Timor's name simply means east, marking where the Lesser Sundas end
Timor takes its name from Malay timur, east, because it caps the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, under 500 km from Australia. Prized for sandalwood since the 13th century, it has been split for centuries and today belongs partly to Timor-Leste and partly to Indonesia.
The island covers 30,777 km² at the southern edge of Maritime Southeast Asia, on the northern side of the Timor Sea. More than 3 million people live there: about 2 million in Indonesian West Timor, part of East Nusa Tenggara province, and about 1.3 million in Timor-Leste. The largest towns are Kupang in the west and the old Portuguese towns of Dili and Baucau in the east, and poor roads make the interior hard to reach. Income comes from Timor Sea oil and gas, coffee and tourism.
Geologically Timor is the main island of the Outer Banda Arc, pushed up as the Australian continent collides with the arc. Unusually, a thick continental margin is being forced beneath thinner oceanic crust, so the island is largely made of Australian rocks scraped off and stacked into a wedge of thrust sheets. Dozens of natural oil and gas seeps have drawn exploration both on land and offshore.
The first written mention is in the 13th-century Chinese Zhu Fan Zhi, which calls it Ti-wu and praises its sandalwood, and the 14th-century Javanese Nagarakretagama lists it within Majapahit's realm. Traders took sandalwood, slaves, honey and wax. As the nearest European outpost, it received William Bligh and his loyal crew after the Bounty mutiny of 1789, and in 1791 survivors of HMS Pandora, wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while hunting the mutineers. The Dutch and Portuguese divided the island by treaty in 1859 but only fixed the boundary in 1912.
Neutral Portuguese Timor was occupied by Australian and Dutch troops in December 1941, and after Japan invaded in February 1942 a 400-strong Allied force and many Timorese volunteers fought back. Portugal withdrew after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Indonesia annexed the east in 1975, and Falintil guerrillas resisted 35,000 Indonesian troops until a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999 rejected autonomy. Eleven ethno-linguistic groups live on the island, the Atoni and Tetun being largest, and about 90% of islanders are Christian; Timor-Leste is 98% Catholic.
Source: Timor
