold Report, set the target date for the incorporation of the Borneo territories into Malaysia at 31 August 1963, allowing an intervening period of a year and a month during which constitutional safeguards and other details would be settled. This period would also be used for more bilateral discussions between Malaya and Singapore, and Malaya and Brunei, on important issues on which their positions were still far apart. However, the definitive significance of this period, marking the run-up to Malaysia, lies not only in these discussions. The Malaya-Singapore discussions were accompanied by a growing rift and rivalry between their two prime ministers, the Tunku and Lee. The two men of different personality, world view and political power base, felt, in the approach of merger, a heightening of the otherness of his opposite number and a desire for mastery over him. The issues at stake in this contest of will and power, which were inseparable from the outstanding issues of the merger itself, threatened to scuttle the merger completely. The strife between the two prime ministers was not the only danger on the merger horizon. Key national leaders in the surrounding region, which comprised island Southeast Asia, began to advance a territorial claim (the Philippine claim to North Borneo), and to oppose Malaysia as a neo-colonial design meant to perpetuate Western influence in their neighbourhood. This external dimension of conflict was to have major impact on the internal merger programme.

The Tunku and the “Troublemaker”

The Tunku and Lee were agreed on the danger posed by the communists and communist proxies in Malaya and Singapore, but differed in their attitude towards communist countries of the world. The Tunku extended his uncompromising stand against communists within his territory to communists globally, resembling the American attitude in that cold war era. Lee's approach was more neutral and pragmatic: he would trade with communist nations on the understanding that trade should be kept separate from politics and ideology. For the present, his purpose was to visit them and explain that he was no British stooge, but a nationalist who believed Malaysia was for the best. When he discussed with the Tunku his plan to visit Belgrade, Moscow, and Beijing as well as New Delhi and Cairo, the Tunku was aghast.

Exit from Malaysia

Singapore arose as an independent nation from the wreckage of a dream for a greater political union. It was a dream that Lee Kuan Yew held all his young adult life. Lee desperately pursued and Tunku Abdul Rahman reluctantly agreed to the formation of Malaysia. They had a mutual foe: the communist network in Singapore which Lee could not destroy singlehandedly without incurring a heavy political price in his predominantly Chinese, communist-influenced, city state, and which the Tunku, on the other side of the causeway, found too close for comfort. But after Malaysia was formed, and the communist threat neutralized, the differences in the politics of the two prime ministers came irreconciliably to the fore.

The Tunku's politics was encapsulated in what has been called the historic bargain between the ethnic communities prior to merdeka in Malaya in 1957. The Tunku agreed to citizenship on jus soli for the Chinese and Indians (as from the independence date, and not earlier), but would not concede recognizing Chinese as an official language. Chinese leaders agreed to special rights for Malays stipulated as land reservations, and quotas in the public services, university admissions, government-awarded scholarships, and trade licences. These Malay special rights, together with Malay dominance in parliament and cabinet, attained, and never relinquished, before more non-Malays received citizenship and hence the vote, assured the Malays absolute control of politics and government in Malaya, and since 1963, in Malaysia.

“The Tunku's simple belief,” Lee said, “was that politics was for the Malays and business for the Chinese.” What it amounted to was that the Chinese businessman would be in a clientelist relationship with the Malay power-holder.

The dispute between Singapore and the central government came to a head when the PAP advocated a Malaysian Malaysia in which everyone, regardless of race, was equal. This resulted in Singapore's expulsion from Malaysia in 1965.

Younger Malay nationalists in the UMNO were no more satisfied than Lee was with the Tunku's politics, though for a completely different reason. They considered the Tunku too conciliatory towards the non-Malays, and did not go all out to implement Malay special rights, especially if doing so conflicted with Chinese and Indian middleman interests.

Coping with the Communists

One of the first words Lee exchanged with the governor, Sir William Goode, after the election concerned the release of the detainees, a matter on which Goode had to refer to London. Lee had a schedule as follows: hold a post-election rally, release the detainees, and hold a press conference on the same day, and then be sworn in as the government. He wanted to have a rally without the detainees, and it was held on the night of 3 June. The detainees were released to face the press on 4 June. The government was sworn in on 5 June.

