Secondary 2 Integrated Humanities

Chapter 10: Industrialisation in Singapore

Worksheet 2: Source Based Questions

Name: ______________________ Class: _______ Date: _______

Study the sources carefully, and then answer questions 1 to 4.

You may use any of the sources to help you answer the questions, in addition to those
sources, which you are told to use. In answering the questions you should use your
knowledge of the topic to help you to interpret and evaluate the sources.

1a. Study Source A.

What is Source A saying about the early industries set up in Singapore in the
1960s? Explain your answer. [5 marks]

1b. Study Sources B and C.

How different are Sources B and C? Explain your answer. [6 marks]

Issue: The Industrialisation of Singapore in the 1960s

Background Information:

Singapore attempted to solve her economic and social problems through

industrialisation in the 1960s. It was not an easy task for the new government of
Singapore as the young country faced many fundamental problems. Two men, Goh
Keng Swee (Singapore’s Finance Minister then) and Albert Winsemius (Singapore’s
Economic Advisor from the Netherlands then) were largely responsible for laying the
ground and adopting the right policies that made Singapore’s industrialisation
programme a success story eventually and a model for other regional countries to
follow.

1
Source A:
A picture of workers at a mosquito coil factory in Jurong, 1965.

Source B:
Excerpt from an interview with Singapore’s ex-minister, Goh Keng Swee, 1995.

Singapore’s economic growth suffered from our history. Singapore never had
a significant manufacturing sector under British colonial rule. It lived by
trade; collecting tropical produce from the region into its port and then re-
exporting to the industrialized countries. And on the other hand, buying
consumer goods from the industrialised countries and re-exporting them to
the countries in the region. So many local entrepreneurs* were good at
shipping, trade and banking. But not manufacturing. We had to overcome
this disadvantage somehow in the 1960s.

*entrepreneur – a person who establishes a business

2
Source C:
Extract from Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s tribute to Singapore’s ex-Economic
Advisor, Dr. Albert Winsemius, at the latter’s death in 1996.

When Winsemius presented his report to me in 1961, he laid two

preconditions for Singapore’s success. First to eliminate the communists,
who made any economic progress impossible. Second, not to remove the
statue of Stamford Raffles. To tell me in 1961 that I should eliminate the
communists when they were at their height of power surprised me.
Winsemius said that we would need large scale technical, management,
entrepreneurial and marketing know-how from the USA and Europe.
Investors from these countries wanted to see what the new government in
Singapore was going to do with the statue of Raffles. Letting it remain would
have a positive effect. I had always been quite happy to leave this statue
alone as Raffles was the founder of modern Singapore.