Was Singapore's Decolonization Process Different from Its Neighbours in Southeast Asia? Explain Your Answer.
According to Duara, "From a historian's perspective, decolonization was one of the most important developments of the twentieth century because it turned the world into the stage of history. " Therefore, it is of no surprise that much historical research has been devoted to this phenomenon; and the various nuances among the decolonization processes undergone by the various Southeast Asian countries have been of interest. For the purpose of this essay, I shall define decolonization' as "the process whereby colonial powers transferred institutional and legal control over their territories and dependencies to indigenously based, formally sovereign, nation-states ". Singapore's neighbours' in Southeast Asia are namely: Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand (which shall be excluded for comparison since it was not colonized by any European power territorially), Myanmar (formerly Burma), Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, East Timor, and the Philippines. Upon close examination of the question, two complications arise: firstly, to go ahead and compare Singapore's decolonization process from the rest of her Southeast Asian neighbours seems to lump the latter into a single unit which is extremely sweeping a move since the process of decolonization was "neither a coherent event
nor a well-defined phenomenon" and the "timing and patterns of decolonization were extremely varied, and the goals of the movement in different countries were not always consistent with each other "; secondly, Singapore's decolonization process is largely intertwined with that of Malaya's, as seen from most historical books, and to extricate its process is a relatively difficult task. Nevertheless, there are still a few salient points about Singapore's decolonization process vis-à-vis her Southeast Asian neighbours, which attests to its process as exclusively different in certain aspects, such as: Singapore's independence could be said to be a result not out of her own accord; also, nationalism, which is
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