Timor

Timor sits at the southern edge of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. Its name comes from the Malay word *timur*, meaning "east," because it marks the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Mainland Australia lies less than 500 kilometers away across the Timor Sea.

The island is home to over 3 million people and is split between two nations. The eastern part is the sovereign state of Timor-Leste, while the western part belongs to Indonesia. West Timor, which has about 2 million residents, is part of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province. Timor-Leste, with roughly 1.3 million people, was under Indonesian control from 1975 to 1999. Within West Timor lies Oecusse District, an exclave of Timor-Leste. For centuries, the island was divided between the Dutch and Portuguese colonial empires.

The earliest known record of Timor comes from the 13th-century Chinese text *Zhu Fan Zhi*, which calls it Ti-wu and notes its sandalwood. The 14th-century Javanese poem *Nagarakretagama* lists Timur as an island within Majapahit’s realm. By the 14th century, Timor was part of ancient Javanese, Chinese, and Indian trade networks, exporting sandalwood, slaves, honey, and wax. The Portuguese settled there in the late 16th century, and the Dutch, based in Kupang, arrived in the mid-17th century.

Timor was the nearest European-settled island when William Bligh and loyal crew members reached it after the 1789 mutiny on the *Bounty*. In 1791, survivors of the ship sent to arrest the mutineers—which sank in the Great Barrier Reef—also landed there.

The island has been politically divided for centuries. The Dutch and Portuguese fought over it until a treaty in 1859, though the boundary was not formally settled until 1912. West Timor was Dutch Timor until 1949, when it became part of Indonesia. East Timor was Portuguese Timor, a colony, until 1975. It includes the Oecussi-Ambeno exclave in West Timor.

Though Portugal was neutral in World War II, Australian and Dutch forces occupied Portuguese Timor in December 1941, expecting a Japanese invasion. This drew the island into the Pacific War but slowed Japan’s advance. When Japan invaded in February 1942, a 400-strong Dutch-Australian force and many Timorese volunteers fought a year-long guerrilla campaign. After the Allies evacuated in February 1943, East Timorese continued resisting, with little collaboration. The Japanese burned villages and seized food, causing between 40,000 and 70,000 Timorese deaths.

After Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution, the Portuguese began withdrawing from Timor. Internal unrest and fear of the communist Fretilin party led Indonesia to invade in 1975, opposing an independent East Timor. Indonesia annexed East Timor as its 27th province, called Timor Timur or “Tim-Tim,” but the UN and Portugal never recognized this. East Timorese, through Fretilin’s military wing Falintil, resisted 35,000 Indonesian troops in a prolonged guerrilla campaign. The whole island remained under Indonesian control until a 1999 UN-sponsored referendum, in which East Timorese rejected autonomy within Indonesia. The UN then governed East Timor until it became independent as Timor-Leste in 2002, with Falintil leader Xanana Gusmão as president. Political strife and poverty followed, though the UN presence was much reduced.

Since 2001, a group on the Indonesian side has reportedly sought a “Great Timor” state. However, there is no real evidence that West Timor’s mostly Atoni people—traditional enemies of the East Timorese—support this. Timor-Leste’s government recognizes the existing boundary.

Anthropologists identify eleven distinct ethno-linguistic groups on Timor. The largest are the Atoni in the west and the Tetun in the central and eastern areas. Most indigenous languages belong to the Austronesian Timor–Babar branch. Non-Austronesian languages are thought to be related to those of Halmahera and Western New Guinea, though some are so mixed that their origins are unclear. Timor-Leste’s official languages are Tetun and Portuguese; in West Timor, it is Indonesian. Uab Meto (Dawan) is the local Atoni language in Kupang and surrounding regencies. Indonesian, a standardized Malay dialect, is also widely spoken in Timor-Leste. Christianity is the dominant religion, practiced by about 90% of the island’s population.