Welcome to the front page of a series of ten excerpts from an NHB Heritage Research Grant (HRG) project titled “A Fine Grain History of Singapore Town: The Architecture and Socio-Morphology of Four Forgotten Neighbourhoods.” This project was led by Dr Imran bin Tajudeen from 2019 to 2021.
This research project adopts a new bottom-up perspective to Singapore”s historical urban neighbourhoods and focuses on names that use the term ‘kampung’ that was shared across various languages. It thus pushes beyond accepted narratives that are based on the cognitive assumptions derived only from the official colonial English names for a selection of historical neighbourhoods of colonial Singapore Town.
Inter-Asian connections and interactions historically counted for far more of the civic life in colonial Singapore in terms of their numbers than did European urban communities. It is curious therefore that the standard Anglophone accounts of colonial Singapore’s urban history focuses on the English names for the town’s neighbourhoods.
In fact, the Malay names for different neighbourhoods in colonial Singapore were used by Europeans, and were also shared with Hokkien, Cantonese, and Tamil speakers in their own names for different parts of the city. The nature of this polyglot charing comprised both translations and transliterations of the Malay names (for example: Kam-kong Mang-ku-lu in Hokkien for Kampung Bengkulu).
Alternative frames and new lines of unquiry
The project focuses on the histories of a number of historical urban neighbourhoods that are omitted by the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others ethnic heritage district framing in Singapore. The areas studied have also had their historical urban fabric expunged to a very great extent. For this reason, it is today difficult to see many of the contexts of the histories being retraced through the information gathered.
The approach mentioned above – of using shared neighbourhood names that go beyond the official colonial names for the urban neighbourhoods of Singapore Town — is posited as a means to shift the narration of the urban social history of colonial Singapore and its morphological units. While any division of the city is contingent, the alternative framing put forth here has opened up new lines of research inquiry and insights into the nature of the cultural diversity and interactions that have been forgotten in Singapore’s urban, architectural, and social history.
Fine grain diversity: Transcending place demarcations and re-studying colonial sources
The project also looks at how ethnicity transcends place demarcations, focusing on fine-grain distribution of individuals of different ethnicity or cultural backgrounds, and mapping an urban mosaic rather than assuming large racial blocs.
The study also explores questions raised by the close study of the town plans of Singapore, demonstrating also the potential of emplacing or identifying the locations of institutions, urban properties of different individuals and mapping these in different combinations. The information collated from the building drawings form an important building block for a fine-grain history not just of architectural features it of social histories involving the owners, architects, and the institutions or organisations occupying these premises.
Other articles in this 10-part series:
Part 1: Campong Bencoolen, Campong Malacca, and other forgotten names
Part 2: Compound houses and compound shophouses
Part 3: Lorongs in Kampung Bengkulu: The forgotten alleys of history
Part 4: Kampong Serani: Some Notes on the Eurasian Community in Town
Part 5: Kampong Melaka and the other story of Singapore River
Part 6: Chinese beyond Chinatown: Kampong Melaka
Part 7: The multiple sites of the Chulia community
Part 8: Malays in the heart of “Chinatown”: Kg Penghulu Kesang
Part 9: Kampong Bengkulu’s Jewish Mahalla and Japan Town
Part 10: Kampong Dhoby, Queen Street: A lost North Indian quarter
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