Distant and Regional Colonialism

Abstract

It is a truism that political circumstances are a product of the history that created them. East Timor is redolent with its history, the various strands of which weave together to create not just a single political fabric but, like a traditional tais,¹ one that is imbued with the hues and meanings of its construction and that, if the ends fray, has a tendency to unravel. The causes of cohesion and conflict in East Timor are numerous and complex but underlying, if not causing, them reside traditional alliances and rivalries and, importantly, the impact of and resistance to colonial segmentation and manipulation of ethnic groups. Relationships comprising status and patronage, dignity and violence, language and region, loyalty and memory, and how these are recalled, reified, distorted, and manipulated all echo and recur in more contemporary events and responses. In East Timor, more traditional responses and belief systems and how they have been reshaped to make sense of external influences are never very far from visible outcomes.