The 500-year Timorese Funu

Abstract

As recent history reveals, the Timorese have not easily acquiesced to dominance by outsiders, now or in the past. This article sets down the broad contours of that past, investigates how that past has been reclaimed, and offers a reflection on the style of the Timorese resistance or war, loosely labeled funu in Timor's Tetum language. By setting down the boundary dividing colonial spheres of influence on Timor, the two concerned colonial powers, Holland and Portugal, unleashed a terrible hubris. This article argues that Timor under the Portuguese stood out in the Southeast Asian context, not so much in the level of violence used to neutralize rebellion, as in the longevity of rebellion, and even the inter-generational character of its rebellions down to modern times. From a Westernizing perspective, or at least a perspective that engages the colonial incorporation of Timor as a dependent tributary within a broader modern world-system, this article describes several discrete stages in Timorese history, albeit within a 500-year framework. But, it also asks, can the 500-year history thesis as defended by Wallerstein be sustained against the argument developed by Frank and Gills that much of the periphery was home to world-systems of its own long before the Columbian revolution, stretching back at least 5,000 years? Attempts to reclaim this history, this article shows, have been, and are bound to be, crucial to the making of an East Timorese identity.