Singapore Prior to 1819
From “Singapore Prior to 1819” in One Hundred Years of Singapore by C. O. Blagden
From: Unknown To: 1819 C.E.
Location: Singapore
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From “Singapore Prior to 1819” in One Hundred Years of Singapore by C. O. Blagden.
Singapore Prior to 1819.
By C. O. Blagden, M.A., Reader in Malay, University of London.
To write a history of the old Singapura would be something like the task imposed upon the children of Israel by Pharaoh: for where should one seek the straw to make those bricks with? What has come down to us in the form of Malay tradition, written and unwritten, cannot be traced back beyond the sixteenth century, when the place had long been nothing but a distant memory. We need not, therefore, wonder that the material is hopelessly mixed up with myth and legend, affording no sure foothold for historical reconstruction. The most that can be done is to focus the few scattered gleams of evidence into a thin ray that may shed some feeble light upon the obscurity of the past, while setting in its true perspective the little that is really known on the subject. At bottom, Singapore is but a phase in a long process of evolution often deflected by outside influences and interrupted by catastrophic changes.
The essence of it all was the command of the international trade-route between East and West, from Indonesia and China to India, Persia, and Arabia, and vice versa, which ran immemorially through the Straits. Even in the second century of our era Ptolemy notes names of Indian origin on the coasts of that region, given no doubt by Indian seafarers, some of whom became settlers, and eventually founded small Hindu and Buddhist states. When the veil is again partially lifted, we find in the seventh century one such State in Southern Sumatra, with its capital at or near Palembang. Its Buddhist rulers bearing the dynastic title of Maharaja are repeatedly mentioned by Arab travellers and geographers, and for centuries the State kept up close commercial and diplomatic relations with China, which are duly recorded in Chinese histories.
Soon extending their sway over the Sumatran homeland of the Malays, properly so called, to the north-west of their capital, the kings of Palembang by degrees possessed themselves of out-stations far up the Straits, to Achin Head on the one side and what is now Lower Siam on the other. By methods which we should call piratical they took toll of all the trade that passed that way. Every vessel had to come into one or other of their ports, or take the alternative risk of being attacked in the narrow seas. As a matter of fact, they were practically forced by circumstances to come in somewhere. The produce of the Far East was brought down by the north-east monsoon, that of the West by the south-west monsoon. The exigencies of barter, coupled with the slowness of navigation in those early days, made an exchange depot a necessity, and the Straits were by nature predestined to that end.
The only question was as to where, precisely, that mart should be located. In early days Kedah, one of Palembang’s most important out-stations, which had long been a port of call for navigators from India, was also apparently the favourite one from the Persian and Arab point of view. But the Chinese were induced or compelled to put in at Palembang on their way, and thither also went many traders from Western Asia, though it made their journey longer. But wherever they went, Palembang took its toll of their merchandise.
For five or six centuries this state of things went on. In spite of occasional attacks on the part of the Javanese and the great Tamil dynasty of Coromandel, Palembang continued to hold its own, and dominated the entire region of the Straits. But fairly early in the thirteenth century we find evidences of impending trouble : the Palembang Empire begins to dissolve, partly perhaps from internal causes, partly under pressure from without. Already one or two of its out-stations or vassal states had begun to set up their independence: an instance is given by the Chinese writer Chau Ju Kua about a.d. 1225.
Towards the close of the same century, there arose in the north of Sumatra a little cloud, which was to grow ere long into a mighty storm and sweep the Archipelago. The North Sumatran settlements were adopting Islam. Before venturing upon such a radical change, they must have practically slipped away from the overlordship of the South. Meanwhile, in the far north of the Peninsula, and on the isthmus leading to it, even worse things were happening. The Siamese power had overcome the Cambojan kingdom, and was pressing down upon the Malay outposts in the region of Ligor. The days of the Maharaja’s Empire were manifestly numbered.
It is somewhere in this period, between a.d. 1250 and 1300, that we must, I think, conceive of Singapore starting upon its brief career of independent existence. How long it may have been a port of call before that time we do not know. The old native name of the place was Temasek, or Tumasik as the Javanese records spell it. Singapura was its Indian title, conferred upon it, no doubt, in reminiscence of some other “Lion City” in Kalinga or elsewhere. The legends which grew up around its name and fate are embodied in Malay literature, but are not worth repeating or discussing here. We may infer from them that for a century or more it was a flourishing port ruled by kings of its own, who may have been descendants of the Palembang house. We learn from Chinese sources that early in the fourteenth century a Siamese naval expedition failed to take the place.
Later on, somewhere about a.d. 1377, it was raided and devastated by the Javanese of Majapahit, who at that time conquered a considerable part of the Archipelago. But they did not apparently think it worth while to occupy the place permanently, and so it lapsed into insignificance and obscurity, being completely eclipsed by the new emporium of Malacca, of which Singapore now became an unimportant out-station. Towards the end of the fifteenth century we find mention of a governor of Singapore who was late in coming to make his obeisance to his sovereign lord the Sultan of Malacca, and was executed as a traitor accordingly. In the early part of the seventeenth century, when the Portuguese had long been masters of Malacca, and its Malay dynasty had fled and established itself in Johore, there was a harbour master (Shahbandar) at Singapore, which seems to indicate that at any rate a certain amount of trade found its way there. But the fame of the old town survived its importance, and the circumstances of its tragic fall left a deep impression on the Malay mind.
It can never have been a very big place. When it was refounded in the nineteenth century, few traces of its former existence were discovered , and they were not such as to indicate any great importance. Local tradition still pointed to the hill, now occupied by Fort Canning, on which the old palace of the Rajas had stood, and which no local Malay even then dared to ascend. But perhaps the only surviving relic that might have proved to be of historical value was a much-weathered inscription on a rock near the mouth of the Singapore River, which was wantonly destroyed a few years later by a vandal at the head of the Public Works Department. Some of the fragments were recovered and sent to the Calcutta Museum, where all trace of now, it seems, been lost. So that clue, if it really was one, is gone forever.
In the history of the Straits, which in essentials is the story of the rise and fall of successive commercial emporia, there is a sort of irregular periodicity. From very early days, Kedah, at the northern end, was the outstanding port of call, and such it remained, under the suzerainty of Palembang, probably till about the middle of the thirteenth century. Then the pendulum swings to the southern end of the Straits, and for a century or so Singapore, soon becoming independent of Palembang, seems to have been in a fair way to make good its natural geographical claim as the predestined trading depot of this region. But it had rivals in the small ports of Northern Sumatra, which now also emancipated themselves. Then came the disastrous Javanese conquest, and the pendulum swung again, but this time haltingly, only as far as Malacca. Malacca may already have had a fairly long existence as a port, but there is not much evidence of it. It now held its own for nearly four centuries. Then, towards the end of the eighteenth century, Penang, the modern representative of Kedah, was founded, and soon began to take the lead. A few years later the refounding of Singapore once more brought the commercial centre of gravity down to the southern end of the Straits.
It is a chequered story, and looking back upon it we see how through it all two contending forces have been at work. On the one hand, natural physical advantages of position, and on the other, political considerations. Powers outside the Straits—Palembang in early days, Majapahit in the fourteenth century, Batavia in the seventeenth and eighteenth—in turn disturbed the normal course of development that would have flowed naturally from the physical conditions. It has been reserved for our own times to create a freedom of trade which has given the geographical advantages of Singapore their full scope. The moral is plain for all to draw, and needs no comment here.
Blagden, C. O. “Singapore Prior to 1819” in One Hundred Years of Singapore. Edited by Walter Makepeace et al., John Murray, 1921.
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