My Interest
I first became aware of The Straits Settlements when I was about 10, a friend of my maternal grandmother gave me some stamps amongst which were some from the Straits, these were sorted and put into an album and I even went to the library to look then up in a Stanley Gibbons catalogue. Somewhere along the line they were misplaced and about 5 years ago I started to re-collect the stamps. That gave me a thirst for knowledge whereupon I read Empire history books to find out what I could. Here you can find a very shortened history and a gallery of the stamps.

History of The Straits Settlements
The Straits Settlements was a British Crown Colony that was established in 1826, comprising of Penang (inc. Province Wellesley), the Dinding Islands (on the Malayan west coast, later returned to Perak), Malacca and Singapore under the control of British India with Singapore being the capital city. By 1832 Singapore had become the centre of administration for the area.

The Straits Settlements became a Crown Colony under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Office in London on 1st April 1867.

In the mid-1860's the advent of the steamship and the opening in 1869 of the Suez Canalin lead to the port of Singapore becoming a major port of call for ships plying trade between Europe and East Asia. At the time the population had grown to 80,792. It also became the world's main rubber sorting and export centre during the 1870's with the development of rubber plantations. Trade in Singapore expanded eightfold between 1873 and 1913 bringing unprecedented prosperity to the area.

Labuan, which had been made a dependency of Singapore in 1906, was constituted a fourth Settlement in 1912. (Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands had been made dependencies of Singapore in 1889 and 1903, respectively.

In the early hours of 8 December 1941 Japanese aircraft bombed the city of Singapore, it actually falling to the Japanese on 15 February1942, and was renamed Syonan (Light of the South). It remained under Japanese occupation for three-and-a-half years until the Japanese surrendered the colony to the British.

There then followed a period of BMA (British Military Administration) until the colony was disolved in 1946. Singapore with its dependencies became a separate crown colony, and Pinang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union to become the Federation of Malaya in 1948, now Malaysia.

The Stamps










Page last updated 1-Dec-2003