CONFRONTING COLONIALISMS: ANALYSING THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SINGAPORE’S NARRATIVES ABOUT IMPERIALISMS

Abstract

The National Museum of Singapore’s narratives about Singapore’s imperialisms, British and Japanese, are widely held by scholars to be in service of the state by offering a state-sponsored narrative of the past. It follows that the British are portrayed as benign colonisers who were primarily responsible for Singapore’s stellar economic progress and cosmopolitan gloss while the Japanese are shown to be brutal occupiers who were only keen to exploit the local populace, even after the 2015 revamp. These one-dimensional characterisations of Singapore’s colonial pasts are conveyed through immersive exhibits that aim to persuade but limit interpretative spaces for audiences. However, a closer consideration of Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story would reveal a more textured understanding of Singapore two imperial periods. Further, when compared to existing scholarship on imperialism, the NMS appears guilty of weak historicisation. Therefore, these museological efforts cannot be said to have fairly represented Lee’s The Singapore Story when documenting British and Japanese colonialism, much less make good use of nuanced academic literature, some of which has been available from the 1950s. On close scrutiny, the museum has obscured the similarities between the two colonial powers such as the themes of violence and collaboration by omitting key details in their exhibits. These efforts go towards forming two disparate and problematic accounts about Singapore’s imperial pasts, both that are in need of urgent reconsideration.