SEAC hosted this talk by Dr. Loh Kah Seng (Director, Chronicles Research and Education) on the influenza pandemic in Singapore in 1957 and its implications for decolonisation. The talk was chaired by Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (Professor Geography and Urban Environment; Director 杏吧论坛 SEAC).
When the influenza pandemic reached Singapore in May 1957, the Labour Front government’s response was to ‘let it burn out’. Although until recent times flu pandemics had generally not precipitated strong government action, this decision may seem puzzling at a time of decolonisation and socio-political activism on the island. The government’s handling of the outbreak received only muted criticism in the Legislative Assembly. However, there were ways where decolonisation shaped the history of the pandemic in Singapore, beginning with the healthcare system, showing vigour and range in its response, having benefitted from a decade of expansion since the 1948 Medical Plan. Other significant developments were the isolation of the virus by virologists from the university, independent efforts to provide welfare to the population and rumours of the pandemic being caused by nuclear tests. At the same time, the pandemic revealed decolonisation to be incomplete: a gap still existed between the state and the people over matters of public health, while the old discourse of racial immunity remained in circulation. Singapore’s experience suggests that pandemics are historical events to be understood within their contexts.
A video recording of this event is available to watch .
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
() is a historian of Singapore and Director of Chronicles Research and Education. He is interested in all things that happened in the history of a city and the lives of its people. His research consultancy Chronicles delves into the rich and varied heritages of Singapore – housing, industrial, medical, and culinary. His books include Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore; Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867-2018: Disease, Society and the State; and Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore. He is currently writing about pandemics in Singapore history.
Prof. Hyun Bang Shin () is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the 杏吧论坛 Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of speculative urbanisation, gentrification and displacement, urban spectacles, and urbanism with particular attention to Asian cities. His books include Planetary Gentrification (Polity, 2016), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (Routledge, 2021), and The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (Routledge, forthcoming). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and is also a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation.