ABSTRACT
On 20 May, 2002 Timor Leste became an independent nation for the second time in its arduous history. This democratic republic’s first declaration of independence from Portugal on November 28, 1979 was short-lived with the Indonesian invasion nine days afterwards. Thus, the 2002 independence that made Timor Leste Southeast Asia’s newest nation is viewed by the East Timorese as a “Restoration of Independence.” This book aims to provide an overview of this young nation’s history, politics and culture, highlighting the struggles of Timor Leste’s people for their own nationhood and the ongoing challenges of the nation building processes in this young country. The inspiration for the current work derives from the reactions of
colleagues and students to an online and much abridged web-course that I wrote for the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (Molnar 2005b, www.seasite.niu.edu/EastTimor/default.htm). The interested audience included other area specialists in the social sciences and postgraduate students who were looking for a single source that brought together key themes and events on the culture and the historical and political development of Timor Leste. The lack of any other single source that provided such an overview was the refrain in the numerous international correspondences I received in reaction to the web-course. This book in large part is a response to the expressed need for a comprehensive overview of the history, politics, and culture of Timor Leste, that attempts to bring together existing knowledge on this new country but currently is distributed in works with specialized foci over multiple social science disciplines. At the same time, this work also highlights those key issues that concern the multiple challenges to the nation building processes of Southeast Asia’s youngest nation. In this vein, a large portion of this book focuses on the post-independence period of instability and conflicts that are rooted in the culture and historical development of Timor Leste.