Lee had planned the order of events to ensure that each one would grab the day's headlines. Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan, Devan Nair, Sandrasegeram Woodhull, and James Puthucheary were among the eight detainees released. Their signed statement was given to the press in a conference and published the next day. The statement contained the key sentence: “To achieve complete identification with the ideal of a united Malayan nation, and to struggle by peaceful, democratic, and constitutional means for the enduring objective of a united, independent, democratic and non-communist, and socialist Malaya.”

Lim, Fong, Nair, and Woodhull received appointment as political secretaries in various ministries, while Puthucheary was made the manager of a new Industrial Promotions Board. Clearly they were thought of with cautious optimism.

Meanwhile, the labour scene was in some kind of disarray. The Lim Yew Hock Government, while closing the communist unions, had encouraged others to form, and these had mushroomed, aided by the Trades Union Ordinance which permitted any seven persons to form a union. Lim Yew Hock's idea seemed to have been to replace the big communist federation of unions with lots of small unions, and by 1959, when the PAP took office, there were more than 200 unions around, more than 50 per cent of which had fewer than 250 members. K.M. Byrne, the PAP Minister for Labour and Law, did not like these “splinter” unions which he thought were easily exploitable by employers. So it was decided that a union must have a minimum of 250 members, must fit into one of nineteen categories, each to be formed into a federation, and must be affiliated to something big, meaning, “obviously the Trades Union Congress”.

The Tunku's volte-face on the merger shocked everybody — the British, Lee Kuan Yew, and the Plen. For the British and Lee, who were overjoyed, it meant to get cracking right away. For the Plen, it called for a new angle. This was to demonstrate that the PAP Government was going to sell out Singapore. Through the Barisan, the communists used the constitutional method of opposition and avoided any resort to violence, choosing instead to tackle the PAP Government verbally, point by point, argument by argument, in public debate. For all other opposition parties in Singapore, the merger was an opportune time to revive themselves and stake claims to a piece of the action, and to speak out on matters of principle: what form should the merger take? Who should decide this? The PAP Government, as the chief stakeholder, was not going to have an easy time of it.

The synergy between merger and internal security was seen in two events in August 1961. The first was a meeting of the Internal Security Council at Cameron Highlands which Lee and Dr Goh Keng Swee attended. This meeting dovetailed nicely into another, in Kuala Lumpur, at which they conferred with Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Abdul Razak on the merger. Afterwards, on 23 August, the Malayan and Singapore prime ministers jointly issued a communiqué stating that they had reached agreement in principle. They mentioned two specific points, namely that (1) internal security, external affairs, and defence would be the responsibility of the Federation of Malaya and (2) Singapore would retain “local autonomy especially on matters of education and labour”. It was “also agreed that a working committee should be set up to go into the overall financial and other implications” of a merger on these terms.

It was clear from the first interview Lee gave to reporters after the joint communiqué that “the question of Singapore citizenship in the event of merger” was a problematic one. When asked about it Lee merely said: “this [along with a host of other topics] was also a matter for the working party” to go into, but that “as far as he could see, there could be no disagreement that Singapore citizens and Federal citizens would be Malayan or Malaysian nationals” (my italics).

This chapter deals with the consequences of success at the level of philosophy, ethics, and moral values. The gearing of the education system to the objective of rapid economic growth inevitably affected the mind and spirit of Singaporeans. The traditional Chinese-medium schools, were, with certain exceptions, gone. They taught the importance of scholastic achievements and hard work, and of respect for the family and the community. In contrast, in an English-medium school, it was considered “uncool” to be so didactic. The shift in enrolment from Chinese-medium schools to English-medium schools, such that by 1987 all schools were English-medium (i.e., using English as the first language), meant that, increasingly, there was a moral gap in the education of Singaporeans. Add to this the growing affluence, with more and more people able to realize the middle-class dream, and the conditions were ripe for a “cult of materialism” to flourish as it, in fact, did, in all its manifold excesses.

Another dubious fruit of the dominance of English in the education system, and as a working language, was the incorporation of Singaporeans as readers and viewers of the newspapers, magazines, films, and television shows produced by the West. This, in the sixties and seventies, exposed them to the youth culture of protest, sex, and drugs erupting in the West at a time when Singapore was taking off into prosperity.

The PAP Government was faced with a situation which had arisen out of the very success for which it had worked. Normally, an industrial society with an affluent middle class may be expected to be a liberal democracy. But the PAP Government believed that Singapore had to be different. It wanted to speed up economic growth with Western technology which it admired unreservedly, but to go slow with adopting Western liberal democracy, which it was sceptical of and distrusted.

