The Battle Box - History

History

Given its position in the western Pacific, Singapore had long been recognised as being strategically important for the Royal Navy in order to counter the growing influence of the Japanese, who were regarded as being the logical threat to Britain’s interests in the Far East and the Pacific. To counter this, the Admiralty devised the Singapore strategy, which required a well equipped naval base. Accordingly, the Singapore Naval Base was constructed on the north shore of Singapore Island. The base, and its associated defences, required a large British military presence on the island.

Fort Canning was used by the British army as their headquarters in Singapore, with a number of buildings built for this purpose in the 1920s. However, the lack of a headquarters combining all three services present in Singapore - the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force - was appreciated in 1936 by the then Colonel Arthur Percival, the Chief of Staff to General Dobbie, 'General Officer Commanding, Malaya'. To remedy this, a Combined Operations Headquarters was proposed for Fort Canning.

Read more about this topic:  The Battle Box

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)

    When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.
    William James (1842–1910)

    All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)