Colonialism can work – just look at Singapore | Jeevan Vasagar | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/colonialism-work-singapore-postcolonial-british-empire
Bombay is Mumbai, Léopoldville is Kinshasa, Cecil Rhodes has been hoisted from his plinth by a crane; but when I moved to Singapore a few years ago it quickly became clear that much of its colonial legacy had been left intact.
The history of empire isn’t about pride – or guilt
James McDougall
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There is a gleaming white statue of Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore, at the riverside spot where he is said to have landed. Unusually for a colonial figure, it was put up in 1969, four years after Singapore became an independent republic.
The country’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew once said the statue reminds his people of Raffles’ vision of Singapore becoming “the emporium of the east”, adding that Singapore was different from most of its south-east Asian neighbours because it had “no xenophobic hangover” from colonialism.
