Drinking Laxative Lemonade in 1930s Singapore
Over three years ago I wrote a post about an advertisement I found in a newspaper from the Philippines from 1940 for “Feen-A-Mint, the tasty chewing gum laxative.” Since that…
The “Lush Life” in 1930s Singapore
The “Lush Life” is a jazz standard that was written during the 1930s. In the song, the singer expresses how tired he is of the night life. He sings about…
On Not Rocking the Boat in Colonial Southeast Asia
The period of the 1930s was a relatively calm period in Southeast Asia. There are at least a couple of reasons for why this was the case. First, many anti-colonial…
The Daily Decisions of a Chinese Housewife in 1937 Singapore
“What’s a girl to do when she has so many choices?” That’s what I think I would have thought if I had been a Chinese woman in Singapore in 1937,…
Ah Chong and Tomato on the Tam O’Shanter
Whenever there is something in the news (and admittedly it’s not very often) about a ship running into some kind of trouble, it always amazes me to hear how international…
Lim Boon Keng’s Ambiguous Protest
The American decision at the turn of the twentieth century to prohibit Chinese from entering the Philippines, that I wrote about below, obviously must have offended some people at the…
Plague in Penang in 1899
In a post below I talked about how the simplicity of telegrams could hide the complexity of the issues that they were referring to. Today I found a telegram that…
Murder, Rebels, Refugees and Telegrams in Late-19th-Century Southeast Asia
A few days ago I wrote about the technology of “wireless telegraphy” and its use in areas of Southeast Asia under colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Today I…
The Sultan of Johor’s Place in the Victorian Ecumene
In an article that she wrote in 1989 on India in world’s fairs, Carol A. Breckenridge coined the phrase “Victorian ecumene” to refer to a transnational cultural world that “encompassed…
Natives in US Consulates in Early-20th-Century Southeast Asia
I was looking at some dispatches from US consulates in Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century when I came across a couple of letters, one from Singapore and the…