Cultural History In Focus | “The ‘Informal Portuguese Empire’ and the Topasses in the Solar Archipelago and Timor in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” by Leonard Yuzon Andaya

 

Ancestor Figure | Itara
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

 
 
 

The ‘Informal Portuguese Empire’ and the Topasses in the Solar Archipelago and Timor in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

 
 

by Leonard Yuzon Andaya

 
 

This article is generously provided by Leonard Yuzon Andaya.

 

Belu Ceremonial Lime Container | Ahu Mama
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Sword | Klewang
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Stone Monument | Itos
© Museo delle Culture Lugano | Switzerland

Ancestor Figure
© Museon | The Netherlands

Belu Ceremonial Mask | Biola
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Ceremonial Ivory Spoon from Eastern Indonesia
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Shawl
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Standing Charm Carved from a Dugong’s Tooth
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Shawl
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Atoni Ancestor Figure with Offering Bowl
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Ancestor Figure | Ai Tos
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Ancestor Figure | Itara
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Shrine Figure of Deity | Baku-Mau
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Spoon Fragment with a Flute Player
© Yale University Art Gallery | Connecticut, USA

 

A Topasse or Mardick with his wife, mid-17th century, from Johannes Nieuhof's trips to Southeast Asia in 1653 to 1670.

The head of Molo with his retinue visits the post holder of Babaoe, Timor.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

The Raja of Korbafo, Roti, between two bodyguards.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Inhabitant of the island of Timor. Jacques Etienne Victor Arago, 1822.
© Rijksmuseum | The Netherlands

 

Cross on local spirit tree, Bau, 2008
Courtesy of Leonard Yuzon Andaya.

St. Anthony and local spirit objects in Ume Leu, 2008
Courtesy of Leonard Yuzon Andaya.

 

Leonard Yuzon Andaya

Courtesy of Subject

Leonard Y. Andaya is a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Hawaiii at Manoa in Honolulu.  He has held a research fellowship at the Australian National University and has taught at the University of Malaya, Auckland University, and the National University of Singapore (NUS).  At the last institution he was appointed the Tan Chin Tuan Professor in Malay Studies from 2011-2012 and the Inaugural Yusof Ishak Professorship in the Social Sciences from 2017-2018.  He has written extensively on the early modern history of Southeast Asia, particularly on Indonesia and Malaysia. 

His most recent books are Leaves of the Same Tree:  Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008); A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and a revised third edition of A History of Malaysia (London: Palgrave, 2017). The last two books were written jointly with Barbara Watson Andaya, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. His current research focuses on the complex network of relationships in eastern Indonesia that helped bind together the disparate cultural communities into a functioning unity in the early modern period. 

 
 

Colophon

Author | Leonard Yuzon Andaya
Publisher | Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University of Singapore
Issue | Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3 (October 2010), pp. 391-420