One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

APPENDIX I

348

APPENDIX I

II. THE PRIVATE CORPS

Defence Psychologists, Bridge Watchkeepers, Legal Specialist Staff, Airbase Civil Engineer,

Naval Safety Engineer, Naval Combat/Platform Systems Engineer and Command, Control,

Communications and Computers Experts. Training began in March 2015 and since its inception,

had received over 1,000 applicants.

Given this development, the history of the Volunteers in Singapore remains a work in progress.

But as of now the history of the Volunteers can be broadly divided into four stages. The first was

when, endorsed by the authorities, they were inaugurated as a private corps strictly for Europeans,

to complement police and military resources in the event of civil disorder. The second was the

formalisation of the movement through legislation in the same capacity. Thirdly, its conversion

from a rifle corps to an Artillery formation and fourthly, its reconstitution as a multi-service,

multi-ethnic, though racially segregated movement which set the stage for full local participation

as well as expansion of the Volunteer movement to other Straits Settlements and the states

of peninsular Malaya. The movement continued to develop further thereafter, through the

tumultuous years of the 20

Century until it became a part, respectively, of the armed services

of both the confederation of Malaysia and an independent Singapore.

Riots by members of the Chinese community in 1846 prompted the European expatriates

in Singapore to consider raising a Volunteer militia, but no action was taken. The proposal

was historic because, had it been raised, it would have been the first Volunteer force in the

British Empire, including Great Britain, where the first Volunteer movement was instituted

in 1859. In the event, when the SVRC was formed in 1854, it was historically the first in the

British Empire anyway, if militias rallying to the opposing sides in the Civil War in England

were discounted. However, Britons had enrolled in a Volunteer corps called the International

Volunteer Corps in the Shanghai International Settlement in 1853 and even conducted

operations on 4

April, 1854, in the Battle of Muddy Flat. But as the members of the corps

had been drawn from various nationalities, it was not regarded as a British institution.

Chinese inter-community riots broke out again in Singapore in 1854, this time more

seriously, leaving behind several deaths and much damage to property. The immediate

cause had been a quarrel over the actual quantity of a ‘kati’ of rice but the root causes

were communal problems in China that tended to spill over to Singapore. On 8

July,

1854, following a well-attended Europeans-only meeting chaired by one John Purvis, a

proposal for a Volunteer corps was submitted to the Governor, Colonel W. J. Butterworth

with 61 signatures. The Governor General in India had apparently initiated the proposal,

thereby ensuring Butterworth’s concurrence.

The mission of the corps was to assist the

police in internal security and to resist foreign invasion. Butterworth was requested to set

out rules and regulations for the corps.

The corps was inaugurated later that year as the