Flag of Singapore
Present-day Singapore was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, who was looking to secure an English trading post at the Straits to circumvent Dutch dominance in the spice trade in the region. He found himself lucky the Dutch never bothered themselves with the island of Singapore, which had a natural harbour and a perfect location. Already by 1825, Singapore had grown to much more importance than Penang where the East India Company had established a trading post before. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1825 secured the Malay peninsula to the British and Sumatra to the Dutch. By that time the Dutch were already severely weakened by the Napoleonic Wars and the lack of population growth which limited its ability of establishing new colonies.
Singapore was a raging success from its founding and attracted a lot of Arabs, Indians, Chinese and Europeans next to local Malays. This melting pot would always have a different culture than the remainder of Malaya which eventually led to the expulsion of Singapore from the Union of Malaysia in 1965 over political disputes between Chinese-dominated Singapore and the Malay-dominated union.
Location of Singapore at the tip of Malaya.
The leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, saw the new republic challenged by land and housing shortage and economic difficulties. Yet he managed, though in authoritarian ways, to lead Singapore to become a fully developed economy with First World living standards in just a few decades.
At this moment Singapore is one of the main financial centers of Asia, next to Tokyo and Hong Kong. It is regarded as a safe haven for Chinese capital. Even the Clintons have moved some of their wealth from Switzerland to Singapore in the wake of bank secrecy laws being scrutinised by the US Government.
Currency
Singapore inherited its Dollar two years after independence from the Malaya & British Borneo Dollar. After the split, it remained in a monetary union with Malaysia and Brunei but Malaysia pulled out in 1975. Ever since the Singapore Dollar has appreciated versus most world currencies because of capital moving towards its banking system. In 1967 there were still 3 Singapore Dollars in a US Dollar, by 1973 this was 2.54 and in 2016 only 1.42. Only Swiss Francs have outperformed the Singapore Dollar in that period. One can say that Singapore is the Switzerland of Asia, forming a place where foreign capital seeks refuge in times of stress.
Coins
Singapore has 3 main circulation coin series. The first one dates from 1967 to 1985, the second one from 1986 until 2012 and the most recent from 2013. The second series initially had ribbons facing up, which might have been associated with a sad mood. To cheer up people using coins they updated the ribbon facing down which makes it look like the coin is smiling :-)
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/singapour-1.html
