Episode 133: The Divided History of Timor, Part 2

I’m back, and sorry for keeping you waiting so long! Today we continue our look at Timor, one of the larger islands on the eastern edge of Southeast Asia. This episode will cover the island’s history from 1661 to about 1800. As always, listen and enjoy!

https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/131966142/episode-133-the-divided-history-of-timor-part-2

(Transcript)

Episode 133: The Divided History of Timor, Part 2

Greetings dear listeners, for the 133rd time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! If this is your first time with us, for the past few episodes we have been touring the islands of eastern Indonesia. Most of those islands don’t get too many visitors from the outside world. The only eastern islands that do get many visitors are Bali and Sulawesi. Last time we arrived at Timor, a fairly large island on the side of Indonesia facing Australia. How large is it? Large enough to be divided between two countries. The western half of the island is part of Indonesia, while the eastern half is an independent nation, called East Timor or Timor Leste, depending on whether you prefer to use the English or the Portuguese name. Previously there was an episode all about East Timor, Episode #117, where we looked at what has been happening there in the 21^st century. Then with Episode #131, we returned to Timor and looked at both sides of the island, to learn what the island has to offer, if you go there as a tourist. Well, we used up all our time seeing the sights in that episode, so now we’re back to get a more detailed history of the island than we had before. We began that history with Episode #132, and got as far as the mid-seventeenth century before we ran out of time again. Of course, if you haven’t listened to Episodes #131 and #132 yet, you will find this episode confusing. Therefore I recommend you go to wherever your favorite podcasts are served, and listen to those episodes first. Don’t worry; it shouldn’t cost anything to stream or download them. Those of you who have already listened to them, come with me!

<Interlude>

Last time, we looked quickly at the human migrations to Timor before recorded history began. The most important thing to remember from this era is Timor’s relative isolation, compared with the big islands of western Indonesia. When merchants and missionaries came in from the outside world, they did not go to Timor, because that island was too far off the path to their destinations, especially if they were taking part in the trade between India and China. As a result, when Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam were introduced to Southeast Asia, they missed Timor completely. That is why elements of the original native religion have survived to this day, and why the main religion of present-day Timor is Christianity, while in most of Indonesia the main religion is Islam; the missionaries who eventually came to Timor were from Europe, not Asia.

Speaking of Europeans, we next saw three European nations send ships to Timor: the Portuguese and the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century, and the Dutch arrived soon after the seventeenth century began. Spanish involvement did not last for long. What I did not tell you last time was how Spain was persuaded to leave Indonesia for Portugal. Spain was interested in Timor because it was near the Moluccas, the fabled “Spice Islands,” a place which the Portuguese found first, but all Europeans wanted access to the spices that came from those islands.- Meanwhile, Spain had discovered the Philippines, and the Philippine islands turned out to be a good advance base for activities in the Far East, like trading with China, but if Spain wanted to be active in the Spice Islands, a base on Timor would be better. Thus, Spain put out a claim to the Moluccas, and fought with Portugal over their competing claims in Southeast Asia until 1529, when they signed the Treaty of Saragossa. According to the treaty, Spain would accept a cash payout — 350,000 ducats — to forget its claim to any part of present-day Indonesia.

Podcast footnote: For those not familiar with Renaissance currency, the ducat was the monetary unit of the city of Venice, a coin that was as widely accepted, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, as the US dollar is in today’s world economy. It contained 3.56 grams of gold, making a ducat worth $233.61 in US money at the time of this recording, and that gold amount was never debased. Therefore the money Spain received from Portugal in the treaty would be worth $81,763,500.00 today. End footnote.

Back to the recap. The Dutch were harder to drive off than the Spaniards, because the Netherlands had a more efficient economy, and they were determined to take the outposts in the Spanish and Portuguese trade networks for themselves. They succeeded in taking over the spice trade, and captured Portuguese outposts like Malacca on the Malay peninsula, and Elmina in West Africa. However, on Timor the Portuguese had the advantage, because there were now quite a few people of mixed ancestry on that island, with European (mostly Portuguese) fathers and native mothers. We call these people Topasses, a name which comes from the Hindustani word topi, meaning hat. They were in the habit of wearing European-style hats whenever they appeared in public, so the Portuguese called them gente dos chapeo, meaning “hat people.” Anyway, in the conflict between Europeans, the Topasses took the Portuguese side, becoming a force of armed men on the spot. After a few rounds of fighting, Portugal and the Netherlands agreed to a treaty in 1661, that gave most of the island to the Portuguese, while leaving the port of Kupang on the western end of Timor to the Dutch. Now keep in mind that with the state of transportation and communication in the seventeeth century, neither side directly ruled part of the island, except for the Dutch fort near Kupang, and the Portuguese outpost at Lifau; Timor’s kingdoms were city-states that remained under the control of native rulers.

If you are thinking that this wasn’t the last word on who ruled Timor, you’re right. On that note, let’s resume the historical narrative.

<Interlude>

After the initial fighting between the Portuguese and the Dutch ended in 1661, what the Portuguese had left in the Far East has been described as an “informal” or “shadow” empire, that included the Chinese port of Macao and a fuzzy zone in the easternmost part of Indonesia. It had to be informal because of logistics; with the mother country almost halfway around the world, transportation and communication from there could take more than a year, and Portugal only had a few people to send this far from Lisbon. Of all the territories Portugal claimed, islands like Timor, Flores and Solor were physically and psychologically on the very edge of the Portuguese state; they were not even listed as part of the Portuguese empire until 1681. And in the area, there were multiple administrations and law codes; the Dominican missionaries, for instance, governed themselves. The person who was theoretically “in charge” was a military officer, with the rank of capitâo-mor or captain-major. The captain-major was not appointed by somebody in Lisbon, but by whoever in the area had the most influence. In the mid-seventeenth century that person was the richest merchant involved in Timor’s sandalwood trade, Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly). The first four captains-major that we know of were white Portuguese, of course, but after the death of the fourth one, Simão Luis, in 1666, Vieira felt compelled to give the title to a Topasse, Antonio de Hornay, because he led the pro-Portuguese army on Timor, in the battles of the 1650s.

Meanwhile on the Dutch side, the Dutch succeeded in taking Maubara, a village on the northeast coast of Timor, in 1667. In the neighborhood of Kupang, the Dutch East India Company signed treaties with the five nearest kingdoms to Kupang, and this allowed them to conquer the Portuguese fortress in Kupang Bay in 1688.

For the rest of the seventeenth century, the Topasses were the most powerful faction on Timor. I believe I mentioned in the previous episode that two families among the Topasses, the de Hornay and the da Costa families, were rivals. Well, now on Timor, the rivalry between these families became more important than the rivalry between European nations. To start with, the da Costas, led by Mateus da Costa, did not recognize the authority of Antonio de Hornay while he was captain-major. He held the title three times between 1666 and 1693. This also made him the most powerful man in the Lesser Sunda islands; my sources describe him as, quote, “virtually the uncrowned king of Timor.” Unquote. The only place on Timor that did not recognize de Hornay’s authority was — you guessed it — Kupang and its Dutch fort. Using the power he gained, de Hornay drove the da Costas out of Timor and away from Larantuka, on the nearby island of Flores. Then in 1695 he died, and the da Costas returned. It was at this point that Portugal tried to strengthen its control over Timor by appointing the next captain-major, but the man they sent in 1697, André Coelho Vieira, was driven out after just a few months, in an uprising that was almost certainly led by Domingo da Costa, the son of Mateus, because after that he held the job of captain-major, from 1697 to 1702. And then until 1722, Domingo da Costa was considered the king of Timor; depending on the circumstances, he would either act as an ally of the Portuguese, or oppose their activities in the Lesser Sundas.

In a previous episode I mentioned William Dampier, an English pirate who also happened to be a scientist; he explored the world beyond Europe and plundered it at the same time. In 1699 he made a stop at Timor, and wrote that the natives acknowledge the King of Portugal as their sovereign and that they allowed the Portuguese colony to build a fort, which they call Lifau, while the Dutch have their own fort at Kupang. However, the natives would not allow either European nation to intervene in their local governments. Dampier also commented that the natives living in Lifau spoke Portuguese and were Catholic; they prided themselves on their Portuguese and Catholic heritage, and would have been very angry if anyone dared to tell them they were not Portuguese. Nevertheless, during his whole time there, Dampier only saw three white people, of which two were priests.

*****

In 1702, the Viceroy of Goa, Portugal’s Indian outpost, sent an official to Timor who was more important than a captain-major. This was the island’s first governor, António Coelho Guerreiro. He introduced two reforms that would have a lasting effect in Portuguese-Timorese relations. The first was the granting of military ranks, such as “colonel,” to local chiefs. This encouraged more trust between the Portuguese and the chiefs who held those ranks. However, the other reform did not get a positive response, because the Portuguese now levied a system of tribute, called the finta, where the client states had to pay a certain amount of trade goods to the governor. A tax by any other name will be just as unpopular, and the natives, led by the Topasses, resisted its collection. In 1705, after he had been in charge for three years, Guerreiro was forced to flee to Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s headquarters on Java, but the repeated attacks did not stop Portugal from sending new governors.

The Topasses were strongest on a part of Timor’s northwest coast. The name of this district is spelled O-E-C-U-S-S-E; I am not sure if it is pronounced O-ay-cusse, or Oo-cusse; my sources disagree on that. If you look at a map of Timor, it is an enclave belonging to East Timor, but separate from the rest of that nation, and surrounded by Indonesian West Timor on all sides but the sea. It is important to this episode because Lifau, the Portuguese base, is also located here. In 1707 Portugal sent two warships carrying troops from Macao to bring the Topasses to heel, but the Topasses, led by Domingo da Costa, defeated the militia and forced it to retreat to Lifau. This forced the white Portuguese to make a major concession; in 1708 they brought in Domingo da Costa as the colony’s second in command, making him lieutenant general or vice governor at Lifau.

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However, this did not end tensions between the Topasses and the Portuguese, who still tried to tighten their grip on Timor. In response to this, fifteen kingdoms united under another Topasse leader, Francisco de Hornay, and he started the next major uprising in 1726. The rest of the kingdoms stayed on the governor’s side. The resulting conflict, now called the battle of Cailaco, lasted for six weeks, from October 23 to December 8, 1726, and involved an estimated 5,500 men on each side. We have a report of villages being destroyed by the violence, and it only ended because the wet season started in December; there was no real winner. Afterwards the Portuguese did what they could to prevent another uprising. One of those actions was the opening of a Catholic seminary, by Portuguese Dominican monks; the Topasses welcomed this. By 1733, more than 40 kingdoms agreed to pay the finta, and recognised the authority of the Portuguese crown.

Now the Topasses turned their attention to the Dutch, launching attacks near Kupang in 1735 and 1745. Then in 1749, the current captain-major, Gaspar da Costa, tried to drive the Dutch off the island completely. On the plain of Penfui, he assembled a huge force. Some of my sources estimate the size of this force at 40,000 to 50,000 warriors, but I think 2,800 is a more accurate figure; what we know for sure is that the Topasses had superior numbers. Against this, the Dutch East India Company only had 23 European soldiers, plus a few hundred former slaves and warriors from around Kupang and neighbouring islands. Despite the imbalance, the Dutch won the battle. At least 2,000 Topasses and their allies were killed in the fighting. Among the dead was Gaspar da Costa. Equally important for the Timorese, the Dutch captured ten Topasse banners and drums, which were seen as the source of their power. When the Portuguese governor at Lifau, Manuel Correia de Lacerda, was told of the outcome of the battle, all he had to say was that da Costa deserved his fate. The governor had tried in person and with letters to dissuade da Costa from such a mad enterprise, but da Costa did not even bother to reply. As a result of the defeat, the rule of the Portuguese and Topasses in the western half of Timor collapsed, with many local rulers professing to the Dutch that they had been forced to join the Topasses. Incidentally, today Kupang’s airport is located on the site of the battle of Penfui.

*****

The victory at Penfui encouraged the Dutch East India Company to pursue a more assertive policy in the 1750s. Not only did they launch military expeditions, they also negotiated new agreements with native rulers across the Lesser Sunda islands. The military expeditions were led by the current Dutch commander at Kupang, a German named Hans Albrecht von Plüskow (I hope I’m saying that name correctly), while the diplomat carrying out the negotiations was John Andrew Paravicini. The result of this two-pronged move was the 1756 Treaty of Paravicini, under which 48 Lesser Kings on the islands of Solor, Roti, Sawu, Sumba and West Timor made alliances with the Company. Fifteen of those kingdoms were on the southwest side of Timor, so this marks the beginning of Dutch rule in what is now Indonesian West Timor. One of the kings who signed was the ruler of Wehale — you may remember from the last episode that Wehale was the dominant kingdom on Timor when the Europeans first arrived — and he still claimed that 27 territories were dependent under him. Fortunately for the Portuguese, Wehale was no longer powerful enough to pull the minor rulers of those territories over to the side of the Dutch, so the eastern former vassals of Wehale remained under the flag of Portugal, while Wehale itself fell under Dutch rule.

