Singapore in the cycles of the longue durée

Abstract

This article examines the history of Singapore over the course of about five centuries from the founding of Temasek-Singapura at the end of the thirteenth century until the establishment of a British trading post in 1819. Contrary to the dominant historiographical tradition during the period of British imperialism, Singapore not was not an obscure place devoid of history before Raffles created a British base on the island. An attack in the late 1300s destroyed the existing settlement, but Singapore subsequently passed through at least three long-term up- and down-cycles, each lasting for a century or more. In the early nineteenth century a new economic up-cycle was underway, and the link to the British Empire provided a significant stimulus.

Summary

This article applies Fernand Braudel’s longue durée framework to the history of Singapore from the founding of Temasek-Singapura at the end of the thirteenth century through the establishment of the British trading post in 1819. Borschberg challenges the entrenched British colonial narrative—propagated by Raffles and Crawfurd—that Singapore was destroyed in a single act of violence in the late fourteenth century and remained fallow land for over five centuries. He argues instead that the island passed through at least three long-term up-cycles and two down-cycles, each lasting a century or more, and that the settlement was destroyed and rebuilt several times without any significant long-term impact on the island’s fortunes (pp. 29–33).

The article draws heavily on Portuguese chronicles—particularly the works of Tome Pires, Afonso de Albuquerque, and João de Barros—which Borschberg reads against the grain to recover an alternative explanation for Singapore’s decline. Rather than military destruction, the Portuguese sources point to environmental factors: intense storms (possibly “Sumatra squalls”) that made the port treacherous for vessels waiting on monsoon winds, and a possible major earthquake and tsunami in western Sumatra around the early 1390s (pp. 37–39). The second up-cycle, spanning from after 1511 to the late seventeenth century, is reconstructed from Dutch and Portuguese sources documenting Singapore’s role as the homeport of the Johor armada and seat of a shahbandar, a high-ranking port official who managed trade and issued maritime passes (pp. 42–45). The second down-cycle, associated with the eighteenth century, is the darkest period: the Johor court’s permanent relocation to the Riau Islands, the rise of Bintan as the principal port, and regional political convulsions all diminished Singapore’s commercial significance, though Borschberg cautions that the absence of European references does not prove the settlement vanished (pp. 46–50).

A key methodological contribution is Borschberg’s argument that the decline in European written references to Singapore after the 1620s is largely an artefact of a shift in shipping routes. After the 1610s, larger vessels began using the Governor’s Strait, a more southerly passage that took ships out of direct view of the settlement, thereby reducing the number of eyewitness accounts (pp. 45–46). He further contends that the British founding of 1819 did not mark a fresh beginning but rather an expansion of pre-existing settlements and a functioning harbour, evidenced by the relocation of the Johor temenggong to Singapore in 1811 and the presence of a Bugis village around Kampong Gelam visible on Daniel Ross’s 1819 chart (pp. 51–52).

Key Findings

• The first up-cycle (c. 1290–c. 1400) saw Singapore attacked at least three times—by Siamese forces in the 1340s, by the Majapahit around 1375–6, and again by the Siamese around 1396—yet the settlement was rebuilt each time and was not abandoned (pp. 36–37).
• Portuguese chronicler Afonso de Albuquerque explained Singapore’s decline by attributing the toponym Singapura to the Portuguese falsa demora (“treacherous delay”), citing intense tempests that destroyed carracks waiting for monsoon winds at the port (p. 38).
• The second up-cycle (c. 1511–late 1600s) is evidenced by the presence of a Johor shahbandar on the island, confirmed by Dutch Admiral Matelieff who personally saw the official in May 1606, and by Jacques de Coutre’s praise of Singapore as one of the best ports in the East Indies (pp. 44–45).
• The settlement was destroyed a second time around 1610–1613, most likely during the Acehnese attack on Johor’s upstream capital Batu Sawar, though the Portuguese and even the residents themselves (via scorched-earth policy) are also candidates (p. 44).
• Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon (1731–1754), a 64-volume German encyclopaedia, still described Singapore as “a city in the East Indies” (Eine Stadt in Ost-Indien), indicating that European knowledge of Singapore as a significant settlement persisted well into the eighteenth century (p. 50).
• The British colonial settlement of 1819 was founded at the early stage of a new economic up-cycle, not at the absolute low point of the previous down-cycle; the first Singapore harbour was bounded by the British settlement in the west and the Malay-Bugis settlements in the east, sharing a maritime space that was vital to the port’s early success (pp. 51–52).

Conclusion

Borschberg’s definitive historical takeaway is that Singapore’s value as a strategic location along the major maritime arteries of Southeast Asia was known and explicitly acknowledged by Europeans long before Raffles arrived in 1819. The island was never a forgotten or neglected place; rather, its fortunes rose and fell in long-term cycles driven by environmental, economic, and geopolitical factors, while the physical settlement was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt with minimal long-term consequence. The British colonial founding was not a creation ex nihilo but an expansion of pre-existing structures and networks (pp. 52–53).

Context

• The article draws on Portuguese chronicles (Albuquerque, Barros, Pires, Eredia), Dutch VOC records (Matelieff’s journal, the Dagh-Register Batavia), early modern European cartography (Eredia’s maps, the Atlas Miscelanea, Bellin’s 1755 chart), and archaeological findings from the Fort Canning excavations directed by John Miksic.
• The study’s historiographical contribution lies in its systematic challenge to the “Dark Space” narrative of Singapore history and its re-reading of Portuguese sources to recover environmental explanations for the island’s cyclical fortunes, a perspective largely absent from both colonial-era and recent archaeological historiography.

References