The general response to the recent book The Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal by Augustine Meaher IV (reviewed in Quadrant, October 2010) has been less about disputing the findings, and more about querying the origins of the myth. The question has moved from “Is it a myth?” to “Where did the myth come from, and how did it evolve?” Perhaps the real question should be, “What undesirable effects has this myth had on our understanding of the world?” Many post-independence dictatorships that rose on a wave of 1950s and 1960s anti-imperialist propaganda are finally being challenged by…