these records which were passed to the India Office after the dissolution of the
Company in 1858. Confronted with these voluminous records, the India Office
undertook a 'weeding' operation to reduce the number of records which it started
cataloguing only after 1874. Today these records are under the charge of the
British Library.
In Singapore, the records of the Straits Settlements as a Presidency under the
Bengal Government were deposited in the Raffles Museum and Library at a date
which is still not clear. This date would not have been before the Government
took over the Museum and Library in 1874, and is most likely after it moved into
its present Stamford Road building in 1887 or later. The consequence has been
that certain records have been lost.12 The subsequent history of Singapore as a
Crown Colony is documented in the files of the Colonial Office, in particular the
CO 273 (Straits Settlements Original Correspondence) series which continues
until 1946. Experiencing the past through the documents preserved as archives,
rather than through memoirs13 and paintings14 or objects15 and monuments has
then been the preferred approach to Singapore's past.
But in the decolonizing post-World War II world, the objectivity of these colonial
records began to be challenged. Their focus on colonial powers to the exclusion
of the locals has been questioned. An English translation of J. C. van Leur's
little known pre-World War II critique of Dutch colonial historiography sparked
a wider debate over the prospects of writing Asia-centric history. The attempts
to write a national history in a post-independence era further challenged the
objectivity of the archival records preserved in national archives.16 The keeper
of the colonial records of Singapore's past, the National Archives of Singapore,
established in 1968, is also the keeper of Singapore's post-1965 records which
have been utilized in the construction of a national history known as the
'Singapore Story'17 This narrative has been challenged by an emerging generation
of post-1965 historians arguing that such a narrative has excluded historical
actors and groups in its focus on the victor of the struggle for independence, the
People's Action Party.18 To that end, this essay also argues that the historian,
more than ever, plays more than a significant role in determining and defining
the role and function of archives, as seen by the active role played by historians of
Singapore in questioning the scope and character of the NAS.
Writing Contemporary History in Post-World War II Singapore
Parkinson and his colleagues were establishing a History Department during
a time of tumultuous political change in Singapore and Malaya. In June 1948,
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
12 For example, the original of the 2 August 1824 Treaty ceding Singapore to the East India Company signed by
John Crawfurd, the second Resident of the settlement, and the Sultan Hussein and his Temenggong appears
to have been lost, and we now work with a transcript in Sir C Aitchinson's 1862 Collection of Treaties,
Engagements and Sunnuds. Similarly, Crawfurd's arguments for pensioning off the Sultan and Temenggong
in a 10 January 1824 memorandum to George Swinton, Secretary to Government at Fort William in Bengal
and his report on the 2 August 1824 Treaty he signed are not in the bound volumes of the Straits Settlement
Records that our Archives inherited from the old Raffles Museum, but have been reproduced in Buckley's
An Anecdotal History of old times in Singapore, pp. 157-163.
13 Begbie, The Malayan Peninsula, Newbold, Political and statistical account of the British settlements in the
Straits of Malacca, and Cameron, Our tropical possessions in Malayan India are three examples of such
memoirs.
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