But our English is not the English Stamford Raffles brought to our shores in 1819.
The British East India Company opened the doors of the island to a cosmopolitan flood of immigrants - coolies, workers, merchants and entrepreneurs - to form a trading port and not to grow a community. People were settled into ethnic silos geographically set apart as much to avoid inter-ethnic hostility as to prevent a consolidation of the ruled against the rulers.
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