Timor & Oecussi
The Lifau Monument marking the spot where the Portuguese landed in 1515 to commence the sandalwood trading centre.
{Extract from History of Timor - see Pdf below} Relative to
the seventeenth Century, little documentary evidence remains or has been
uncovered on the Portuguese in Timor in the sixteenth Century, the Century of
discovery, albeit, not yet permanent European settlement on Timor. Whether this
owes to Portuguese secrecy or, as the Portuguese writer Porfirio Campos asserts,
allegations of criminal negligence on the part of one Governor in allowing fire
to destroy the Dili archives in 1779.
Dutch scholars have established that, at the time of the Javanese empire of Srivijaya (circa tenth century AD), sandalwood from Timor was transported to the Malacca Straits area and then via the monsoon-controlled trade routes to India and China. Crawfurd, citing local "annals", observed that as early as 1332 the Javanese along with Malays frequented Ternate in the Spice Islands as the "first link in the long commercial chain" reaching from the Moluccas to Europe. There is no question that sandal from Timor entered this chain as a commodity of Indian or Arab trade. We also know from such Chinese sources as the 1225 accounts of the Chinese Inspector of Overseas Trade Chau-Ju-Kua, that Timor was regarded as a place rich in sandalwood. Ming dynasty records are more eloquent on the subject, describing Timor as an island covered with the aromatic wood and having at least twelve landing places where Chinese merchants made their landfall. Also from this time a direct sea route to Timor was opened up by Chinese navigators through the Sulu and Celebes seas to the Moluccas. From his reading of Chinese sources on this question, Roderich Ptak has established that the earliest extant Chinese description of Timor is that contained in the Tao-i chin-lueh (circa 1350).
Dutch scholars have established that, at the time of the Javanese empire of Srivijaya (circa tenth century AD), sandalwood from Timor was transported to the Malacca Straits area and then via the monsoon-controlled trade routes to India and China. Crawfurd, citing local "annals", observed that as early as 1332 the Javanese along with Malays frequented Ternate in the Spice Islands as the "first link in the long commercial chain" reaching from the Moluccas to Europe. There is no question that sandal from Timor entered this chain as a commodity of Indian or Arab trade. We also know from such Chinese sources as the 1225 accounts of the Chinese Inspector of Overseas Trade Chau-Ju-Kua, that Timor was regarded as a place rich in sandalwood. Ming dynasty records are more eloquent on the subject, describing Timor as an island covered with the aromatic wood and having at least twelve landing places where Chinese merchants made their landfall. Also from this time a direct sea route to Timor was opened up by Chinese navigators through the Sulu and Celebes seas to the Moluccas. From his reading of Chinese sources on this question, Roderich Ptak has established that the earliest extant Chinese description of Timor is that contained in the Tao-i chin-lueh (circa 1350).
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