Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore, 1880-1940 (East Asian Social Science Monographs) [Hardcover]

James Francis Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1986

This book looks at the history of Singapore in the colonial period from the viewpoint of the Chinese labouring population.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fascinating reconstruction." -- Far Eastern Economic Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

James F. Warren is Professor of Southeast Asian History at Murdoch University, and has taught at Australian National University, Yale and Kyoto University. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 430 pages
• Publisher: OUP Australia and New Zealand (December 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195826744
• ISBN-13: 978-0195826746
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,711,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping people's history, August 3, 2011

By 

Carno Polo "adventure traveler" (Rome, Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore 1880-1940 (Paperback)

This is a well written history of the rickshaw in Singapore. For over half a century this means of transportation marked the daily life of the then British colony, only to be gradually superseded by motor transport in the XX century. Coolies came mostl from China and their immigration contributed to making the social composition of Sigapore what it is today. Their proletarian life tell us a lot about the ethical values, the politics and the economics of Singapore in that period (1880-1940). Gambling, brothels and opium smoking were part of a common lifestyle. The book provides an avalanche of details about individual episodes and this makes for excessively wordy chapters. The long appendices, with tables and tables of facts, might have sufficed to provide the historian's data. Overall a strongly recommended reading to get an important perspective of life in Singapore as people really lived it in the period covered. Amazing to learn that rickshaws were, for many years, the sole ambulances in the colony! The rickshaw puller deserves his place in history and (unlike what is written on page 326) there is a rickshaw now at the National Museum.