and social divisions and institutions within British Malaya, one of which was
the establishment of the Malayan Communist Party in 1930. Although the MCP
was looked upon unfavourably by the British, both worked in tandem throughout
the duration of the Japanese Occupation, inadvertently allowing the MCP to
establish itself as an armed organisation which directly challenged the post-war
British administration in Malaya.6
This reconstruction of Malaya's history is in large part built upon the work of
a pre-war generation of colonial administrators-scholars like Richard Winstedt
and a new generation of post-World War II local historians trained in the newly
established University of Malaya formed in 1949 with the merger of Raffles
College and the King Edward College of Medicine. The University introduced a
special subject on the history of Malaya as part of its degree of Bachelor of Arts
(Honours) in History.
In preparation for the course, C. D. Cowan, who had lectured on history at
the Raffles College, selected and edited 158 documents on 'Early Penang
the Rise of Singapore, 1805-1832' from the records of the East India Company
then deposited in the old Raffles Museum and Library 'to provide students with
an original documentary basis for their studies.'7 These records of the Straits
Settlements under the East India Company from 1786 to 1867 are today a core
collection of the National Archives of Singapore established in 1968.8 The more
voluminous Colonial Office records deposited in the Public Records Office in
London and the National Archives of Singapore 9 complement the East India
Company records and together these two collections form the primary body of
evidence for more than one generation of graduates of the History Department
of the old University of Malaya and Singapore to reconstruct the history of
Singapore.
That C. N. Parkinson, the first Raffles Professor of History, his successors,
K. G. Tregonning and Wong Lin Ken, and their staff10 were able to produce a
series of pioneering studies of Malayan history based on what they uncovered
in the records of the East India Company and the Colonial Office was due to
the Honourable Company keeping written records of its transactions from the
beginning of the eighteenth century.11 These records of the various departments
and committees of the Company remained with their creators until 1811,
when a librarian/register and Keeper of the Board's Papers was created to keep
KWA CHONG GUAN AND HO CHI TIM ARCHIVES IN THE MAKING OF POST-COLONIAL SINGAPORE
published as The Straits Settlements 1826-67, Indian Presidency to Crown Colony. Turnbull went on to write
what has become a standard textbook on A history of Singapore 1819-1975 and has since been updated with
a new edition forthcoming from the National University of Singapore Press; Chiang hai Ding's doctoral
dissertation: A history of Straits Settlements foreign trade 1870-1915, and Edwin Lee's doctoral dissertation,
The British as rulers; governing multiracial Singapore 1867-1914.
11 M. Moir, A General Guide, pp. 3-59 for an account of the evolution of East India Company recordkeeping.
Previously, for the first century of its existence, the Company operated essentially as a series of Committees
elected by its shareholders. Affairs of the Company were handled through meetings of the Committees, the
proceedings of which survive in the minutes kept by the Secretary, the most important of the Company's
paid officers. This largely oral working environment however, had to change with the growth of the
Company's functions, wealth and power. A paper and information explosion in Tudor England enabled
this transformation of the Company's operations. Henceforth paper reports became the preferred medium
of communications. Detailed and lengthy memoranda and reports became the basis of decision making.
The Committee of Correspondence, responsible for the Company's non-secret correspondence with India,
emerged as the most important of various standing Committees reporting to the Court of Directors. A full
time Writer Compiler of Indian Correspondence took over from the Secretary the task of drafting and
investigating the Indian correspondence from 1770.
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