The understanding that Singapore's pastis not a monolithic process is further
highlighted by the titles of recent publications such as The Scripting of a National
History: Singapore and its Pasts or Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-War
Singapore, and New Perspectives and Sources on the History of Singapore: A Multi-
Disciplinary Approach. Other publications such as Comet in our sky; Lim Chin
Siong in History, and more recently, The Fajar Generation, the University Socialist
Club and the politics of postwar Malaya and Singapore are a more direct challenge
to the social memories held within the British colonial archives. This ideological,
intellectual and institutional tug-of-war has implications on the relationship
between historians and archivists.
Though not addressed directly to the NAS, New perspectives and sources on the
History of Singapore the edited proceedings of a 2005 workshop, is perhaps
indicative of how the archival role of the NAS in documenting the Singapore
Story would come under increasingly scrutiny and challenge. The conveyors of
the workshop were on the lookout for new perspectives and non-archival sources
to understand Singapore's past beyond accepted frameworks (which started
with the British founding of Singapore in 1819) and the stories of great men
or national heroes. The questioning came to a full circle in a symposium, 'The
Makers and Keepers of Singapore History', held in 2008, where presenters spoke
of the issues and difficulties in accessing archives, particularly the collection held
by the NAS.48
Most of the participants at the 2008 symposium argued that the NAS should
modify or adjust its usual practices to fit the changing intellectual context, and in
doing so, highlighted an inherent tension between the NAS' mission to be keeper
of the records that are the 'corporate memory of government' and its vision of
also becoming the collective memory of the nation. For the collective memories
of citizens of the nation may not coincide, and more often than not, are at
variance with the tacit narratives embedded in the State's records. The challenge
for the NAS, as for other archives, is how to mediate between the state as the
parent institution of the archives and the citizens of the state that the archives
also serve.
Reiterating that the NAS' primary responsibility is to its parent institution and
allowing selective access to its collections as determined by its stakeholders who
deposit its records within the Archives, as a number of Asian archives still do,
is one, but increasingly difficult option in an increasingly cosmopolitan global
situation where other archives allowing more access to their holdings as part of
citizen's democratic right to information about the state he is a citizen of. The
NAS, like other archives, will have to work harder to convince the creators of the
records deposited in the NAS to declassify their records and open them for public
consultation within the statutory period of thirty years. The archivist should not
cast himself or herself in the role of the 'dragon at the gate but research partner'
as Kathleen Marquis argues.49
Historians too play a crucial role in determining the scope and character of any
archives. While the disciplinary boundaries of writing history based on evidence
has to be upheld, historians should not be limited to the traditional notions of
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
48 Loh Kah Seng, Makers and keepers of Singapore history. The conference from which this volume grew builds
on an earlier anthology of the same title edited by Loh Kah Seng published in Tangent special issue vol, 6/ii.
49 Marquis, 'Not dragon at the gate but research partner'.
50 Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng.
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