When Lee Kuan Yew died recently, the world media turned its
attention to the nation he led for decades: Singapore. Lee Kuan
Yew's revolutionary transformation of Singapore from a poor and
corrupt colonial backwater into an economic powerhouse renowned for
its wealth, order, and rectitude is one of the great-and most
surprising-stories of modern era. In Singapore: Unlikely Power,
John Perry provides an evenhanded and authoritative history of the
island nation that ranges from its Malay origins to the present
day. Blessed with a natural deepwater port that is shielded by
mountain ranges from oceanic storms and which sits along one of the
most strategic straits in the world, Singapore has served as a
major shipping entrepot throughout modern history. The first great
naval power to exploit the island's strategic location was China,
and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries thousands of
Chinese emigrated to Singapore. The most famous colonizer, though,
was Britain, which ruled Singapore until the 1960s except for when
the Japanese occupied it during World War Two. From the early
nineteenth century onward, Singapore was a vital node in the global
economy, which relied on oceanic shipping and the protection of the
British Navy. Perry covers all of this before turning to the era of
independence, which began in the 1960s. Plagued with the usual
assortment of ills that former colonies in the tropics suffered
from-corruption, inequality, lack of an educated
population-Singapore improbably vaulted from essentially
third-world status into a first world dynamo over the course of
three decades. In the process, longtime leader Lee Kuan Yew did
many things that other post-colonial leaders shunned. He embraced
the colonial past, established close ties with its World War Two
tormentor (Japan), and adopted a resolutely pragmatist approach to
economic development rather than following any one fashionable
ideological program. Today, it is one of the wealthiest and best
educated countries in the world, and it is a model regime for
states looking to develop rapidly but which are relatively
unconcerned with freedom or democracy (although Singapore itself is
a democracy). In sum, this is an accessible, comprehensive, and
indeed colorful overview of a city-state that has perfected one of
the most influential political-economic models in the world.
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