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East Timorese nationalism experienced a unique generational transition during Indonesia's occupation hinging onto internationalism in the changing world. In contrast to the existing literature on nationalism, which is overwhelmingly focused on earlier construction of nationalism and post‐independence nation building, this article offers a theoretical account of the transformation of nationalism from an older to newer generation through a socio‐historical analysis. In light of interactions between nationalism and internationalism, it argues that while the older generation relied on a Lusophone cosmology of anti‐colonialism derived from counterparts in Portuguese colonies in Africa in the 1960s, the younger generation took advantage of universal human rights advocacy in the 1990s in its aspiration for independence. In doing so, this study demonstrates both generational continuity and change in the construction, development and transformation of East Timorese nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shepherd's book, then, has value on multiple levels, and I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone interested in histories of ethnography, animism, or reflexive or ontological anthropology. The point here is to illuminate how ethnographers become a part of a story, as catalysts for animist events through the negative effects of, for instance, breaching taboos, or the more productive but still complicated promise of a revitalisation or validation of local ideas. "Animism" as a term came from such efforts, as colonial ethnographers sought to categorise and understand local ways of life. [Extracted from the article]

The island of Ataúro, situated north of the capital of Timor-Leste, functioned as a prison island during the Portuguese colonial regime, more intensively from the 1920s onwards. During the Indonesian colonial period (1975-1999), the occupiers used the island to confine families of resistance members in open concentration camps, where hundreds of people died of hunger and malnutrition. In this paper, departing from an analysis of the memories and archival material on the former prisoners in Ataúro during the Indonesian occupation, I argue for the importance of telling and memorialising the histories of the island and people imprisoned there. Furthermore, I discuss memory and the colonial legacies, as some islands in the Pacific region remain territories deemed as repositories and detention sites for people fleeing from far away places marked by conflicts created by dictatorial and colonial regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 26 August 1975 the colonial administration in Portuguese Timor abruptly removed itself from Dili to the island of Atauru, amidst escalating armed conflict among Timorese political parties. A puzzle that has remained is why did the Portuguese administration leave so precipitately, and why did it not return a few days later when the conflict was over? We have been left with the impression that Portugal simply deserted its responsibilities, abandoning the territory to Indonesian annexation. This paper pieces together a rivetting but little‐known story, from contemporary Portuguese, Indonesian, US, Australian, Timorese and eyewitness accounts, about the humiliating capture and detention by Timorese and Indonesians of Portuguese military as prisoners of war, which helps to explain a previously unrecognized constraint on Portuguese policy in East Timor in 1975‐1976. This paper also shows that Indonesia had taken some important lessons from history on how to manage Portugal, from India's annexation of Portuguese Goa in 1961. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the mimesis of indigenous "customs and law" as a theory of and strategy for colonial government in the period of late imperialism. I draw on the case of colonial administration in the Portuguese colony of Timor during the second-half of the nineteenth century. I introduce the concept of "mimetic governmentality": the art of governing the Other through the productive inclusion of institutions, symbols, cultural materials, or social forms understood as other than one's own. In Timor, the imperial establishment was characterized by fragility and isolation, and a pragmatic style of colonial action thrived. In Europe, modem doctrines of colonial law rejected assimilationist policies and advocated "specialization." In this context, between 1860 and 1910, administrators on Timor devised a system of colonial justice that required the colonizers to slip into the indigenous world and govern others from the others' position and perspectives. To efficiently govern the "natives" and apply colonial justice in courts--the so-called justiças--Europeans had to release themselves from European principles and embrace indigenous law, as they understood it. The essay uses the case of Timor to assert the analytic importance and potential of mimesis for the comparative study of colonial administrations during the period of imperial expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay suggests that the East Timorese experience of Indonesian occupation and its aftermath may be more fully understood by exploring the influence of missionary education in the late-colonial Portuguese period. Tracing this influence through the Indonesian period, it examines the case of a Jesuit-established school in which the language of instruction was Portuguese. In this setting, 'comportment' was a part of elite formation, taught and assimilated by association. The significance and problems of'comportment' are addressed through this case by discussing its relation to a colonial idea o f'civilisation', and in the broader social context of colonial educational reforms and changes in East Timor's society across the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]