On another expedition, in 1759, the Dutch commander von Plüskow destroyed a Topasse stronghold in Animata, and then attacked their fort in Noemuti, where he took 400 prisoners and captured 14 cannon. This success persuaded seven more western chiefs, formerly Topasse allies, to sign a treaty with the Dutch. Next, von Plüskow proposed a comprehensive treaty between the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Topasses, that would settle the political situation on Timor once and for all. It did not come to pass because he was assassinated in 1761, by Francisco da Costa and António de Hornay, the leaders of the two former rival Topasse families; they had teamed up to get rid of an enemy who was a threat to both of them. After that, the Dutch scaled down their interference in internal Timorese affairs. Their next military campaign on the island took Atapupu, a town in the middle of the northern coast, in 1818.

Podcast footnote: Eventually some people with mixed European-Asian ancestry also appeared in the Dutch-controlled part of Timor. This isn’t a surprise. One of the lessons I have learned from history is that mankind is quite a frisky creature; from the stone age to the present, wherever large groups of people have migrated, they eventually had sex with the people they met in the new place. The presence of a few Neanderthal genes in modern man suggests that even people as radically different as Neanderthals could be bedtime partners for our ancestors. A few years back, my brother took a DNA test and claimed that some genes from Neanderthal Man and even Denisova Man turned up. If he is right, then I have genes from those cavemen, too! Anyway, the Dutch gave the name Mardijkers to these part-Dutch, part-Indonesian folks, but unlike the Topasses, most of them did not adopt the Christian faith, and they were never as strong as the Topasses. They were seen as an arrogant group that sought to expand their influence across the island. End footnote.

*****

Meanwhile, the Topasses continued their attacks on the Portuguese settlement at Lifau, and they managed to kill the governor, Dionísio Gonçalves Rebelo Galvão, in 1766. They were such a threat to the Portuguese that the next governor, António Teles de Menezes, decided to abandon Lifau. On August 11, 1769, the Portuguese administration and the population loyal to them, about 1,200 people in all, departed in boats and sailed 100 miles east. They settled in the town of Dili, and Dili would be the Portuguese capital for the rest of their time on Timor. That’s why Dili is the capital of East Timor today. Back in Lifau, the Topasses moved in, and one of them, Francisco de Hornay, offered the place to the Dutch, but after careful consideration they decided not to take it.

Before we move on, I will give a few words on the practice of slavery in Indonesia during this period. The Dutch, like the Portuguese, suffered from serious manpower shortages in this part of the world, especially after malaria epidemics struck Batavia and Kupang in the early eighteenth century. Therefore when the Dutch East India Company sent soldiers on military campaigns, they looked for slaves to use in tasks like plantation work in the Moluccas. Traditionally on Timor, slaves were mainly prisoners of war or people convicted of crimes like witchcraft. Compared with slaves in other times and places, Timorese slaves were relatively well treated. They were considered members of the family which owned them, they could buy their freedom, and if emancipated, could even be promoted into the nobility. Moreover, their master could not send them away from the island. After the Dutch conquered Roti, a western island, in 1681, they built schools there and brought slaves from Roti to Timor. Those slaves became a well-educated elite in the local population, and their descendents can still be identified on West Timor today.

However, as European control over Indonesia increased, slavery became harsher. In the eighteenth century, laws were changed so that masters could ship their slaves off the island; typically a few hundred slaves would be shipped to Batavia and Macao each year. Some of these unfortunate slaves would be sold to Chinese and Arab buyers. In 1752, the Bishop of Malacca declared the Dutch slave trade a crime, and that Catholics who take part in it would be excommunicated. The Dutch also forced the Timorese kingdoms to give them troops and 200 men annually, to pan for gold in the mountains. Neither the military expeditions nor the gold prospecting brought success. Instead, discontent among the Timorese grew, because of dangerous accidents during the search for gold. 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 looking for gold.

As in other places, slavery was ended gradually, in stages, starting with an end to the slave trade in the early nineteenth century. Officially slavery was banned in the Dutch East Indies in 1860, but this could only be enforced in areas the Dutch directly controlled. Elsewhere slavery continued into the early twentieth century. Samosir, an island in Lake Toba on Sumatra, is the last place we know of in Indonesia where slavery was practiced; there it was abolished in 1914. In the Portuguese-controlled part of Timor, slavery was also practiced, but we only have reliable records of Portuguese slavery starting in 1858, when they abolished it.

In 1790, the Dutch put down a rebellion in the towns of Sonba’i and Maubara, but their part of Timor remained troubled into the 19th century, and the Dutch failed to bring the interior of the island back under their control. In 1799, the Dutch East India Company went bankrupt and the Dutch government took over everything the Company had. That is a good place to end our historical narrative for this episode.

Finally, I should mention that at some point in the eighteenth century, Europeans intoduced two new crops to Indonesia, coffee and corn (if you’re not American, the corn is what you call maize). Both were introduced to Timor as well. Coffee is a cash crop, of course, and it became a new source of income for those who grew it, while corn made food production possible in places not suitable for growing rice.

Mutiny on the Bounty

Kupang was important to the outside world once in history, when the crew of a famous ship, the Bounty, was marooned in a lifeboat by the Bounty’s mutineers, and they survived by going to Kupang. The story of the Bounty has captured the world’s imagination more than once in the centuries since then. Poems, books, and movies have been composed about the Bounty incident, so there’s a good chance you already know the story. My favorite version of the story is the 1984 movie, “The Bounty,” starring Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. It has gotten high marks for historical accuracy, and excellent photography. If you know the story and want to leave the episode here, I won’t object. The rest of you, listen on . . .

In 1787 the British Royal Navy bought a collier, a ship used for hauling coal, named the Bethia; they refitted her for long voyages, and re-christened her the Bounty. They did it because Sir Joseph Banks, the scientist who went on the expeditions of Captain James Cook, had an idea: if a ship picked up young breadfruit trees from Tahiti, a recently discovered island, and brought them to the Caribbean, breadfruit could be grown as a cheap food for slaves. Banks also suggested that Lieutenant William Bligh, a navigator from the third Cook expedition, be put in command of the Bounty.

A luxury cruise this wasn’t. The crew lived under cramped conditions; Bligh gave up the captain’s quarters to provide a room for the potted breadfruit plants on the return trip. In real life Bligh wasn’t the slave-driver portrayed in the movies (a court-martial cleared him of all charges, after he got back to England), but the crew hated him anyway for his harsh punishments and foul language. Their attempt to sail around Cape Horn, an area notorious for its frightful weather, was especially hard on everyone. After fighting storms and winds blowing in the opposite direction for a full month, Bligh turned the ship around and sailed east instead of west; this meant a longer than expected voyage, across both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Finally, ten months after leaving England, the Bounty reached Tahiti, in October 1788.

They ended up spending five months on Tahiti, because it took that long to grow the breadfruit plants large enough to give them a fighting chance of surviving a long trip on the Bounty. Meanwhile, the crew discovered Tahiti’s famous girls, so they spent a lot of their time ashore, and few slept alone. Some men got native-style tattoos, and the first mate, Fletcher Christian, married a Tahitian woman, Maimiti. Ominously, tensions grew between Bligh and the men during this time; Fletcher Christian was a frequent target of Bligh’s hot temper and verbal abuse.

Naturally the men were reluctant to leave, after five months in paradise. Instead of trying to go around Cape Horn again, Bligh wanted to explore an uncharted part of Australia’s northern coast on the way home. However, the men thought this was a dangerous course as well; in fact, it was the last straw. Twenty-three days and 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, while the Bounty was in Tongan waters, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny. It was a bloodless affair; eighteen of the ship’s forty-two-man crew joined him, and among the rest, only Bligh resisted. The mutineers put Bligh and eighteen crewmen who remained loyal into the ship’s launch, and set them adrift on the open sea. Then the mutineers took the Bounty back to Tahiti, along with six non-mutineers they did not have room for in the launch.

Bligh’s job was simple, but it was not easy. He had to get back to civilization, and the nearest European settlements were on Timor. By traveling halfway across the Pacific in the launch, covering 4,162 miles in forty-seven days, with only a sextant and a pocket watch for navigation tools, he became a hero and showed his sailing skills at the same time. On Tofua, an island in the Tonga group, they tried to collect provisions, and the natives stoned a crewman to death; that was the only casualty they suffered. Next they were chased by cannibals on Fiji, and after passing through the Torres Strait, between New Guinea and Australia, they reached Kupang. From there Bligh hitched rides on several Dutch ships until he got back to England in early 1790, and reported the mutiny.

Back on Tahiti, sixteen of the men from the Bounty chose to stay there, though they knew that the Royal Navy would come looking for them, and Tahiti would be the first place they would search. Christian, however, decided they would be safer if no outsiders knew what island they were on, so he took the Bounty away from there with eight mutineers, six Tahitian men, twelve Tahitian women, and one baby. After wandering around the Pacific for nearly four months, they discovered Pitcairn Island and settled down there, burning the ship so that no one would find them too quickly.

Christian was probably the luckiest of the former mutineers, for only those with him on Pitcairn ever saw him again. By 1800, the only man left in the group was a mutineer named John Adams, and he ruled over nine Tahitian women and dozens of children. They were discovered by an American merchant ship, the Topaz, in 1808; the crew of the Topaz was definitely surprised to find an island of Polynesians who spoke English and practiced Christianity. Today Pitcairn is a British territory with a population of 56, according to a census taken in 2013, divided between four families descended from the mutineers and their Tahitian companions.

As for the breadfruit trees, Sir Joseph Banks still wanted some, so a second ship, the HMS Providence, was sent to get them in 1791. Now promoted to the rank of captain, Bligh commanded the second expedition. This time he brought nineteen marines to make sure there wasn’t a second mutiny, and almost everything went as planned. At Tahiti they collected 2,126 breadfruit plants, twice as many as they had loaded on the Bounty, with plenty of other botanical specimens to please Banks. This ship returned by way of the Torres Strait, and delivered the breadfruit to Britain’s Caribbean colonies. However, the project was not a total success, for the slaves on Jamaica refused to eat the breadfruit. The trees thrived in the Caribbean climate, though, and Jamaicans eventually developed a taste for breadfruit; it is part of their cuisine today.

<Interlude>

We have come to the end of the line for this episode. Remember when I said that we might need a trilogy of episodes to cover everything worth saying about Timor? Well, after one sightseeing episode and two history episodes, we’re still more than two centuries from the present, so we’re going to need at least one more episode to finish the historical narrative. Join me next time as we look over what happened here in the nineteenth, and maybe also the twentieth century. I look forward to having you here again!

<applause>

These days, you have to admit that podcasts have become mainstream. Some of my favorite podcasters are going on tours, where you can go to see them in live performances. Joe Rogan, probably the most popular podcaster of all, can make news just by saying something. When I tell people about this show, it seems I no longer have to begin by telling them what a podcast is. And these days, most podcasts are accompanied by commercials. Not this one; if you hear an ad while listening to me, I didn’t do it, and I make no money from it. As always, this podcast has lasted for nearly eight years, in part, because of donations from kind listeners like you. But lately, the podcast and I have gone through a financial dry spell. While the donors on Patreon have been hanging in there (and I am thankful for that), since the year began, there has not been a single one-time donation. If you have felt like making a one-time donation, there has never been a better time to do it than now. One-time donations are made through Paypal. You can do it by following the link on the Blubrry.com page that hosts this episode; occasionally I post links on the podcast’s Facebook page as well. And yes, I know that some of you live in places where you can’t use Paypal, so one of these days I will have to set up accounts on Venmo and Zelle to accept donations that way; hopefully I can do that this season. Or if you’d like to join Patreon and support me with a small amount each month, there are Patreon links in the same places that have the Paypal links, on Blubbry and Facebook. Finally, you can still help for free by spreading the word about this show to others; word of mouth advertising is still the best kind. As always, thank you for listening, and come back when the monsoon winds are blowing right!

<Outro>

Episode 133 is on the Way

To everyone waiting for the next episode, don’t worry, I am working on it. I got done with the research in the middle of March. It’s just that the recording is taking longer than expected, in part due to minor computer problems. At the rate I am going, it should be finished next week. This episode will cover the history of Timor, from 1661 to about 1800. See you again soon!

Episode 132: The Divided History of Timor, Part 1

Today, February 14, is going to be a busy day. For some of you, this is Valentine’s Day, and for some of you, this is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent on the traditional Christian calendar. Also, I have uploaded a new episode for the podcast! The new episode is the first part of an historical narrative about the island of Timor, covering events up until the mid-seventeenth century. How many more episodes will the history of Timor take? Stick with me to find out!

https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/130944232/episode-132-the-divided-history-of-timor-part-1

(Transcript)

Episode 132: The Divided History of Timor, Part 1

Greetings dear listeners, for the 132nd time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! I don’t know how life has treated you, but here in Kentucky it has been bitterly cold for most of the time since the new year began. As I work on this episode, there is 3 to 5 inches of snow on the ground, and for the last two mornings, the temperature dipped down close to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Since both my wife and I come from warmer climates, the weather gives us special challenges, and it has us thinking of where we used to live. Last Thursday a truck from Florida came to my city, selling citrus fruits from Florida, and I bought a box of Honeybell tangelos for us. Besides Florida, we also thought about Georgia, where our daughter lives. And of course we thought about Southeast Asia, where it never gets cold.

