Flores
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14,300 km² extending east from the Java island of Indonesia. The population was 1,831,000 in the 2010 census and the largest town is Maumere. Flores is Portuguese (as well as Spanish) for "flowers".Flores is located east of Sumbawa and Komodo and west of Lembata and the Alor Archipelago. To the southeast is Timor. To the south, across the Sumba strait, is Sumba and to the north, beyond the Flores Sea, is Sulawesi.
On 12 December 1992, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred, killing 2,500 people in and around Maumere, including islands off the North coast.
In September 2004, at Liang Bua Cave in western Flores, paleoanthropologists discovered small skeletons that they described as a previously unknown hominid species, Homo floresiensis.[2] These are informally named hobbits and appear to have stood about 1 m (3.3 ft) tall. The most complete individual (LB1) is dated as 18,000 years old.
Portuguese
traders and missionaries came to Flores in the 16th century, mainly to Larantuka
and Sikka.
Their influence is still discernible in Sikka's language, culture and religion.
The Dominican
order was extremely important in this island, as well as in the
neighbouring islands of Timor and Solor. When in 1613 the Dutch attacked the Fortress of Solor,
the population of this fort, led by the Dominicans, moved to the harbor town of
Larantuka,
on the eastern coast of Flores. This population was mixed, of Portuguese and
local islanders descent and Larantuqueiros, Topasses
(people that wear heats) or, as Dutch knew them, the 'Black Portuguese' (Swarte
Portugueezen).
The Larantuqueiros or Topasses became
the dominant sandalwood trading people of the region for the next 200 years.
This group used Portuguese as the language for worship, Malay as the language
of trade and a mixed dialect as mother tongue. This was observed by William
Dampier, a English privateer visiting the Island in 1699:
These
[the Topasses] have no Forts, but depend on their Alliance with the Natives:
And indeed they are already so mixt, that it is hard to distinguish whether
they are Portugueze or Indians. Their Language is Portugueze; and the religion
they have, is Romish. They seem in Words to acknowledge the King of Portugal
for their Sovereign; yet they will not accept any Officers sent by him. They speak
indifferently the Malayan and their own native Languages, as well as
Portugueze.[3]
In 1846, Dutch and Portuguese
initiated negotiations towards delimiting the territories but these
negotiations led nowhere. In 1851 the new governor of Timor, Solor and Flores,
Lima Lopes, faced with an impoverished administration, agreed to sell eastern
Flores and the nearby islands to the Dutch in return for a payment of 200,000 Florins.
Lima Lopes did so without the consent of Lisbon and was dismissed in disgrace,
but his agreement was not rescinded and in 1854 Portugal ceded all its
historical claims on Flores. After this, Flores became part of the territory of
Dutch East Indies.
During World War II
a Japanese invasion force landed at Reo on 14 May 1942 and occupied Flores.[4]
After the war Flores became part of
independent Indonesia.
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