The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language Colonialmimesiswordpress.Com

Ricardo Roque The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language colonialmimesiswordpress.com THE COLONIAL COMMAND OF CEREMONIAL LANGUAGE: Etiquette and custom-imitation in nineteenth century East Timor1 Ricardo Roque Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt, 9, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal [email protected] This paper is in draft form. You are welcome to cite it, but please reference it appropriately – for instance in the following form: Ricardo Roque, „The colonial command of ceremonial language: etiquette and custom-imitation in nineteenth century East Timor‟, online version of 30th January 2011, available at http://colonialmimesis.wordpress.com/ (downloaded on [date of access]) This is a version of the paper to be published as: Ricardo Roque , „The colonial command of ceremonial language: etiquette and custom-imitation in nineteenth century East Timor‟, in Laura Pang (ed.), Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies, 1511-2011: Complexities of Engagement, Culture, and Identity in Southeast Asia. Vol. 2: The Tenacities and Plasticities of Culture and Identity (2 vols. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011) (forthcoming). Please refer to this book publication for the final text. * * Throughout the nineteenth century, Timor was perceived as Portugal‟s most remote colonial province, a problematic remnant of the Portuguese maritime empire in Asia. The island was geographically isolated and the administration was militarily weak, economically poor, and enmeshed in multiple political and military conflicts, either Ricardo Roque The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language colonialmimesiswordpress.com between the colonizers and the indigenous, or amongst colonizers themselves.2 This marginal, weak, and atavistic colonial condition was associated with a ceremonial style of administration. Although the Portuguese governors envisaged an administration modeled in the example of „modern‟ European and Imperial state bureaucracies, territorial occupation, economic order, and military organization, the fact was that, in practice, they felt the need to engage and reproduce old local institutions and traditions, deeply rooted in the government praxis of the colony. Indeed, the idea of sacred age-old custom – usually under the name of estilos 3 – was a main source of legitimacy and normative supervision of colonial domination as „traditional authority‟.4 As one governor declared in 1901, the governor‟s authority could only aspire to indigenous recognition because of and „in accordance with the estilos‟.5 Regardless of their being perceived as barbarian, abhorrent, feudal or old-fashioned by nineteenth century Portuguese, many of these estilos of administration could not be easily dismissed or modified in practice without serious consequences for colonial authority. Thus the Portuguese in Timor felt compelled to copy and reproduce a number of locally meaningful ancient socio-political customs, norms, and ceremonies, of which they were important actors. The origin of many of these estilos could be traced to manners and customs introduced in Timor by former Portuguese agents in the early modern period. But by the nineteenth century not only they were critical to the survival of colonial authority in the present, as they were not „Portuguese‟ customs any more. They were a legacy of the past that had been creatively integrated and adopted as lawful by the people and the elites in the Timorese kingdoms. It had already become a form of „indigenous‟ ancient custom, and as such was valued by the Timorese. This essay explores the pivotal significance of some of these ancient customs and ceremonial practices in nineteenth century colonial East Timor. Scholars of the Portuguese imperial expansion have already called attention to the cultural and political significance of feasts, rituals, and generally ceremonial culture in the structuring of political authority and the making of the empire in the early modern period, namely with Ricardo Roque The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language colonialmimesiswordpress.com regard to Brazil.6 Yet, in what concerns later historical periods of Portuguese imperialism, ceremonial culture and practices have not been discussed as an active component of Luso-Asian encounters and colonial government. This essay contributes to redress this balance, exploring the productive role of ceremonial customs and codified gestures for the co-production of colonial and indigenous power, status and authority in the late imperialism period. In Timor, I argue, ceremoniality was the language and the technology through which both Portuguese and Timorese politico- jural authority and status were constituted and exercised in colonial interactions. It ensured the enactment of command as well as the social communication with and amongst the colonial and indigenous people and ruling classes, in a variety of situations: during peaceful conjunctive interactions, but also, and importantly, on occasions of political tension, conflict, or imminent physical violence. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Portuguese and Timorese jural authority and status constituted an entangled realm, supported by a rich variety of customary rules, rites, objects, and signs associated with the exercise of justice, the conduct of war, and generally the rule over worldly affairs. This was a historically fluid, fragile, fractured, and contingent entanglement, cut across by dynamics of differentiation and hostility, and from which opposition and violence were not discounted – indeed, they could be constitutive of its functioning. 7 Headhunting rites performed in colonial campaigns fed on the mutual strength of the colonial establishment and the victorious indigenous communities; public labour, warrior service, and collective taxes (such as the finta) owed to the government formed a ritual tributary system that fed on the Portuguese power in Dili whilst strengthening also indigenous centres and elites in the kingdoms; Portuguese national flags, military uniforms, sceptres and a multitude of honours, titles and ranks granted to Timorese lineages of liurais in the course of vassalage oaths helped to sustain, as ancestral tokens of office, the latter‟s status and authority in the communities.8 Ricardo Roque The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language colonialmimesiswordpress.com I will not deal here with the full range of these important expressions of status and authority that stood at the conjunction of indigenous and colonial societies in Timor. My purpose in this essay is to concentrate attention on one apparently minor, yet significant, aspect of the entangled ceremonial world of Portuguese-Timorese affairs. I refer to the minute care paid by both the European and Indigenous agents to the rightful performance of ancient stereotyped behaviours and deference gestures in their mutual dealings – the etiquette performed in colonial interactions in relation to persons of certain status and authority positions, in accordance to custom, to the estilo – to every norm, rite, tradition or gesture acknowledged as lawful in colonial Timor. Etiquette and the notion of custom-imitation It is one hypothesis of this essay that managing etiquette in colonial interactions was critical for the communication and regulation of authority, social hierarchy and political tension. Etiquette regulated the relationships with authorities and persons of rank, holding together the circuits of deference upon which superior power and status were sustained. Army officers and indigenous aristocracy; army officers and missionaries; governors and indigenous kings and noblemen; and the commoners as regards every person or thing perceived to be an embodiment of higher authority, should observe in their relations a certain number of modes of behaviour, dress codes, linguistic manners, spatial locations, use of material objects, and so on. As such, managing etiquette was critical for those (Timorese and Portuguese alike) who claimed higher status and authority in colonial Timor. The mutual observance of etiquette implied the bodily expression of deference. These were gestures „expressing the status of an individual‟ and „represent[ing] an assent to the unequal distribution of rewards and facilities‟, to be owed to a person of status by people of equal or lower standing.9 As a ceremonial mode of „stereotyped behaviour‟, etiquette represented, as Edward Shils observed, an „appreciation of the charismatic qualities embodied in great Ricardo Roque The Colonial Command of Ceremonial Language colonialmimesiswordpress.com authority, power, and eminence‟.10 Therefore, etiquette mattered not only to maintain the micro-sociological order of social interactions. In that it expressed an acknowledgement of power and social hierarchy in human relations, etiquette was crucial to the wider regulation of status and authority at both a societal and a cross- cultural level in colonial Timor. Etiquette simultaneously expressed and made possible the central elements of jural authority, across the colonial-indigenous divide. In addition, it was an important aspect in the regulation of conflicts and violence – to the extent that, in some instances, as I shall suggest, the greater the political tension or the sense of imminent physical threat, the more important became the rightful performance of etiquette for the actors involved. The emphasis on the continued adoption of etiquette (and, more generally, of estilos) configured a form of imitation, one way of performing

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