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ANNOTATOR’S PREFACE

Song Ong Siang’s One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore began as a single chapter intended for inclusion in the two-volume work One Hundred Years of Singapore, edited by Walter Makepeace, Gilbert E Brooke and Roland St John Braddell. Makepeace had initially approached Dr Lim Boon Keng to complete this task but Lim was unable to complete it, given his multifarious civic and professional obligations. Instead, Lim recommended his old friend, Song Ong Siang to complete what he had started. In Song’s own words, he quickly ‘realised at once the futility of attempting to write a historical review or a general survey of the subject which would be of any real value to readers’ and proceeded to ‘compile a chronological history of the Chinese in Singapore covering the one hundred years’ period, on the lines of the late Mr Buckley’s Anecdotal History of Singapore’.

Song’s choice of Buckley’s stupendous compendium as a model determined the shape of his own work. Buckley’s work had been ‘in great part a revision with many additions of a series of articles which appeared under the same title in the weekly Singapore Free Press newspaper’ between 1884 and 1887. Buckley had ‘the columns of the history cut out of the newspaper, sewn into a book, and interleaved’ before sending it off to WH Read, who sent it to James Guthrie. Both Read and Guthrie added their comments and later, other residents provided more information to Buckley for his use in the compilation. Over the course of some twenty years, Buckley’s Anecdotal History took shape. It is, as Buckley himself noted, ‘made up largely of scraps’. The same could be said of Song’s volume. He made copious and liberal use of newspapers and even called himself a ‘Compiler’ rather than an author.

One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore was first published in 1923 by John Murray of London and then reprinted twice; first by the University of Malaya Press in 1967 and then by the Oxford University Press in Singapore in 1984. It has thus been out of print for more than 30 years, but its popularity remains undiminished. This is evinced by the astronomical sums for which the first edition of this work sells for on auction sites like eBay and antiquarian booksellers listed on abebooks.com. The copyright itself expired and went into public domain on 29 September 2011, exactly 70 years after Song Ong Siang’s death, and digitised versions of the first edition are easily available for downloading in PDF format.

So why undertake to reissue this work, and in an annotated edition at that? Simple. Despite its limited and elitist outlook on Singapore’s Straits Chinese community, the work remains extremely popular and is one of the best sources of information of the key personalities who were active in Singapore between 1819 and 1919 and a little beyond. Many researchers use this book as one of their main sources of research to the extent that some have come to regard it as a primary source. Song Ong Siang never intended it to be used this way; he only wanted to provide a chronological account of the Chinese in the first hundred years of British rule in Singapore. Given its importance, primacy, and the fact that so many readers rely heavily on the accuracy of its account, it was decided that a serious attempt be made to verify and corroborate, insofar as it is possible, Song’s account of the history. No attempt has been made to refocus the work or its objects in any way. Song’s text is left intact, but annotated footnotes are added throughout to substantiate, and in a few instances, challenge the account offered by the author.

The practice of annotating a primary text by adding explanatory notes or comments to it, usually in the margins, is a long-standing one, quite possibly dating back to the 5th or 6th century BCE. The purpose of annotating a text is to illuminate it and add value to the text. At the same time, errors or contradictions may also be highlighted through annotations. In the case of major literary works or religious texts – like the works of Shakespeare or the Bible – annotations provide guidance to the literary or religious references and devices adopted by the authors. Our object in annotating Song Ong Siang’s work is no different. By revisiting Song’s text, we hope to trace, where humanly possible, the primary sources for his account and to reference them for the reader. This exercise also allows us to verify the facts presented, especially dates and other details, and to note discrepancies where they appear. Errors, where they appear, are corrected in the footnotes, while the original text remains unblemished.

This was a mammoth task requiring, in addition to three editors, a dedicated team of researchers. Before research commenced the editors created a master list of names from each chapter to be researched. The lists were then compared and duplicates eliminated. Researchers were then assigned specific personalities to focus on. Priority was given to the newspaper archives since we know that Song relied very heavily on newspapers for his information. After the researchers combed through the newspapers, their next ports of call were the various secondary sources in English and Chinese in the libraries. These included published monographs, collections of essays, and theses and dissertations.

Finally, a general search on the internet – especially on genealogy and history websites – was conducted. Naturally, the highest priority was given to newspaper archives and secondary sources and, in terms of annotation, these sources have been cited in preference to others, such as websites and ephemera. However, we did review secondary sources as well, with academic works from reputable authors carrying the greatest weight. Citations of websites were generally avoided and only done where the editors determined the information contained therein to be credible and found nowhere else. In addition, all attempts to list websites with stable URLs were made but this was not always possible. As such, the dates of accession to the web page has been given as bona fide evidence of the site having been consulted.

Every effort has been made to track the Chinese names (rendered in simplified Chinese characters) of the personalities listed in each chapter. These have been compiled in a separate table at the start of the book to facilitate easy reference. This is to avoid repeating Chinese character names in the text as the same personalities tend to be mentioned several times. Chinese names in footnotes are embedded therein. The editors and researchers have focused on the personalities – just as Song had done – but dates and accounts of key events are also verified and referenced. To maintain the integrity of the original text, only house-style changes have been made. At the same time, the original page numbers have been retained and are embedded within the text in square brackets.

It is our hope that our efforts in annotating this important work has enhanced its value as a research tool and reference work for future generations of researchers and readers.

Kevin YL Tan

Singapore 1^st November 2016

Postscript

This annotated edition was initially released to the public as an eBook for comments and contributions in April 2016 via the National Archives of Singapore’s platform called Citizen Archivist. This updated edition takes into account the verified inputs of public contributors.