Of all countries in Southeast Asia, Singapore is most haunted by its social history. Historians of Singapore have frequently used social history to invert and interrogate the triumphalist state- and elite-centric narrative of economic growth and modernisation. These scholars ask ‘For whom?’ and ‘At what price?’ about the writing of Singapore history, and Singapore's official storytellers stammer.
Jason Lim poses such questions in his book, A Slow Ride into the Past: The Chinese Trishaw Industry in Singapore, 1942–1983. It draws from, and contributes to, a long tradition of Singapore's ‘history from below.’ Indeed, it is an homage to a pioneering work in Singapore social history, James Francis Warren's Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore, 1880–1940 (Reference Warren2003). Lim's book is based on his honours thesis, for which Warren himself was the supervisor. Moreover, its subject is a marginalised occupational group in the transport sector, similar to Warren's focus in his work on rickshaw pullers. Lim is clear in the introduction, “Social history of the Chinese community in Singapore”, that the book positions itself within the wider literature of Singapore social history, specifically, of its ethnic Chinese population in the decades after the Second World War. However, Lim also engages with transportation studies. In the first chapter he situates the book alongside other works on cycle transport in Southeast Asia, making his research another testament to the significance of mobility in the history of Singaporean society (Pante 2013). Moreover, by highlighting trishaws as a mode of informal transport, which is a commonplace in Southeast Asian cities, Lim emphasises the subordinate status of his story vis-à-vis ‘the Singapore story.’
Chapter 2, “The advent of the trishaws”, jumpstarts the narrative. The story begins in April 1914, when trishaws first appeared in the streets of Singapore (p. 14). What made trishaws ubiquitous though were a pair of colonial accidents. The wartime situation during the Japanese occupation made the trishaws a practical means of mobility, leading the Japanese colonial authorities to recognise and regulate this transport system. The subsequent British administration, having reoccupied Singapore, decided to ban rickshaws from the streets, paving the way for the emergence of trishaws as a critical public transport mode in the post war era.
Lim devotes the third chapter, “The trishaw industry as a ‘bang’-based trade”, to an analysis of the ethno linguistic dimension of the industry. The bang, or dialect group, served as a social network to mobilise labour in many industries in Singapore and oftentimes to ensure the monopoly of an ethno linguistic group over a specific trades. In the trishaw industry, the Henghua and Hokchia bangs became predominant as trishaw riders, as they moved away from pulling rickshaws (p. 33). Both groups were late comers to Singapore and were thus relegated to the transport sector (pp. 40–42). Nonetheless, trishaw riders earned higher incomes compared to those of other transport occupation groups, enjoyed flexible working hours, and even formed organisations such as the Singapore Hired Trishaw Riders Association (SHTRA) to advance their interests. The early post war period was the golden era for the trishaw industry (p. 55).
A clear point of emphasis seems missing in the subsequent chapter, “The trishaw industry and Singapore society”. For one, the chapter's title makes for a generic discussion. More importantly, the lack of cohesiveness of its contents gives it a semblance of being a convenient catchall for material that does not fit easily in the other chapters. Another source of concern in this part of the book is the lack of elaboration on the politics of the trishaw industry. For instance, there is mention of trishaw riders and owners having a prominent role in so-called charity rides to support state policies. This provides an opportunity to derive insights about the industry's political connections, yet the author does not extract much from this point (pp. 82–87). That the political angle is understudied is also seen in the previous chapter in which the left- and right-wing dichotomy used to distinguish the SHTRA from the trishaw owners’ group was rather vague (p. 56). Moreover, the outbreak of the Hock Lee Bus riots in 1955 makes questions of politics and ideology all the more crucial, especially since trishaw riders and owners came from the same sector as the bus strikers. How does one characterise trishaw riders based on the fact that they previously distanced themselves from the radical Singapore Federation of Trade Unions, yet launched a strike on 13 June 1955 (p. 58)? Did the bang-based nature of the industry influence the riders’ politics? Pondering these questions could have enhanced the author's overall analysis.
Fortunately, the following section, “The twilight years”, provides a counterpoint to Chapter 4 with a compelling argument about the industry's demise from the 1970s to the 1980s. Lim posits that the key to the trishaws’ downfall was Singapore's post-independence drive to attain a first world economy. Integral to this objective was a top-down urban plan drawn up by Singapore's politicians and planners that involved moving residents of the densely populated inner city to the “modern” multi-storey estates of the Housing and Development Board in outlying areas (cf. Loh Reference Seng2013). Relocated from the downtown, Singaporeans now relied on motorised transportation for their everyday mobility. Singapore's altered geography spelt doom for trishaws, whose viability depended on cramped yet intimate work and residential urban spaces that manifested in shop houses and narrow streets (p. 114). Though a tourism boom aided the industry (with the boom itself a reaction to Singapore's rapid urbanisation that consequently neglected cultural heritage), its positive effects were temporary and insufficient to avert a collapse of the industry (p. 116). On 31 March 1983, the SHTRA dissolved, marking the death of the industry (p. 120).
Unfortunately, the concluding chapter, “The trishaw industry in perspective”, is a reiteration of points from previous chapters, rather than a synthesis that elevates the main arguments, whether in theoretical or empirical terms. However, the 14 appendices that follow it provide tabulated data that are useful for future researchers, especially those interested in the social and transport history of Singapore. For example, Appendix 4 (p. 132) enumerates and categorises the SHTRA's membership from 1950 to 1976 according to dialect group, while Appendix 10 (pp. 138–139) is a summary of trishaw riders’ common traffic offences for the period 1949–1959. These appendices illustrate the author's extensive and intensive research. A total of 163 pages might make the book seem thin for a scholarly book on history, however, these pages are densely packed with thick descriptions of the industry, its workers and passengers, and Singaporean society.
