Portuguese Timor

Before the arrival of mariners from the European colonial powers in the region, the island of Timor was part of the trade routes that stretched between India and China, and was an important link in the maritime trade of Southeast Asia. Large stocks of island fragrant sandalwood were its main commodity ^[2] . The first Europeans to arrive in the region were the Portuguese at the beginning of the 16th century, followed by the Dutch at the end of the 16th century. Both came in search of the legendary Spice Islands in the Moluccas . The Portuguese first landed near the modern Pante Macassar, and in 1556 a group of Dominican monks created the village of Lifau.

Over the next three centuries, the Dutch began to dominate the entire Indonesian archipelago, with the exception of eastern Timor, which became Portuguese Timor ^[2] . The Portuguese introduced corn as a food crop and coffee as an export crop. Timor’s tax collection and labor control systems have been preserved: with their help, people paid taxes at the expense of their labor and part of the coffee and sandalwood harvest. The Portuguese introduced the institution of mercenaries into the Timorese communities and the leaders of the Timorese tribes hired Portuguese soldiers for wars against neighboring tribes. Using Portuguese muskets, Timorese began to hunt deer and supply deer antlers, which soon became export goods.

The Portuguese spread Catholicism, the Latin system of writing, the printing press, and formal training in East Timor. In Timor Leste, two new groups of people appeared: the Portuguese and the topas (mestizos are descendants of Portuguese marriages with local residents). Portuguese became the language of commerce, church, and government affairs, and Portuguese Asians used Malay in addition to Portuguese. Under colonial policy, Portuguese citizenship was accessible to people who were sufficiently assimilated and knew Portuguese, were literate and professed Christianity, and by 1970, 1,200 East Timorese, mostly representatives of the aristocracy, residents of Dili or other major cities, had acquired Portuguese citizenship. At the end of the colonial administration in 1974, 30 percent of East Timor's population were practicing Catholics, while most continued to worship the spirits of earth and heaven.

In 1702, Lisbon sent to East Timor his first permanent governor, António Coelu Geruilo, in Lifau, which became the capital of all Portuguese possessions in the Lesser Sunda Islands. The former capitals were the cities of Solor and Larantuka. Portuguese control over the territory was especially weak in mountainous areas. Dominican monks, from time to time the Dutch and the Timorese themselves competed with the Portuguese merchants. Colonial administration control over the island was largely limited to the Dili area, and they had to rely on traditional tribal leaders for control and influence ^[2] .

The capital of the colony was moved to Dili in 1769 due to the attacks of the thapas, who became the rulers of several local kingdoms (Liurai). At the same time, the Dutch colonized the western part of the island and the surrounding islands of the archipelago - modern Indonesia. The border between Portuguese Timor and the Dutch East Indies was officially determined in 1859 by the Treaty of Lisbon. In 1913, the Portuguese and Dutch officially agreed to divide the island between them. The final border was finally established in The Hague in 1916, and it remains the state border between the modern states of East Timor and Indonesia.

For the Portuguese, East Timor remained little more than an unimportant trading post until the end of the 19th century. Investments in infrastructure, health and education were minimal. Sandal remained the main export crop, along with coffee, whose exports became significant in the middle of the 19th century. In places where Portuguese rule established itself, it was generally cruel and heavily exploited by the local population.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the economic crisis in the metropolis led Portugal to extract more wealth from its colonies, as a result of which the Portuguese power in East Timor significantly strengthened. In 1910-12, an uprising took place in East Timor that was crushed after Portugal sent troops from its colonies in Mozambique and Macau, resulting in the deaths of 3,000 East Timor residents.

Although Portugal remained neutral during World War II , in December 1941, Portuguese Timor was occupied by Australian and Dutch troops who were expecting a Japanese invasion. Thousands of Japanese soldiers occupied Timor in February 1942, and the borders of the Dutch and Portuguese were not counted on the island of Timor, when a single administrative zone was created here by the Japanese occupation army. 400 Australian and Dutch commandos trapped on the island as a result of a Japanese invasion led a guerrilla warfare that linked Japanese forces and resulted in more than 1,000 casualties. The Timorese helped the partisans, but after the evacuation of the Allies, Japanese punitive actions by soldiers and allied Japanese by the Timorese militia put East Timor in a very difficult position. At the end of the war, an estimated 40-60 thousand Timorese died, the economy was in ruins, and hunger was widespread.

After World War II, the Portuguese immediately regained power over their colony, while West Timor became part of Indonesia, which secured its independence in 1949. To restore the economy, the colonial governors forced local leaders to supply workers, which subsequently led to a collapse in the agricultural sector. The role of the Catholic Church in East Timor grew after the Portuguese government transferred the education in Timor to the hands of the church in 1941. In post-war Portuguese Timor, primary and secondary school enrollment increased significantly, although education itself was very low. Although illiteracy in the country in 1973 was estimated at 93% of the population, the small educated elite of East Timor who were trained by the church in the 1960s and early 1970s became leaders of the independence movement during the Indonesian occupation.

After the coup of 1974 (the “ carnation revolution ”), the new government advocated a gradual process of decolonization of Portuguese possessions in Asia and Africa. When political parties were legalized for the first time in East Timor in April 1974, three main “players” appeared. The Timor Democratic Union (UDT) first advocated for the preservation of East Timor under the protectorate of Portugal, and in September announced its support for independence. FRETILIN approved the “universal doctrine of socialism”, as well as the “right to independence” ^[3] , and then declared himself “the only legal representative of the people” ^[4] . The third party, APODETI , began propaganda for the integration of East Timor with Indonesia ^[5] , expressing concern that an independent East Timor would be an economically weak and vulnerable country ^[6] .

On November 28, 1975, East Timor declared its independence.

Nine days later, Indonesia invaded East Timor, declaring it the twenty-seventh province of Indonesia under the name Timor Timur in 1976. The United Nations , however, did not recognize its annexation. The last governor of Portuguese Timor was Mario Lemos Pires in 1974-75. Following the end of the Indonesian occupation in 1999 and the transition period under the administration of the United Nations, East Timor became a formally independent state in 2002.

The first currency of East Timor was Portuguese Timor Pataca (introduced in 1894), and after 1959, Portuguese Timor's escudo associated with Portuguese escudos was used . In 1975, the currency ceased to exist, since East Timor was annexed by Indonesia and the use of the Indonesian rupee began on its territory.

• History of East Timor
• Colonies of Portugal

• Dunn, James. Timor: A People Betrayed . Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1996. ISBN 0-7333-0537-7 .
• Indonesia Department of Foreign Affairs. Decolonization in East Timor . Jakarta: Department of Information, Republic of Indonesia, 1977. OCLC 4458152 .
• Schwarz, A. A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia in the 1990s. - Westview Press, 1994. - ISBN 1-86373-635-2 .
• Taylor, Jean Gelman. Indonesia: Peoples and Histories. - New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003 .-- ISBN 0-300-10518-5 .

• History of Timor - Technical University of Lisbon
• Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea; Conflict and Adaptation in Early Colonial Timor, 1600-1800 - KITLV Press 2012. Open Access
• Kenichi Goto, Japan and Portuguese Timor in the 1930s and early 1940s