History
What is the range of lives lost during the Sook Ching massacre?
Singapore
Temasek ('sea town'), a second century outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire, is the earliest known settlement on Singapore. The island was part of the Sri Vijaya Empire when it was invaded by the south Indian Emperor Rajendra Chola I of the Chola Empire in the 11th century. In 1613, Portuguese raiders burned down the settlement and the island sank into obscurity for the next two centuries. Nominally, it belonged to the Johor Sultanate during this period. In 1819, Thomas Stamford Raffles arrived and signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor on behalf of the British East India Company to develop the southern part of Singapore as a British trading post. In 1824, the entire island became a British possession under a further treaty with the Sultan and the Temenggong. In 1826, Singapore became part of the Straits Settlements, under the jurisdiction of British India, becoming the regional capital in 1836. Before Raffles arrived, there were approximately 1,000 people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese. By 1860, the population exceeded 80,000 and more than half was Chinese. Many immigrants came to work at rubber plantations and, after the 1870s, the island became a global centre for rubber exports. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded British Malaya, culminating in the Battle of Singapore. The British were defeated, and surrendered on 15 February 1942. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history". The Sook Ching massacre of ethnic Chinese after the fall of Singapore claimed between 5,000 and 25,000 lives. The Japanese occupied Singapore until the British repossessed it in September 1945, after the Surrender of Japan. Singapore's first general election in 1955 was won by David Marshall, the pro-independence leader of the Labour Front. He led a delegation to London to demand complete self-rule but was turned down by the British. He subsequently resigned and was replaced by Lim Yew Hock, whose policies convinced Britain to grant Singapore full internal self-government for all matters except defence and foreign affairs. During the May 1959 elections, the People's Action Party won a landslide victory. Singapore became an internally self-governing state within the Commonwealth and Lee Kuan Yew became the country's first Prime Minister. Governor Sir William Allmond Codrington Goode served as the first Yang di-Pertuan Negara ("Head of State"), and was succeeded by Yusof bin Ishak who became the first President of Singapore in 1965. During the 1950s, Chinese Communists with strong ties to the trade unions and Chinese schools carried out an armed uprising against the government, leading to the Malayan Emergency and later, the Communist Insurgency War. The 1954 National Service Riots, Chinese middle schools riots and Hock Lee bus riots in Singapore were all linked to these events.