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Timor is an island in South East Asia. Geologically considered a continental crustal fragment, it lies alongside the Sunda shelf, and is the largest in a cluster of islands between Java and New Guinea. [1] European colonialism has shaped Timorese history since 1515, a period when it was divided between the Dutch in the west of the island (now Indonesian West Timor) and the Portuguese in the east (now the independent state of East Timor).
The island of Timor was populated as part of the human migrations that have shaped Australasia more generally. It is believed that survivors from three waves of migration still live in the country. The first is described by anthropologists as Vedda people who arrived from the north and west at least 42,000 years ago.[ citation needed ] In 2011 evidence was uncovered, at the Jerimalai cave site, showing that these early settlers had high-level maritime skills at this time, and by implication the technology needed to make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna. [2] These excavations also discovered one of the world's earliest recorded fish hooks, between 16,000 and 23,000 years old. [3]
Around 3000 BC, a second migration brought Melanesians. The earlier Vedda peoples withdrew at this time to the mountainous interior. Finally, proto-Malays from 2500 BC arrived from south China and north Indochina. [4] Timorese origin myths tell of ancestors that sailed around the eastern end of Timor arriving on land in the south. Some stories recount Timorese ancestors journeying from the Malay Peninsula or the Minangkabau Highlands of Sumatra. [5]
The later Timorese were not seafarers, rather they were land focused peoples who did not make contact with other islands and peoples by sea. Timor was part of a region of small islands with small populations of similarly land-focused peoples that now make up eastern Indonesia. Contact with the outside world was via networks of foreign seafaring traders from as far as China and India that served the archipelago. Outside products brought to the region included metal goods, rice, fine textiles, and coins exchanged for local spices, sandalwood, deer horn, bees' wax, and slaves. [5]
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Oral traditions of people of the Wehali principality of East Timor mention their migration from Sina Mutin Malaka or "Chinese White Malacca" (part of Indianised Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya empire) in ancient times. [7]
Majapahit empire's Nagarakretagama chronicles called Timor a tributary, [8] but as Portuguese chronologist Tomé Pires wrote in the sixteenth century, all islands east of Java were called "Timor". [9] Indonesian nationalist used the Majapahit chronicles to claim East Timor as part of Indonesia. [10]
Early European explorers report that the island had a number of small chiefdoms or princedoms in the early sixteenth century. One of the most significant is the Wehali or Wehale kingdom in central Timor, to which the Tetum, Bunak and Kemak ethnic groups were aligned. [11]
The account of Antonio Pigafetta of the Magellan expedition, who visited Timor in 1522, confirms the importance of the Wewiku-Wehali kingdom. In the seventeenth century the ruler of Wehali was described as "an emperor, whom all the kings on the island adhere to with tribute, as being their sovereign". [12] He entertained friendly contacts with the Muslim kingdom of Makassar, but his power was checked by devastating invasions by the Portuguese in 1642 and 1665. [13] Wehali was now brought inside the Portuguese sphere of power but appears to have had limited contact with its colonial suzerain.
Timor is mentioned in the thirteenth-century Chinese Zhu Fan Zhi , where it is called Ti-wu and is noted for its sandalwood. It is called Ti-men in the History of Song of 1345. Writing towards 1350, Wang Dayuan refers to a Ku-li Ti-men, which is a corruption of Giri Timor, meaning island of Timor. [14] Giri from "mountain" in Sanskrit, thus "mountainous island of Timor".
Filipinos, known as Luções among Portuguese sailors, were recorded to have visited and settled in East Timor before Spanish colonization of the Philippines. The Magellan expedition recorded that when they anchored on the island, they witnessed Luções merchants who traded Philippine gold for East Timorese sandalwood. [15]
Beginning in the early sixteenth century, European colonialists—the Dutch in the island's west, and Portuguese in the east—would divide the island, isolating the East Timorese from the histories of the surrounding archipelago. [8]
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, known as West Timor, constitutes part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Within West Timor lies an exclave of East Timor called Oecusse District. The island covers an area of 30,777 square kilometres. The name is a variant of timur, Malay for "east"; it is so called because it lies at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Mainland Australia is less than 500 km away, separated by the Timor Sea.
West Timor is an area 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 (1945–1949). From 1949 to 1975 it was named Indonesian Timor.
Portuguese Timor was a colonial possession of Portugal that existed between 1702 and 1975. During most of this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Dutch East Indies.
The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, and north and east of Timor. Lying within Wallacea, the Moluccas have been considered a geographical and cultural intersection of Asia and Oceania.
The military history of the Philippines is characterized by wars between Philippine kingdoms and its neighbors in the precolonial era and then a period of struggle against colonial powers such as Spain and the United States, occupation by the Empire of Japan during World War II and participation in Asian conflicts post-World War II such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Philippines has also battled a communist insurgency and a secessionist movement by Muslims in the southern portion of the country.
