West Timor
West Timor is a region covering the western part of the island of Timor, except for the district of Oecussi-Ambeno. Administratively, West Timor is part of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. The capital as well as its main port is Kupang. During the colonial period, the area was named Dutch Timor and was a centre of Dutch loyalists during the Indonesian National Revolution. From 1949 to 1975 it was named Indonesian Timor.
The total area of West Timor is, including offshore islands. The highest peaks are Mount Mutis, above sea level, and Mount Lakaan, above sea level. The main languages of West Timor are Dawan, Marae and Tetun, as well as several other languages, such as Kemak, Bunak and Helong, are also used in Timor-Leste. The other three languages which are only used in the local area of the Austronesian language group from the Fabron branches are Ndao, Rote and Sabu. The most populous cities and towns are Kupang City with 466,632 inhabitants according to the official estimates for mid 2023, Atambua Town with 85,838 inhabitants, Kefamenanu Town with 49,589 inhabitants, Soe Town with 41,640 inhabitants, and Betun Town with 41,631 inhabitants.
History
Pre-colonial period
The population of Timor came to the island as part of the general settlement of the region. Anthropologists assume that the descendants of three waves of immigration live here, which also explains Timor's ethnic-cultural diversity. Australo-Papuans are thought to have reached Timor from the north and west around 40,000 to 20,000 BC, during the last Ice Age. The Atoin Meto, who dominate West Timor, are considered the descendants of this first wave of settlers, although their language is one of the Austronesian languages. The same applies to the Helong, who originally inhabited the region around Kupang and were displaced by the Atoin Meto to the far western tip of the island. Around 3000 BC, Melanesians came from the west with a second wave of immigration and brought the oval axe culture to Timor. The Bunak people in the borderland to Timor-Leste are among their descendants. The last peoples to migrate to Timor in prehistoric times were the Malay peoples. There are different indications as to whether the Malays reached Timor in one or two waves. The proto-Malays from southern China and northern Indochina, probably reached Timor in 2500 BC. They spread throughout the archipelago under pressure from the expansion of the East Asian peoples. Probably around 500 AD, Deutero-Malays became the dominant population throughout the archipelago and also reached Timor. The Tetum in eastern West Timor form the largest ethnic group in East Timor and are descendants of the Malay immigrants, as are the Kemak people living on the border.Recent cultural contacts of West Timor's dominant population, the Atoin Meto, are due to the interest of various Asian and European traders in the island's formerly very rich sandalwood resources. This sandalwood trade with Southeast Asia, which took place over centuries, did not leave Timorese cultures unscathed. All buyers of Timorese sandalwood have left their mark from a cultural point of view.
Portuguese
The first European colonization of Timor was in the 16th century. In 1512, the Portuguese navigator António de Abreu was the first European to discover the island of Timor in search of the Spice Islands. When the first Portuguese reached Timor, they found the population divided into many small kingdoms that were relatively independent of each other. The centre of the island was dominated by the Wehale kingdom with its allies among the tribes of the Tetum, Bunak and Kemak ethnic groups. The Tetum formed the core of the kingdom. The capital Laran village on the territory of today's West Timor formed the spiritual centre of the entire island at that time. Following the Wehale model, a second kingdom arose in West Timor, that of the Sonba'i kingdom.In 1556, the Dominican Order founded the village of Lifau, six kilometres west of today's Pante Macassar, to secure the sandalwood trade. Portugal initially established few garrisons and trading posts on Timor. Only when the threat from the Dutch increased did the Portuguese begin to expand their positions. Dutch traders first reached Timor in 1568.
To extend their control to the interior of the island, the Portuguese began a large-scale invasion in 1642 under Francisco Fernandes. However, this action was justified by the protection of the Christianised rulers of the coastal region. The previous Christianisation supported the Portuguese in their quick and brutal victory, as their influence on the Timorese had already weakened the resistance. Fernandes first moved through the Sonba'i area and then quickly conquered the kingdom of Wehale, which was considered the religious and political centre of the island. After the victory, the immigration of the Topasses continued to increase. They were mestizos whose ancestors were inhabitants of the islands of Solor and Flores and Portuguese. The centre of the Topasses became Lifau, the main Portuguese base on Timor. Later, the Topasses also settled inland at the present-day villages of Kefamenanu and Niki-Niki. They were given land by the local rulers and soon formed their own local kingdoms, such as Noimuti, and became a power on the island. Two clans, the Hornay and the Costa, at times controlled large parts of Timor, which was not without conflict between them.
