ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the historical roots of the emergence of Singapore as a trade hub in Southeast Asia and its rapid economic development. Singapore’s economy registered remarkable growth after its foundation in 1819, and the port soon became an entrepôt for the trade of international commodities between neighbouring Southeast Asian countries and distant Western and Asian economies. By using new information on British India between 1800 and 1874, we show that Singapore’s early trade growth pattern assimilated many features of the regional trading system of the eighteenth-century intra-Asian trade. Before the establishment of Singapore, the intra-Asian trade between India and Southeast Asia was mostly based on the export of Indian cotton goods. Besides exports of tropical produce to China, the imports of Indian cotton cloth enhanced Singapore’s function as an entrepôt. The gradual shift from Indian textiles to British manufactured goods fuelled the growth of the Southeast Asian trade centred on Singapore, leading to the progressive integration of the region into the modern global economy.