Anyway, if this is your first time with us, for the past few episodes we have been touring the islands of eastern Indonesia. Most of those islands don’t get too many visitors from the outside world. Last time we arrived at Timor, a fairly large island on the side of Indonesia facing Australia. How large is it? Large enough to be divided between two countries. The western half of the island is part of Indonesia, while the eastern half is an independent nation, called East Timor or Timor Leste, depending on whether you prefer to use the English or the Portuguese name. Previously there was an episode all about East Timor, Episode #117, where we looked at what has been happening there in the 21^st century. Then with Episode #131, we returned to Timor and looked at both sides of the island, to learn what the island has to offer, if you go there as a tourist. Well, we used up all our time seeing the sights in that episode, so now we’re back for a more detailed history of the island than we had before. And as I do the research for these episodes, I don’t want to leave out any of the delightful facts I have learned, so now it looks like I will need more than one episode just to properly cover Timor’s history. Well, that’s the same kind of “mission creep” I have heard from other history podcasts, so maybe I should call this series the “Timor Trilogy.” Of course, if you haven’t listened to Episode #131 yet, it will help a lot if go listen to it first, and then come back for this episode. As for the material in Episode #117, I probably won’t repeat it again here; maybe you can listen to that after you’re done here.

Okay, are you ready to go? Let’s do it!

<Interlude>

Now what can we say about the history of Timor, besides what was mentioned already? We can start with geography.

From the start, I have defined Southeast Asia as “the eleven countries between India, China and Australia.” Well, Timor is the nearest part of Southeast Asia to Australia. You could call it “Southeast Southeast Asia,” if you want to be redundant. The body of water separating the island from the continent is appropriately called the Timor Sea. Tropical cyclones, what we call hurricanes or typhoons in other parts of the world, can form in the warm waters of the Timor Sea, but because the sea is south of the equator, and these kind of storms usually do not cross that line, the storms are only a threat to western Australia. Today the Timor Sea is approximately 300 miles wide. However, in one of the earliest episodes of the podcast, I mentioned that during the ice age, world sea levels were lower, and that made the Timor Sea smaller; the part of the ocean between Timor and Australia may have been as narrow as 60 miles wide, or 100 kilometers. Therefore we now believe the ancestors of the Aborigines came to Australia by crossing that waterway in simple watercraft, like dugout canoes. On the other side of Timor, it could have been joined to other Indonesian islands by land bridges that no longer exist, so those first human inhabitants on Timor in prehistoric times would have arrived simply by walking there.

Now who were those first humans on Timor? One thing we have figured out is that they came in more than one migration. Evidence for at least three of those migrations has been found. The first group to migrate, the ones I called the ancestors of the Aborigines, appear to be a Veddoid people, whose present-day descendants live in south India and Sri Lanka. My source on them said they could have arrived as long as 42,000 years ago, though it did not say where scientists got that early date. The dominant tribe on West Timor, the Atoin Meto, are probably directly descended from them, though they speak an Austronesian language, meaning the language is related to most other modern Indonesian languages. The Helong tribe, which lives around Kupang, also comes from the first wave; more about them in a few minutes. Fish hooks from the first settlers have been found on Timor, and it appears they made a living by catching tuna and other large fish in the open sea, so they must have been capable of building advanced seagoing vessels, a technology the Aborigines lost after they settled in Australia.

The second group that migrated to Timor were Melanesians, and they arrived around 3000 B.C. In earlier episodes I told you how the Melanesians came from New Guinea, and today they mainly live on islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, but they also settled eastern Indonesia, going as far west as the island of Sumbawa. Today, the main evidence for Melanesians on Timor comes from the languages spoken there — not all of them are related to other Indonesian languages. The best example of a Melanesian tribe on Timor is the Bunak people; they live in the central mountains, and as a result, are divided by the border between East and West Timor.

However, the Melanesians’ ability to expand westward was limited, because they ran into another people, the ancestors of the Malays, coming into Indonesia from the opposite direction. The proto-Malays, also called Austronesians or Malayo-Polynesians, got started on the Asian mainland, and they had an advantage over everyone they met because their outrigger canoes were more efficient ships, and they had a large population base behind them, because they grew rice on the large islands they had already settled, like Luzon in the Philippines. For the rest of the story on the Malay migration, go back — way back — to Episode #2 of the podcast. Thus, the proto-Malays were the third wave of migrating people that came to Timor, and they could have arrived as early as 2500 B.C., around the same time that the ancient Egyptians were building their pyramids. For what it’s worth, the people of Timor have myths which assert that their ancestors sailed around the eastern end of the island, before making landfall on the south side. Other stories trace their ancestors back to the Malay Peninsula or the Minangkabau Highlands of Sumatra. Myself, I find those stories plausible, but unlikely. I think it is more likely that the Malay ancestors of the Timorese came from Borneo or Sulawesi, or they followed the Lesser Sunda chain of islands eastward. Two examples of tribes with direct Malay ancestry are the Tetum, the largest ethnic group in East Timor, and the Kemak, who like the Bunak, live along the border.

*****

That’s all that we hear from Timor for more than three thousand years, because we have no written records from the next age. If you listened to the earliest episodes of the podcast, you will recall that Indian merchants and missionaries began visiting Southeast Asia around 250 B.C. Visiting the coast of the mainland and western islands like Sumatra, Java and Borneo, they introduced their culture and religions to the people they met. However, since their ultimate goal was to trade with China, they did not go to the eastern islands — those places were too far off the beaten path. That included Timor. After they arrived on Timor, the proto-Malays did not go out to sea again, but concentrated their attention on the land. Still, they were willing to trade with the foreigners who came to them later, like the Chinese. These outsiders brought metal goods, rice, fine textiles, and their various coins, which they traded for the local spices, sandalwood, deer horn, honey, beeswax, and slaves. We now also believe that a second wave of migrating Malays arrived around 500 A.D., and they introduced both advanced agricultural techniques, like wet-rice cultivation, and metalurgy.

The first time Timor was mentioned in recorded history happened in the early thirteenth century. This comes from a Chinese book named the Zhu Fan Zhi, or “A Description of Barbarian Nations,” a guide to the lands beyond China, written by Zhao Rukuo. For those of you familiar with Chinese history, this would have been during the Southern Song dynasty. The book refers to Timor as Ti-Wu, and notes that the island has the world’s best sandalwood. Because Chinese merchant ships had already been going to nearby islands for centuries, like the Philippines, we believe they also went to Timor for a long time, perhaps as early as the seventh century.

For those of you not familiar with sandalwood, it grows in many places around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is a valuable commodity, expecially in India and China. This is a fragrant, fine-grained evergreen shrub or tree, that seldom exceeds 20 feet in height and a foot in diameter. Asians use sandalwood to make carved and inlaid boxes, fans, combs and walking sticks. Buddhists will use sandalwood powder to make incense, to burn at family shrines and temple altars. Hindus mix sandalwood paste with vermillion to make marks on their foreheads. In addition, the oil you can get from sandalwood is an ingredient of various perfumes, soap, cosmetics and medicines.

You can grow sandalwood commercially, and today there are sandalwood plantations in India and Australia, but the trees are slow growing; they have to be at least fifteen years old before the wood and oil are any good. Consequently, most people with an interest in sandalwood have gone for the short-term profit, harvesting the wood from wild trees, and decimating entire forests. In many of the places where sandalwood used to grow, like the Pacific islands of Tonga and Fiji, you won’t find it anymore for that reason. For example, Sumba, the island we visited in Episode #129, used to have sandalwood forests, but they’re gone now. On Timor there is one forest left, and one of my sources calls it the last sandalwood forest in the world. Most of this deforestation was done by Europeans in the nineteenth century, before they had much concern for conservation and the environment. Nowadays there is a small craft home industry on Timor, which uses sandalwood to produce items like Catholic rosaries, Moslem prayer beads, and intricately carved fans.

*****

Meanwhile on Java, the Majapahit empire got started at the end of the thirteenth century, and during the fourteenth century, it expanded across all of present-day Indonesia. Timor appears to have been part of it, at least from 1359 to 1420. The epic poem written about Majapahit during that time, the Nagarakertagama, gives Timor the name Timur, meaning “East” in modern Indonesian, and it states that Timor was divided into several mini-states, which paid tribute to Java. One result of the Majapahit period was that Timor would be firmly integrated into the trade networks of Indian and Chinese merchants, shortly before Europeans appeared on the scene. After Majapahit fell, Malacca, the state that arose on the Malay peninsula around 1400, became a new trading partner of Timor, but the Malaccans thought Timor was one single, unitary realm.

The first Europeans to reach Timor were the Portuguese, which shouldn’t surprise any of you since Portugal led the way, when it came to exploring the world beyond Europe. However, my sources disagree on when the first Portuguese ship reached the island. To start with, a website called the Portuguese Historical Museum claims they arrived some time between 1509 and 1511. However, I think that’s unlikely. To start with, 1509 and 1511 are already important dates in Portuguese exploration. In Episode #12, I said that 1509 was when the Portuguese discovered Malacca, and 1511 is when a follow-up expedition conquered it. Then in 1512 another expedition found the ultimate goal of all these voyages — the Spice Islands, the source of the spices Portuguese ships traveled so far to get. Timor is near the Spice Islands, or as we call them today, the Moluccas, but not directly on the path to them, so it doesn’t make sense that ships heading to the Spice Islands would discover Timor first. Meanwhile, Wikipedia asserts that the first Portuguese ship came to Timor in 1515, and Encyclopedia Britannica puts the first landfall in 1520; personally I prefer either one of those dates. They arrived not a day too soon, for the first Spanish ship made it there only two years after the last date, in 1522. This ship was the Victoria, the only ship from Magellan’s expedition to complete the first voyage all the way around the world, and Timor was its last stop before it crossed the Indian Ocean.

Antonio Pigafetta, the crewman who wrote the official story of the Magellan expedition, reported that one kingdom on Timor, called Wewiku or Wehali, was stronger than the rest. One century later, the ruler of Wehali was described as, quote, “an emperor, whom all the kings on the island adhere to with tribute, as being their sovereign”. Unquote. He got along with Makassar, a Moslem state we have already met on Sulawesi, and Wehali was one of the native states that opposed Portuguese efforts to hold and expand their outposts in Southeast Asia. The capital of Wehali, a village named Laran, acted as the religious center for the entire island. Pigafetta also tells us that Filipino merchants were already active on Timor before the Spaniards found the island. Soon the Portuguese would refer to the Filipinos as Luções (I hope I am saying that right), and Spain would call them Luzones; both names come from Luzon, the big northern island in the Philippines. Like the Chinese, the Filipinos came for Timor’s sandalwood, and they valued it so much that they traded Philippine gold for it.

*****

The Spaniards did not stay on Timor, because they had so many other prizes to exploit elsewhere. Portugal readily joined the trading network, harvesting sandalwood here, and selling it in India and China. However, trading did not remain their only interest for long; they also wanted to make Christians of the natives they met. There were a few Dominican priests on the very first ship to arrive, and in 1556 a Dominican friar, Antonio Taveira, set up the first mission here. This was a village named Lifau, on the north coast of the island. Lifau would become the Portuguese base of operations on Timor for the next two hundred years. Because the Portuguese Empire was spread so thin around the world that Lisbon could only spare a few men for Timor, the missionaries ended up managing the sandalwood trade as well. The headquarters for the trade was not on Timor but on Solor, a small island just east of Flores. The missions also grew slowly at this stage; by 1640, nearly a century after they started, there were ten missions and 22 churches on the island. It was in Mena, a port on the north coast, that they converted their first ruler, the queen of that town, in 1640. In response to this, the chief of Wehali would strengthen ties with Makassar by converting to Islam.

Native rulers quickly responded to the Portuguese expansion on Timor. 1640 also saw a raid from Tolo, a city-state near Makassar, which burned three coastal towns, including Mena, and carried off sandalwood and captives from those towns. Because of that, the next Portuguese force that came to Timor, in May 1642, was stronger than usual. Instead of just the usual merchants and sailors, this time it was a military expedition: ninety soldiers armed with muskets, led by one Captain Major Francisco Fernandes, and accompanied by three Dominicans. Because native warriors from some of the local states joined the Portuguese, the expedition was a complete success, sweeping across the island with only minimal resistance, and breaking Wehali’s power over the other states. Afterwards, the Dominicans did their work, by converting most of the minor rulers to Christianity. The rulers were willing to become Christians at this point; not only would this gain better treatment from the Portuguese, it also helped ensure that the minor rulers would be independent of Wehali in the future, since they no longer followed the religion that Wehali used to promote. As for Wehali, technically it was now inside the Portuguese sphere of power, but European influence over it appears to have remained limited.

