The Pirates of Singapore

Posted by otterman under Lifestyle, National History, Traditions
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Movies goers were probably tickled to see Chow Yun Fatt declare “Welcome to Singapore” to (presumably) the ‘pirate lords of the four corners off the earth.’ The trailer of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 depicts Singapore as pirate-infested and it was enought to set off a straw poll by The Straits Times Life! section asking “Is depicting Singapore as an 18th century pirate’s den insulting to Singaporeans…?”

Most ‘couldn’t care less,’ or felt it wasn’t true at all. Brandon Seah, in his blog post “The Pirates of Singapore” (in Commonplace Book, 01 Apr 2007) points out that “…pirates did lurk in our Straits even up to the early days of the modern settlement in the 19th century. ”

“The present-day pirate problem in the Straits of Malacca, often ranked as one of the more pirate-infested waters in the world, can be viewed as part of the heritage of indigenous piracy in the Malay Archipelago that hid and thrived in the innumerable islets and coves of present-day Indonesia and Malaysia.”

With the help of 14th-century Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan, and references to 19th-century Munshi Abdullah, William Farquhar and Sir Stamford Raffles, he sheds some light to the claim that will make the trailer all the more interesting! See “The Pirates of Singapore.” By Brandon Seah. Commonplace Book, 01 Apr 2007.

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