This volume, co-authored by Hong Lysa and Huang Jianli, is another addition to a series of publications that have emerged over the last decade or so as part of an important academic trend in Singapore history. This trend, which primarily makes the case for alternative and revisionist historical narratives as a counter to the state discourse and national narrative that have been promulgated in the education curriculum in Singapore, presents an increasing number of possibilities for generating a diverse range of collective social memories of Singapore's past during the decolonisation and independence periods after the Second World War.
The volume, comprising a collection of previously published papers and book chapters, focuses on three key aspects of Singapore history: (1) the historiographical critique of the construction of the Singapore Story; (2) the forgotten history and marginalisation of historical personalities from the Chinese-speaking community; and (3) the state's co-opting of selected historical personalities and places in scripting the national narrative. The papers are collectively an important contribution to the field of Singapore history, primarily because they provide a detailed expository of the complexity that has characterised the crafting of the post-1965 era, and the utilisation of speeches by Singapore's first generation of political leaders, particularly Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore's first Prime Minister until 1990), in steering and shaping the national narrative towards their viewpoint and perspective of the past as they saw and remembered it. They attempt to subvert and question the ‘national narrative’, or the Singapore Story, by probing the historiographical approaches of the state narrative, the data that has been omitted, and the nature of these omissions. The papers also show the inherent continuities embodied in historical data, places and key events, and how these continue to be exploited by Singapore's political leaders to bring relevance of the past to the present.
Taken together, they provide a forceful argument and lucid account of the state of the national narrative up to the present. In particular, the authors argue that it is possible to discern how the national narrative has been determined to a large extent by the dominant viewpoint of Lee Kuan Yew, and that his perspective and experiences with the Chinese-speaking community shaped the national narrative that has come to dominate the collective social memory of present-day Singaporeans. In the process, individuals and places are selected, co-opted and conferred historical significance to reinforce the currency of the narrative that has been developed. Some of the arguments presented in the papers could well be applied to the study of national histories beyond Singapore and Southeast Asia, thereby making the book theoretically provoking.
One of the distinctive features of the books lie not so much in the brand-new contributions that it makes to the field of Singapore history, since all the chapters, with the exception of the introduction, chapter 1 and the conclusion, have previously been published elsewhere over the course of the last 11 years. Instead, it reflects the scholarship of both Huang Jianli and Hong Lysa, reflecting the development of their respective scholarly strengths — the history of the Chinese-speaking community in Singapore in the post-World War Two era and Southeast Asian historiographical discourse respectively.
These strengths, however, also bring a number of shortcomings of the book to light. Firstly, there is not much convincing evidence provided, apart from speeches made by Lee Kuan Yew and complemented by those given by the key ministers of the first cabinet of Singapore, to show that Lee was in fact the one who crafted the national narrative. In fact, it is apparent from the information presented in the volume that there is a significant entity working behind the scenes to engineer the culmination of a narrative that coincides with the views of Lee. In other words, the national narrative is the sum total of the convergence of several historical discourses rather than the result of one concerted effort. The attempts by the book to personify the process of narrative construction in the form of one man require implicit or direct evidence beyond delivered speeches, in such sources as governmental records, as that would make the arguments for the link between the form of the narrative and the thoughts of the personality in question more convincing.
The assumptions adopted by the authors do pose a challenge to the reader. As a case in point, the second part of the book seeks to exposit the historical narrative, hitherto largely unwritten and underappreciated, as may be seen and experienced by the Chinese-speaking community. While the scholarship is in-depth and highly informative, it narrates not so much the forgotten histories of the population of Singapore as those specifically of the Chinese-educated and -speaking community. Even in that respect, the alternative history presented is one of key personalities who have not featured significantly in the national narrative, and do not necessarily present to history the social group itself. History, as seen through the experiences of certain leaders of the community, is not necessarily the same history as seen by the people they represent. The same arguments used in the first part of the book, which deals with the historiographical discourse of the national narrative, may be as effectively levelled against the second part as well.
To some extent, the very criticisms levelled by the authors at the way in which the state and the first generation of key political leaders are embodied in the framework of the book itself. There is, for example, a prevalent criticism, particularly in parts 1 and 3 of the book, of the national narrative reflecting the social rubric of ‘Chinese, Malays, Indian and Others’ (or CMIO) established by the government of Singapore. However, the fact that much of the narrative and commentary in the book concentrates almost exclusively on the Chinese-educated community reflects not just the pervasiveness but also the currency of that state-dictated social rubric in present-day historical scholarship on Singapore. It would appear, from the volume, that the other ethnic groups played fairly inconsequential roles in Singapore's post-war development. It is therefore necessary to read this book within the context of the broader corpus of literature, including those that attempt a revisionist critique of the various ethnic histories of Singapore's decolonisation and independence period, as well as those that recast its postwar history of Singapore within a trans-regional and trans-national framework.
