Singapore in the Global System: Relationship, Structure and ChangeThis book tracks the phases of Singapore’s economic and political development, arguing that its success was always dependent upon the territories links with the surrounding region and the wider global system, and suggests that managing these links today will be the key to the country’s future. Singapore has followed a distinctive historical development trajectory. It was one of a number of cities which provided bases for the expansion of the British empire in the East. But the Pacific War provided local elites with their chance to secure independence. In Singapore the elite disciplined and mobilized their population and built successfully on their colonial inheritance. Today, the city-state prospers in the context of its regional and global networks, and sustaining and nurturing these are the keys to its future. But there are clouds on the elite’s horizons; domestically, the population is restive with inequality, migration and surplus-repression causing concern; and internationally, the strategy of constructing a business-hub economy is being widely copied and both Hong Kong and Shanghai are significant competitors. This book discusses these issues and argues that although success is likely to characterize Singapore’s future, the elite will have to address these significant domestic and international problems. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 90
... China; later the ports of the informal empire3 extended British influence, and Bangkok and Shanghai drew in Siam and the central regions of China. The history of these four cities records their participation in a series of polities ...
... Chinese cultural sphere comprising China, the Korean peninsula, the Japanese islands and the Indo-Chinese polity of Vietnam; a Malay cultural sphere comprising a number of polities in mainland Indo-China and a multiplicity of shifting ...
... China was the first symptom; thereafter Imperial Japanese aggression ensured the crisis had regional scope; the ... China remained mired in war. In China an autarchic state socialism advanced slowly at great cost to the population until ...
... China. British involvement in Asia was not concerned with settlement; it was driven by trade and shaped by multiple conflicts with contending European and local country powers. The process was haphazard in terms of the actual ...
... China; whilst the British, here preferring guile to warfare, established three trading ports on the Malay peninsula which formed the crucial links in a chain that was to run to the overriding goal of China. 36 37 Francis Light ...
Contents
Impact and reply 40 | |
General crisis 58 | |
New trajectories 79 | |
Locating Singapore 100 | |
Trading cities 160 | |
Unfolding trajectories 197 | |
Notes 216 | |
Bibliography 263 | |
Index 275 | |
Other editions - View all
Singapore in the Global System: Relationship, Structure and Change Peter Preston Limited preview - 2007 |
Singapore in the Global System: Relationship, Structure and Change Peter Wallace Preston No preview available - 2007 |