Singaporean historian Thum Ping Tjin runs Project Southeast Asia at Oxford University. Back in July, he launched The History of Singapore, a podcast that covers the period between 1819 to 1965. He also is, incidentally, the first Singaporean to ever swim the English Channel solo. Here, he talks to us about that harrowing experience, about economic inequality in Singapore and the stories that shape the nation.  

I’m an academic. I’m not a social sort of person. I don’t go out there, I don’t meet people. I don’t really have my ear to the ground. I sit in archives and write and see patterns.

The podcast is an attempt to help us understand why we are the way we are today. Many of the events that happened 100 years ago continue to impact Singapore today, and we don’t realize that. 

What does it mean to be Singaporean? It’s the same debate we had in the 1950s as it became clear that we were going to be an independent country. 

Are we a racial country, or a multiracial country? What is the meaning and purpose of our government? What is the purpose of becoming rich? Is it to become richer? Or is it to take care of the people among us who are unable to take care of themselves? 

These are very legitimate debates about our future that people had in the 50s and 60s. It’s a debate we really need to have in order to set a clear direction for Singapore. Right now we’re just muddling along.

There are all these ideas that influence how we perceive Singapore today that are myths. By myths we don’t mean they are untrue, but that they are created stories. 

For example: in the 1950s, the mean income was 1,200 Malayan dollars a month, but the modal income and median incomes were the same as the poverty line, which was $100 Malayan dollars. The rich were so rich that they could pull up the median 12 times over.

In effect, you had two Singapores: the beautiful, colonial area with massive buildings that you can still see, and the massively poor kampongs. 

Today, 10% of Singaporeans live on less than $1,000 a month. But we have more millionaires per capita—some estimates say as many as 10% of Singaporeans are Sing dollar millionaires. So we are approaching a similar inequality that we had in the 1950s.

Another myth is the idea that Chinese people came to Southeast Asia and made it big. Very few people made it big. Most people just ended up working class or middle class like everyone else. 

But this myth influences how we think of race, how we think of poverty, and it feeds into all sorts of stereotypes about the role of the Chinese in Singapore.

This year, the opposition all said, “We are not trying to unseat the PAP. PAP has a lot of good people and they do the right things.” I think a lot of people said, “Well, then why should we vote for you?”

The next election will be a national one, rather than ultra-local campaigns about individual constituencies. Singaporeans know we’re a small, overcrowded island. Everything is national.

Tharman should be the next PM. People respect him. 

This “We’re not ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister” is nonsense. Who was our first Chief Minister? A Baghdadi Jew. I don’t think we do race the way Malaysia does race. It’s going to be less of an issue. People vote on competence.

My online presence needs work, because I’m depicted as this swimmer, when really that was 10 years ago.

I started swimming at a very early age, chiefly because my dad wanted me to be good at sport. He was a believer in “mens sana in corpore sano”—the Greek ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body. 

At Oxford, every other year, there’s a race across the channel versus Cambridge—a six-man relay team. I took part in that and had a great time. And I thought, “I’m going to swim the channel solo and that’ll be the end of my swimming career.”

I learned that no Singaporean had ever done it. And it was our 40th anniversary, and I thought it would be great to do it for Singapore, for my dad and for charity. 

It was the closest I ever came to dying, because it was so incredibly painful. 

You have to have a support boat. You can’t see France from the water, and the current is very strong, so you follow a boat. 

Four hours in, we hit really bad weather. I felt like I was in a washing machine. By the fifth hour I was exhausted. I thought, “I’m not going to do this.”

But if you want to give up, you have to go and touch the boat. That’s your signal. So I said to myself, “If I can swim to the boat, it still means I can swim that far. So let’s just swim to where the boat is and reevaluate.” But by the time I swam there, the boat had moved on. So I said, “Can I still swim to the boat?” And my body said, “Yes.” 

It got to the point where I was saying to myself, “Can I take one more stroke? Yes, I can take one more stroke.” The expectation was that some point my body would say, “No, you cannot take one more stroke,” and I would start drowning and hope the boat would pick me up in time.

The first time I realized that I was going to succeed was when I brought my hand down, and I hit the beach. 

Often you can’t see your goal or where you’re going. You’ve just got to go one stroke at a time and keep the faith. And the next thing you know, you bring your hand down and you’ve hit the beach and you’re there. That’s what keeps me going.

You can find Dr Thum Ping Tjin's podcast here.