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Singapore : A Very Interesting Place

Satisfactory Essays

Mason Vargas
January 13, 2017
Period 3
History Essay
Singapore History Essay Singapore is a very interesting place. For quite a while people did not even know what to call it, a city, a country or just a territory. It is currently called an island city state. It is located off of the coast of Malaysia and Singapore is a very large center of global finance. Its currency is the Singapore dollar, its GDP is 55,182 United States dollar. And, its official languages are English, Tamil, Malay and standard Mandarin. A third of their religion is Buddhist and 18.8 percent is Christian. Singapore governs itself on a Westminster parliamentary system and their current president is Tony Teng Keng Yam. (Britannica 1-2; YourSingapore 1-5) In 1299 the …show more content…

A man named Yew Hock who was the pro-independence leader for Singapore convinced Brittan to have self-government in all matters besides defense and foreign affairs. (Nations 2) During the elections in 1959, the People’s Action party (PAP) won. This meant that Malaysia became a self-governing state under Lee Kuan Yew who was the first Prime Minister. Later Yusof bin Ishak became the first president in 1965. Once PAP was firmly and comfortably under Lee’s control, he met with other leaders of nations such as Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak to sign the Malaysia Agreement on July 9, 1963, after this agreement was formally signed Malaysia was formally an independent nation. Lee announced Singapore’s independence from Britain on August 31, 1963. Many opponents of the merge were put into jail, and the PAP won most of the seats in the assembly. Although the threats of military confrontation from Indonesia and l raids on Sabah and Sarawak by Indonesia, the merge took place on September 16, 1963. The new federation was based on an unstable alliance between Malays and The Chinese. Riots took place in various parts of the new nation, including Singapore. In the end, the merge failed. As a state, Singapore did not obtain the economic progress it had hoped for, and political tensions rose between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. In the end, Singapore’s independence had to be stripped away from them.

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