Coinage of Timor
WE WERE ON top of the world in Tibet. Take a short step of 3500 miles southeast and here we are in the island of Timor, whose coins we will discuss next.
We’re not quite at the international date line, but from where I’m writing this, on the eastern seaboard of the U. S, it is the other side of the world.
Timor is southeast of Java, the largest Indonesian island. There are Malaysian islands nearby to the west. To the south, not far away, is Australia.
It is part of a group of islands geographically designated as the Lesser Sundas. Other noted Sunda islands are Flores, were fossils of small hominids, nicknamed “hobbits,” were found in recent decades, and Sulawesi, home of the oldest known cave art, 39,000 years, and local culture center.
There were anatomically modern humans on Timor at least 42,000 years ago. Paleontologists and archeologists are arguing about whether they got there from Australia or from Asia.
The Indonesian islands in general were at the forefront of tool and weapons technology through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, meaning they tended to start using those methods several centuries before other places, like Greece for example.
By the time people were using bronze, Timor was an outlier to Java. There were cities and class structures and foreign enclaves on the trade routes. They’ve found bronze drums made in Vietnam about 2500 years ago. Outside the cities was jungle, filled with hunter- gatherers.
That situation of coastal entrepots and backwoods indigenous culture persisted into the 19th century. Through that period the island passed through several overlord situations, as empires came and went.
The earliest of the maritime empires of the region was Srivijaya, based in Sumatra, which flourished from the 7th to the 12th centuries A. D. Timor isn’t mentioned in records related to Srivijaya, but if they didn’t “belong” to the Empire, they were certainly in the sphere of influence.
Srivijaya coins are tiny pill shaped coins with a single mark. Most were billon, a few were gold. The refined name for them is “namo.” When they were somewhat available a few decades ago they were marketed as “rat’s dung money.”
Most namos seem to have come from Java. Similar things have been found in Thailand. No news from Timor.
Srivijaya declined and was followed by the Majapahit Empire, 13th century to the middle of the 16th century. They were confronted by Muslims in Malacca, who were aided by the Chinese, then the Portuguese took Malacca.
Timor is mentioned in Majapahit and Portuguese records.
The coins they used in the Majapahit Empire were sil
ver coins a bit smaller than a dime, with an incuse square on one side, like archaic Greek coins. First time I got one ( out of a junk box), I banged my head against Greek coin books for a while before I bumped into Millie’s book, “Recherches sur Les Monnaies des Indigenes de L’Archipel Indien et de la Peninsule Malaie.” And there they were, the “units” of Majapahit.
In the 16th century the Portuguese, with their more efficient weapons, came to almost but not quite dominate the western Indonesian archipelago.
The Portuguese established a permanent presence on the eastern side of Timor. The big Portuguese town was Kupang, which still exists. Kupang is the name of the small gold coin of the region in the 17th and 18th centuries. I don’t know if there is any relation between the town and the coin name.
There are apparently no coins of Timor from the preEuropean colonial period.
The Portuguese, with their settlements in Africa, and India, and islands all over the Indian and Indonesian waters, not to mention Brazil, were totally overextended. So, when the Dutch, newly freed from Spain by their own efforts and full of it, decided to go marauding in the world, they attacked Portuguese holdings everywhere.
Some they won, some not. The Dutch had bits of Brazil for a while. They comprehensively kicked the Portuguese out of the Malaya- Indonesia region. It all came into the portfolio of the United East India Company, whose directors authorized the VOC coins.
The Portuguese held on to the eastern side of the island until the 20th century.
The 18th century Dutch Indonesia used Spanish colonial silver and Dutch gold ducats. On their own account they had copper and some silver VOC coins made at the national mints. Some of the copper coins are the most common 18th century coins in the market. The silvers are rare.
The Dutch government bought out the VOC after Napoleon. They started a colonial coinage that evolved until the end of World War II.
The Portuguese colony was used by successive governments as a dumping ground for prisoners and other categories of undesirables. After slavery ended the Portuguese started exporting sandalwood and later grew coffee.
There was a treaty made with the Netherlands in 1859 that established the border between the two administrations on the island.
Portugal continued to neglect its colony. During World War II, Australia put troops in which made the Japanese decide to invade and occupy the Portuguese side, which otherwise, who knows, they might not have done, because Portugal was officially neutral in World War II.
So after the end of World War II all of the victorious countries got their colonies back, and immediately all of those colonies wanted to be independent. Indonesia was one of the first to free itself.
The new Indonesian government, headed by the war hero Sukarno, explicitly stated that it wasn’t interested
in Portuguese Timor. That government was violently overthrown and was replaced by another government that engaged in a quite extensive political purge. That government evolved into what they have today. A lot of military influence. Now there are functioning elements of democracy: elections that mean something, legislators who can make some things happen.
