Imagining East Timor
By Benedict Anderson [1] Doc. IISH I want to ask two quite concrete questions which nevertheless involve a certain common theoretical problematic. The first question is: Why has Indonesia's attempt to absorb East Timor failed? Was the failure inevitable or did something happen between 1975 and 1990 which could have been avoided? What is the nature of the mistakes that were made, if there were indeed mistakes made? The second question is in some ways the reverse: How does one explain the very rapid spread and development of Timorese nationalism? For me this second question is very serious. My theoretical writings on nationalism have focused on the importance of the spread of print and its relationship to capitalism, yet in East Timor there has been very little capitalism, and illiteracy was widespread. Moreover, East Timor is ethnically very complicated, with many different language groups. What was it then that made it possible to 'think East Timor'? The first