Nathan's research explores the relationship between the economic policy of free trade and changing attitudes towards racial hierarchies in colonial Singapore. The focus of the research will explore how native and foreign merchants who thrived under the policy of free trade were perceived in the colonial mind-set of both Singapore and the metropole. Nathan's interest in colonial Singaporean trade began during his Master's, as his thesis concentrated on the development of trade networks in the first half of the nineteenth century.
PhD
Supervisor: Lily Chang
Working title: 'Free trade and the breakdown of racial hierarchies in the British colonial mind-set, 1819-1869'
Expected completion date: 2019
Conference organisation
- Organising committee, Nature's Past: Historical Perspectives on a Contested Concept, UCL History postgraduate conference, June 2017