Between Empire and Nation: Lee Kuan Yew and the Making of Singapore’s Nationalizing State, 1965–1972

Wei Azim Hung, University of Cambridge

How do postcolonial elites repurpose imperial inheritances in constructing nationalizing states? This paper argues that postcolonial nationalization is structured through elites’ strategic redeployment of imperial vocabularies, institutional logics, and interpretive frames to address domestic fragmentation and national survival within unequal global hierarchies. Using Singapore as a case, I show that this process was driven simultaneously by responses to racial tensions and elite rivalry and by concerns over state viability in an unstable international environment. Empirically, the paper draws on a reflexive thematic analysis of Lee Kuan Yew’s post-independence speeches (1965–1972). I identify four interlocking discursive logics—survivalism, managed pluralism, vigilance within global hierarchies, and moral-institutional engineering—that structure Singapore’s early nationalizing project.

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 Presented in Session 39. Nationalist Projects, Transnational Solidarities, Colonial Legacies