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
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... the currently recoverable history of the succession of polities whose particular geographical extents have encompassed the island. The ancient history is lost in myth 1 but the modern history begins with the expansion of the British ...
... 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: from the mandala ...
Relationship, Structure and Change Peter Preston. The system expanded until the early years of the twentieth century; but it was unsustainable, a matter of demographics, 23 metropolitan critics plus local leaders who had come to ...
... the organizational vehicle for English expansion in the Asian region. It began in the seventeenth century; it deepened in the eighteenth; 28 it became more important after the loss of the American colonies; and the related inauguration of ...
Relationship, Structure and Change Peter Preston. remade the region as a series of discrete colonial spheres of influence. Indigenous patterns of livelihood were overlaid with newer activities serving the demands of the wider system ...
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 |