ABSTRACT
In respect to Singapore, there is a notable absence of modern case studies of the entrepreneurial and mercantile actors who articulated its regional and worldwide connections during the colonial era. This chapter sets out to address this relative neglect. It begins with known facts about the family background of two brothers, James and Lewis Fraser, who left their native Scotland for ‘the East’ early in the nineteenth century and ends with their business activities in the City of London, to which they both relocated after a lengthy sojourn in Southeast Asia. It is that sojourn, however, that forms the essential core of the chapter. As such, it focuses on the Fraser brothers’ success in inserting their firm into the commodity chains of which the mid-nineteenth century port was fast becoming a nodal point, something that required their active collaboration (however imperfectly documented) with Chinese interests there and elsewhere in the region.
