LORDS OF THE LAND, LORDS OF THE SEA VERHANDELINGEN VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 273 HANS HÄGERDAL LORDS OF THE LAND, LORDS OF THE SEA Conflict and adaptation in early colonial Timor, 1600-1800 KITLV Press Leiden 2012 Published by: KITLV Press Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands website: www.kitlv.nl e-mail: [email protected] KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) [LOGO KNAW] Cover: Creja ontwerpen ISBN 978 90 6718 378 9 © 2012 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde KITLV Press applies the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) to selected books, published in or after January 2011. 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Printed editions manufactured in the Netherlands Contents list of maps, figures, tables and illustrations ix preface xi 1 timor and historical research 1 2 the first contacts 15 Early reports 15 The Solor connection 21 Missionary activity on Timor 29 Arrival of the Dutch 33 The hunt for sandalwood 41 3 traditional forms of power 51 Tantalizing shreds of evidence 51 Chiefs or kings? 52 Wehali – the centre 60 Sonbai 68 The elusive eastern liurai 77 4 establishments and clashes, 1641-1658 83 Makassarese inroads, Portuguese responses 83 Dutch beginnings 91 The rise of Sonbai 98 The Company builds a fort 102 New alliances, new defeats 110 A later perspective 126 | Contents 5 the topass phase, 1650s-1702 133 The mestizo community goes to Timor 133 The rise of the Hornays and Da Costas 138 Co-opting the Atoni princedoms 149 Wehali and the eastern lands 162 The outer islands 173 The uncrowned merchant prince 180 The ethnic dynamics of the Topasses 190 6 kupang and the five loyal allies, 1658-1700s 199 The formation of the five allies 199 The pattern of warfare 209 Kingship in the shadow of the Company 216 Rote 221 Sawu 228 Solor 233 The Alor group 242 Proplems of surveillance – a case study 245 7 life and death in kupang 253 The population of Kupang 253 The Chinese impact 262 Slaves 269 Arenas of interaction 283 Room for negotiations 291 The Company as mediator 298 Savages 302 8 the estado strikes back, 1696-1732 311 A difficult heritage 311 The coming of the white governor 316 The VOC connection 322 A clerical peace- and troublemaker 328 Anti-Portuguese movements 335 The Topass leader at the helm 344 vi Contents | 9 the company on the move, 1732-1761 349 Dutch activism and Belu overtures 349 The Meulenbeek incident 356 The road to Penfui 361 The map is redrawn 367 The Paravicini mission 376 New Company initiatives 381 10 colonial retreat and maintenance 393 Two ports in decline 393 Chaos in the west, stabilization in the east 399 Conclusions: cultures in contact 409 appendix 1. rulers of local princedoms from 1619 to approximately 1850 417 appendix 2. governors of portuguese timor from 1696 to 1832 423 appendix 3. dutch opperhoofden and residents of timor from 1646 to 1832 425 glossary 429 bibliography 433 index 463 vii List of maps, fi gures, tables and illustrations maps Timorese ethnolinguistic groups 11 The Solor and Alor Islands 23 West Timorese domains 63 East Timorese domains 79 figures Genealogy of the Sonbai dynasty 101 Genealogy of the Hornay and Da Costa families 145 tables Reformed Christians on Timor, Rote and Sawu, eighteenth century 286 illustrations A Topass or mardijker with his family 194 Kupang as it appeared to a British visitor in the early 1790s 219 Rotenese characters in 1829 225 A group of Timorese soldiers 294 The interior of a Timorese house in Kupang 303 A lady and her servants in Kupang 304 The siege of the mountain stronghold Cailaco in 1726, by the forces of the Estado da Índia 339 A letter written by Gaspar da Costa, who led the Topass community between 1732 and 1749 355 The Sonbai ruler Pieter Nube, who ruled in 1798-1821, with French visitors 404 Preface The aim of this book is to fill a historiographical void by studying how local people on Timor fought, traded, negotiated and mixed with for- eigners during two eventful centuries, from 1600 to 1800. The subject is not entirely new, for many good historians have taken up their pen and delved into the intricate history of the island. What is still needed, however, and what this book tries to achieve, is a comprehensive discus- sion that takes into account the entire island – what is today known as Indonesian Timor or Timor Leste. An account that traces both indige- nous as well as colonial interests; a study which fully uses the rich archival sources that are available; a text that traces not only the exploitative and oppressive features accompanying the European presence and