The Battle for Merger

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [iv], 207. Laminated cream paper-boards, printed in black. Portrait frontispiece, 10 half-tone plates, b/w illustrations, fold-out holograph manuscript, appendices 1 through 12.

Presentation copy "to W[illiam] S[utherland] Thatcher, with affection & esteem. 30.1.62." Pencilled-in by the recipient to front endpaper, beneath the author's presentation inscription, it reads: "Read 26.4.62, W&S." The beneficiary served as Censor (now known as Master) of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where the author was admitted in 1947. Alex Josey, in his masterful account, Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years (1980), states that: "Mr Thatcher had a great influence on him, and they remained good friends and corresponded frequently until Thatcher's death in 1966." A couple of closed tears (pp. 37/8, 117/8), spine ends pushed-in, else a fresh, fine copy.

A series of twelve talks broadcast by the then Prime minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, over Radio Singapore between September 13, 1961 and October 9, 1961. In them, he sets out the case for joining Malaya, Brunei, Sarawak and Sabah in a new state of Malaysia. Lee's arguments did prevail and the Referendum on Merger, held the subsequent year, was won with an overwhelming majority of well over seventy percent. However, this experiment in multiracialism brought about on 16 September, 1963, soon after dissolved into acrimony and Singapore was asked to leave the federation by the Malaysian government, in order to forestall the likelihood of brewing communal rioting.

Reluctantly, on 9 August, 1965, Singapore was legally separated from Malaysia, and became an independent and sovereign nation. This set the stage for the remarkable rise of Singapore as a "First World" Asian Tiger, in the process rightly conferring on Lee Kuan Yew the moniker of the founding father of his nation.

Rare presentation copy of a seminal text in the author's vision to the man who helped guide his development into a world statesman.