Netherlands
In 1640, the Dutch built their first fortress on Timor near Kupang and the political division of the island began. Kupang Bay was considered the best natural harbour on the entire island. From 1642, a simple fort again protected the Portuguese post. Two Dutch attacks on it failed in 1644. For better defence, the Dominicans under Antonio de São Jacointo built a new fortress in 1647, but in 1653 the Dutch destroyed the Portuguese post and finally conquered it on 27 January 1656 with a strong force under General Arnold de Vlamigh van Outshoorn. However, the Dutch had to withdraw from the fortress immediately due to heavy losses after following the Topasse outside Kupang. For the time being, however, the Dutch sphere of influence remained limited to this region of Timor, with the exception of Maubara, which fell to the Dutch in 1667. Until the final conquest of the Portuguese fortress in Kupang Bay in 1688, the Dutch East India Company concluded treaties with the five small rulers in this area, the "five loyal allies". In the middle of the 18th century, Timor was divided into two halves from a Portuguese perspective. The smaller western part consisted of the province of with 16 local kingdoms and was controlled by the Topasses. The eastern half was the province of Belu and consisted of 46 kingdoms. Three times the Topasses also tried to expel the Dutch from Timor. However, when an attack by the Portuguese and Topasses on Kupang ended in disaster in 1749, despite superior numbers, the rule of both in West Timor collapsed. At the Battle of Penfui, Capitão-Mor Gaspar da Costa and many other Topasse leaders were killed. A total of 40,000 warriors of the Topasses and their allies are said to have perished. As a result of the defeat, the rule of the Portuguese and Topasses in West Timor collapsed.In April 1751, Liurais of Servião rose up; according to one source, Gaspar only met his death here. In 1752, the Dutch attacked the Amarasi Kingdom and the Topasse Kingdom of Noimuti. This attack was led by the German Hans Albrecht von Plüskow, who was the Dutch commander of Kupang. He was to be killed by a Topasse assassination plot in Lifau in 1761. The Dutch also used this campaign to hunt slaves to serve the needs of the plantations in the Moluccas. In 1752, the Bishop of Malacca branded the Dutch trade in slaves, which were also sold to Chinese and Arabs, as a crime that would lead to excommunication for Catholics.
In 1755, the Dutch East India Company sent John Andrew Paravicini to negotiate treaties with rulers in several of the Lesser Sunda Islands. In 1756, 48 Lesser Kings of Solor, Roti, Sawu, Sumba and much of West Timor made alliances with the VOC. This was the beginning of Dutch rule in what is now Indonesian West Timor. Among them was a certain Jacinto Correa, King of Wewiku-Wehale and Grand Prince of Belu, who also signed the dubious Treaty of Paravicini on behalf of 27 territories dependent on him in central Timor. Fortunately for the Portuguese, Wehale was no longer powerful enough to pull all the local rulers over to the side of the Dutch. Thus, the eastern former vassals of Wehale remained under the flag of Portugal, while Wehale itself fell under Dutch rule.
On 11 August 1769, the Portuguese governor António José Teles de Meneses was forced to leave Lifau by the Topasses. The new capital of the Portuguese on Timor became Dili in the east of the island. The Topaz Francisco da Hornay offered Lifau to the Dutch, but after careful consideration they refused.
However, Dutch power remained limited in the west and was primarily in the hands of their Timorese allies. In 1681, the Dutch conquered the western island of Roti, from where slaves were subsequently brought to Timor. The Dutch also recruited soldiers for their army there and built schools after the local ruler converted to Christianity in 1729. The Rotinese people became a well-educated elite. To use them as a counterweight to the Timorese, the Dutch encouraged their immigration to West Timor, so that they are still present here today.
But the Dutch also had to contend with rebellions in the 1750s and 1780s. The worst was the renewed loss of Greater Sonba'i. The ruler, Kau Sonbai, openly broke with the Dutch from 1783, left Kupang and re-established Sonba'i as an independent inland kingdom, constantly pitting Dutch and Portuguese against each other. Little Sonbai remained under Dutch control. The reason for the rebellions was probably the deficiencies in the administration of the VOC, which now became openly apparent with the expansion of the domain. After 1733, the VOC had an acute shortage of personnel due to malaria epidemics in Batavia. The situation was even worse in Kupang, where mortality among Europeans was particularly high due to malaria. Paravicini, of all people, who had praised the VOC so much in his treaty, described their personnel as bad, dishonest, greedy, cruel and disobedience would run rampant with him. They forced local rulers to buy goods at outrageous prices and Opperhoofd preyed on the impoverished rajas. The Timorese kingdoms were forced to send troops and 200 men annually to pan for gold in the mountains. Neither the military expeditions nor the gold prospecting brought the desired success. Instead, discontent among the Timorese grew. This was also because accidents during the search for gold could also be dangerous for the regents. A Dutchman reported in 1777, when five gold mines had collapsed, that relatives of the victims could take revenge on the rulers who had sent them to search for gold. There were also problems with corruption and also with the Mardijkers, the Dutch equivalent of the Topasse, but most of whom had not adopted the Christian faith. They were seen as an arrogant group that sought to expand their influence in the region.