ensuing forms of resistance, but also the forms of co-operation, partnership and mutual dependence that subsequently evolved. When using general textbooks to study the history of Indonesia, it is apparent that a non-literate and low-technological culture like that of the Timorese does not feature heavily. The same goes for works that survey Portuguese expansion overseas, where Timor is a footnote appended to discussions about Goa, Malacca and Macao. The extended arc of islands known as Nusa Tenggara, which stretches out some 1,000 kilometres from west to east, is by no means devoid of interest for the modern schol- ar. The islands harbour a remarkable ethnic and linguistic diversity. They are characterized by small-scale polities, a strong belief in the role of ancestors, ritual-spatial location, and marital exchange patterns between lineages. All this has engendered excellent scholarship, but scholarship that tends to sit within the field of anthropology rather than history. This is matched by the public discourse of modern Indonesia, where the cen- tral, principally Javanese, narration of Indonesia’s long history has been predominant. Powerful physical symbols, such as the Javanese kraton and temples and the Balinese religious sites, stand out in textbooks and tour- ist guides alike. Unsurprisingly, much of the official six-volume textbook Sejarah nasional Indonesia (Marwati Djoenad Poesponegoro and Nugroho | Preface Notosusanto 1975) is devoted to the geographical centre, although there are also a few sections on Sumatra, Kalimantan and South Sulawesi, especially in reference to anti-colonial rebellions, perhaps illustrative of modern nationalist sentiment. Coverage of Timor is restricted to a few scattered mentions in volumes I and III. It must be emphasized that any gaps in the history of Timor are not entirely due to a lack of sources, as there have been a good number of documents during the last three or four centuries. Although the mate- rial is largely Dutch or Portuguese, with all its inherent problems of Eurocentric bias, it can still be effectively used to trace historical pro- cesses in the easterly regions of Indonesia and Timor Leste. Language, however, has been an obstacle. For the most part, texts dealing with ‘Portuguese’ Timor have not taken advantage of Dutch sources, and vice versa. Notwithstanding this, since the cataclysmic separation of Timor Leste from Indonesia in 1999, a number of interesting contributions have surfaced. A detailed study of the period 1613-1660 has been com- pleted by Arend de Roever (2002), and I have no intention of supersed- ing his work. One may also mention the widely used online history of Timor by Geoffrey Gunn (n.y.), and the cartographic work undertaken by Frédéric Durand (2006a). To write a comprehensive text covering two centuries of history is a long and cumbersome yet rewarding journey, and it is hard to pinpoint a particular event that has been formative in the process. To do so would merely be a reconstruction after the fact, of the type that is often found in literary autobiographies. After years of labour, however, there are some occasions that spring to mind as being especially memorable. One such moment occurred on a January night in Ajaobaki, in the sonaf (residence) of the Oematan family, once the rulers of the West Timorese highland district Mollo. In the sparsely lit building from 1911 – as is often the case in these quarters, the electricity was off – I found myself talking to people whose ancestors had played important roles in the distant centu- ries I was studying. The adat (tradition) expert tied to the Oematan fam- ily, Mathias Sunbanu, an old moustached gentleman clad in a local kain, revealed the family history of the Oematan since time immemorial – or rather a section of it, since it is unbecoming that an adat expert tells more than he is allowed to according to traditional Timorese custom. Showing a good awareness of historical criticism, he told me that one must circu- late among the various experts to hear the variations. He added that sopi, xii Preface | a type of liquor, was mandatory to keep the experts in high spirits and help them relax and open up. With me in the room was Leopold Nisnoni, son of the last Dutch-appointed raja of Kupang and a descendant of the Sonbai family. This family had held a position of precedence among the princes in West Timor for many hundreds of years, to such an extent that the Portuguese and Dutch colonizers heralded them as emperors. It was, indeed, one of those moments when history comes alive. Nor were moments of fascination lacking when examining the ar- chives.