The Straits Settlements comprised a group of British territories located in the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It initially comprised Penang, Singapore, and Malacca, and was formed in 1826. Unlike Malacca which was a thriving city with a substantial Chinese community, Penang and Singapore were relatively uninhabited when the British arrived, but Chinese immigration to both territories swiftly took place and on a large scale. For much of the nineteenth century, British policy towards the Chinese community in the Straits was one of minimal governance. They were largely left to order their affairs privately and this suited the Chinese, who tended to be aloof from the machinery of government and were also unfamiliar with English law. While there were many positive aspects of such private ordering, some negative features included the manner in which secret societies evolved and the treatment of coolies. It was only when the colonial government introduced strong measures that these negative aspects were ameliorated.

The article examines the uses of visual culture and visual representations of time in two major public anniversaries in nineteenth-century colonial Southeast Asia: the 35th anniversary of Singapore in 1854 and the 250th anniversary of Batavia (now Jakarta) in 1869. The authorities in these two major colonial cities, capitals of the British Straits Settlements and the Dutch East Indies respectively, made use of these occasions to celebrate colonial rule, but also to project specific and contrasting messages to their intended audiences. These messages were embodied in a range of visual cues, representations, and events throughout the anniversary programmes, including images, sculptures, decorations, architecture, theatrical performances, and balls. Analysing this range of visual materials and focusing on the fleeting and spatially specific experience of the ceremonies rather than durable material representations, this article shows that the two anniversaries embodied strikingly different conceptualisations of historical time and imperial self-fashioning: one broadly presentist and forward-looking, the other far more past-oriented. Connecting these cultural differences to the diverging historical circumstances of the two colonies at the time, the article argues that imperial visual culture, especially in relation to practices of commemoration, was both global and transnational in its re-employment of metropolitan models on the one hand and highly locally specific on the other, responding to needs that were specific to the time and the place. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.