Read: 700 Years of Singapore - What History Tells Investors About the Next Growth Story

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Michelle Martin (0:22)

Well, we're going to dive into a sweeping historical book. It's new and it takes us through Singapore's economic history back 700 years. An amazing achievement in terms of a book of this nature, I think, the first of its kind. You know, I think you cannot live well if you don't read well. So today, I have picked for you a book, a new book out there that is going to be interesting, I think, to the investor mindset. Because as investors, we spend a lot of time trying to forecast the next quarter, the next rate move, the next market cycle. But perhaps there's something to be gained from taking stock and doing the exact opposite, zooming out not just five or ten years into Singapore's history, but 700 years. How remarkable. My guess has done that. Tracing Singapore's economic history from Tomasic to the global city that we know today. This is the first ever economic history book on Singapore that covers such a wide time frame, taking us back to 14th century Singapore. Keen Meng Choy is Professor of Economics and Economics History. Former Professor, he retired to write this book, which took him six years. Dr. Choy, why did you want to do this?

Keen Meng Choy (1:34)

Well, as you've just mentioned, the reason when we started on the project, such a book on Singapore, there are a lot of general histories, political histories. But we found it somewhat surprising that for a country like Singapore where the main purpose is to make money, as they say, that there hasn't been economic history.

And it just happens that my collaborator, my co-author from Japan, Ichiro Sugimoto, he's an economic historian. And when I met him, we wrote some papers together, and then we decided to write this book to fill the gap in the literature. Right.

Michelle Martin (2:08)

And in order to do so, you had to comb through newspapers from the past.

Keen Meng Choy (2:13)

Right. So let me just go back to the 14th century, the economic that you mentioned. So as most listeners would know, Singapore existed for about a hundred years, and it was known as the Masik. And it was a trading port, basically exchanging the indigenous products of the Southeast Asian region with the manufactured products of China and India, silk cloth. And that part of the history, of course, we don't have much documented sources. So we have had to rely on archaeological artifacts that have been unearthed from Fort Kenning Park. And from the artifacts unearthed, historians and archaeologists have sort of put together a rough story of how Singapore was.

And interestingly, it was a thriving port. In fact, it was probably the most prosperous port of the time.

And so that's the first source. Now from the 14th century, up until Sir Stamford Air Force discovered Singapore, nothing much was happening in Singapore, strangely enough.

Michelle Martin (3:14)

From 14th century to 1819, nothing much was happening.

Keen Meng Choy (3:17)

Nothing much was happening. There was not much trade, and it was a puzzle to most historians.

Michelle Martin (3:22)

But we were a thriving port before that.

Keen Meng Choy (3:24)

Yes, for just 100 years. After that, the whole city was burned down by the Majapahit invaders from Indonesia, from Java. So after that, Singapore, strangely enough, did not sort of exist as a port until raffles came along. But from that moment onwards, it has prospered continuously up to today. So one of the things that we really wanted to bring out in the book is this team of Singapore's consistent success, what lies behind it? What is the secret behind Singapore's success? But coming back to the sources question, for the colonial period, we had to rely a lot of colonial documents from the British archives, and they kept meticulous records.

And then, as you mentioned, newspapers, so we had to read newspapers for almost 150 years.

Michelle Martin (4:12)

That's quite a news comb, I have to say, Dr. Choy. So investors love the line that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, right? As investors, we love that idea. So after studying 700 years of Singapore's economic history, what patterns do you see repeating most clearly?

Keen Meng Choy (4:28)

Right. So historically, especially during the colonial period, Singapore was essentially a service economy. So trade was predominant, and it was still doing some of the stuff that it did during the Temasek times, which is exchanging the products of the region. And that includes things like pepper, gambia, seashells, and sea slugs, and things like that. Basically, the jungle and marine products of the region to the west. And this was done by sort of agency houses, European traders that were based in Singapore. So, after that, it continued into the modern era, not just trade in the colonial period, it continued in the era, and then it sort of, it sort of went into manufacturing. But this is actually an anomaly from the historical point of view, because Singapore was never a manufacturing base all along, until the modern era.