Imagine quitting your high-paying government job at 54 and spending the next 14 years on a massive road trip because your boss was a flake. That’s basically what Confucius did. From 496 to 484 BC, he and his crew were basically “stateless” and “lordless”—which back then was super dangerous. No boss meant no protection.
When Confucius left Lu at 54 to wander around China looking for work, he didn’t go alone. He had a squad. These guys gave up their jobs and families to follow their teacher into a super uncertain future.
When Confucius got back to his home state of Lu around 515 BC, the vibes were… not great. The Duke was still in exile, and three powerful families (the Jisun, Mengsun, and Shusun) were basically running a shadow government.
Imagine being a genius but having to work in a grain warehouse. That was Confucius in his 20s. He started out as a low-level civil servant, making sure the rice and millet didn’t get moldy. Later, he got promoted to managing herds of sheep and oxen. He wasn’t too proud for the “lowly skills”—he just made sure the animals were fat and healthy and moved on.
Every superhero has an origin story, and Confucius is no different. But his isn’t about radioactive spiders—it’s about a 70-year-old retired soldier and a teenage girl.
To understand Confucius, you have to understand that “China” wasn’t even a thing yet. It was more like a patchwork of states constantly beefing with each other over territory and power.
Picture this: It’s 2,500 years ago. You’re in your late fifties, stranded in the woods, and you haven’t eaten in a week. Your students are starting to lose it, and you’re wondering if your life’s work was all for nothing.
Who exactly was Confucius? If you’re thinking “just some old guy with a beard,” you’re missing the point. He was the most influential person in Chinese history, period.
So, here’s the thing: trying to write a biography of Confucius is a total nightmare. When Meher McArthur started this book, a scholar straight-up told her it was impossible. And honestly? They weren’t wrong.
So, we’re talking about Confucius. You’ve probably heard the name, maybe seen some “Confucius says” memes that are honestly kind of cringe. But here’s the thing: this guy was basically the original influencer, and he did it all without a smartphone or a single follower on social media.
And just like that, we’re done. Over the past two weeks, we’ve walked through the entire story of Singapore - from ancient sea traders to a modern global powerhouse. Here are my final thoughts on John Curtis Perry’s “Singapore: Unlikely Power.”
Perry’s final chapter is the kind that makes you sit back and think. After eight chapters tracing Singapore from ancient Temasek through colonial port to modern powerhouse, he steps back and asks: so what does all this mean for the future? Can this tiny island actually become the hinge that connects the world’s great civilizations?
The second half of Chapter VIII gets into territory that makes Singapore genuinely fascinating and genuinely uncomfortable at the same time. Perry covers the “Asian values” debate, the tight grip the government keeps on politics and media, and then the wild card nobody planned for: the internet.
Chapter VIII is called “Coming to the Present,” and it marks a shift in Perry’s book. We’re past the colonial era, past independence, past Lee Kuan Yew’s early nation-building. Now we’re looking at modern Singapore figuring out how to survive when the old playbook isn’t enough anymore.
The second half of Chapter VII is where Perry gets into the stuff that actually built modern Singapore. Not the political drama of independence or the merger with Malaysia. The physical, industrial, nuts-and-bolts transformation. Steel boxes on ships. A naval base sold for one dollar. A dead river turned into a waterfront district. This is the chapter where Singapore stops being a story about survival and starts becoming a story about engineering.
On August 9, 1965, Lee Kuan Yew went on TV, cried, and told Singapore it was now a country. Not because they wanted to be. Because Malaysia kicked them out.
When the British marched back into Singapore in 1945, they were not the gentlemen the locals had been raised to expect. A Malay observer described them as “often drunk and disorderly, consorting openly with women of the streets.” The image of the English gentleman was shattered. And honestly, so was pretty much everything else.
Churchill called December 10, 1941, “the worst day of the war.” Not because of some abstract strategic loss. Because on that day, the Royal Navy lost two of its biggest ships to Japanese aircraft. And with them, any illusion that Britain could defend Singapore.
Chapter V of “Singapore: Unlikely Power” is where things start going very wrong. Perry titled it “Clouds, Thunder, and Storm” and that really nails it. Everything we’ve been reading about in previous chapters, the trade, the empire, the comfy colonial life, it’s all about to get smashed. But nobody in Singapore seems to notice.
The first half of this chapter was all about Suez, steam, and how Singapore found itself at the center of a shrinking world. This second half gets into what actually flowed through that center. Tin. Rubber. People. Some came voluntarily. Many did not.
Chapter IV is where Singapore stops being a scrappy trading outpost and starts becoming a real global port. Three things happened almost at once in the late 1860s and early 1870s: Singapore cut ties with India and reported directly to London, the Suez Canal opened, and the undersea telegraph cable arrived. Perry calls this chapter “Empire at Zenith” and it’s easy to see why. British infrastructure basically supercharged Singapore’s growth.
Chapter III of Perry’s book is where Singapore stops being just a dot on the map and starts becoming a real city. And the story of how that happened is basically about people showing up, working hard, and some seriously questionable government revenue strategies.
Chapter II is called “Wings of Canvas,” which is honestly a great title. It captures this moment in the 1400s and 1500s when Europeans figured out long-distance sailing and suddenly showed up in Asian waters like uninvited guests who never left.
Perry opens this chapter with a line that stuck with me: “An equatorial jungle swamp provides an unpromising spawning ground for a world-class city.”
Perry opens with a memory from his childhood in 1930s New Jersey. A small wooden model boat, a Malayan prau, that he loved carrying around as a kid. His parents had lived in Southeast Asia in the 1920s, working on a rubber plantation. Their house was filled with exotic stuff: a tiger skin on the floor, an elephant-foot wastebasket, brass trays, opium pipes, batik hangings. For a kid growing up in suburban Maplewood during the Great Depression, this was basically having a portal to another world sitting in your living room.
I just finished reading “Singapore: Unlikely Power” by John Curtis Perry, and I have to say - this book blew my mind a little.