Up until now the Portuguese were the only Europeans active on Timor, but the situation was not going to stay this way. In 1613 the first Dutch ship arrived here; we saw in Episode #17 that during the seventeenth century, the ultimate goal of Dutch activity was to replace the Spanish and Portuguese trading networks with one of their own. However, at first they saw the Chinese, rather than the Portuguese or the natives, as their greatest challenge. As one Dutch participant in the enterprise wrote in 1614, quote: “the greatest damage is to be feared from the Chinese, as they trade in articles which are unprocurable for us. Besides, they can afford to pay much more than we, as in China manufactured goods are abundant and cheap.” End quote. As it turned out, though, the Chinese were not a threat for long, thanks to the rapid growth in the strength and wealth of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, and because Chinese commerce on the seas suffered an interruption, during the political transfer at home, from the Ming to the Qing, or Manchu dynasty.

*****

In eastern Indonesia the Dutch first took Solor, then they landed on the southwest end of Timor. This was the site of Kupang; at this time the port was ruled by a Raja from the Helong tribe, who claimed descent from the island of Ceram in the Moluccas. Kupang had the best harbor on Timor, so the Dutch decided to set up their headquarters here. They saw the Raja as an ally, because the Dutch East India Company did not have enough personnel to man a base on Timor. However, this turned out to be a mistake, for the Portuguese-Mestizo population from Flores, the Topasses, was now large enough to support Portuguese interests in the islands. To refresh your memory, the Portuguese flirted with Indonesian women after they arrived in Southeast Asia, and the Topasses were the children produced by these relationships. We first hear about the Topasses on Timor in 1618, and across the island they had a stronger influence than the Dutch, even in Kupang. Contemporary records refer to the Topasses as “Black Portuguese,” and assert that when given up-to-date weapons, they were just as good soldiers as the full-blooded Portuguese. At this stage there were 450 Topasses on Timor, compared with 89 white Portuguese. The Topasses came to be dominated by two families: the de Hornay family, descendants of a Dutch deserter and native women, and the da Costa family, which was fully Portuguese on the father’s side of the family.

Another factor was the changing political situation back in Europe. For sixty years the king of Spain had ruled over both Spain and Portugal. This arrangement, called the Iberian Union, came about because the Portuguese king was killed in a battle in Morocco, and he left no descendants. King Philip II of Spain took the empty throne, and the Union lasted until 1640, when Portugal got another king of its own and regained independence. Since the Dutch had regarded the king of Spain as their real enemy, the Spanish-Portuguese split meant the Dutch were now less motivated to attack the Portuguese and their colonies. It also meant that the Portuguese recovered some of their strength; whereas they had been helpless against the first Dutch attacks on their empire, now they could fight back, since the Spaniards were no longer restraining them.

An agreement was quickly reached between the Dutch East India Company and the Raja of Kupang, but the Dutch soon realized they needed to have their own personnel on the spot. Therefore in January 1653 they built a fort, Fort Concordia, on the bank of the river that supplied fresh water to Kupang. Kupang was a Dutch client state after that, though Portugal continued to dominate the rest of the island. However, when the Dutch attempted to recruit a native army, it proved less effective than the pro-Portuguese Topasses.

There was a battle in 1655 where the Dutch commander, Major Jacob Verheijden, was killed by a force led by a Topass, Antonio de Hornay. The Dutch retaliated by sending a considerable force of their own, a squadron of ships with Arnold de Vlaming van Oudshoorn, the military governor of Amboina, in command. The campaign van Oudshoorn had participated in on Amboina, to secure a monopoly over the spices from that island, was one of the bloodiest in the Dutch East India Company’s history, and it made van Oudshoorn a notorious figure. Nevertheless, he did not fare as well on Timor. Details are not clear, except that in the battle of 1657, the Dutch lost again. Estimates of the number of Dutch troops killed range from 34 to 170, so they must have been up against a sizeable army.

In the neighborhood of Kupang, pro-Portuguese forces managed to destroy a native village that was only three quarters of a mile, or a little more than one kilometer, from the Dutch fort. All the Dutch could do was take in native refugees, especially from Wehali, that had been driven from their homes, and resettle them in and around Kupang. While the Raja remained the “Lord of the Land,” or tuan tanah, he remained dependent on the Dutch, and the Portuguese continued to dominate most of Timor until 1749.

On the Portuguese side, there was an anti-Portuguese rebellion in the town of Mena, where 27 people, both whites and Mestizos, were massacred on the orders of the queen. The Portuguese governor at the time, Francisco Carneiro, had the king and queen of Mena executed, and this raised a big stink among the native population, because none of them believed a private individual had the right to pass a death sentence on a king and queen. After that there was a slump in the sandalwood trade, because many natives refused to do business with Europeans. Under these conditions, the Portuguese signed a treaty with the Dutch in 1661, in which both sides recognized the Dutch presence in Kupang and Portuguese rule over the rest of the island.

<interlude>

Well, would you believe we have run out of time already? We managed to cover the first round in the conflict between the Dutch and the Portuguese over Timor, and since we’re breaking off in the middle of the seventeenth century, you know there will be more to talk about next time. Join me again for the next episode, as we continue the historical narrative. And while I am doing the research each episode requires, if you live north of the tropics, may the rest of winter be mild for you.

When I got started on this podcast, there were less than one million podcasts in the world. Recently I heard that there are now three million podcasts, so I am grateful that you have chosen to listen to this one. Sometimes when I tell others about this podcast, I have to start by explaining to them what a podcast is. Maybe the time is coming up when I will no longer have to do that. Usually I tell them it’s like a radio program but it’s on the Internet, so you can listen to it whenever you like.

Anyway, your financial support helps keep this podcast running, since I still don’t run any ads on it. There haven’t been any one-time donations lately, so if you have a Paypal account, consider making a donation. Like I have said before, this podcast is free for you the listeners, but not for me the podcaster; it costs me some money, and more than a little time, to produce each episode. To make a one-time donation, follow the Paypal links I posted, on the Blubrry.com page where this episode is hosted, or on the podcast’s Facebook page. After you click on the link, follow the instructions. You can also support the podcast by becoming a Patron, where you pledge to give a small amount at the beginning of each month, $1 or more. If you want to do that, there is also a Patreon link on the previously mentioned Blubrry page. I don’t mention enough how much I appreciate the patrons!

Those who make a one-time donation will get their first names added to the Podcast’s Hall of Fame Page. If you haven’t seen that page, there are also links to it, from Blubrry.com and the Facebook page. And if you donate in more than one year, there’s more. Those who donate in two different years will get the coveted water buffalo icon added, next to their name. Those who donate in three different years will get the ever-popular Shwedagon Pagoda icon added next to their name as well. Those who donate for four years will get the OUTRAGEOUS Merlion icon, and those who donate for five years will get the Awesome Volcano icon! Two of you have gotten the Awesome Volcano icon, but now we are into a new year, so I should add a new icon for those who have donated in six years. Will one of you make me do it? Put me to the test! Okay, I’ve said enough for now, so thank you for listening, and come back when the monsoon winds are blowing right!

<Outro>

Episode 131: Sightseeing on Timor

Here is the first episode of the podcast for 2024. This is the first of a two-part series on one of Southeast Asia’s easternmost islands, Timor. In fact, it is so far east that it looks more like a place in the South Pacific, than part of Southeast Asia. The island is also politically divided; the west half of the island belongs to Indonesia, while the east half is the independent nation of East Timor, or Timor Leste. In this episode you will learn what it is like to visit Timor, and the next episode will cover the island’s complicated history.

https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/128264023/episode-131-sightseeing-on-timor/

(Transcript)

This episode is dedicated to Henri N., Vang X., and Joshua S., who have made donations to the podcast. I have said before that a new year is the time for new beginnings, so may this new year be a time to make things betters for all of you, and may new opportunities come your way. Sometimes it seems that a new dark age began when the COVID-19 virus appeared, with all the troubles that have happened since then, so for the three of you, may 2024 be the end of that dark age, a Renaissance of sorts, to use the historical expression. And now let’s go to the regularly scheduled program.

Episode 131: Sightseeing on Timor

Greetings dear listeners, for the 131st time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! Most of the past few episodes, Episodes #124 through #129, have been a tour of eastern Indonesia, and in the month of October I took some time out from that. First I recorded a special Halloween episode, following up on the one I did four years ago, and then I took part in the Intelligent Speech Conference of 2023. At the conference, I gave a presentation on the secrets of Thailand’s success, but sound problems meant that only a few people saw it when it took place. Fortunately the presentations were recorded, and after the conference, I obtained a copy of mine, edited out the long stretch of dead air at the beginning, and it is now on YouTube for anyone who cares to view it.

Today we are going to visit an island you are already familiar with, if you are a regular listener of this podcast. That is the island of Timor. As the Lesser Sundas go, Timor is quite a large island. In fact, it is the last large island in the Lesser Sunda chain. How large is it? It covers an area of 30,777 square kilometers, or 11,883 square miles. This makes it just a little bit larger than Albania, in Europe. It also means that Timor is large enough to be divided between two countries. So when I talk about the island here, the discussion will be rather complicated because of that division. That’s why it took so long to get this episode done; the research was more difficult this time, as I had to research the east and the west separately. And Timor’s division is not for the short term. The only time during the past 400 years when Timor wasn’t divided was probably in the last quarter of the twentieth century, from 1975 to 1999, when Indonesia ruled the whole island. Today the eastern half of the island, plus an enclave on the northwest coast, and two smaller islands, is the independent nation of East Timor, or Timor Leste if you prefer the Portuguese name; this is Southeast Asia’s newest nation. The western half is Indonesian territory, part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara. In fact, Kupang, the largest city on West Timor, is the capital of that province. We have already covered East Timor. In Episodes #59 and #103 I briefly talked about East Timor in the twentieth century, when it was occupied first by Portugal, then by Indonesia, and Episode #117 was all about East Timor, covering its history since it became independent in 2002. Therefore in this episode, we will be concentrating our attention on West Timor. Feel free to listen to those other episodes if you haven’t already!

<Interlude>

As of 2020, Timor has a population of 3,311,735. Two thirds of Timor’s population is on the west side of the island; part of this is due to the terrible violence East Timor suffered before independence. Christianity is the religion of the majority on both sides of Timor. Portugal sent Catholic missionaries in the 16^th century, and the Netherlands sent Protestant missionaries in the 17^th century; because the Portuguese missionaries included some very active Jesuits, Catholics outnumber Protestants in the present-day population. Even so, people in the island’s villages also keep some of the traditional laws, called Adat, and some animist beliefs, both of which pre-date the arrival of Christianity. Fifteen languages and dialects are spoken locally, though the natives also know two languages that are used off-island: Portuguese in the east, and Indonesian, also called Bahasa Indonesia, in the west. Besides the national governments, the locals have some 25 traditional kingdoms and several minor states.

Podcast Footnote: Because most Timorese are Christians, pork, called babi in the local languages, is fairly common in the local cuisine, and unlike the rest of Indonesia, most of the places where food is sold are not halal. I am mentioning this for those of you who are Jewish, Moslem or Seventh-Day Adventist, or otherwise do not eat pork. End footnote.

And now for a word on the wildlife. Like the other islands in the Lesser Sunda chain, Timor has a mix of both Asian and South Pacific plants and animals. These include several endemic species like the Timor rat and the Timor shrew. The Timor rat, scientific name Rattus timorensis, is known from a single specimen, collected in the teak forest of West Timor in 1991. Unfortunately I could not find any details about this rat, like its size. Sometimes it is called the Timor forest rat, to distiguish it from the other rats found on Timor. The other rats are much bigger than the typical lab rat or sewer rat; in recent years bones have been found from these rats that indicate they weighed at least five kilograms, or 11 pounds, meaning they were as big as cats or small dogs. This makes them the largest rats to have lived anywhere. It looks like they survived for thousands of years after humans arrived on Timor, even though they were on the hunters’ menu. Finally they died out between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, presumably because humans cleared out most of the forest on the island, to make room for farms.

Speaking of unnaturally sized animals, do you remember in Episode #128 when I said that Komodo dragons used to be much larger than they are today, and they lived on several surrounding islands, as well as on the Australian mainland? Timor was one of those islands. Fossils of Stegodons, the miniature elephants that used to live on Flores, have been found on Timor as well.

