Vista at Hill 2 (photo: Claire Leow)

by Andrew Tan

In Bukit Brown Cemetery, an avenue, like prime real estate, connects Singapore’s prominent families—all inter-related, as these powerful cliques were linked by arranged marriages to perpetuate their wealth and influence through six generations, during 150 years of British rule (1819 to 1959).

Chronology

1819-1867        Beginnings

The earliest Asian elites in Singapore were comprador-kapitans from Malacca, who brokered with European (mainly British) companies, exclusive credit and arms deals.  To procure native products for Europeans, compradors resourced from powerful clan headmen who controlled the supply of coolie labour, ships, and native products—crucial to entrepot success.  Business partnerships were tied by arranged marriages between all families.

Family examples: Tan Tock Seng and his family network supplied and distributed manufactures for the British “country traders”; they also married influential relatives of the compradors and Kapitan Cina.  Together, this was the first powerful clique in Singapore, which broadened (after Singapore’s cessation as entrepot of the opium-arms trade following British victory over Qing China) to include revenue farmers and labour contractors as their enterprises penetrated Southeast Asia.

1867-1900        Rise

From 1867, with Singapore a crown colony, the long established families recruited scholars and professionals as sons-in-law, to perpetuate their vested interests (e.g. tax-free “free trade” policies, opium farms, colonial intervention in tin-rich Malaya) through positions in the advisory board and councils at the municipal, rural and legislative level; appointments rotated among relatives (who advised the Governor on nominations) to ensure advantageous policy continuity.

The immediate decades after Suez Canal opened in 1869 diverted oceanic traffic through Singapore.  To compete internationally, merchant families pooled their resources into joint-venture consortiums (in steamships); their offspring intermarried too.  Ties between in-laws counted more than paper contracts.

Family examples: Notable Queen scholars (Lim Boon Keng, Song Ong Siang etc) and other top professionals were sons-in-law of well established merchant-shipping families like the Wee-Ho Hong-Lee group, as well as others who partnered in Straits Steamship.

1900-1941        Peak

Insatiable demand for World War One commodities (tin, rubber) produced the first multi-millionaires in Singapore: these nouveaux-riches—their heirs and heiresses were courted and charmed by Old Money.  Merging New Money with Old gave birth to multifamily-owned conglomerates (e.g. OCBC, UOB, Straits Steamship) tying together banks, ships, plantations, factories and newspapers.

Large fortunes would aggrandize social ambition: Plutocrats usurped collective and consular institutions (e.g. Ngee Ann Kongsi, Chinese Chambers of Commerce), to connect with powerful Chinese warlords of lucrative market potential, offering to regimes funds for schools and humanitarian relief, using family-controlled newspaper editorials to galvanize mass involvement.

Ability to lead the Chinese masses into action was recognized by the British military; however, these plutocrats on war councils were relocated with their families to India just weeks before the Japanese Occupation.

Family examples: Families from shipping, commodities, revenue farming, and remittances, co-founded the conglomerates of OCBC and UOB, with ties to the burgeoning sectors like film and publishing, and family connections in politics.

1945-1959        Turning Point

In postwar Singapore, enriched by military contracts in the Cold War, scions used their wealth to contest for elected self-government, but the expanded, impoverished electorate rejected these “rich men’s parties” (Progressive Party and Democratic Party, whose members were related, merged into the Liberal Socialist Party), in favour of a new regime, the People’s Action Party (PAP).

Family examples: Contracts were monopolized by consortiums who subcontracted to each other.  Chain of suppliers for the British military coalesced and expanded to retail giants.

1959 onwards          Decline

Following Singapore’s independence under the PAP, the old elites diminished in economic influence: their once-predominant, century-old monopoly of colonial contracts was overshadowed by the growth of public state-sector industries in partnership with foreign multinationals.  Attrition too, their vast landholdings compulsorily acquired by the state for redevelopment.

Their hereditary clan-leadership in communities has been subsumed by government departments that fund and run all neighbourhood activities and amenities.  More than cultural and community centres, clans were once the centre of powerful labour unions.  They once ran schools; but today, the Education Ministry syllabus and compulsory mandarin has created a generation disconnected with their dialect heritage, previously stressed in clan schools.

Arranged marriages and pedigrees became obsolete as post-war mass education broadened careers and widened choices in life partners. Also, professionalization broke down class barriers.  The Women’s Charter in 1961 ended the quasi-feudal family structure.

As Singapore developed to become a middle class society, a new breed of technocrats allied with the PAP replaced the Old Establishment.

A multifamily tree, with 1000 people from 100 families, 6 generations interlinked in strategic alliances from the late 1700s to now, will be published  in 2012.  I shed light on the influential cliques (made up of powerful families) who dominated Singapore’s society and economy past two hundred years. Andrew Tan