https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367332586_From_Pasir_Ris_to_Pioneer_Singapore%27s_Mass_Rapid_Transit_MRT_Names_in_Relation_to_Its_Identity

Owing largely to its location at the base of the Malay Peninsula, on a key shipping route linking the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds, Singapore has been a commercial center since antiquity. But coastal contours did not foreordain Singapore’s ascendance. Its success as a global entrepôt (and arguably as an independent nation) owed to the ability of decision makers there to exploit the island’s geographic advantages to become central participants in, and beneficiaries of, the Anthropocene—especially the recent subperiod of this era that some environmental historians have dubbed the Great Acceleration. Drawing on path dependence theory, this article underscores how geography and contingent human decisions combined to position Singapore as a vital trade center in an increasingly interconnected world. As this process unfolded, Singapore’s accommodation of global trade propelled immense transformations of local environments, even as local decisions facilitated and contributed to environmental ramifications extending outward on a planetary scale. This article thus demonstrates that major ports might be understood as key nodes at which local and global environmental histories intersect. © 2022 Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History. All rights reserved.