Have you ever wondered who founded the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) in Singapore in 1875? How about the life and daily snapshots of English missionary works in Singapore during…

Taj al-Salatin (The Crown of Kings) was written around 1603 in Aceh by Bukhari al-Jauhari and its objective was to underscore guidelines for just kingship and good governance in tandem…

Francois Valentijn (1666-1727) was a Dutch Protestant minister who arrived in the Dutch East Indies in 1685 in the employ of the Dutch East India Company where he served mainly…

Pantun Champor-Bawor (A Variety of Malay Quatrains) was published in 1908 by the local Batu Gantong Press. These quatrains were compiled by Chan Kim Boon (1851-1920), well-known for his Baba Malay…

One Hundred Years of Singapore was published to mark Singapore’s centenary. Earlier, in March 1918, the Straits Settlements government appointed a Centenary Committee under the chairmanship of George Maxwell, the…

A Vision of the Past contains selected photographs from what is arguably “the single, most important existing pictorial record of Southeast Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”…

A Vocabulary of the English and Malay Languages, Containing Upwards of 2000 Words was published in 1820 with the purpose of introducing a collection of common words to those whom…

Images of Singapore: From the Japanese Perspective (1868–1941) is a compilation of photos, books and postcards of Singapore before WWII. It was published in Singapore by the Japanese Cultural Society…

Daoyi Zhilue 岛夷志略 (Description of the Barbarians of the Isles) was written by Yuan dynasty voyager Wang Dayuan 汪大渊 in 1349. The book contains Wang’s personal accounts of the places…

Characters of Light, by Marjorie Doggett, is a pictorial chronicle of colonial architecture in Singapore and the first photographic book to document the Singapore urban landscape. It was published in…