In 1974 there was a successful revolution in Portugal. The new government sent out colonial governors whose new job was to set up a process for independence.
Australia, a power in the region, had mentioned in consultation mode that they’d be favorable to “integration” of Portuguese Timor into Indonesia.
Under the revolutionary governor, a popular vote was held. Independence parties came out on top.
Indonesia began propaganda campaigns in an attempt at splitting the winning coalition of East Timor. Maybe they had some success, or maybe it was just the internal politics, but there was a partially successful coup, a murky situation that lasted a couple of weeks.
Part of the struggle involved one of the factions declaring a “Democratic Republic of Timor- Leste.” The coup plotters, having at some point becoming stooges of Indonesia, declared that East Timor should be part of Indonesia. They were in Indonesia at the time. That declaration in hand, Indonesia rolled military assets into East Timor.
In 1975, Indonesia poured money into East Timor, but ruled directly, using central government rule books, with no local input.
The East Timorese never stopped fighting anyway, even after the Indonesians declared the war over and started inviting tourists in. And there was international support, and an international support movement. An oppressed people fighting for self- determination, a popular notion with a demographic, funds could be raised.
So, they fought on, until Indonesia finally agreed to allow the referendum that the UN had been calling for for years. That was 1999.
That’s actually a funny story. Basically, the new Indonesian President in the 1990s was not a murderous dictator like the previous one had been. He had been fiddling around with the Timor question. He was not, of course, in favor of independence, being the President of Indonesia, after all.
But a letter from an Australian big wig about the desirability of an independence referendum within 10 years apparently got under the Indonesian President’s skin and he reacted by going, “Oh yeah? I’ll show you.”
He called a snap referendum in six months. What? 78 percent voted for independence.
Well, that’s just what he wanted, wasn’t it?
Well, no. The Indonesian military in East Timor proceeded to try to wreck all the infrastructure and kill a lot of people. In no time, Australia got the requisite support for a peacekeeping force led by itself. Indonesia backed off, then left.
The Australians were gone by 2000, replaced by a UN contingent. Formal independence was declared in 2002. The governments of Timor- Leste and Indonesia are not strained at this time. There is an argument with Australia over some oil fields in disputed waters.
So, coins.
I mean, the Portuguese government
in Lisbon
just didn’t care about East Timor. They cared about Mozambique and Angola. They didn’t make coins for their colony on the island until 1945.
Why then? Probably to create a material expression of ownership, which is what coins have traditionally been. They were long- lasting propaganda items, advertising the sovereign of the place in which they were passing from hand to hand.
Why would they want to do that? Possibly because they could see the writing on the wall for the region. World War II was ending, the Dutch were not going to be able to reconquer their Netherlands Indies. They were going to try and fail. The coins were a physical statement that the Portuguese administration was not planning to leave any time soon.
The first series of coins was based on the denomination scheme in use in Portuguese Macao. 100 avos made a pataca. There was bronze 10 and 20 avos and silver 50 avos. Date range is 1948 to 1951.
They weren’t making coins for Macao at that time, though there were bank notes. They didn’t get around to making Macao coins until 1952, and the silver coins were much smaller.
In 1958 they went to a standard escudo scheme. They did that in all the colonies. There were some local adaptations in the early years of the colonial currency modernization. In Timor they made silver 3 escudos coins equal to the older 50 avos, and 6 escudos, equal to the Macao pataca that was never struck for Timor.
The odd denominations were phased out and replaced by standard denominations. So instead of 3 escudos there was a 2.5 escudos, et cetera.
It turns out that a non- trivial quantity of colonial Timor coins were saved in high grade. They left the region, probably during the period of the Indonesian occupation, and entered the market.
It’s a scarce location. I looked at my sales records. I’ve had all of the coins except the provas, including the expensive 1945 10 avos. I sold it in 2014. I don’t have a picture.
The most common coin in the market is probably the 1970 20 centavos.
The modern nation of Timor- Leste ( East Timor) uses the U. S. dollar as its currency. It uses local coins denominated in centavos, which are equal to U. S. cents. The denomination set is 1 cent to 200 cents. They’ve been making the local coins since 2003. The government mint in Lisbon makes them.
There are no precious metal coins. There are no special commemoratives. There are proof sets that have no market presence.
It seems that the entire Timor and East Timor set can be collected for not a lot of money. Except the provas.
Provas started out as patterns made at the Lisbon mint in satisfaction of bureaucratic requirements. Someone looked at them and said “OK, go make them.” Then it got so some well- connected collectors could importune some person to get provas, so a few extra were made. Then the mint got a marketing department and began making “provas” for sale to the public. So, then people went, “Ho hum, another prova, why don’t they make them in gold, that would be interesting.” But the Lisbon mint has not been interested in making gold provas, ever.
The Timor provas are bureaucratic artifacts, very rare.