As Singapore is the chief administrative centre of the colony, the governor has his principal residence here. Here also are chief offices of the various heads of the government departments, and here the legislative council of the colony holds its sessions.
The trade of Singapore is chiefly dependent upon the position which the port occupies as the principal emporium of the Fed erated Malay States and of the Malay archipelago, and as the great port of call for ships passing to and from the Far East. The ships using the port during 1926 numbered 15,977 with an aggre gate tonnage of 25,628,329 tons of which 7,516 were British ships with an aggregate tonnage of 10,977,421 tons. The retail trade of the place is largely in the hands of Chinese, Indian and Arab traders, but there are good European shops. The port is a free port, import duties being payable only on opium, tobacco, wines and spirits.
It is possible that Singapore was a trading centre in the i 2th and 13th centuries, but neither Marco Polo nor Ibn Batuta, both of whom wintered in Sumatra on their way back to Europe from China, have left anything on record confirmatory of this. About
the middle of the 14th century it was destroyed by Majapahit. In 1552 St. Xavier despatched letters from the port to Goa. When it passed by treaty to the East India Company in 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles persuading the sultan and temenggong of Johore to cede it to him, it was uninhabited save by fisherfolk. It was at first subordinate to Benkulen, the company's principal station in Sumatra, but in 1823 it was placed under the administra tion of Bengal. It was incorporated in the colony of the Straits Settlements when that colony was established in 1826. See also MALAY PENINSULA and STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. For the naval base see DOCKYARDS AND NAVAL BASES and DOCKS.