What it attempted to do was a mix and match of Western technology and East Asian values. Confucian philosophy was held to be a treasury of the desired East Asian values. However, selectivity and discretion were also exercised here. Aspects of Confucianism were drawn on as needed, depending on how the situation shaped up.

The overbearing attitude of a Malaysian brigadier stationed in Singapore in the aftermath of separation was worrying to Prime Minister Lee. The unduly prolonged stay of a Malaysian regiment at Camp Temasek was another worrying sign. In the short run, the British bases on the island served as a deterrent to any move to take back Singapore's independence. But they were no substitute for the defence force that the new republic must provide for itself quickly. As Dr Goh Keng Swee said, “The most dependable guarantee of our independence is a strong SAF [Singapore Armed Forces].” He added, “A strong SAF, in turn, depends on the political will to make the effort and pay the price.” The price was National Service (NS). The hardest part for the government was to get people to accept it.

As of 1965, Singapore had two infantry regiments. The government decided to form more units of regular soldiers like these, but the bulk of the army would be made up of boys and men drafted to do National Service. The first batches of National Servicemen of the new republic were called up in 1967. While recruits were plentiful, those considered to be officer material were in short supply owing to the deferment from NS then freely given to all attending university or polytechnic, or working in the civil service.

In late 1967, the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) had to issue a “brainpower call-up”, which tapped the civil service, the two universities, the polytechnics and the vocational institute. The age group liable for NS ranged from eighteen to forty, and to fifty, in the case of officers and persons with special skills. Thus a whole lot of people and interests were affected in those early years of NS. Many were hit after the shock announcement of British withdrawal in January 1968, when MINDEF had to speed up its programme. There was a large number of command and technical positions being created, and obviously, the normal eighteen-year-old NSmen could not be appointed to them. “Accordingly, it was necessary to enlist at short notice large numbers of graduates to fill the expanded establishment.”

Then, in 1969, MINDEF decided to lengthen the full time service period of NS officers from two to three years.

Lim Yew Hock succeeded Marshall as chief minister in June 1956 and served for the remainder of the tenure of the Rendel Constitution. He went out as chief minister together with the constitution in June 1959.

A Straits Chinese educated in English in local schools, he had worked successively as a clerk, stenographer, private secretary, and trade unionist. He was the general secretary and then president of the Singapore Trade Union Congress (STUC). He went on a British Council scholarship to England and Wales to study the trade union and cooperative movements. The unions grouped under his STUC represented the English-educated workforce of multiracial Singapore, comprising mainly the Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Eurasians. Lim hoped to bring these workers into a “new era” of trade unionism. He “introduced a new Labour Code to give them a better deal”.

But for all his striving for modernity, Lim was also prone to thinking and acting in a traditional Chinese way. He was paternalistic, and set great store on building consensus and bridging differences. When he became chief minister, he chose to hold concurrently the post of Minister of Labour and Social Welfare (his previous portfolio) so as to continue using his personal influence to settle trade disputes, calling both sides to his presence, and making it impossible for them to refuse a compromise without serious embarrassment or loss of face.

He was capable of behaving like a triad boss. Francis Thomas recalled: “There was an attempt to intimidate PAP helpers by a thug attack” during one by-election.

Chinese high school student rebels soon got a taste of his robust methods. On one occasion, students in a certain Chinese high school decided to boycott classes and camp out in their school field instead. Lim requested the governor to send for the police commissioner. He then got the police commissioner, who was to take no action, to cooperate with his plan. “From my own sources,” Lim wrote, “I found out that there were only two really active ringleaders in the particular school. I had their photographs, their names, and their addresses. I selected two tough and hefty men and assigned them the task of assaulting and frightening the two ringleaders away from the school”.

The two hard years in Malaysia ending in expulsion gave Singapore leaders an angst to put to good use in subsequent nation-building. Without it they might not have set about their task with such a vengeance, nor taken such desperate measures in the name of national survival. The British East of Suez withdrawal targeting their Far Eastern base at Singapore struck a further blow at the new nation's viability. But at the same time, it galvanized the fighting spirit of Singapore leaders who went on to rally their people all the more. “Students of history know,” Lee said, “that the destiny of a people is not preordained. It is not predetermination but determination which decides what happens to a people.”

