Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor

This academic piece looks at what has caused bouts of mass political violence lasting for long periods in Southeast Asia by digging up the troubled past of a young nation

By Peter Gordon 

Douglas Kammen has written a detailed and at times fascinating narrative of Maubara, an obscure outpost in the remote former Portuguese colony of East Timor, wrapped in a somewhat less approachable academic discussion of mass violence.

Maubara doesn't emerge into the historical record until 1726 when it was mentioned in the context of assistance provided by the local ruler to the Portuguese in putting down a rebellion. It passed into Dutch hands soon after – the Portuguese only having a tenuous hold on Timor in the 18th century–and back to the Portuguese again in the mid-19th century.

With such records as exist, Kammen has reconstructed the history of the leading families which is both interesting for its own sake, but also for what this inside-out view of the period says about Portuguese colonialism in the far-flung corners of the Empire. Presence was very thin and they ruled until the 20th century in an almost feudal manner. Kammen calls Timor a Vassal state – governed largely through local kings, queens and regional rulers – terms that seems hyperbolic under the circumstances. It was a messy system and evidently a source of instability.

Kammen provides blow-by-blow accounts of various uprisings which can have a certain novel quality. Here is an excerpt: "Portuguese troops had surrounded Maubute at Fatubuikaren and he was again ordered to surrender. According to one oral account, Maubute told the commander, 'I will not surrender. I will not go with you to Dili. I do not want the foreigners [malae] here because this land belongs to us, not the white people.' The Portuguese commander then drew his sword and struck Maubute's neck, but the sword did not cut him. Maubute spoke again: 'Rather than surrender, I will give you my sword,' he said. Wielding the rebel's own weapon, the Portuguese commander beheaded Maubute. The severed head was taken back to Dili, where it was said to have been stored in a large jar of formaldehyde in a government office building."

This evocative imagery aside, these incidents, while looming large in the local consciousness, must have been pretty minor affairs by European or Chinese standards.

It was not until the 1890s that Portugal attempted to "bring the entire territory and population under Portuguese control." The advent of the Republic in 1910 ironically tightened the colonial yoke. Poll taxes, intensive cultivation of coffee and forced labor all "saw sharp increases". In spite of Portuguese neutrality, East Timor endured a brutal Japanese occupation during World War II.

This sorry tale continues up through the perhaps better-known period of the brutal Indonesian invasion and occupation after the Portuguese pulled out in in the mid-1970s. Maubara was where the infamous pro-Indonesian militia Besi Merah Putih was established.

The stated academic purpose of this book is not, however, the narrative, but rather a data point in the study of mass violence. "Why does violence recur in some places, over long periods of times?" asks the back cover. The actual discussion of this subject and Maubara's place in a larger theory occupies only a dozen or so pages; perhaps those who are familiar with the "broader literature on mass political violence" would be able to slot the narrative into existing theory, but the uninitiated risk being baffled by the heavy arguments. Incompetent colonialism would seem like a reasonable default explanation for the violence. The claim on the back cover that this very specific study is directly relevant to explaining violence in places as far afield as the Caucasus, the Balkans and China seems a stretch; there is little in this relatively short volume to lend substance to the claim.

The value of the book, at least for a general reader, probably lies elsewhere. There seem to be few such accounts about or from East Timor. Exacting in the details, Kammen has succeeded in writing a compelling and evocative narrative. The story of a thin and often incompetent and brutal colonial administration, conflicts of interests and collaboration among the colonized, various degrees of cultural and social intermixing , a wrenching decolonization process and a precarious aftermath is, furthermore, one that has parallels in other parts of Asia. Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor is a reminder of the complexity that is Southeast Asia and of the elements of its history that can still bedevil it today.

Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books

in Caixin online - Reprinted with permission from The Asian Review of Books