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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.
Kupang, formerly known as Koepang or Coupang, is the capital of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. At the 2020 Census, it had a population of 442,758; the official estimate as of mid-2023 was 466,632. It is the largest city and port on the island of Timor, and is a part of the Timor Leste–Indonesia–Australia Growth Triangle free trade zone. Geographically, Kupang is the southernmost city in Indonesia.
Amabi was a traditional principality in West Timor in the currently East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. From at least the 17th century to 1917, Amabi played a role in the rivalries between the Portuguese and Dutch colonials on Timor Island.
Sonbai was an Indonesian princely dynasty that reigned over various parts of West Timor from at least the 17th century until the 1950s. It was known as the most prestigious princedom of the Atoni people of West Timor, and is the subject of many myths and stories.
Topasses were a group of people led by the two powerful families – Da Costa and Hornay – that resided in Oecussi and Flores. The Da Costa families were descendants of Portuguese Jewish merchants and Hornay were Dutch.
Gaspar da Costa was the leader or tenente geral of the Portuguese-speaking Topasses, a Eurasian group that dominated much of the politics on Timor in the early modern period. He was largely responsible for the dramatic collapse of Portuguese power in West Timor, a process that laid the foundations for the modern division of Timor in an Indonesian and an independent part.
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.
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.
Amanuban was a traditional princedom in West Timor, Indonesia. It lay in the regency (kabupaten) Timor Tengah Selatan. In the late colonial period, according to an estimate in 1930, Amanuban covered 2,075 square kilometers. The centre of the princedom since the 19th century was Niki-Niki. The population belongs to the Atoni group. Today they are predominantly Protestants, with a significant Catholic minority and some Muslims.
Amanatun was an Atoni princedom situated in what is today Indonesian West Timor, which existed up to 1962. It was also known as the princedom of Onam. The area once included one of the best ports where the commercially important sandalwood was loaded on Dutch and Portuguese ships.
Sonbai Kecil or Lesser Sonbai was an Atoni princedom in West Timor, now included in Indonesia. It existed from 1658 to 1917, when it merged into a colonial creation, the zelfbesturend landschap Kupang.
Amarasi was a traditional princedom in West Timor, in present-day Indonesia. It had an important role in the political history of Timor during the 17th and 18th century, being a client state of the Portuguese colonialists, and later subjected to the Netherlands East Indies.
Amarasi is a Central Malayo-Polynesian language of West Timor, and is spoken by the Amarasi. The Amarasi language has about 80,000 native speakers, with four main dialects called Ro'is, Kotos, Tais Nonof, and Ketun, though many differences exist between individual villages. It uses Subject-Object-Verb grammar structure. Speakers are interspersed with those of Helong.
Portuguese Indonesians are native Indonesians with Portuguese ancestry or have had adopted Portuguese customs and some practices such as religion.
Sinhalese–Portuguese conflicts refers to the series of armed engagements that took place from 1518 to 1658 in Sri Lanka between the native Sinhalese kingdoms and the Portuguese Empire. It spanned from the Transitional to the Kandyan periods of Sri Lankan history. A combination of political and military moves gained the Portuguese control over most of the island, but their invasion of the final independent kingdom was a disaster, leading to a stalemate in the wider war and a truce from 1621. In 1638 the war restarted when the Dutch East India Company intervened in the conflict, initially as an ally of the Sinhalese against the Portuguese, but later as an enemy of both sides. The war concluded in 1658, with the Dutch in control of about half the island, the Kingdom of Kandy the other half, and the Portuguese expelled.
The Battle of Penfui took place on 9 November 1749 in the hillside of Penfui, near modern Kupang. A large Topass army was defeated by a numerically inferior Dutch East India Company force following the withdrawal of the former's Timorese allies from the battlefield, resulting in the death of the Topass leader Gaspar da Costa. Following the battle, both Topass and Portuguese influence on Timor declined, eventually leading to the formation of a boundary between Dutch and Portuguese Timor which precipitated into the modern border between West Timor and East Timor.
References
- ↑ H. Hägerdal (2007), 'Rebellions or Factionalism? Timorese Forms of Resistance in an Early Colonial Context', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 163-1, p. 18.
- ↑ H.G. Schulte Nordholt (1971), The Political System of the Atoni of Timor. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
- ↑ C.R. Boxer (1968), Fidalgos in the Far East 1550-1750. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, pp. 250-1.
- ↑ F.H. Fobia (1984), Sonba'i dalam kisah dan perjuangan. Soe; I Gde Parimartha (2002), Perdagangan dan Politik di Nusa Tenggara 1815-1915. Jakarta: Djambatan, pp. 360-1.
- ↑ "Sonbai Article". Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved 2008-12-30.