What if Singapore remained Portuguese?

[Othniel]

As the title says, what if the Portuguese had remained in control of Singapore, or many of their other Eastern Asian possesions? What effect would that have in the 500 minus years that this takes place in?

[arctic warrior]

The British might have turned to Penang for their Far East naval base. Read somewhere that would be a much better place than Singapore. Then Singapore would not be a Japanese objective in WWII, but Malaya would still.

[Flocculencio]

As the title says, what if the Portuguese had remained in control of Singapore, or many of their other Eastern Asian possesions? What effect would that have in the 500 minus years that this takes place in?

Err...it was never Portugese.

You may be thinking of Malacca.

[Othniel]

Err...it was never Portugese.

You may be thinking of Malacca.
It was Portuguese in 1526, or they at least held trading rights there until they burnt it down in 1617 during the Malay-Portugal Wars. Melaka was Portuguese from 1511 to 1641.

[Flocculencio]

It was Portuguese in 1526, or they at least held trading rights there until they burnt it down in 1617 during the Malay-Portugal Wars. Melaka was Portuguese from 1511 to 1641.

Uh...no offence but as you know I'm Singaporean and I know for a fact that although they may have had trading rights there, Singapore was nothing more than a fishing village until Sir Stamford Raffles came along. Malacca was the trade centre- Singapore was a swampy malarial island.

[Othniel]

Or prehaps it was just included as part of their possesion of Bintan

[Flocculencio]

That's quite possible but the fact remains that it wasn't a trading entre.

[Othniel]

That's quite possible but the fact remains that it wasn't a trading entre.
We do know that the Portuguese were in the region and had a pretty good control over it before their Union with the Spainsh. We have good knoledge of their opperations of that region. We also know that Portugal for a period of time claimed rights in that area, acualtly holding an island just 48 Km away till 1628. Given those factors to call Singapore a Portuguese would probably not be corect factually, nor technically, however we could say that in all likelyhood that it was influenced by the Portuguese in that area. A more stable Portugal might have been able to keep its influences in both Indian, and directly around the Malallaccan Straits.