THE MAPPING OF SINGAPORE : A HISTORICAL STUDY

Abstract

This academic exercise concerns primarily with the examination of maps of Singapore from a historical perspective in relation to humanistic studies and the development in cartographic presentation. The mapping history of Singapore has started as early as in the fourteenth century when a Chinese sailing chart started the recording of the Singapore Strait. Subsequently, more maps, especially hydrographic charts were produced for Singapore. Most of them recorded the island merely by a dot as a consequent of the use of a small scale and limited geographical knowledge of the island in the early sixteenth century. During this period, it was the successful maritime explorations and sea trade of the Portuguese and the Dutch in the Southeast Asia region that prompted much mapping activities for Singapore. Then, the maps of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had manifested improved knowledge of straits of Singapore. Since then, the island was depicted in exaggerated dimension with a grossly disfigured configuration combined with an artistic inclination in its modes of presentation. Incidentally, topographic mapping of the island itself had remained unimportant for the concern major concern was with the strategic location of the Singapore Straits. The execution of these maps suggests of a strong predilection for the trends prevalent in the West when the cartographic practices were compared to the global cartographic history presented earlier. This tendency was inevitable since most of the cartographers concerned with the mapping of the Singapore island were the Europeans, especially the English. Much dynamism and versatility of the mapping contents and modes of presentation had however started only with the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles. His arrival saw much sophisticated development in cartography in terms of the use of specific symbols for the representation of spatial phenomena, methods and new concepts in the mapping arena Hydrographic charts were profusely illustrated with depth soundings and isobaths while topographic mapping was made much more interesting with the injection of voluminous new geographical data. Thematic mapping has received greater prominence with the easy accessibility to new data. In the more recent cartographic development, a short review of the progression in the various types of map such as the topographic, thematic and cadastral mapping is made. Fundamentally, there is great improvement in the techniques and equipments used for cartographic practices nowadays. The most recent development is obviously in the field of computer-assisted cartography, the most advanced cartographic technique in the present era. However, due a late start in computer application in Singapore, computer-assisted cartography has been limited only to very specialized application such as the gathering and processing of raw data. Though development in software and hardware programme packages are limited, computer-assisted cartography will definitely expand its potentiality in the years to come, bring a new phase into the local mapping history. In my conclusion, the need for a humanistic study for these old maps, besides treating them as mere historical documents and as records in the development of cartographic skills, is again emphasized. The importance of maps as an effective communication device must not be neglected while maps of a period tend to throw much light upon its history, the mentality and spirituality of an age reflected, if not enshrined in maps.