Timor receives few tourists, so I’ll admit I had a challenge finding sources on what it’s like to travel there. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to get to Timor. For both parts of the island, you will need a visa if you didn’t get one previously; with West Timor, you should already have it if you are approaching from another part of Indonesia. Kupang has an airport that is well-connected with the parts of the province we have visited in previous episodes, like Flores and Sumba; there are also flights going to and from major Indonesian cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, and Denpasar on Bali, and from the nearest Australian city, Darwin. As for East Timor, there are international flights to Dili, East Timor’s capital, but only from three cities: Singapore, Denpasar and Darwin. Since 2017, three airlines have flown between Kupang and Dili, but again, have your visas ready before you try to travel this way. There are also ferryboat services connecting Kupang with the neighboring islands of Flores and Alor. In addition, Kupang sees traffic from foreign shipping; often Australian sailors will make their first stop on Kupang after their ships leave Darwin.

Finally, you can take a bus trip across the island, between Dili and Kupang. One of the busses, called Gemilang, carries 30 passengers and goes for a shorter trip, between Dili and Atambua, a city on the west side of the border. Passengers for this bus are picked up at home and disembark at the destination. However, when going by land, the border crossing can be a challenge. At the border, you can expect officials to look for your name on a list of people they know will be crossing that day. Here is what one of my sources, RoamIndonesia.com, said about crossing the border between West and East Timor. Quote:

“Officially, to make the crossing from West Timor to East Timor you first need to apply for a letter from the Timor Leste (East Timor) consulate that gives you permission to get a visa at the border. However, anecdotal reports are that this is virtually impossible as the East Timor consulate doesn’t respond to emails. So unofficially, if you present in person to the East Timor consulate in Kupang with a passport photo, a copy of your passport and complete a visa application, they’ll process it in three working days and print out an authority to be issued with an East Timor visa at the border. Take this and US$30 with you to the border and keep your fingers crossed.

The process for entering West Timor from East Timor is just as complicated. The border crossing doesn’t have Free Visa or Visa on Arrival facilities so you’ll need to go to the Indonesian Embassy in Dili, East Timor and fill out a visa application form. Allow three working days for your visa to be processed and keep in mind the visa application desk is only open between 9:00am-12:00pm Monday to Friday. It can get quite busy and they operate on a first come first served basis so get there early.”

End Quote.

<Interlude>

Okay, once you get to West Timor, what can you do there? The travel guides recommend you go to Soe, a small town set in the mountains. While Soe itself doesn’t have much to see, its central location makes a good base from which to explore the surrounding countryside and traditional markets; driving time is not so long when you take day trips starting from here. And because Soe is in the mountains, the weather is cooler than in places along the coast, cool enough that you probably won’t need to use a fan or air conditioner in your hotel room.

What makes West Timor unique are the local tribes. If you want to meet them, you will definitely need a guide, but getting one is not easy. Another one of my sources, Cheekypassports.com, tells why you need a guide, and how difficult finding one can be. As with the visas, you may want to plan this in advance. Here is what the website said. Quote:

“It is almost impossible to visit the traditional villages without a local guide. This is not a matter of comfort or research, as some of the villages do not welcome visitors unless they are in the presence of a local guide who can speak the dialect and who needs to introduce them to the village elders.

Secondly, even if you know some Bahasa Indonesia, it is very unlikely that you can in any way communicate with the villagers and elders of Indonesian tribes during your West Timor travel, since few of them know and understand the national language!

Also, some of the villages are hidden high up in the mountains and the rough winding roads leading to them are not serviced by any form of public transport, so a car and with a driver would anyway need to be hired.

Although we chose to visit other villages and Indonesian tribes independently in Sumba, Alor, Papua in Indonesia and even around Laos, we decided that this time around it would make sense to avail ourselves of the service of a guide/translator. The people at the tourist office spoke no English whatsoever, but we managed to make ourselves understood when asking for a local guide.

Finding a guide for possibly the only foreigners in town seemed to be no easy task either. Phone calls were made and a network of friends and relatives summoned! Finally, a red-toothed man called Timus made his way to the office, and we were told that he was a West Timor travel guide who could speak English. He confirmed that he could also speak the dialects spoken in the traditional village, so we were ready to start negotiating a price.”

End Quote.

Markets are held on specific days in different villages, and your guide should know which ones are happening during your visit. Since outsiders are rarely seen in the markets, expect to be the center of attention when you go there. Also, it is customary to bring gifts when you visit a village. When it comes to gifts, betelnut and lime powder are two good choices; you can buy bags of them from native stalls for a reasonable price, before you reach the villages.

Each village has its own features, its own character, and its own local customs, so a few words to summarize all the villages won’t do justice to them. For example, one of the villages, Boti, has a giant TV satellite dish at its entrance. Of course this looks out of place, but it is not used; here it is only a decoration. When the local government gave them the dish as a gift, the villagers did not trust it, refusing to even learn what it was good for, so the cable leading from it is not plugged into anything. Another village, Maubesi, is known for having a “Magic House.” This is a rather plain hut which contains a flat, bloodstained stone, which supports a large pole and is surrounded by swords and feathers. The residents will tell you that a black pig would be sacrificed here before a warrior left the village to fight in a tribal war, and a white pig would be sacrificed upon the warrior’s safe return. Today there are no more tribal wars, but there are still sacrifices at planting and harvest times, or when a villager leaves to go study in another village. Also, the village is decorated with the skulls of monkeys caught stealing their crops, which are now used to discourage other animal thieves from bothering them!

A third village, Tamkesi, is located on two hills near the border of East Timor, and it serves a special purpose, to preserve the traditional culture of the nine surrounding villages. One of the hills is called the Holy Mountain, and every seven years, seven men climb the “mountain” to sacrifice a goat and a rooster. The goat is killed and eaten right away, whilst the rooster is tied up and left to die alone.

Currently Tamkesi has twenty-six residents, who come from one family in each of the other nine villages. Once they move here, they become “keepers” of the traditions, and stay for the rest of their lives. Another one of their unique beliefs is that anything falling to the ground can only be picked up by the chief of the village, or the village will suffer from bad luck, so be sure to handle your belongings very carefully, to keep from dropping them. Also, the village has nine wooden poles, one for each of the other villages, with a large flat stone carefully balanced on each. If a stone falls off, the village it represents will have bad luck. Therefore it is recommended you do not go near enough to the poles to disturb them!

In Kupang the main attraction to visit is Gua Kristal, or Crystal Cave, so called because of its crystal-blue pool. To avoid the crowds, the best time to see it is between 2 and 4 PM. Near the cave is Oenesu Waterfall, a popular place for swimming. There are also some beaches, but they don’t come with the infrastructure you would expect at a popular beach resort. One of my sources, Tripadvisor.com, gives the names and addresses of several hotels in the Kupang area. Finally, if you like fresh seafood, the markets of Kupang are a great place to get it.

<Interlude>

That’s West Timor; what can you see and do in East Timor? Well, as it turns out, less than ten tourists come here each day. And most people don’t think of this country when they think of places to visit. A lot of them don’t even know East Timor is a country, since it only became independent after the twenty-first century began. For instance, when I list the eleven countries covered in this podcast, East Timor is the one others are most likely to ask questions about. Also, it probably doesn’t help when the country is in the news, and the media uses the country’s Portuguese name — Timor Leste. Sure, if you’re like me and familiar with Southeast Asia, you will recognize that name, but what about the undereducated masses among us? One of my sources went so far as to call East Timor, quote, “The Country No One Knows Exists.” End quote. I also watched a YouTube video entitled “Timor Leste – Nobody Travels Here!” From that I learned that people drive on the left side of the road in this country, like in Japan and Thailand. Finally, the US Department of State has issued a travel advisory for East Timor, because of the problems it has with crime and civil unrest; I’m sure that doesn’t encourage tourism either!

Now if you are planning a trip to East Timor in the near future, here is what the US State Department recommends you do. Quote:

• Keep a low profile.
• Be aware of your surroundings.
• Use caution when walking or driving at night.
• Avoid demonstrations or crowds.
• Keep travel documents up to date and easily accessible.
• Obtain comprehensive medical insurance that includes medical evacuation.
• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
• Follow the Department of State on Facebook and Twitter.
• Review the Country Security Report for Timor-Leste.
• Visit the Center for Disease Control page for the latest Travel Health Information related to your travel.
• Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler’s Checklist.

End quote. The Traveler’s Checklist mentioned in the last line can be downloaded as a PDF from their website, travel.state.gov. In addition to all this, the travel guides recommend you wear bug repellent, to keep from getting diseases carried by mosquitoes. The tropical climate means that the temperature stays between 26° and 32° Celsius all year round (that’s 79° to 90° Fahrenheit for you Americans), and the humidity is always high. If you want to avoid rainy weather, the dry season runs from June to November.

This isn’t a country with man-made things to see; unlike other parts of Southeast Asia, you won’t spend your time going to night parties and ancient temples. The social media site Reddit describes East Timor as a very laid-back place, even by the standards of West Timor, without the hustle and bustle that characterizes Asian cities; in fact, it more resembles Melanesia than Southeast Asia. Most of the people earn a living through subsistence farming, though in recent years coffee production has shown some promise. Taxis often move along at less than 20 KPH, even on empty roads. In Dili there are a couple of three-star hotels, no golf courses and one shopping mall. Backpackers won’t find the travellers’ huts and hippie markets they are used to.

All the attractions worth seeing are nature-related. Here is what East Timor has that will make you want to go there:

1. Diving. The waters around Timor are a pristine place for both snorkeling and scuba diving. By comparison, the waters around more popular countries, like Thailand and Malaysia, are over-dived. In less than an hour, divers are likely to see sharks, tuna, mackerel, barracuda, turtles, dugongs or manatees, and dolphins. And whales; East Timor is one of two countries in the world where divers can swim with blue whales, the world’s largest mammals (the other country is Sri Lanka). Also, about three fourths of the world’s species of coral live in the reefs here.

2. Beaches all for yourself. The white sand beaches near the capital only get crowded on weekends, and two of them, Areia Branca and Dollar Beach, have bars and restaurants near the water, if you’re not trying to get away from it all completely. Good surfing is available too, but it is not recommended you try surfing on the south coast, because the beaches over there have salt-water crocodiles, notorious man-killers.

3. Spectacular scenery. Like the surrounding ocean, the land is unspoiled by crowds, land development and pollution. It is worth driving along the coast from Dili to the second city, Baucau, just for the scenery. However, the roads can be dangerous, if not completely impassable, with enormous potholes and fallen bridges, when the rain washes them out. That is where the next activity comes in.

4. Biking. You may want to consider a motrcycle or bike, if you don’t want to pay the high price for car rentals. However, you will need to be physically fit, to handle the steep climbs and high temperatures. The good news is you will have more opportunities to enjoy the view than you would while driving.

5. Calm life and silent nights. You will definitely find peace and quiet here, especially if you travel away from Dili.

6. Fresh, $1 coffee. Did I mention the coffee already? One dollar a cup is expensive by Southeast Asian standards, and here most people live on less than a dollar a day. In most of Southeast Asia, like my wife’s part of the Philippines, travel costs are dirt cheap, but here the travel industry is undeveloped, meaning that food, drinks and accomodations for tourists come at an inflated price. So is anything imported, due to limited commerce. Still, the coffee is fresh, and available almost anywhere. And you may remember I mentioned in Episode #117 that US dollars are used here, without conversion into any other currency first. American tourists will like that.

*****

I need to take back what I said about the lack of man-made attractions. One of the travel organizations that I use for a source, Lonely Planet, found a few man-made points of interest in East Timor. Man, that group has people going to every spot on this world! So here are the three main places the Lonely Planet website recommends you see. All of them are in Dili:

1. Centro Nacional Chega. This is a prison built during the Portuguese era, but it is mainly known as the place where Indonesian troops held resistance fighters during East Timor’s struggle for independence. Today the locals simply call it “Chega!” for short, which means Stop or No More in Portuguese. You may remember when I talked about the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, also called S21, in Cambodia; this is a very similar place. Here you can see the results from the Commission for Reception, Truth & Reconciliation, which documented human rights abuses from 1974 to 1999. A series of panels and photographs detail various elements of the violence in a now-peaceful complex, and you can also see the “dark cells” where the human rights violations took place. To maximize your understanding of what you see, Lonely Planet recommends you book a visit in advance (which includes a free tour), or go there with the group Dili History Tours.

2. Projeto Montanha. This is not your typical tourist attraction, but an educational and vocational center founded by Brazilians. Here children and young adults learn useful skills like languages, crafts, cooking, and music; the site also has a shop and a restaurant where they can make some money applying these skills, plus a few rooms with furniture made from recycled materials, where you can stay for $25 to $30 per person, if you haven’t booked a hotel in Dili already. Tours are enthusiastically given for free.

3. Resistência Timorense Arquivo e Museu. Of course there is a museum featuring everything you can learn about East Timor’s struggle against Indonesian occupation, and this is it. Here you will see photos, video recordings and exhibits of the weapons and tools of communication that the East Timorese used. Special emphasis is given to the Santa Cruz Massacre, with exhibits of the possessions of some of the victims. Next door is a memorial garden, where an eternal flame and further commemorative museum are under construction, according to the website.