File:UvA-BC 300.144 - Siboga - Noimini-bocht op het eiland Timor.jpg|thumb|Noimini Bay on the south coast of West Timor. Photo of the Siboga expedition by Max Wilhelm Carl Weber.
William Bligh reached Kupang with his faithful in 1789 after being marooned at sea during the mutiny on the Bounty.
In 1790, a rebellion in Sonba'i and Maubara was put down by the Dutch, but the colony continued to be troubled into the 19th century and the Dutch failed to bring the interior of the island under their control. In 1799, the Dutch East India Company went bankrupt and the Dutch government took over rule of West Timor, though without showing much interest in the economically uninteresting and distant Kupang. Trade was primarily conducted by the Chinese.
In 1797, the British attempted to occupy Kupang, fearing that France might establish itself here after the occupation of the Netherlands. However, the British were driven out by the Dutch commander with the help of local people and slaves. The subsequent collapse of the company meant that in 1799, the area returned to official Dutch rule. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British succeeded in occupying Kupang in 1811. In 1812, British control was extended to all of Dutch West Timor. Only after the return of the House of Orange-Nassau to the Dutch throne did the Dutch officially regain their Timorese possessions on 7 October 1816. As early as 1815, Dutch troops had unsuccessfully tried to bring the rebellious Raja of Amanuban back under their control. He was a Christian ruler in West Timor who had been educated in Kupang and had also visited the Dutch colonial metropolis of Batavia. In 1816, a second military expedition failed disastrously due to Timorese guerrilla tactics. Sixty Dutch soldiers died, while the rebels suffered only six casualties. Until 1915, the Dutch still had to send military expeditions into the interior almost every year to pacify the native population, mostly against the Amanuban Kingdom.
In 1851, the Portuguese governor José Joaquim Lopes de Lima reached an agreement with the Dutch on the colonial boundaries in Timor, but without authorisation from Lisbon. In it, the western part, except for the exclave of Oe-Cusse Ambeno, was ceded to the Dutch. Needless to say, the governor fell from grace and was deposed when Lisbon learned of the treaty. But the agreements could not be undone, even though the treaty on boundaries was renegotiated in 1854 and not ratified until 1859 as the Treaty of Lisbon. The various small kingdoms of Timor were divided under Dutch and Portuguese authority. The treaty had some weaknesses, however. One enclave without access to the sea remained in the territory of the other side. In addition, the imprecise borders of the Timorese kingdoms and their traditional claims were the basis for the colonial demarcation.
From 1872 onwards, the Dutch left "internal affairs" to the native rulers, who were thus able to continue unhindered with slave trading and piracy and to carry out raids on other places. In 1885, however, one of the larger kingdoms of West Timor, Sonba'i, fell into anarchy after the death of the Raja. When the Dutch governor and his garrison were not in Kupang, the colonial capital was even occupied by the rebels. The Dutch then abandoned their policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the rulers they controlled. Then Governor-General, Jan Jacob Rochussen, sent troops and placed the interior of the island under military administration. The rulers were again forced to sign a treaty in which they recognised the sovereignty of the Netherlands and were forbidden contact with foreign powers.
Only after three more negotiations between the two colonial powers was the problem of the final borders resolved. On 17 August 1916, the treaty was signed in The Hague that defined the border between East and West Timor that still exists today. The wrangling over this border between Portugal and the Netherlands and the views of the indigenous population as to whether they belonged to the West or the East has had consequences that extend to the present day. Various ethnic groups that were part of the Wehale Kingdom or its close allies were divided by the border. Today, Tetum, Bunak and Kemak live both in Indonesian West Timor and in independent East Timor. Traditionally, there are still thoughts among these peoples about a united Timor. There were conflicts between the different Timorese kingdoms, which already had their roots in pre-colonial times. Various reasons could then lead to the outbreak of armed conflicts between the Timorese. For example, the Mold and the Miomafo in south-central West Timor fought over gold mines between 1760 and 1782. From 1864 to 1870, Sonba'i and the Sorbian of Amfo'an fought over the rights to use some betel palms in the Kupang kingdom.
The Dutch, like the Portuguese in the eastern part of the island, had problems financing their colony. The captain of the Portuguese corvette Sa de Bandeira reported from his visit in 1869 that the Dutch could not return his 21-gun salute because they lacked guns and soldiers. The Portuguese captain saw this as an example of the Dutch way of "economic administration". In 1875, the German expedition ship SMS Gazelle visited Kupang on its circumnavigation of the world. Extensive studies of the surrounding area were carried out.