Race, sexuality and prostitution in colonial Singapore: reading J. G. Farrell's The Singapore Grip

Abstract

The brothel business flourished parallel to industrial and commercial growth in colonial Singapore during the early twentieth century. This article explores the British Empire's role in proliferating prostitution in colonial Singapore as depicted in James Gordon Farrell's historical novel, The Singapore Grip (1978). It argues, as the novel describes, that the British administration in Singapore played a vital role in promoting prostitution for its ulterior economic and political motives. Fuelled by a fallacious notion of racial supremacy, the British authorities in colonial Singapore compromised the lives – social, economic and physical – of girls and women inducted into prostitution. The article concludes with a section on the role and contribution of the prostitutes in the making and sustaining of Singapore, which has been overlooked in traditional, patriarchal historiography.