[Talk] Why Was There No Singapore Before Raffles?

Readers in Singapore may be interested in this talk at ISEAS next Wedneday

Why Was There No Singapore Before Raffles?
Date : Wednesday, 18 July 2018
Time : 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Venue : ISEAS Seminar Room 2

This seminar will examine issues in the writing about the history of Singapore before 1819. Sir Stamford Raffles and Dr John Crawfurd, the second Resident of Singapore, lead in reporting that Singapore was uninhabited before the British arrived. Generations of historians have concurred with this description of Singapore at 1819 and gone further to claim, as former Professors K G Tregonning and C M Turnbull have done, that whatever may have happened on Singapore before 1819 is irrelevant to the island’s historical development thereafter. This seminar explores the assumptions underlying this understanding of Singapore’s history and how the work at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre is challenging and revising these assumptions.