Name: Wee Ai Ting Pearl

Module: HY5412
Assignment: Book Review on Rickshaw Coolie and The Singapore River

Introduction

Social History, as the history from below, was largely absent from Singapore’s

historiography until the late twentieth century. Predominantly, Singapore’s

history tends to focus on either Singapore’s past through a broad time frame, or

on significant individuals like Raffles or Lee Kuan Yew 1. In the 1980s, various

scholars started to look at other ways to understand Singapore’s past, namely

through the ordinary folks whose lives have been largely left out in the history of

Singapore. Here, James Francis Warren’s Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of

Singapore (1880 – 1940) and Stephen Dobbs’ The Singapore River: a Social

History 1819 – 2002 deserve some attention. Their works examine the lives of the

lay people, in particular rickshaw Coolies and lightermen.

Overview of the two books

Rickshaw Coolie is an attempt to give a voice to an otherwise under-represented

group of people. Warren offers a glimpse into their everyday lives, situating them

in the developments of the rickshaw trade in Singapore and the progressive

phases of Colonial Singapore. Warren stated,

“Rickshaw Coolie examines the origin and development of

the rickshaw trade in Singapore, its control and regulation

from the standpoint of the Chinese and the British, the

1
Ernest Koh Wee Song, “Ignoring ‘History from Below’: People's History in the
Historiography of Singapore” in History Compass 5, no. 1 (January 2007): 11
 method of earning a livelihood in rickshaw pulling, and the

character of a rickshaw coolies’ life.” 2

The book is divided into two parts. The first part sets the context of which the

rickshaw coolies arrived in Singapore. After describing the reasons why these

migrants came to Singapore, Warren examines the relationship between the

rickshaw coolies with various authorities like the rickshaw owners and the

colonial government. He also establishes the relationship these rickshaw coolies

had with their occupation as a rickshaw puller, going in depth to the different

types of rickshaws and how it influenced their work. Warren also dedicates a

chapter on strikes, giving the rickshaw coolies a sense of agency and shows that

they were not just passive workers. In the second part, Warren delves into the

many aspects of the Rickshaw coolies’ everyday lives. Each chapter focuses on a

different aspect, such as the customers they meet and interact with, experiences

forming elemental families and their consequential problems, their leisure

activities and even the dangers of their work. He paints a picture of the rickshaw

coolies who had to make a living out of the harsh conditions they found

themselves to be in, and often ends in despair or death. The rickshaw coolies

were ultimately victims of progress, as they continue to be affected by the

politics and the competition of new technology.

In contrast, The Singapore River is centered on a physical entity. The Singapore

River is divided into three parts. In the first part, Dobbs examines the

development of the Singapore River beginning from the Colonial Administration,

following the economic changes due to the Suez Canal and technological
2
James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore (1880 –
1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), vii.
advancements, to the Singapore government that perceived a different economic

purpose of the Singapore River. The lightermen are the focus in the next part,

where Dobbs went more in depth to examine their lives. From situating their

work as intrinsically tied with the fortunes of the river, Dobbs argues that their

everyday lives revolved around the river. Even their recreational time or space is

always linked to the river. Lastly, Dobbs looks on the changes made to the

Singapore River and its impact on the lightermen trade. With its economic

relevance diminishing and a pressing need to clean up the dirty and heavily

polluted Singapore River, Dobbs illustrates how the clean up negatively affected

the livelihood of the Lightermen, where their trade diminished as Singapore’s

economy shifted from an entrepot to a knowledge economy 3.

Approach towards Social History

The authors of Rickshaw Coolie and The Singapore River approached the writing

of Singapore’s social history quite differently. Warren’s depiction of the rickshaw

coolie’s everyday lives in minute detail is an example of micro-social history,

where he focuses on their seemingly ordinary, day-to-day experiences. Poverty

pervaded much of a rickshaw coolie’s life, affecting his marriage, leisure, and his

work. They often had to deal with problems arising from poverty that usually

end in suicide or addiction to opium. Even the derelict quarters the coolies lived

in were made more pronounced with descriptions of “rooms that might, when

the moment came, collapses and bury them alive” 4 but the coolies “left their fate

to Heaven”5 as they could not afford any better housing. This microscopic view of
3
Stephen Dobbs, The Singapore River: A Social History 1819 –2002 (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 2003), 116.
4
Warren, Rickshaw Coolie, 206.
5
Ibid.
the rickshaw coolies’ lives enabled Warren to give them a voice, one that is

different from the Singapore Story.

Similarly, Dobbs explores the ordinary lightermen whose lives were tied to the

economic functions of the Singapore River. However, he approaches it

differently, by situating the lightermen in a broader narrative of the evolution of

the Singapore River across time, from the British Administration to the People’s

Action Party. Dobbs argued, “The river was not a mere physical entity, but

constitutes an interdependent social, political and economic landscape and

environment.”6 By focusing on the river life and functions, Dobbs gives a fuller

picture of the lightermen’s lives in their spatial context. The river, which became

the center of Colonial Singapore’s commercial activities, also became the center

of the lightermen’s lives. They were never far away from it, and surrounded their

leisure, work or even home around it. This also enlivened the river’s landscape.

He gives us a sense of the bustling life of the river, where “there was a carnival

like atmosphere which pervaded that part of town… with the production of

almost every nation in the world.”7

At the same time, Dobbs’ use of the Singapore River as a physical landscape

seemed to be incomplete. Although he explores the river’s physical ecology with

that of the lightermen, he largely ignores the rest of the industries that were also

integral to the river’s commercial activity. These included the different types of

merchant shops and processing factories that were located further up along the

6
Dobbs, The Singapore River, 4.
7
Ibid, 29.
river. Bringing in these perspectives, albeit a longer and thicker book, would help

to give a better understanding of the river’s social history.