The post-colonial landscape in Asia and Africa was strewn with the wreckage of states which have failed. These failed states provided a lesson for Lee. As he observed:

Clearly, the economy would be very high on Lee's agenda. In fact, the above statement was made in a speech delivered in April 1971, only about six years into independence after Malaysia, and with a track record already set up. As well as the economy, education and defence would also have high priority. In the same speech, Lee spoke of “the ingredients of success” in nation-building as “First, a stable political situation. Second, a well trained and educated population … Third, ability to attract higher-level technology industries. Fourth, better standards of life, and in a cleaner, greener, and more gracious Singapore. Fifth, the competence of our defence forces to ensure that no one believes he can just walk in and take over what we have created and built”.

The Series

This series of histories on nation-building in Southeast Asia had its beginnings in Bangkok at the 14th Conference of the International Association of the Historians of Asia (IAHA). At that meeting, I noted that nation-building in Southeast Asia began fifty years ago and suggested that it was time for historians to write about that phenomenon. Most books on the region's new nations have been written by journalists and social scientists. I asked whether historians would tell the story differently. Decades of anti-colonial nationalism came to a climax with the Japanese invasion of 1941–45. New states like those of the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma were born immediately after the war, followed soon by those of Malaysia and Singapore. The independence of a unified Vietnam was delayed by a bitter war and this held back the liberation of the two other Indochina states, Cambodia and Laos, but the independence of all three was only a matter of time.

Many of the protagonists of the early phases of nation-building have described their roles in this new process. Political commentators and journalists provided up-to-date accounts and analyses. But historians of the region have been concerned not to write prematurely about this subject. Many were, like me, fascinated by the first generation of nationalist leaders, men like Sukarno, Tengku Abdul Rahman and Ho Chi Minh, followed by Lee Kuan Yew, Soeharto, Ferdinand Marcos and Ne Win, but hesitant to take on full-length studies about the nations they had set out to build. Through their leadership, their peoples were offered sharply distinct visions of their countries’ future. Would historians wait, as they are wont to do, for all sources to be available before they began research on their countries? How long would it be before the story of each country in Southeast Asia is told by the historians themselves?

When I returned from the Bangkok conference, I brought the question to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (lSEAS) and was gratified when the then director, Professor Chan Heng Chee, encouraged me to try and find out. With that support, I approached five of the leading historians of the original members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN in 1968 consisted of Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore). They were Taufik Abdullah, Charnvit Kasetsiri, Reynaldo Ileto, Cheah Boon Kheng and Edwin Lee.

Singapore was in Malaysia, but without love, and with instead, much illwill. The conflict between Singapore and the central government dominated all else within Malaysia. At the same time the new federation was under serious threat from without as Sukarno stepped up his confrontation agenda. Confrontation guaranteed that the Western bloc powers would be focused on the troubled region. Britain, whose forces were engaged in defensive action, and America, Australia and New Zealand, all inter-linked as allies, cast their anxious eyes on Malaysia, the victim, and Indonesia, the aggressor. This created a rare opportunity for the contending leaders within Malaysia to draw strength from this international group of Western powers to support their internal struggle against each other. The Western powers in question were out to influence the leaders of Malaya and Singapore to conform to their strategic and political interests in the region. But on this score, they came up against the assertive nationalism of the Malayan and Singaporean leaders who were determined to have their own way. While these leaders looked upon the Western powers as a valuable resource to tap into, they made it very clear that they should be in charge of their own destiny. This limited the capacity of the Western powers to affect the course of the internal struggle in Malaysia, and of the confrontation outside it sustained by Sukarno.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee believed that, for the Malaysian nation to succeed, all who belonged to it, regardless of race, religion, or creed, should be equal. This was his abiding nation-building imperative. When, as a budding nationalist, he addressed the Malayan Forum all those years ago, he had emphasized the importance of a Malayan Malaya over a Malay Malaya, a Chinese Malaya, an Indian Malaya, and an Eurasian Malaya. This idea became the founding principle of the PAP, which he led to victory and into merger. The experience of the final stages of the merger negotiations, amid signs that the Tunku was seeking to replace him with a more amenable leader, was a brutal reminder to him not to assume equality as a matter of right, but to be prepared, if necessary, to fight for it.