East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. The country comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor and the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco. The first inhabitants are thought to be descendant of Australoid and Melanesian peoples. The Portuguese began to trade with Timor by the early 16th century and colonised it throughout the mid-century. Skirmishing with the Dutch in the region eventually resulted in an 1859 treaty for which Portugal ceded the western half of the island. Imperial Japan occupied East Timor during World War II, but Portugal resumed colonial authority after the Japanese surrender.
Great Timor refers to the irredentist concept of a united and independent island of Timor, which is currently divided between the independent state of East Timor and the Indonesian territory of West Timor. The concept of unifying the island has been raised since the mid-20th century.
East Timorese Portuguese, or Nusantaran Portuguese, is the variety of the Portuguese language spoken in Timor-Leste. It is one of the official languages of Timor-Leste alongside Tetum. As with other Lusophone countries besides Brazil, the Portuguese language curriculum in East Timor is based on European Portuguese, with some localisations in pronunciation. East Timor is the only sovereign state in Asia with Portuguese as an official language. There is a growing demand for Portuguese-language courses in the country, both at early-learning and tertiary levels of education.
The majority of the population of East Timor is Christian, and the Catholic Church is the dominant religious institution, although it is not formally the state religion. There are also small Protestant and Sunni Muslim communities.
Company rule in the Dutch East Indies began when the Dutch East India Company appointed the first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies in 1610, and ended in 1800 when the bankrupt company was dissolved and its possessions were nationalized as the Dutch East Indies. By then it exerted territorial control over much of the archipelago, most notably on Java.
Wehali is the name of a traditional kingdom at the southern coast of Central Timor, now in the Republic of Indonesia. It is often mentioned together with its neighbouring sister kingdom, as Wewiku-Wehali (Waiwiku-Wehale). Wehali held a position of ritual seniority among the many small Timorese kingdoms.
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor - of which the western half is administered by Indonesia - the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-western half, and the minor islands of Atauro and Jaco. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea. The country's size is 14,950 square kilometres (5,770 sq mi). Dili, on the north coast of Timor, is its capital and largest city.
Luzones was a demonym used by Portuguese sailors in Malaysia during the early 1500s, referring to the Kapampangan and Tagalog people who lived in Manila Bay, which was then called Lusong. The term was also used for Tagalog settlers in Southern Tagalog region, where they created intensive contact with the Kapampangans.
In Philippine history, the Tagalog bayan of Maynila was one of the most cosmopolitan of the early historic settlements on the Philippine archipelago. Fortified with a wooden palisade which was appropriate for the predominant battle tactics of its time, it lay on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, where the district of Intramuros in Manila currently stands, and across the river from the separately-led Tondo polity.
Liurai is a ruler's title on Timor. The word is Tetun and literally means "surpassing the earth". It was originally associated with Wehali, a ritually central kingdom situated at the south coast of central Timor. The sacral lord of Wehali, the Maromak Oan enjoyed a ritually passive role, and he kept the liurai as the executive ruler of the land. In the same way, the rulers of two other important princedoms, Sonbai in West Timor and Likusaen (Liquica) in East Timor, were often referred as liurais, which indicated a symbolic tripartition of the island. In later history, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the term liurai underwent a process of inflation. By this time it denoted any ruler in the Portuguese part of Timor, great or small. In the Dutch part in West Timor the title appears to have been restricted to the Sonbai and Wehali rulers. The rulers in the west were known by the Malay term raja, while there were internally used terms such as usif (lord) among the Dawan-speaking groups, and loro (sun) among the Tetun speakers.
Southeast Asia was in the Indian sphere of cultural influence from 290 BCE to the 15th century CE, when Hindu-Buddhist influences were incorporated into local political systems. Kingdoms in the southeast coast of the Indian subcontinent had established trade, cultural and political relations with Southeast Asian kingdoms in Burma, Bhutan, Thailand, the Sunda Islands, Malay Peninsula, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, and Champa. This led to the Indianisation and Sanskritisation of Southeast Asia within the Indosphere, Southeast Asian polities were the Indianised Hindu-Buddhist Mandala.
East Timor–Philippines relations refer to foreign relations between East Timor and the Philippines. The Philippines was actively involved in the United Nations peacekeeping forces in East Timor during its move towards independence. When several nations recognized East Timor's sovereignty, the Philippines began official diplomatic relations between the two governments with the establishment of an embassy in Dili and East Timor established its embassy in Pasig.
Luso-Asians are Eurasian people whose ethnicity is partially or wholly Portuguese and ancestrally are based in or hail primarily from Portugal, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. They historically came under the cultural and multi-ethnic sway of the Portuguese Empire in the East and retain certain aspects of the Portuguese language, Roman Catholic faith, and Latin cultural practices, including internal and external architecture, art, and cuisine that reflect this contact. The term Luso comes from the Roman empire's province of Lusitania, which roughly corresponds to modern Portugal.
Chinese people in East Timor consist of Chinese migrants to East Timor and their descendants. The Chinese minority is a small proportion of the East Timorese population and most are Hakka and a small number of Cantonese within the populace. Many Chinese left during the mid-1970s.