Travellers' Singapore

This anthology contains a representative range of writings on Singapore, from its founding by Stamford Raffles in 1819 to the Japanese conquest in 1942, to illustrate those features of Singapore which captured the Western imagination.

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From the earliest days of its foundation by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, Singapore has attracted travellers in great numbers. Most of them in the nineteenth century were on their way to other parts of Asia, notably China, and they spent only a few days in Singapore. This pattern has continued, and most of today's visitors stop over briefly before flying on to other countries in South-East Asia, the Far East, or Australia and New Zealand. A number of travellers wrote of their impressions of the island, often a chapter in a book describing their travels around the world. John Bastin has made a selection of these writings to produce a vivid account of Singapore as it has gradually changed over the years to become the world's leading port. He ends his selection in 1942 with the Japanese conquest of the island. This is a convenient date as the Second World War ended the golden age of travel, when relatively few people could afford the cost, to give way in the 1950s to the era of mass travel, when it seems at times that most of the world is on the move.