As expected, the 154th refuses to publishe this letter in PRINT despite the author not holding the pink IC!
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=980 align=center bgColor=#b7daf0 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=19></TD><TD width=632 bgColor=#ffffff><!-- START OF : div id="story"--><!-- story contains story1 then story2 --><!-- START OF : div id="story1"--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Home > ST Forum > Online Story
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<!-- headline one : start --><TR>S'pore a sizeable port of regional importance in 14th century
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->MR TAN Yip Meng's letter, 'Back to the future, a sleepy fishing village', last Tuesday is indeed most interesting and thought-provoking.
If anything, it raises the political debate in Singapore to a commendable philosophical level that relates to the enduring allegories of Plato's cave and Zhuang Zi's dream of the butterfly.
The need for historical accuracy, however, prompts me to highlight that the stepping stone for his rationale fails to take into account the development of the research in Singapore history that has taken place over the last two decades.
It is now quite well-established that Singapore was a sizeable port of regional importance as early as the 14th century and that it thrived throughout the 15th century, albeit in the shadow of Malacca. While the troubled period of the 16th to 18th centuries saw it go into a long decline, it was nonetheless known to sailors of many nationalities, albeit strangely enough not the British.�
In a paper reviewed during the recent symposium on Keepers And Makers Of Singapore History, historian Peter Borschberg from the National University of Singapore highlighted that the awareness of Singapore as a privileged geographical location can be followed through the centuries if one looks for the right sources of information in the right places, that is, non-British sources such as Portuguese and Dutch manuscripts and maps.�
I was recently told by historian John Miksic, who conducted the excavations on Fort Canning, that the largest collection in the world of white and blue Chinese porcelain shards of diverse dynasties is right here in Singapore. And yes, it was dug out of Singapore's very soil. � It therefore increasingly appears that the idea that Singapore was 'nothing more than a sleeping fishing village when discovered by Raffles' is in fact a lie fabricated by Stamford Raffles himself and later repeated in British sources in order to support their claim over a territory that was part of the Riau-Lingga Sultanate and under Dutch control.� Gilles Massot
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=980 align=center bgColor=#b7daf0 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=19></TD><TD width=632 bgColor=#ffffff><!-- START OF : div id="story"--><!-- story contains story1 then story2 --><!-- START OF : div id="story1"--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Home > ST Forum > Online Story
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<!-- headline one : start --><TR>S'pore a sizeable port of regional importance in 14th century
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->MR TAN Yip Meng's letter, 'Back to the future, a sleepy fishing village', last Tuesday is indeed most interesting and thought-provoking.
If anything, it raises the political debate in Singapore to a commendable philosophical level that relates to the enduring allegories of Plato's cave and Zhuang Zi's dream of the butterfly.
The need for historical accuracy, however, prompts me to highlight that the stepping stone for his rationale fails to take into account the development of the research in Singapore history that has taken place over the last two decades.
It is now quite well-established that Singapore was a sizeable port of regional importance as early as the 14th century and that it thrived throughout the 15th century, albeit in the shadow of Malacca. While the troubled period of the 16th to 18th centuries saw it go into a long decline, it was nonetheless known to sailors of many nationalities, albeit strangely enough not the British.�
In a paper reviewed during the recent symposium on Keepers And Makers Of Singapore History, historian Peter Borschberg from the National University of Singapore highlighted that the awareness of Singapore as a privileged geographical location can be followed through the centuries if one looks for the right sources of information in the right places, that is, non-British sources such as Portuguese and Dutch manuscripts and maps.�
I was recently told by historian John Miksic, who conducted the excavations on Fort Canning, that the largest collection in the world of white and blue Chinese porcelain shards of diverse dynasties is right here in Singapore. And yes, it was dug out of Singapore's very soil. � It therefore increasingly appears that the idea that Singapore was 'nothing more than a sleeping fishing village when discovered by Raffles' is in fact a lie fabricated by Stamford Raffles himself and later repeated in British sources in order to support their claim over a territory that was part of the Riau-Lingga Sultanate and under Dutch control.� Gilles Massot
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