ABOUT THIS BOOK

An analysis of the human-animal relationship in post-colonial Singapore.

Modern Singapore is the Garden City, a biophilic urban space that includes a variety of animals, from mosquitoes to humans, even polar bears. Singaporean Creatures brings together historians to contemplate this human-animal relationship and how it has shaped society—socially, economically, politically, and environmentally. It is a work of historical and ecological analysis, in which various institutions, perspectives, and events involving animals provide insight into how the larger society has been formed and developed over the last half-century. The interaction of all Singaporean creatures thus provides a lens through which we can understand the creation of a modern and urban nation-state, shaped by the forces of the Anthropocene.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Timothy P. Barnard is associate professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.

REVIEWS

“A lively and persuasive account of Singapore’s relationship with animals from the mid-20th century onwards…. Thoroughly intriguing and readable, Singaporean Creatures is also a worthy 'sequel' to Barnard’s earlier book Imperial Creatures, which explored Singapore’s relationship with other animals within an earlier time frame of 1819 to 1942.”

— Straits Times

“This is a thorough account of multidisciplinary research in the post-colonial world and capitalist social engineering on a grand scale.”

— Leonardo Reviews

"Over the past two or three decades, a number of fine scholars have produced important work on the environmental history of Southeast Asia. In Singapore, one in particular stands out: Timothy P. Barnard, who has taught for many years at the National University of Singapore.... Barnard and the other authors of Singaporean Creatures are to be commended for demonstrating that such reinstatement is not really necessary, for animals have been there alongside humans all along."

— Mekong Review

“The book’s main strength is its comprehensive coverage of human–animal relationships in Singapore. It features animals to be consumed as human food; small pests that are despised by humans; large wild animals that humans find vicious yet fascinating; and domesticated animals that are adored by humans as house pets or as ‘national icons’ in zoos and aquariums. The way in which the authors present the stories of each animal or institution is also very vivid and easy to follow…. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in human–animal relationships in Singapore.”

— Social & Cultural Geography

“I didn’t anticipate how much I would enjoy [this book]. I did not pick up this volume of animal histories edited by Timothy Barnard for fun, light reading, but it was – fun. Some of my personal favourites, accounts of – Twiggy, the escaped panther, a starved orangutan falling from a tree in MacRitchie and then rising to fame as Ah Meng the maternal mascot of all zoo animals, macaques killed by mysteriously poisoned bananas and dolphins disappearing en route to Chimelong, China. This is the stuff of fiction, and yet, it is not. Singaporean Creatures is so carefully researched that it documents Burkill, the director of the Singapore Botanical Gardens taking his hatred for monkeys so personally that he compared them with Dickensian characters.”

— SUSPECT

“[Imperial Creatures] is a highly readable, immaculately researched, and exhaustive study of human-animal relations in colonial Singapore. . . [Singaporean Creatures] convincingly argues that human-animal relations remain a potent lens through which to better understand how the meticulously curated and manicured Garden City of Singapore we know today came into being. . . . Taken together, Barnard’s two works are a leap forward in studying the history of animals and human-animal relationships in Singapore and, indeed, elsewhere. Reading against the grain, Barnard and his contributors document histories of human entanglement with non-human lives that have hereto been excluded and ignored. These books will most likely remain go-to sources for many years to come.”

— Animal History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Images
Introduction: Humans and Other Animals in a Singaporean Anthropocene
Chapter 1: Tilapia, Travel and the Making of a Singaporean Creature
Chapter 2: One of the Main Drawbacks of Tropical Living
Chapter 3: Mosquitoes, Public Health and the Construction of a Modern Society
Chapter 4: Fear, Fascination and Fantasy in the Cultural History of Crocodiles
Chapter 5: Too Much Monkey Business
Chapter 6: Songbirds in a Garden City
Chapter 7: Marine Life in Service of the State at Public Aquariums and Oceanariums in Singapore
Chapter 8: Nation, Nature and the Singapore Zoological Gardens, 1973-2018
List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index