We’re running out of time, so I won’t go into detail about the other attractions. To read about them, check out LonelyPlanet.com. I will just mention Cristo Rei, the giant statue of Jesus that stands a few miles outside of Dili. It looks a lot like the famous statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but surprisingly, the Brazilians had nothing to do with this monument. It was a gift from the Indonesian government, built in 1996, though as we have seen in previous episodes, Indonesia is not a Christian nation. Maybe it was a peace offering of sorts from Jakarta, built in an attempt to end the twentieth-century war, by making an accomodation for Timor’s Christian population.

If I followed the same pattern that I did in the past few episodes, I would give a detailed history of Timor starting now, but I have kept you waiting for this episode long enough, and the history is long enough to fill up another episode by itself, so I’m going to do just that. Join me next time for the history of both East and West Timor, now that you know what to expect, if and when you visit there. And since 2024 has begun since the previous episode was released, Happy belated New Year!

*****

If you have listened to podcasts for long, you know that these days they have more advertisements than they used to. Sometimes the ads seem to stumble over each other; I have heard podcasts that had a new ad begin before the previous ad finished. Well, that’s not the case here; though this podcast is now seven and a half years old, I still do it without advertising. Alas, I have never been good at monetizing this show. Therefore I end each episode by politely asking for donations, from those of you who feel it is worth the time and effort I put into the research, recording and editing. One-time donations are made through Paypal, or you can sign up to make a small monthly donation through Patreon; I have included links to both on the Blubrry.com page that hosts this episode. Hopefully this year I can set up accounts on services like Venmo or Zelle, for those of you who can’t use Paypal. If you can’t donate at this time, for whatever reason, that’s okay; you can also help by spreading the word about the show. Just mention the podcast to anyone who might be interested; if I can do it, so can you! Thank you for listening, and come back when the monsoon winds are blowing right!

<Outro>

Almost Done With the Next Podcast Episode

Some of the podcasters I listen to have taken the second half of December off for the holidays. Not me! I have spent my spare time researching and recording, because I felt I should get one more episode done before the end of 2023. Unfortunately that time has been limited, as real-life concerns have continued to get in the way, and this time I found the research especially difficult. Therefore I’m going to miss the deadline, but Episode #131 should be available later this week. So enjoy the New Year of Western civilization, and expect to hear from me again in the next few days.

My Video From the 2023 Intelligent Speech Conference

If you saw the announcement I recorded in October, you know that I took part in the Intelligent Speech Conference, an online meeting of history podcasters, on November 4. For those who are wondering how it went, the results are mixed. Although I was able to give my presentation, only a few people got to see it at the time.

The problem was the sound system. When it was my turn to go on, nobody could hear me. Eventually my administrator and I figured out that it was because my computer has two microphones: the small one built into the laptop, and a larger external microphone for recording the podcast. The Zoom software that we use for videoconferencing could not figure out which microphone to use! By the time we got the Zoom software to accept the external microphone, there were only a few minutes left for my presentation, and most of my audience had left. Ironically, before the conference took place, I had requested one of the late time slots in order to work out computer problems like this!

Despite all this, the administrator suggested that I do the presentation anyway, just so they would have something to record and put up alongside the other recordings. I agreed and went ahead, and at the end I managed to answer one question from an audience member who stuck around. Then just a few hours after the conference ended, the day’s recordings were posted on the website; not DAYS later, mind you, but HOURS later. In my case, the recording was the uncut, raw footage, running for 82 minutes, though if you watch the whole thing, about all you will see for the first 39 minutes are a black screen with my name on it, while we worked silently in the background on the sound system.

Fortunately my computer has some simple tools for editing videos, and using that, I removed the first 39 minutes of the video. Therefore if you watch what’s left, it will look like there weren’t any problems with the recording. I uploaded the edited video to YouTube, and here it is. Hopefully you’ll enjoy my performance.

Episode 130: More Southeast Asian Monsters

This episode is a Halloween special, a short sequel to one I recorded four years ago. Meet five more of the monsters that Southeast Asians believe in!

https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/122232967/episode-130-more-southeast-asian-monsters/

(Transcript)

This episode is dedicated to Guy H., Krislert S., and Thomas S.; all of them have made generous donations to the podcast recently. Therefore their first names have been added to the podcast’s Hall of Fame Page. And yes, I updated the Hall of Fame page; I can’t believe I let it go unattended for a few months. Please accept my apologies if your name was one of the ones I added, and thank you for your patience. After all, this podcast has been a one-person show from the beginning. If the podcast had a list of credits, like a typical movie or TV show, my name would be on all the lines. Anyway, Guy has donated before, in 2020 and 2021, so if you have been here a while, you know he gets another icon on the Hall of Fame Page. Yes! Guy, you are now the proud owner of the Ever-Popular Shwe Dagon Pagoda icon! And Krislert and Thomas, I am honored to have you join our family. May all three of you advance in your careers to new heights of success. And now we’ll go to the episode. Hit it, Hal!

<Intro>

Episode 130: More Southeast Asian Monsters

Greetings dear listeners, for the 130th time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! Originally this episode was going to cover West Timor, the next stop in our series on the islands of eastern Indonesia. Then the Intelligent Speech Conference came up; for more on that, see the announcement I made previously, and the announcements I made on the History of Southeast Asia Podcast Facebook page. Next, I read an article on the various monsters that people around the world believe in, and thus discovered five new beasties from Southeast Asia that I didn’t know about already. Four years ago I recorded an episode on that subject — it was Episode #76, “Monsters of Southeast Asia,” and I called it a Halloween special. Now that Halloween is coming up again, this episode will be another Halloween special, and a short follow-up to Episode #76. If you haven’t listened to Episode #76 yet, I recommend you go to wherever you get this podcast, and download or stream that episode as well. Don’t worry, it’s free for your listening pleasure.

One thing that the monsters in this episode have in common, is that they are all considered bogeymen. A bogeyman is a person or creature that parents threaten their children with, when they misbehave. The parents will say something like “Eat your broccoli or I’m calling the Ogre,” or “If you don’t stop crying the Troll will get you!” Evidently using a scary creature to frighten chidren into obedience is something found in all cultures.

So you may not want your kids listening to this episode, though this is a family-friendly podcast. If the kids are out of hearing range, let’s get started.

<music clip>

Ong Ba Bi

Our first entry is from Vietnam, the Ong Ba Bi. This one looks roughly humanoid, like an old, rugged man with twelve eyes. He carries three sacks, and he will lure naughty children into dark, quiet neighborhoods, to kidnap them and put them in his sacks.

Unlike the many kinds of ghosts that the Vietnamese believe in, this monster appears to be thoroughly a creature of this world, aside from the multiple eyes. Some people believe that the Ong Ba Bi was invented in the imaginations of the seventeenth century, when there was a terrible famine in Vietnam, and many starving people were driven to kidnap children from other families. If they weren’t willing to commit acts of cannibalism, they would sell the children for normal food, which was now a rare commodity.

Now which monster is next?

Krahang

In Episode #76 I told you about the Krasue, a hideous spirit from Thailand that looks like a flying woman’s head, with her internal organs hanging down underneath. The Krasue also haunts other Southeast Asian countries, under other names; for example, Cambodians call her the Ap. Well, the Thais also believe that the Krasue has a ghostly husband, called the Krahang. According to them, a man becomes a Krahang when he dabbles too much in sorcery, and gets turned into a terrifying ghost when the magic backfires on him. He appears as a normal man during the day, but then at night becomes a man wearing a traditional loincloth, with no shirt. To fly, he wears two enormous round baskets, the kind used for winnowing rice, one on each arm. He may also ride the pole used to pound the hulls off rice grains, as if it was a broomstick. Finally, it is said that they can shoot fire from their mouths.

Thais disagree on how dangerous the Krahang really is. Reports of them terrorizing villagers, especially women and children, have been heard as recently as 2012. Some describe them as being bloodthirsty and attacking animals, though they are really scavengers; their primary diet is filth, garbage and human waste.

<Ew!>

Others describe them as guardian spirits, who hang around temples and other places of worship. In this form they will protect those who are pure of heart, and punish those that are evil.

Santu Sakai

Our next monster is from Malaysia, and this is truly one you won’t want to meet in a dark alley! In fact, judging from how recent the sightings of it are, the Santu Sakai might be a real creature, like the Yeti or Bigfoot could be. This creature’s name means “Mouth Man,” and it is described as a giant ape with long fangs, who raids villages and carries off people for midnight snacks. My sources describe it as a type of werewolf, suggesting that it hides in the daytime by becoming a more humanlike creature, possibly even someone from a tribe of humans living in a remote area, away from Malaysia’s cities. Indeed, in nearby Myanmar, the Burmese believe in a creature called a “TASE,” which looks and acts very much like the werewolf in Western horror stories. The Myanmar werewolf is probably based on sightings of the dhole, a wild dog found in that county.

Back to the Santu Sakai. Nowadays, because Malaysia is a modern, successful nation, most Malaysians do not believe in the Santu Sakai. Our main testimony about this monster comes from a foreign visitor, Henri Van Heerdan. You can read Van Heerdan’s story in the book The Abominable Snowmen, by Eric Nourmand. According to this, in June 1967, Van Heerdan left Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to go hunting a few miles out in the nearest jungle. Using a backwoods road that was scarcely visible, he wandered half a mile from his vehicle, and managed to bag a number of the local birds, when he heard “ugly growls and strange screams” and saw two huge, shaggy monsters charging at him. He described the creatures he saw as, quote, “demons from hell,” unquote.

He rushed back to the car, dropping everything but his shotgun in his mad dash for safety. When he reached the car, he tried shooting the “Mouth Men,” but one of them bit his arm, causing him to drop the gun. Desperate, Van Heerdan managed to pick up a good-sized rock and used it to pound this monster on the skull, until it fell in a daze. Next, he struck the other in the face, got inside the car, and started the engine.

At this point, one monster tried smashing through the rear window while the other mounted the hood. When the car started moving, the monster in the rear fell off, but the one on the hood began battering the windshield. So Van Heerdan hit the brakes, sending the monster flying into some weeds. Then he hurried back to civilization.

The hunter reported the incident to the police, but they only laughed and told him to go home and sleep it off. The next afternoon, Van Heerdan returned to the scene of the attack with some of his friends. Those who were skeptical of his words changed their minds when they saw strange humanlike footprints, and blood in several places. The shotgun was nowhere to be found; presumably the hairy demons took it away, and Van Heerdan speculated on what they might have done with it.

We We Gombel

This is a female ghost, from the island of Java. She is described as looking like a woman, but with red eyes and very long breasts hanging downward; modern art also shows her with fangs, as if she is a vampire. The myth around her is several centuries old, and one of the most popular horror stories in present-day Indonesia. In fact, the story was made into a movie twice, in 1988 and 2012, and in 2020 it was featured on the HBO program Folklore.

According to the story, once upon a time there was a married couple living in Semarang, a city in central Java. Unfortunately, when the husband realized that his wife was barren, he stopped loving her and wandered away for long periods of time, so she was usually lonely and sad. One day she followed him and caught him in a sexual relationship with another woman. Enraged by this discovery, she killed her husband, but when the neighbors found out about the crime, they gathered in a mob and chased her from Semarang, and eventually she committed suicide.

Of course that’s not the end of the story, for the woman’s vengeful spirit now became We We Gombel. At first she would wander around at night, wearing a white dress or veil, riding a white horse, and armed with a rattan stick. If she met anyone who had wronged her, she would inflict curses that would make them ill or even kill them. After all her enemies were gone, she switched to another line of work; now she kidnaps children who have been mistreated or neglected by their parents, and keeps them in a nest, in the crown of a palm tree. Children in her clutches are not afraid of her, because she treats them like a grandmother, and she may even return them to the parents if they repent of their ways and promise to take better care of them in the future.

Children are told this story to keep them from going outside at night. Altogether, the We We Gombel doesn’t sound as bad as the other monsters in this episode. One version of the story even asserts that if you are brave enough to confront the We We Gombel without losing your wits completely (she is a ghost, after all), she will grant you power and fortune. But we have one more monster to meet, and this one isn’t friendly.

Langsuyar

Back in Episode #76 I talked about Southeast Asian vampires, called Pontianak in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Asuwang in the Philippines. The Langsuyar is both a ghost and another type of vampire, told about in Singapore and Malaysia. The name comes from the Malay word for eagle. A Langsuyar is created when a beautiful woman dies while pregnant or giving birth; the trauma of delivering a stillborn child can also turn a woman into a Langsuyar. She is described as having very long nails, arms so long that she can touch her feet with her hands while standing, and wearing green robes. Like other vampires, she seeks the blood of the living; her favorite blood comes from newborn baby boys. However, she sucks the blood through a hole in the back or her neck, which is concealed by covering it with her long hair.

Like other ghosts, the Langsuyar can fly in the sky at night and scare people by howling like a banshee. One version of the myth also says the Langsuyar can change into an owl, and if you see an owl perched on the roof of a house, it could mean a Langsuyar is attacking someone inside. On other occasions you may see a Langsuyar in human form, perched in a tree, or wandering on a beach while eating a fish.

