Reclaiming Singapore’s Credit for Success: Removing Colonialist Statues

This letter, by Emma Wang, 15, of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., is one of the Top 9 winners of The Learning Network’s Student Open Letter Contest, for which we received 8,065 entries. You can find the work of all the winners, as we publish them, here.

Dear Singapore Government,

My memories of Singapore make me who I am, a proud citizen of a beautiful country. However, there is one part of Singapore’s past that no citizen is proud of: colonialism. So, I am asking you to take down the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles.

With the second highest G.D.P. per capita in the world, Singapore’s robust economy is often used to justify its colonial past. The misguided notion that British imperialists brought “Western know-how” to build our prosperous society is problematic, as it glorifies colonization and a false notion of Western superiority.

In 1963, when Singapore gained its independence, “nearly 70 percent of the population lived in slums,” according to SG101, a government website that tells the story of Singapore’s journey as a nation. Britain left us with almost no local industry, while unemployment rates hovered in the double digits. The stark contrast of this despair with Singapore’s current success is not a result of British imperialism — it is an astonishing rebound from it.

Located south of the Straits of Malacca, Singapore’s natural deep-sea ports place it at the crossroads between two important shipping channels. Now, with more than 5,000 maritime companies and over 130 international shipping groups, Singapore’s ports are among the busiest in the world. These ports were able to sustain Singapore’s economy in a fundamental way after independence, and before colonization; Britain simply saw this potential and exploited it to its advantage.

Singapore also created a decolonization plan with impressive urgency and effectiveness. As SG101 describes, “While some newly independent nations with large domestic markets were adopting protectionist policies — ejecting foreign companies, slashing imports, and manufacturing their own products for the domestic market — Singapore had to go against the grain and open our borders to foreign investors.” This unique, and brave, policy allowed Singapore to become economically self-reliant. Clearly, Singapore’s economic success is not simply a continuation of British ideologies, but rather the country’s strategy for decolonization and economic independence.

Colonial influence will always be our past, but do we need to celebrate it in the present? The statue of Sir Stamford Raffles encourages problematic justifications of colonialism, obscuring Singapore’s success. The original statue stands in front of Empress Place, with a plaque that reads “This tablet to the memory of Sir Stamford Raffles, to whose foresight and genius Singapore owes its existence and prosperity ….” Owes? The statue misleadingly attributes Singapore’s hard-won prosperity to him, “the founder,” and British imperialism.