The Beginning of the End of the British Empire

February 14, 2016 | 14:04 GMT

Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival and his party on their way to surrender Singapore to the Japanese on Feb. 15, 1942. (Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia)

On Jan. 31, 1942, Allied engineers blew a hole in the causeway linking the island city of Singapore to the Malay Peninsula, hoping to slow the advance of Japanese Imperial troops down the coastline. The blast resounded throughout the city. As the story goes, 19-year-old university student and future prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew was walking across campus at that moment. When his British headmaster, passing by, asked what the sound was, Lee responded, "That is the end of the British Empire."

Japanese troops landed on the beaches eight days later, and Singapore was hopelessly surrounded. On Feb. 15, British forces were forced to surrender. Before the astonishing defeat, the loss of Singapore was unthinkable for Britain. Winston Churchill had called Singapore the "Gibraltar of the East," an impregnable fortress at the heart of the empire. Japan's surprise victory shook that empire and marked the start of an epochal shift — one in which the United States became the top Pacific power. It also marked the start of a period of near-apocalyptic violence in Southeast Asia and resulted in multiple intractable smaller conflicts that continue to the present day