There is a tree in Malaysia called the Rengas tree, that contains poisonous oils, and is believed to be cursed by the Langsuyar. So when woodcutters harvest lumber from this tree, they will undergo elaborate exorcisms, not to get rid of the wood’s toxin, but to keep from getting haunted by Langsuyars and other spirits. Finally, Malaysians will tell you how to keep a recently deceased mother from becoming a Langsuyar: put a hen’s egg under each armpit, a needle in the palm of each hand, and glass beads in her mouth. Supposedly, if this is done, a reanimated woman cannot beome a Langsuyar because she cannot open her mouth to scream, nor can she wave her arms or open and close her hands, in order to fly.

<sound clip>

And that’s all for today. If you are listening to this episode during the same week I recorded it, I hope you will join me for the Intelligent Speech Conference on Saturday. Again, see the announcement I posted previously, wherever you got this episode, for the details. And for the next episode, we will resume the podcast tour of eastern Indonesia, with a stop on an island we visited once before — Timor. Everyone listening, join me for that, too.

It takes money, time and energy to record this podcast and make it available to the rest of the world. I have the time to do this because currently I don’t have a day job; my income comes from self-employment. So if you think this episode was worth at least a dollar, the best way you can express your appreciation is by supporting the podcast financially. To do that, go to the host of the podcast, Blubrry.com, look for the gold button that says “Donate,” and click on it to make a secure donation through Paypal. The URL for the host site is http://www.B-L-U-B-R-R-Y.com/H-O-S-E-A-S-I-A/; once you are there, click on any episode’s page and scroll to the bottom. Thank you in advance for whatever you can give.

Maybe you’re saying, “I cannot give right now. What else can I do to help?” I’m glad you asked! You can rate the podcast, on the website or app where you download or listen to it! And maybe write a review, while you’re at it; reviews attract more potential listeners. And if you’re active on Facebook, “Like” the History of Southeast Asia Podcast Page, so you will catch the content I share that’s related to the show, like pictures, videos, and articles. And finally, tell others about the show; you never know who may be interested enough to give it a listen. When it comes to advertising, the simplest kind, word of mouth, is still the most effective. Thank you for listening, and pleasant dreams.

<Outro>

A Very Special Announcement

Okay, here is the audio version of what I said in my previous entry. This is my official announcement of my appearance at the 2023 Intelligent Speech Conference. Listen here for the details.

https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/120832613/a-very-special-announcement/

And click on the link below to join me at the conference.

https://intelligentspeechonline.com

(Transcript)

<Intro>

A Very Special Announcement

Greetings, dear listeners! This isn’t a regular episode of the podcast. This is an announcement of a special event coming up just a few days from the time of this recording: the Fifth Annual Intelligent Speech Conference! This is an online meeting of 40 history podcasters and their listeners, and I can testify that it’s a lot of fun. For a start, here you can see the faces of the nice people you have been listening to for years. Join us on Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 10 AM to 6 PM; that’s Eastern Time in the United States. And a few days after the conference, videos of the sessions will become available to attendees, so if you got a ticket, you can see the speakers and presentations you missed.

I gave a presentation at the Intelligent Speech Conference once before, in 2020; some of you may remember that. I’ll admit I didn’t talk about this year’s conference until now, because I only expected to be a spectator, like I was last year. Then on the last day of September I bought my ticket for the event, and when the leaders of the conference sent me an email telling me what to expect, I sent an email back, telling them what I would discuss if I was one of the speakers. Well, they liked the idea, and since they had a couple of time slots still available, I am one of the speakers now!

<Applause>

Thank you. To get your tickets, go to intelligentspeechonline.com . The early bird special is no longer being offered, so the price is $30 each. However, if you put in the word “ASIA” where the page asks for a coupon code, you will get a 10% discount on me. That’s A-S-I-A, like the continent. Now here is one of the promos I am hearing for the event on other podcasts:

<play promo>

Okay, I gotta run now. I hope you’ll be there! Like I say at the end of the episodes, thank you for listening, and come back when the monsoon winds are blowing right!

<Outro>

See me at the Intelligent Speech Conference!

If you listen to other history podcasts besides this one, you probably have heard of the Intelligent Speech Conference, the annual online meeting of history podcasters and their fans. This year, the conference is scheduled for Saturday, November 4. Well, I’m going to be a speaker at it! Three years ago, I gave a presentation at the conference, and when I told the people in charge what I would like to talk about this time, they accepted my idea! Stay tuned; I plan to tell you more about the conference over the next four weeks.

Whoops! I Forgot the Transcript!

If you follow what I write here, you know that when I upload a new podcast episode, I put a transcript of what I said in it here. This should make it easier for people to find the podcast, via a search engine, especially if they are hearing-impaired. Well, with the episode I shared yesterday, I forgot that step. Maybe after my recent time in the hospital, I am not yet completely recovered. Anyway, here is the transcript for Episode 129.

Episode 129: Sumba, The Forgotten Island

Greetings dear listeners, for the 129th time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! Well, I tried again to get an episode out in less than two months. What got in the way this time? Nature did, when I was more than halfway done with this episode. For the first time in my life, I was seriously ill. I guess there’s something to be said that I made it to the age of 64 before something like that happened. I fell ill during the last week of August, and thought it was just another cold. But it did not go away, and on the sixth day I was feeling so bad that I went to my doctor’s office to be checked out. I never saw the doctor; the nurses checked my vital signs, and then immediately called an ambulance. The way they are talking, they got me to the hospital just in time. It was a COVID infection that had caused my heart to race out of control.

I stayed at the hospital for the next five days. I can’t believe all the tests they did, all the blood samples they took. Fortunately, the test results were positive; no permanent damage. Then I convinced them that I had done all the recuperating possible with them, so they let me come home to finish the recovery here. Don’t worry, I have a sock stretched over my microphone. It’s an old podcaster’s trick to make sure the letter “P” sounds normal in a recording, but now it will also make sure that none of you catch COVID from listening to this. Yes, I am practicing safe podcasting now!

So what is happening in the rest of the world? As I record this, it is late summer, one of the dullest times of the year. Some people call these the Dog Days, or the summer doldrums. Many of us are on vacation, and the news isn’t very exciting. I know that because the stories making headlines are ones you won’t hear about the rest of the year. For example, one of the headlines I saw came from Memphis, Tennessee, where a crew of workers were painting a road, and they painted a white stripe over a dead raccoon on the pavement. That story should have only been reported in Memphis, but at this time of the year it gets national attention! Of course, the news media would go out of business if they gave us a headline that said, “Today Nothing Happened.” For those who are still at home, their kids are going back to school. And because the weather is hot and muggy outside, many of us, myself included, are looking forward to the beginning of fall.

Speaking of “man bites dog” stories, I’ve got a bit of news concerning a place we visited previously: Sulawesi. Indonesia has some market places that are not recommended for the fainthearted, because dog and cat meat are sold there. There has been pressure from the outside world, from animal rights activists and world celebrities, to stop this practice, and in July 2023, they scored a victory. That is when Indonesian authorities announced the end of dog and cat slaughter at an animal market on the northern coast of the island of Sulawesi. The Tomohon Extreme Market will become the first such market in Indonesia to go dog and cat meat-free, according to the anti-animal cruelty group Humane Society International. I found an article about the Tomohon market, and I must admit I couldn’t read beyond the beginning of it, because the article came with photos of butchered dogs; the photos were that horrible.

For the past five episodes we have done a mini-series about the islands of eastern Indonesia, those places which were mostly overlooked in this podcast while all the action was happening on Java, Sumatra and Borneo. Episode #124 looked at Bali, Episode #125 visited Sulawesi, Episode #126 went to Lombok, Episode #127 was about Sumbawa, and with Episode #128, we saw Komodo and Flores. Now today we are going to continue our journey across the Lesser Sunda Islands, and visit an island called Sumba. Compared with the islands in the previous episodes, Sumba is really off the beaten path. Here is how the website travelandleisureasia.com describes Sumba. Quote:

“It may be only an hour’s hop from Bali, but Sumba Island feels like the last frontier in Indonesia. With white-sand beaches, turquoise seas, rich culture and some stylish new resorts in the mix, this raw destination is the antithesis to Southeast Asia’s most frenetic beach towns.”

End quote.

When it comes to tourist stops, Sumba has been neglected until recently; that’s why I called it “The Forgotten Island.” Most foreigners have not heard of the place. The tourists who come here are mainly surfers and adventurers, so unless you can afford the most expensive hotel (more about that in a few minutes), you’d better be willing to rough it! The travel websites recommend Sumba as a quiet alternative to Bali, one of the best places to get away from it all, and the place to go when you need a vacation from the vacation you just took. I said “getting away from it all” because this isn’t your typical tourist resort; the infrastructure considered essential for the tourism industry just isn’t here. The roads are bumpy and long. The lodgings in most places are basic. The beaches are beautiful, but lack restrooms, cafes and restaurants; all they have is sand, water, and mangrove trees. Still, if all you want is a quiet beach and a traditional tribal culture, Sumba is the place for you.

Okay, this introduction has gone on long enough. If you are ready, let’s go to Sumba!

<Interlude>

*****

The first thing I need to tell you about Sumba is that Sumba and Sumbawa are not two names for the same place. I’m done talking about Sumbawa; everything I wanted to say about that island is in Episode #127. Sumba isn’t even the local name; it’s the name given to it by outsiders. The island’s natives call it Humba or Hubba. According to Wikipedia, Humba or Hubba means “no interfere”, “original”, “native”, or “indigenous.” Likewise, the island’s indigenous population calls itself tau Humba or tau Hubba, meaning “native people” or “original people.” However, these names did not work so well for foreigners, especially people from Java, who started coming here around the twelfth century. To the Javanese, the native names did not make sense to them; for them the name Humba meant “to wash” or “to cleanse.” Therefore they replaced the “H” in Humba with an “S,” creating the name Sumba that we use. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Dutch were in charge, they had another name for Sumba: Sandalwood Island.

Sumba is 174 kilometers, or 109 miles, south of Flores, rather than east of that island. There are at least two flights daily from Denpasar on Bali, but Sumba has two airports, so make sure you fly to the right one! If you go to the wrong airport, you will have a long drive across the island to reach your destination. There is also a ferry that travels between eastern Flores and Sumba, on Tuesdays and Fridays. If you go to Sumba this way, buy a first class ticket; it only costs $3 in US money, and you will appreciate being put in an area on the ferry with less noice and smoke.

Sumba occupies an area of 11,005 square km; that’s 4,249 square miles if you aren’t metric. This means it is about the same size as Jamaica, and twice the size of Bali, but it only has one sixth of Bali’s population. The most recent date I could find population figures for was 2021; then Sumba had an estimated population of 788,190. Waingapu is the largest town on the island, with 35,000 residents.

The landscape of Sumba is dominated by low-lying limestone hills. Mountains get as high as 4,000 ft above sea level (that’s a bit more than 1,200 meters if you’re metric), but unlike the other islands this podcast has visited, there are no volcanoes. Some geologists have even suggested that Sumba may once have been a part of northern Australia, and it was broken off the continent by plate tectonics. The island has a rich diversity of flora and fauna, and is especially famous for its birdlife; there are more than 200 species of birds, including several species that are only found here. The natural habitat of Sumba is, however, threatened, due to clearance of forests for human activities. Waterfalls, beaches, coves, and birdlife, are some of the tourist attractions of Sumba.

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Because of Sumba’s isolation, much of the traditional culture has survived to this day. As a result, when you get away from the modern towns and hotels, you can visit a handful of traditional villages. In the center of each village is a cluster of megalithic tombs, with several individuals buried in each; the oldest tombs are built with stones, while newer ones are built with concrete. Surrounding the tombs are the houses, which have extraordinarily tall peaked roofs. The peaked roofs are there because each house is supposed to have three levels. The bottom level is for the animals, and the middle level is the main floor, where the families conduct most of their activities. The top level, immediately under the peaked roofs, is where ancestral spirits are believed to stay. Often ancestral artifacts are stored in the top level. Building a new house, or simply replacing a roof, requires ceremonies and sacrifices. Because the houses are built with flammable materials, this happens more often than is probably necessary. Most of the village dwellers earn a living by farming or fishing.

Typically there is only one clan living in a village, two at the most. For every clan there is a clan house in the middle of the village, named the Rumah Adat. These are houses where the clan’s oldest ancestral spirits dwell, and cult objects of the clan are kept here. They are built with a different design from the houses of living people. This is the village’s equivalent of a temple, church or mosque; outsiders may only enter with the permission of the clan. Villagers believe that while they will eventually leave this world, their spirits will never leave the village.

Elaborate ceremonies are commonplace, especially for three of the most important events in life: birth, marriage, and death. Often animal sacrifices take place at the ceremonies. The animals used for the sacrifices are chickens, pigs, cattle and water buffalo, so you’ll need a strong stomach if you plan on attending these ceremonies.

