A Sanskrit lion city now tops the world in GDP per person
Singapore, a Southeast Asian island republic of one main island plus over sixty islets about 137 kilometres north of the equator, bears a name from Malay Singapura—Sanskrit Siṃhapura, “lion city.” Stamford Raffles opened a British entrepôt here in 1819; today it posts the world’s highest PPP-adjusted GDP per capita.
Early names hint at the island's trade. A third-century Chinese account seems to render Pulau Ujong, Malay for 'island at the end of a peninsula', and a Javanese poem of 1365 calls it Temasek, possibly 'sea town'. Around 1330 the traveller Wang Dayuan described a port he called Danmaxi. The Malay Annals say a Palembang prince, Sang Nila Utama, glimpsed a beast he took for a lion and founded Singapura; Portuguese sources instead point to Parameswara, who fled a lost Lion Throne, took Temasek and later founded the Malacca Sultanate. Portuguese raiders burned the settlement in 1613, and the island faded for two centuries.
Raffles landed on 28 January 1819 and exploited a Johor succession feud, recognising the exiled elder brother as Sultan Hussein in return for a trading post under the treaty of 6 February. About a thousand people lived there then; by 1860 more than 80,000 did, over half Chinese, many working pepper and gambier plantations. From the 1890s the port became a world centre for sorting and exporting rubber.
In 1915 Muslim sepoys mutinied on rumours they would be sent against the Ottomans. Britain then built a naval base with the world's largest dry dock, which Churchill called the Gibraltar of the East, but with the fleet tied down in Europe, Japan seized the island in 1942. Singapore gained self-government in 1959, joined Malaysia in 1963, was expelled two years later and became independent in 1965, growing into one of the Four Asian Tigers despite lacking resources or hinterland.
It has the world's second-highest population density yet abundant parkland, earning the nickname Garden City. English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil are all official, with English as the common tongue, and the 'Little Red Dot' label traces to a 1998 remark attributed to Indonesia's President Habibie.
Source: Singapore
