Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore for 31 years, first as a self-governing British colony from 1959, then briefly within Malaysia, and from 1965 as an independent republic, stepping down in 1990. Under his firm and often authoritarian rule the small port city, with no natural resources, became one of the richest places in Asia. Admirers regard him as the father of the modern Singaporean state; critics point to the curbs on the press, the opposition and civil liberties that came with that success.

Lee was born on 16 September 1923 in Singapore, then part of the Straits Settlements of the British Empire, into an English-speaking family of Peranakan (Straits Chinese) descent; as a young man he was known as Harry. During the Japanese occupation he narrowly escaped the Sook Ching massacres of Chinese men and later worked for the Japanese propaganda department. The swift British collapse of 1942, he later said, ended his belief in colonial superiority. After the war he studied law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating with a starred first in 1949, married Kwa Geok Choo and was called to the bar in 1950.

Back in Singapore, Lee made his name representing trade unions and students against the colonial authorities. In November 1954 he co-founded the People's Action Party (PAP), allying with left-wing union leaders such as Lim Chin Siong. In the election of 30 May 1959 the PAP won 43 of 51 seats, and on 5 June Lee was sworn in as Singapore's first prime minister. In 1961 the party's left wing broke away to form the Barisan Sosialis. Lee pressed for union with Malaya, held a referendum on merger in September 1962, and in February 1963 Operation Coldstore detained more than 100 opponents, including Lim; British records later suggested Lee was keener on the arrests than he admitted.

Singapore joined the new federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. Relations with the Malay-led federal government soon soured: Lee campaigned for a "Malaysian Malaysia" with equal treatment for all races, which Malay nationalists saw as a threat, and race riots in Singapore in 1964 left 22 dead. In August 1965 the federal prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, decided Singapore must leave, and on 9 August 1965 it became independent. Lee fought back tears as he announced the news on television.

Lee's government faced high unemployment, the withdrawal of British bases and an uncertain region. It introduced national service in 1967 and built up the armed forces with Israeli advice. It attracted foreign multinational companies, built a financial centre, set up a powerful anti-corruption bureau and paid ministers highly. Public housing, education, health care and a policy of multiracial harmony transformed the island, which he styled a "garden city". Between 1959 and 1990 income per person rose roughly fifteenfold and literacy from about half (in 1957) to 90 per cent. Singapore co-founded ASEAN in 1967. Lee also pursued social engineering, from a "Stop at Two" family-planning campaign to incentives for graduate mothers.

The PAP held every seat in parliament from 1968 to 1981. Lee's government restricted the press and public assembly, kept tight control of the unions, detained critics without trial under internal security laws, and Lee won large defamation damages from opposition politicians and foreign publications. He defended this as necessary for stability, arguing that "Asian values" put community before individual rights. China's leaders, especially under Deng Xiaoping, studied his model closely.

Lee handed over to Goh Chok Tong on 28 November 1990, by then the world's longest-serving prime minister. He stayed in the cabinet as senior minister and, from 2004, as minister mentor under his son Lee Hsien Loong, retiring in 2011. He died of pneumonia on 23 March 2015, aged 91, and some 1.7 million people paid tribute during a week of national mourning.

Our 1960 map shows Singapore as a self-governing British territory, and our 1985 and later maps show independent Singapore at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.