ABSTRACT
In the military landscape of pre-World War II Singapore, Changi Cantonment, completed in 1941 after one and a half decades of on-off construction, was the largest and perhaps the most significant. It was first planned in 1926 and the planning principle was investigated and set out in a report by the Gillman Commission, a high level commission from Britain dispatched by the Army Council to study “on the spot” the details of the proposed defenses of the new Imperial Naval Base.1 Changi Cantonment was a key component of the interwar effort to turn Singapore into Britain’s major defensive stronghold east of Suez to counter the growing Japanese threat in the 1920s and 1930s. Together with the completion of the Imperial Naval Base at Sembawang, and the air bases at Seletar and Tengah in the late 1930s, Changi Cantonment was key to making Singapore the “Gibraltar of the East,” the major British imperial defensive bulwark in the Far East, simultaneously protecting British territories and trade interests, specifically Hong Kong and the China trade route, and the British dominions to the south, i.e. Australia and New Zealand.2
