Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of
the Timor
Sea
. It is divided between the independent state
of East
Timor
, and West Timor,
belonging to the Indonesian
province of East Nusa
Tenggara.
The island's surface is 11,883 square miles (30,777
km²). The name is a variant of
timur,
Malay for “east”; it
is so called because it is at the east end of a chain of
islands.
Language, ethnic groups, and religion
Similar to nearby islands, most Timorese are
Melanesian and anthropologists identify eleven
distinct ethno-linguistic groups in Timor. The largest are the
Atoni of western Timor, and the
Tetum of central and eastern Timor. Most Timor
indigenous Timorese languages belong to the
Austronesian group of languages spoken through
the Indonesian archipelago.
The non-Austronesian languages are related to
languages spoken in the Halmahera
(in Maluku
) and
Western New
Guinea
.
The official languages of East Timor are
Tetum
and
Portuguese, while in West
Timor it is
Indonesian.
Indonesian is also widely spoken and understood in East
Timor.
Christianity is the dominant religion
throughout the island of Timor, at about 90% of the population.
Roman Catholics are the majority on
both halves of the island; Catholics outnumber
Protestants in West Timor by about a 1.5:1 ratio.
Muslims and
Animists
are most of the remainder, at about 5% each.
Geography
To the south and southeast of Timor is
Oceania.
To its northwest is the island of Sulawesi
, and to its
west, the island of Sumba
.
To the
west-northwest of Timor are the islands of Flores
and Alor
, and to its northeast are the Barat Daya Islands, including Wetar
.
It,
together with Sumba
, Babar
and associated smaller islands, forms the southern
archipelago of the Lesser Sunda
Islands
.
Timor has older geology and lacks the volcanic nature of the
northern Lesser Sunda Islands. The orientation of the main axis of
the island also differs from its neighbors. These features have
been explained as the result of being on the northern edge of the
Indo-Australian Plate as it
pushes into the
South East
Asia.
Flora and fauna
Timor,
together with the Lesser Sunda Islands
to the northwest and the smaller islands to the
northeast, is covered by tropical dry
broadleaf forests. Many trees are
deciduous or partly deciduous, dropping their
leaves during the dry season. Timor, the Barat Daya Islands, and
the smaller islands to the northeast of Timor constitute the
Timor and Wetar
deciduous forests ecoregion.
During the
Pleistocene epoch, Timor was the abode of extinct
giant monitor lizards similar to the
Komodo dragon.
Like Flores
, Sumba
and Sulawesi
, Timor was
also once a habitat of extinct dwarf stegodonts,
relatives of elephants.
History
The earliest historical record about Timor island is 14th century
Nagarakretagama, Canto 14, that
identify
Timur as an island within
Majapahit's realm. Timor was incorporated into
ancient Indonesian, Chinese and Indian trading networks of the 14th
century as an exporter of aromatic
sandalwood,
slave,
honey and
wax.
As the nearest island with a European settlement at the time, Timor
was the destination of
William Bligh
and seamen loyal to him following the infamous
mutiny on the Bounty in 1789.
It was
also where survivors of the wrecked HMS
Pandora
, sent to arrest the Bounty mutineers,
landed in 1791 after that ship sank in the Great Barrier
Reef
.
The
island has been politically divided in two parts for centuries:
West Timor, which was known as
Dutch Timor from the 1800s until 1949 when it
became Indonesian Timor, a part of the nation of
Indonesia
which was formed from the old Netherlands
East Indies
; and East
Timor
which was known as Portuguese Timor
, a Portuguese colony until 1975.
It
includes the enclave of Oecussi-Ambeno
in West Timor. The Netherlands
and Portugal
did not formally resolve the matter of the boundary
until 1912.
Japanese
forces occupied the whole island from 1942 to
1945. They were resisted in a
guerrilla campaign led initially by
Australian commandos. (See
Battle of Timor.)
Following the withdrawal of the Portuguese, internal unrest, and an
Indonesian
invasion in 1975, East Timor was annexed by Indonesia and
became known as
Timor Timur or 'Tim-Tim' for short.
It was
regarded by Indonesia as the country's 27th province,
but this was never recognised by the United Nations or Portugal
. The people of East Timor resisted
Indonesian forces in a prolonged guerilla campaign. (See:
Indonesian occupation of
East Timor).
Following a referendum held in 1999, under a
UN sponsored agreement between Indonesia
and Portugal
, in which its people rejected the offer of autonomy
within Indonesia, East Timor achieved independence in 2002 and is
now officially known as Timor-Leste
. A group of people on the Indonesian side of
Timor have been reported active since 2001 trying to establish a
Great Timor State.However, there is no
real evidence whatsoever that the people of West Timor, most of
whom are from
Atoni ethnicity who are the
traditional enemy of East Timorese, have any interest in joining
their tribal enemies.
Additionally, East Timor
's independence movement never laid claim to West
Timor at any time, before the Indonesian invasion or
thereafter. Similarly, the government of East Timor
fully recognises Indonesia's existing boundaries as inherited from
the Netherlands
East Indies
. This is similar to the position taken by
Papua New
Guinea
in relation to West Papua
, when the former became independent of Australia.
References
- Audley-Charles, M.G. (1987) "Dispersal of Gondwanaland:
relevance to evolution of the Angiosperms" In: Whitmore,
T.C. (ed.) (1987) Biogeographical Evolution of the Malay
Archipelago Oxford Monographs on Biogeography 4, Clarendon
Press, Oxford, pp. 5–25, ISBN 0-19-854185-6
- etan.org
See also