Singapore History Day Contest

Raffles Institution

An Analysis of the Impact of Racial Relations in Early

Modern Singapore: Process Paper

Team members:
Daniel Ching
Huang Ziwen
Kam Pak Wai

When we first decided to come up with a topic to analyse, we were particularly interested in
something that we felt has not been widely known. As a result, through the creation of this
website, broadcast this knowledge through the use of an easily accessible platform, which was
the website. We originally wanted to focus on the history of Singapura before Raffles founded
modern Singapore but we eventually decided that the very first racial relations were the most
relevant when applying it to today’s culture.

We then identified multiple first-hand accounts which offered a diversity of viewpoints from all
the different races. Although there were some accounts that somewhat refuted our thesis, we
still decided to include them in as through our research, the formation of racial relations was
through struggles and not just through positive racial relations. Therefore, adding contrasting
views will add complexity in this aspect. We knew that if given an extension of word count, we
would surely examine other races in Singapore.

After gathering sources that were pivotal in recording the histories of Singapore such as the
Hikayat Abdullah and secondary sources such as The History of Modern Singapore, we delved
deeper to more obscure yet crucial sources such as books written by J.T. Thomson - who
designed Tan Tock Seng Hospital - analysing the best quotes handpicked, categorising them
according to the major races as shown in our website.

Through the analysis of the preliminary racial relations of Singapore, we successfully linked it to
the theme of Encounter and Exchange- an Encounter when people of different backgrounds and
different places meet each other, and an Exchange of cultural identities to merge into a
colourful, permanent canvas of the Singaporean Identity, for example as represented through
the Peranakan Culture.
Word Count: 292