The New York Times reports on the newly revised Singapore History textbook (they mention Peter Borschberg along the way!)

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“While earlier generations learned a narrative that essentially started in 1819 with the British colonial administrator, Sir Stamford Raffles, stumbling upon a sleepy Malay fishing village, 13-year-olds now learn of a golden age that started 500 years earlier. The new story, introduced in January, brings into focus a 300-year period, from 1300 to 1600, when Singapore was a thriving multinational trading hub, with an estimated population of 10,000.

Behind the revision is the work of John N. Miksic, an American archaeology professor at the National University of Singapore, who advised the government on the new school text. Professor Miksic has led major archaeological excavations across Southeast Asia, including a dozen in Singapore over the past 30 years that have yielded eight tons of artifacts � evidence of a precolonial history that was largely neglected until now.

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Why did it take 30 years to change the story? �It takes overwhelming evidence to shift the mind-set of a people from one image of its past to another,� Professor Miksic said in an interview at his campus laboratory. […] Professor Miksic gives credit for the new history lesson to former students who have reached positions of authority in academia and in the Ministry of Education.

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Professor [Derek] Heng surmised that one reason it had taken so long to change the narrative may have been the government�s fears of communal conflict in the 1960s and �70s. Indonesia engaged in �Konfrontasi� � violent confrontation against the newly formed Malaysian state � in the early 1960s, which was followed by Malaysia�s ejection of Singapore in 1965. �There was a deliberate attempt not to talk about links to the ethnicity of the past,� Professor Heng said. �Now we are more confident to say we were once a Malay polity cutting straight down through Asia.�

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Another factor that delayed a rewriting was a 200-year period of decline, a sort of historical �black hole,� between the formerly thriving emporium and the establishment of the 19th-century British trading port, according to Kwa Chong Guan, an adjunct associate professor at N.U.S. who also advised on the textbook revisions. �Until a connection could be made, the tons of archaeological shards Miksic excavated remained of antiquarian interest,� he said. In 2009, the professors Kwa, Heng and Tan Tai Yong published evidence from written Malay sources that bridged the gap and put Professor Miksic�s artifacts into a larger maritime trade framework. Their book, �Singapore: A 700-Year History � From Early Emporium To World City,� linked the port to the larger sultanate of Johor-Riau in the Strait of Malacca.

Concurrently, Peter Borschberg, also a professor at N.U.S., published another important link: Dutch and Portuguese maritime accounts and maps showed that Singapore was on European radars well before Raffles arrived.

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�Every generation has to rewrite its history,� [Prof Kwa] said. While it used to suit Singapore to see itself as a city-state with a British heritage, modern Singapore needs a different interpretation of history to reinforce a more global perspective, he suggested. Professor Heng also sees the opening of Singapore to new migrants as a stimulus for reassessing its history: �If inward migration continues, we need to know who we are or we will get lost,� he said. Professor Miksic goes a step further. �A short history puts a nation on shaky ground; a shallowly rooted place could be overturned quickly,� he said. �If you can show a long cohabitation between the Malays and the Chinese, it proves you have a pretty stable arrangement.�

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