At the beginning of the twentieth century, Singapore was the world’s largest producer and exporter of canned pineapples. Dominated by Chinese concerns, the pineapple industry was a crucial source of wealth for several influential merchants in a colonial capitalist economy. Spurred by a new land policy, Chinese planters cultivated pineapples as a “catch crop” to reduce capital costs for rubber estate development. Combined with low-cost canning practices, the industry offered an inexpensive product to consumers in Britain and its empire, democratizing the taste of a fruit once regarded as a symbol of wealth and luxury. From the 1920s, however, the industry expanded northwards to the state of Johor, and it gradually became synonymous with Malaya rather than Singapore. Within a few years, pineapple cultivation on the island had greatly diminished, and an agricultural study concluded that the industry was “an ephemeral thing with no great stability”. Why did the pineapple industry in Singapore emerge and then vanish so quickly? This paper explores the history of pineapples in Singapore within its local and global contexts, drawing attention to how an unusual agricultural method consigned the industry to obsolescence from its inception.

Michael Yeo is an Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He teaches and researches the history of cities, coasts, and commodities in colonial Southeast Asia. Michael received his DPhil in History from the University of Oxford in 2021, and he is working on a book manuscript about empire and urbanization in Borneo.