Jakarta 2

This will be probably the most sobering of my entries on Timor-Leste.


Southeast Asia is rich in islands, settled by waves of different peoples, visited by different trading communities, made parts of different empires over the centuries.

In the 1500s and 1600s, Europeans were eager to get control of these islands. The Dutch ended up with most of what's now Indonesia, but on one island in the archipelago, they got only half. The other half was controlled by the Portuguese. That half became pre...