Late colonial women in a welfare world

ABSTRACT I sketch a case study of late colonial, welfare-engaged women in Singapore, in a world of imperial privilege, welfare exceptionalism and late colonial fragmentation. They participated in the shaping of their colonial world, but had neither the pre-war sense of belonging, nor the post-colonial clarity of being in another world. The article draws from an archival study of social welfare in Singapore, in the late colonial period from 1945 to 1965. If we are to reclaim the colonial heritage, their lives should neither be ignored nor assigned to a past that has irretrievably been left behind.