Tag: singapore

Singapore pr/ ), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign city-state and island country located in maritime Southeast Asia. Singapore lies about one degree of latitude north of the equator, and is situated off the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, and, by extension, the southernmost extremity of continental Eurasia.The island country is wedged between western Indonesia and peninsular Malaysia, sharing its southern maritime border with the Batam, Bintan, and Karimun archipelago of the former’s Riau Islands province, and its northern, western, and eastern maritime borders with the latter’s Johor state; it is additionally in the vicinity of Sumatra to its west and Borneo to its east.The island country is enveloped by the littoral waters of the Johore Strait to its north and the Singapore Strait to its south, and is geographically positioned within the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, being bounded by the Malacca Strait to its west and the South China Sea to its east.The country’s territory, which is archipelagic, is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet, the combined area of which has increased by 25% since the country’s independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects.

Throughout its millennia-long history, Singaporehistorically known by the names Pulau Ujong, Temasek, and subsequently Singapurawas a maritime emporium that fell under the suzerainty of several successive Indianised and Islamicate Malay polities: initially a series of ancient to medieval Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empires, subsequently a medieval localised Hindu-Buddhist kingdom, and ultimately two medieval to early modern Islamic sultanates. The 1819 arrival of Stamford Raffles, a British colonial officer, and the subsequent establishment of a British East India Company trading post on the main islandthen part of the Johor Sultanatemarked the genesis of modern Singapore. In 1826, Singapore was incorporated into the Straits Settlements, a pan-Malayan presidency of the Company with Penang as capital, and in 1830, the Settlements were annexed to British India as a residency, where they would be governed from the capital of Calcutta under two administrationsuntil 1858 under Company rule, andfollowing the Company’s collapse in the wake of the 1857 Indian Rebellionuntil 1867 under the successive British Raj.In 1867, the administration of the Settlements was transferred to London, bringing them under the direct control of the United Kingdom as a Malayan crown colony.

From 1867 to the 1940s, Singapore, having replaced Penang as capital of the Settlements, grew into a thriving entrept and settler-colony under the auspices of the British Empire, attracting large numbers of non-indigenous settlers and sojourners from the region and beyond. During the Second World War, Imperial Japan invaded and annexed Singapore, resulting in an interregnum of British colonial rule corresponding with a brief but bloody Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945.