SINGAPORE BEACH
May 1st, 2001
BY SIMON WILCOX, in SingaporeIN a dim and distant era before electronics and semiconductors, Singapore was a tiny backwater in the Malay kingdom of Johor-Riau, its inhabitants depending on jungle produce, fishing, small-scale trading and a little piracy for their livelihood.Political and commercial power lay to the south, on the island of Bintan, the gateway to the Riau-Lingga archipelago.It was here that the sultan and the great trading fleets of the "Bugis" nobility held sway.But things change and it was Singapore which subsequently became the "emporium of the ...
Full access to this article can be arranged with permission from the client that first ordered it. Please contact us to request access. Entries are uploaded to our archive at least one year after being published by a client – free access is restricted to International News Services journalists for background research only. The article date indicates when copy was filed to a client, not when posted to this archive. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.