Animals also play a part in weddings, though here they are kept alive. When a man wants to propose to a Sumba woman, his family must give her family gifts, usually in the form of water buffalo, cows, pigs, sandalwood or horses. The number of animals required for marriage is determined by the status of the bride’s family. For example, if the woman comes from a noble family, the price to marry her is forty horses, along with dozens of other livestock.

As with the Torajas in Episode #125, a funeral is a big deal, so much so that it may be delayed for a long time, in order for the family of the deceased to save up the money they need. One king had to wait 17 years after his death for his funeral, until the villagers could afford it.

I already mentioned that Sumba has a shortage of hotels, and the roads are not very good. In addition, Sumba is one of the poorest islands in the country, with many of the inhabitants lacking clean water, proper housing, and education. You will want to bring a mosquito net if you don’t stay in a hotel, because you can catch malaria and dengue fever here. Stray animals run around loose and they are in poor condition. Visitors will find their trip to Sumba heart breaking. Virtually no one speaks languages from the outside world like English; to get around on Sumba without a guide, you will at least have to know Indonesia’s official language, Bahasa Indonesia. As recently as 1998, a conflict broke out in the town of Waikabubak, where those fighting hacked each other to death with swords. This isn’t a theme park like Walt Disney World.

Although I said that Sumba is off the beaten path, it may not be that way for much longer. The island first attracted the attention of the travel industry in 1988, when a surfing couple, Claude and Petra Graves, came here, in search of the perfect wave. They settled on Nihiwatu Beach; Nihiwatu means “Mortar Stone,” because it is a beach with an isolated rock formation, shaped by the tide. Unlike most tourists, they did not stay here for a few days and then leave, but founded the island’s primary hotel, which they called the Nihiwatu Resort. By 2012, Claude was ready to expand the resort, and an American real estate investor, Christopher Burch, joined him to help with that. Burch brought in a friend from New York, the South African-born hotelier James McBride, who was President of YTL Hotels in Singapore at the time. Later in that year Burch and McBride acquired the hotel, renamed it NIHI Sumba, and they are the current owners.

Since then, the NIHI Sumba has been ranked as one of the world’s five best eco-hotels and was awarded the world’s best hotel of 2016 and 2017 by Travel + Leisure Magazine, for its native ambiance and authentic local experience. Despite its expensive rates, the resort is fully booked most of the time. Rates start at $295/night for adults and $145/night for children 6-11 years old. The private villas range from $1,075 to $20,675 per night, depending on how many bedrooms they have, and whether or not you book them during the busy season. More hotels are being built at this time; there are also huts along the beaches that can be rented. Fortunately the developers have two goals; they don’t want to add to the damage the local environment has already suffered, and they want to minimize disturbing the traditional culture.

Though Sumba isn’t too large of an island, the eastern and western halves of it are quite different, thanks to most of the rain falling on the western half. Consequently two thirds of the island’s population lives on the west side, and the farmers grow rice, because this is Southeast Asia, after all. On the relatively dry east side, corn (called maize if you’re not American), coffee, tobacco, fruits, coconuts and vegetables are grown, and copra is exported. The natives also earn much of their income by raising horses, water buffalo and cattle, and they export these animals to other parts of Indonesia.

Finally, I should say a few words about Sumba’s textile industry. You have probably heard of batik, the technique used on Java for dying cloth with wax. Sumba’s equivalent of batik is called ikat. Like batik and American tie-dying, ikat is a resist dying technique; here the artisan will tie and wrap individual yarns to prevent dying them all at the same time. What makes ikat different is that the yarns are dyed before they are woven into the cloth, making for a very complicated but beautiful process. Therefore it takes a lot of skill to become an ikat artisan! Similar dying techniques have been developed in other parts of Southeast Asia, India, Iran, Uzbekistan, Madagascar and South America, but apparently Indonesian ikat is the most famous these days. Of course the tourists will take some ikat with them when they leave, as souvenirs, and some of it is exported to Bali, to be sold in the rest of Indonesia, but the people of Sumba keep their best weavings at home, for weddings and funerals; at funerals, for example, the deceased will be buried wearing ikat clothing.

As on Flores and Sumbawa, the native population is a mixture of Malays from the islands to the west, and Melanesians from the islands to the east. Most of them speak languages that are Austronesian in origin, meaning the languages are related to other Indonesian languages. However, Islam is not the predominant religion on Sumba, the way it is in most of Indonesia. In the previous episode, we saw that the people on the island of Flores are largely Catholic, but even Catholicism is not the main religion on Sumba. While there are some Moslems, Catholics and Protestants, mainly living on the island’s coast, the largest share of the population, about 30%, follows the traditional religion, which is called Marapu. This combines animism, the belief that there are spirits everywhere in this world, with ancestor worship and some Hindu beliefs. When it comes to freedom of religion, the Indonesian government recognizes six religions — Islam, Protestant Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism — and the government requires every citizen of the country to embrace one of those religions. Whichever religion they declare is mentioned in documents that have personal data, such as passports and identification cards. In the past, those who didn’t declare themselves as followers of one of the six religions could be denied a marriage license or land titles. Thus, in order to practice Marapu legally, its followers will declare themselves Moslem, Protestant or Catholic, though Marapu has some practices that those religions do not call for, especially animal sacrifices and the placing of images on altars.

While it is fairly easy to plan for trips to the most important tombs and villages, if you want to attend a traditional ceremony or ritual, they are never planned more than a few days in advance, and you will only hear about them from your guide or hotel. The most popular of these events is Pasola, a pre-harvest fertility ritual that the villages hold in February and March. This ritual features two groups of riders on horses, throwing spears at each other — a reminder that the Sumba people are still warriors. Nowadays the spears have blunt, wooden points, so that nobody gets killed in the mock battle. Even so, witnesses to Pasola have said it gets very messy. They believe that, like the former practice of headhunting, wounds from Pasola are good for the villages; the more blood is spilled on the ground, the better the harvest will be. Okay, you have been warned.

*****

It won’t take long to cover Sumba’s history, since we have no written records before the Europeans arrived, just over five hundred years ago. For the pre-European era, the people of Sumba tell oral traditions, legends passed down from generation to generation. Oral history will tell how a clan got started, and otherwise is reliable for the past four or five generations. What we know for sure is that people have lived here for a long time, at least five thousand years. The oldest artifacts found were the skeleton of an exceptionally large man and a large clay jug. Both of these items date to sometime before 1500 B.C., and they can now be seen in Jakarta.

The original inhabitants of Sumba also left megalithic structures, monuments made out of enormous stones. Like the people of ancient Europe, they raised dolmen tombs, upright stones (some of them carved), and stone enclosures; they also leveled terraces. Today in the tribal villages, you can see similar structures: megalithic tombs currently in use; table-like spirit stones, where offerings are made to the dead; and skull trees, called andung, where headhunters used to hang their trophies. The practice of headhunting was only stopped by the Dutch authorities in the 1920s.

I mentioned already that the people of Java started coming here in the twelfth century. More Javanese may have been sent by the Kingdom of Singosari in the thirteenth century, and like the rest of Indonesia, Sumba was part of the Majapahit Empire in the late fourteenth century. Horses were either introduced to Sumba at this time, or soon after 1400. Then after Majapahit collapsed, Sumba came under the rule of Bima on Sumbawa, and later was ruled by Gowa on Sulawesi. If you listened to previous episodes of the podcast, you may remember Singosari and Majapahit from Episode 6, Bima from Episode 127, and Gowa from Episode 125. All of these off-island rulers, however, could not make too many changes to the daily life on Sumba. Even the Dutch impact was limited until the twentieth century. One Dutch official, for example, commented in 1911 that before the twentieth century, money was not used on Sumba; everything was traded by bartering.

For the islanders, life was more influenced by internal wars between clans and small kingdoms than it was by whichever foreigners were in charge. These petty wars were mostly fought over land and trading rights. Warriors brought back the heads of killed enemies to their villages and speared them up on so-called skull-trees in the middle of the village. They believed that the heads would bring a good harvest and wealth for the village. Sometimes they also kidnapped people from other villages and enslaved them, or sold them as slaves to neighbouring islands. Because of these wars and raids, villages were built on hills or mountains and surrounded by stone walls for protection. Still, however, no village could grow or produce everything it needed, so some trade took place between them. The communities on nearby islands would also trade with Sumba, but they regarded it as a very violent island. Beyond Indonesia, the Chinese accepted as much sandalwood as merchants could bring to them, and we have Chinese records of this trade going as far back as 357 A.D.; usually the sandalwood came from either Sumba or another Indonesian island, Timor.

The first Europeans to visit Sumba came from Portugal, and they arrived in 1522. Then as the seventeenth century began, the Netherlands founded the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, to take away Portugal’s trade in Southeast Asia. We first hear of a Dutch ship making landfall on Sumba in 1636, when a schooner from the Dutch East India Company, the Maria, was shipwrecked here. Initially the Company showed no interest in the island, because it did not have any resources the Company wanted. A report from 1650 noted that Sumba was under the control of Makassar, on Sulawesi, and that its slaves were too expensive.

The Dutch also avoided Sumba because it had no central authority; if they invaded, or made a treaty with the natives, they would impose their will on just one of the island’s small kingdoms. Then in the eighteenth century, the Dutch discovered that sandalwood from the island’s forests was a popular commodity, and people from places as far away as China and India would pay for it, so the Dutch entered the sandalwood trade. In 1756 the Company signed a treaty with some of Sumba’s leaders; after that, a considerable number of sandalwood trees were cut down, and the sandalwood was exported. That is why present-day Sumba is not covered by forests, and instead has vast, arid grasslands or savannas. And because slavery was legal in those days (it would be a few more years before the Abolitionist movement got started in England), the Dutch East India Company got involved in the slave trade, too.

In 1866 the Dutch government formally annexed Sumba, adding it to its growing colony in the region, the Dutch East Indies. This was also the date when the first Christian missionaries arrived. Because the Netherlands is a Protestant country, most of the missionaries and their converts were Dutch Calvinists, but Jesuits came here as well, establishing a Catholic body in the population. Then in 1906 Dutch troops invaded Sumba, not because the natives resisted Dutch authority, but because clan wars disturbed the colonial trade. I suspect the military intervention was an afterthought on the part of the Dutch, because their troops were also active on other Indonesian islands at this date; remember the war on Bali. In 1913 the Netherlands set up a loose civil administration on Sumba. However, as you would probably guess if you have been paying attention, this changed the social structures of Sumba only very slowly. Actions by the Dutch to gain more power and influence, often ended in bloody conflicts.

The last part of Sumba’s history will only take a minute to mention, since not much has happened here since 1940, aside from the coming of the hotel builders. My sources did not say anything about World War II, so it is safe to assume that the Japanese took over in early 1942, and held Sumba for the rest of the war, though no battles were fought here. After the war, when the Dutch came under foreign pressure to grant independence to the Dutch East Indies, they tried to enroll all the islands east of Java and Borneo into a separate state, called Negara Indonesia Timur, the State of Eastern Indonesia. The Dutch plan turned out to be unworkable, and in August 1950, the eastern islands, including Sumba, were annexed by Sukarno’s Java-based government, creating Indonesia as we have known it ever since. And that’s the way it is, as Walter Cronkite used to say.

*****

Okay, that takes care of Sumba. I don’t want to delay this episode any longer, so I will “get er done,” as Larry the Cable Guy would say, and perform the final tasks needed to get it to you. Although the end has come in sight for our tour of eastern Indonesia, there are a few more islands between Sumba and New Guinea, so join me next time to see which islands we visit next. And then after that, we still have to visit the fabled Spice Islands, the Moluccas.

In the podcasts I have been listening to, I have noticed the number of advertisements is increasing. Somehow the websites hosting those podcasts know I am in Kentucky, and with the podcasts I download or stream, they will give me ads aimed at the Kentucky market. For example, currently most of those podcasts come with an ad announcing that sports betting is about to become legal in Kentucky. Since I don’t gamble, and I’m not a sports fan, this ad isn’t useful to me. Still, I may hear it multiple times in one podcast episode, and that gets annoying. If you feel the same way, you probably appreciate that I put no ads in this podcast. If you are hearing any, they are not from me. However, I still need to keep the lights on here, figuratively speaking. Remember what I said at the beginning of this episode about the dog days of summer? For podcasters that means the number of donations can decrease in late summer, and that happened here; no one-time donations have come in since the previous episode was recorded. Although late summer may become fall by the time you hear this, any donation you can afford to make will still be greatly appreciated on this end. One-time donations are made through Paypal, or you can sign up to make a small monthly donation through Patreon; I have included links to both on the Blubrry.com page that hosts this episode. And if you can’t afford to make a donation at this time, you can still help by spreading the word about this show to family, friends, and even people you have just met who may be interested. Heck, I am telling folks about the show all the time. Okay, I’ve said enough, so thank you for listening, and come back when the monsoon winds are blowing right!

<Outro>