Methodology and Sources

Warren uses the Coroner’s records extensively in Rickshaw Coolie. As a primary

source, it gives rich details about the circumstance surrounding the deaths of the

rickshaw coolies that could not be found elsewhere. However, due to the nature

of the Coroner’s records, it would inevitably skew Warren’s perspective of the

rickshaw coolies to the pessimistic side. In nearly every chapter of his book,

death was not far from the rickshaw coolies’ stories. This is to the extent where

even a Chinaman could be walking down the stairs to be stabbed and bleed to

death8. It therefore paints a very despondent picture of their lives that seems too

lopsided. Furthermore, the Coroner’s records only indicated the reason or how

the coolies died. These records do not give an impression of how the coolies

lived, their aspirations or their worldview. Furthermore, Warren only used four

oral history interviews to support his narrative. The heavy reliance on the

Coroner’s records meant that it was still largely left to the author’s imagination

to piece the puzzles together and craft a story of their lives, which is

commendable but still limited.

Dobbs, by contrast, perhaps due to hindsight and the nature of his study, uses a

greater variety of primary sources, including oral history and maps. The use of

such sources brought about many insights to the lives of the lightermen,

shedding light into their perspective as sojourners in a foreign country. Having a

8
Warren, Rickshaw Coolie, 172 – 173.
distant contact with their families back in China “was the strongest consolation

as they worked through the monotonous grind of their daily lives on the

Singapore River.”9 Dobbs also varies the accounts of the lightermen, by including

those who were successful and able to return to China as well as those who

succumbed to opium addiction. This thus gives a better and more complete

understanding of the lightermen’s lives and worldviews.

Rickshaw Coolies and Lightermen

Arguably, both the rickshaw coolies’ and the lightermen’s work were strenuous.

Yet the differences in their lives were quite distinct. The lives of the rickshaw

coolies was afflicted with poverty. Warren’s account of their lives was bleak and

hopeless in the face of the many things that were beyond their control. The lives

of the lightermen, in contrast, was more hopeful. Dobbs notes that a lightermen’s

job was preferred over other unskilled labor and that their pay was higher 10. This

meant that the lightermen had a greater success stories than the rickshaw coolie.

Furthermore, lightermen were mainly bachelors who did not deem marriage to

be practical due to the nature of their occupation. This freed them from the

domestic troubles some rickshaw coolies faced in their families. As such,

although both were migrants and came to Singapore in search of a better future,

their life trajectory was quite different.

More specifically, it seemed that both rickshaw coolies and lightermen did not

call for great social change. Warren only manages to give the Rickshaw coolies

some sort of agency in the chapter Strikes. Through the clan associations, they
9
Dobbs, The Singapore River, 83.
10
Ibid, 65.
came together to call for better working conditions or against the exploitation by

the rickshaw owners. Yet Warren stops short of exploring their motivations and

goals of social change. A further analysis into the clan associations’ records or

oral interviews could offer a better understanding of the coolies’ involvement in

these strikes. What were the motivations behind these coolies? Why did the riots

not call for greater social change amongst the Chinese migrant communities?

Although lightermen did not, in the same degree, rioted against the Colonial

authorities, they did formed unions to call for better working conditions. What is

more interesting is the emphasis on the relationship between the lightermen and

lighter owners. It was reflective of a cultural quasi-kinship and “exchanges with

respect to labour and security” 11 based on dialect, where both lightermen and

lighter owner recognizes their interdependent relationship and would therefore

look out for each other. Even in these unions, there were no recorded conflicts

mentioned between different dialect groups. Dobbs cites the reason to be that it

did not matter which dialect group they belong to, “as the work [they] did was

basically the same and the sorts of difficulties [they] face were the same.” 12

Dobbs seems to suggest that the reason there were not much strikes by the

lightermen was due to this relationship, and that they did not wish to sever it 13.

Eventually, both authors conclude that these trades diminished as a result of

progress. Technological advancements introduced the motorcar and bus into

Singapore, which proved to be strong contenders to the rickshaw. With the

11
Dobbs, The Singapore River, 81.
12
Ibid, 77.
13
Ibid, 81.
increasing need to modernize Singapore, the government exerted pressure and

restrictions on the rickshaw trade, ultimately leading to its demise. In a similar

way, as Singapore’s trade industry evolved, so did the relevance of the

lightermen industry dwindled. As Dobbs remarked,

“The emergence of the modern Singapore of soaring glass and

steel, symbolic of transnational capital and regional trade, was

now encroaching onto the banks of the river. The imperative for

drastic change was immediate and everyone working lighters on

the river felt it.”14

The lightermen were then displaced, neglected and forgotten in time. Their story

endings were identical, as they could not escape from their fate of being replaced

due to the evolving nature of economic progress.

Conclusion

Both authors depict the lives of the ordinary men who were largely removed in

the historical narrative as Singapore modernizes and the changing landscapes

erase any traces of their presence. Their approaches to social history are

innovative, and allows for a deeper understanding of the complexities

surrounding Colonial Singapore. Albeit their limitations, they are nonetheless

significant in providing various methods of writing the history of Singapore,

especially of migrants. Using either a microscopic lens or a physical entity to talk

about a particular group of people, they inspire other scholars to look at

Singapore’s past differently.

(1990 words)

14
Dobbs, The Singapore River, 109.
References
1. Dobbs, Stephen. The Singapore River: A Social History 1819–2002
(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003).
2. Koh Wee Song, Ernest. “Ignoring ‘History from Below’: People's History in
the Historiography of Singapore” in History Compass 5, no. 1 (January
2007): 11 – 25, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00370.x.
3. Warren, James Francis. Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore
(1880 – 1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986).