Central to the rise of the island of Singapore as one of the world’s most important cities are its location on one of the planet’s most important waterways and crossroads and its potent mix of the behavioral values of two cultures—British and overseas Chinese.
There’s no other place quite like Singapore, which goes back hundreds of years to a once-prosperous city called Temasek that essentially disappeared. Singapore’s long colonial status started in 1819—when it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles as a British trading post—and ended in 1963, when Singapore briefly merged with Malaya, only to anxiously turn into an independent city-state in 1965 when it became clear that a Malay marriage with a city dominated by overseas Chinese was doomed.
