British World War 2 propaganda posters
Recently, a tourist by the name of Dr. Daniel Emlyn-Jones wrote in the Straits Times that Singapore's bicentennial celebrations should include segments on Singapore's colonial masters and their contributions in Singapore's development.
In response, popular vlogger Mr Brown made a response calling tourist a "tosser". He highlighted the fact that the British were incompetent in defending Singapore and them carrying the Batang Kali massacre.
What really disappointed me was the following: Not only did Mr Brown give a simple insult (with no discussion or argument) to the contributor, his post received more than 1000 likes and even more anti-British comments. Worse still, the contributor renounced his position to do, using the extreme analogy of what Hitler did for Germany (i.e. he improved German infrastructure but started World War 2 and the Holocaust).
Among the comments and responses, there were little calls for nuance or recognition for what the British did. Many respondents, including some of my close friends, seemed to only focus on what negative of the British administration.
While I am not the biggest fan of British Imperialism, I want to particularly examine a few things that the British did for Singapore in this post.
1) Civil Service
One of the greatest thing that the British was to introduce the concept of English Common Law. This provides the basis of many of Singapore legal workings, including the presumption of innocence (i.e. the accused is innocent until proven guilty). If you think that procedure is a given, note that many Asian countries do not share the same sentiment.
Furthermore, the Singapore Civil Service inherited many of its processes from the British administration. For instance, the idea that recruitment was based on meritocracy was present early on the British system, and was something that we thankfully
2) Defence of Singapore
Even before the Singapore Strategy (the plan to defend Singapore from the Japanese), the British did commit to making Singapore safer. In the 1860s, the British worked together with the China and other European colonial powers to combat piracy in Singapore.
Thomas Dunman, the first Police Commissioner in Singapore in 1856, introduced laws and improved police training to the local police, reducing the sex trafficking in Singapore.
Even a simple search of Wikipedia will reveal that the British committed 85 000 soldiers to the defence of Singapore during World War 2. Even though they lost the Battle of Singapore, it was a heavy investment to assign that many soldiers to a colony, considering the Nazis were at the British doorstep.
Conclusion
While the British did fail and abuse their colonial power in some cases, we must also recognise that the British did do some good in Singapore. In other words, the British did do both good and bad things. To have one extreme view or another is disingenuous at best. I am disappointed that Mr Brown and some of the commentators resorted juvenile statements.
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