One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
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 1st 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.
NOTE TO READERS
ANNOTATIONS
The two key objects of this annotation are to offer readers and researchers:
a.Additional biographical information on the individuals described and discussed in Song’s work.
b.Accurate references to the source material used by Song in his compilation of the work.
It is not our purpose to embark on a biographical study of every individual listed. That would create a work many times more voluminous than Song’s original. In some instances, where the personalities are described in great depth by Song, for example his good friend, Dr Lim Boon Keng, annotations are kept to a minimum with reference only to later secondary sources that provide more information or better analysis. Interested readers may pursue these references on their own and it is not the object of the editors to summarise all the arguments made in the secondary literature either.
Wherever possible, primary sources were consulted and referenced. In the many cases where primary sources did not exist in the public domain, secondary sources were consulted and every effort made to corroborate the information provided.
CHINESE NAMES
In Song’s original version, all names were only rendered in dialect and spelt out in English. No Chinese characters were used. This has long been a problem for researchers as it was very difficult to determine if Chinese sources referring to a particular individual was in fact a reference to one of the named individuals in Song’s book.
We have prepared a table of Chinese names which can be found in the opening pages of this volume to help readers to identify the various personalities listed in this volume. We opted to make a listing in tabulated form rather than to intersperse the Chinese names of individuals throughout the text wherever their names appear. This makes the text less distracting and hopefully, much easier to read as well.
All efforts have been made to locate the Chinese character names of the individuals when collating the table. These are rendered in simplified Chinese script. In quite a number of instances, an individual may be listed as having several alternative Chinese script renditions of their names. This is because they have been referred to in different permutations in different publications. Naturally, attempts have been made to verify many of these names against those found in the most authoritative sources – family genealogies, epigraphic material on tombstones, temples etc – but oftentimes, such sources simply do not exist. So, rather than arbitrarily choose one of two or more alternatives, all alternatives have been listed.
FOOTNOTES
Annotation of the text has been done by use of extensive footnotes. This enables the reader to easily cross-reference material in the text and match up the facts and events with those revealed in the annotation.
Song Ong Siang’s original footnotes have been retained but are rendered in square brackets, to indicate that those footnotes are reproduced from the original, e.g.:
3.[Song: British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca (1839)].
All other footnotes have been inserted by the annotators.
QUOTATIONS
Compared to the original version of Song’s work, there appears to be a sudden ‘increase’ in the number of quotations in this version. This is because Song tended to take entire chunks of material from newspapers and books and weave these words into his own text. All he did to separate the quoted segments from the text was to make extensive use of double quote marks to indicate these ‘merged passages’. For example, this segment from