Sec 2 Ih Chap 10 Ws 2

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.

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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 reexporting 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

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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.

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