Today, about 74 per cent of Singapore’s 4 million-strong resident population is Chinese, while the rest are of other ethnicities such as Malay, Indian and Eurasian.

Existing scholarship suggests Chinese traders had been travelling to the region since at least the 14th century, and it is likely those who assimilated with locals were the ancestors of the hybrid community known as Peranakans. By the time the British arrived in Singapore in the 19th century, Peranakans had been in the region for generations. As compradors, they became intermediaries between the new colonial order and existing regional networks of trade, and were co-opted into British systems of education and political participation. Many built up business empires and left enduring legacies as community leaders.

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As new waves of Chinese immigrants arrived beginning in the 1840s, sharp distinctions emerged between these two communities, which developed “a complex symbiotic and also competitive relationship”, notes co-chief editor Kwa Chong Guan. The Peranakans ran the businesses and associations that the sinkehs , or “new arrivals”, depended on for livelihoods and support. But the new immigrants were also a much-needed source of labour and talent for these enterprises, and they had their own leaders and networks that challenged the Peranakan elite.

The differences between the two Chinese communities grew more kaleidoscopic and nuanced as time went on. In 1900, Singapore’s Peranakans founded the Straits Chinese British Association (SCBA), which would come to include “the most modern and westernised Chinese leaders of Singapore”, writes historian C.F. Yong. They considered themselves loyal subjects of the British Empire, while the Chinese-educated migrants thought of themselves as overseas Chinese whose allegiances were linked to the political factions vying to steer China’s destiny.

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Things were not always so clear-cut though. Peranakan leader Lim Boon Keng, for instance, stands out as a poignant example. Educated in the English tradition in Singapore, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh on a Queen’s Scholarship. His sojourn in the West seems to have brought on a bit of an identity crisis. Academic Yen Ching-hwang writes: “Although he put on Western clothes without an easily identifiable Manchu queue, and behaved like an English gentleman, he was still identified by most as a Westernised Chinaman rather than a British subject. He was embarrassed when his teacher and friends discovered he could not read Chinese and knew very little of Chinese culture.”

After returning to Singapore in 1893, Lim converted from Christianity to Confucianism, and became keenly interested in Chinese history and heritage.

When Lee first returned to Singapore from England in the 1950s, he had joined the SCBA. These post-war years, however, were a time of another kind of identity crisis for this community. As Singapore started transitioning into self-government, the SCBA declined to form a political party to contest the 1955 elections.

“They had always been invited or nominated or appointed by the colonial authorities to serve in public office. It was not in their mindset to fight for public office,” Kwa speculates.

Lee left the SCBA and founded the People’s Action Party (PAP), which came into power in 1959. Thus, “in the 1950s, a new generation of Straits Chinese emerged to lead the community to another era of history”, writes Kwa. Led by Lee and Singapore’s economic architect Goh Keng Swee, among others, “the core of this new generation of Peranakan Chinese had grown up in the ‘golden era’ of Peranakan history and culture, and must have internalised the dialogues about the dilemmas of defending and maintaining a hybrid cultural identity”.

This is certainly an interesting lens through which to look at the policy decisions that followed and how Chinese culture in multiracial Singapore has evolved since the days of the Straits-born and the sinkehs. For a few decades now, English has been the language of instruction for most subjects in schools, and the working language in the public and private sectors.

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Besides being a pragmatic way to plug into the global economy, English also became a common linguistic base for a diverse population, which is still learning how to navigate and discuss race, as the recent “brownface” saga has shown.

It accounts for the question all Singaporeans get asked when travelling abroad: “How come you speak such good English?”

There is an echo to this question, though. Addressed to Chinese Singaporeans when something needs to be done in Chinese,“Can you do this?” means ”Are you up to the task?”.

Because, despite being a school subject for Chinese Singaporeans, fluency in the language is not a given, mostly due to a lack of usage. Another factor when it comes to fluency is whether one traces one’s lineage back to an English-educated milieu or a Chinese-educated one. Faltering tongues can still reveal lapsed and lingering allegiances.

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Still, all Singaporeans are hybrids now, to some degree. That can make for a very flexible yet particular way of connecting with the wider world, as the very existence of this book – a wide-ranging tome of about 1,000 pages – illustrates.

Co-chief editor Kua Bak Lim says: “Most of the contributing writers are effectively bilingual. They used many primary sources, such as publications by clan associations, and information gleaned from historical tablets, stone inscriptions, temple plaques, oral history and genealogies. This makes the book somewhat different from the work of Western scholars about similar topics, as our writers and materials offer a unique and somewhat personalised perspective of events from the ground and close to the source of action.”

And despite its highly specific particularities, this account of the Chinese in Singapore contains striking affinities with our contemporary milieu.

So many more sojourners today move between different cultures, willingly or otherwise, their sense of themselves splintering into new kaleidoscopes. Contestations between entrenched elites and emerging challengers are unfolding every day.

Fresh convulsions are upon us, and coherence no longer exists; perhaps it never did. ■