Timor-Leste

The twenty-first century's first new country, and one that lost around a quarter of its population to get there. Portugal held the eastern half of Timor from the sixteenth century for sandalwood, dividing the island with the Dutch, and ruled it as one of the most neglected colonies anywhere. When the Portuguese revolution of 1974 began decolonisation, Fretilin declared independence in November 1975; Indonesia invaded nine days later with American and Australian acquiescence and annexed the territory. The occupation lasted twenty-four years and killed somewhere between one and two hundred thousand people through fighting, forced resettlement and famine. The Santa Cruz massacre in 1991, filmed by a British journalist and broadcast internationally, changed the diplomatic picture. After Suharto's fall a UN-supervised referendum in August 1999 returned a large majority for independence, and Indonesian-backed militias then destroyed most of the country's buildings before an Australian-led force intervened. Full independence came on 20 May 2002. Offshore oil and gas revenues are held in a sovereign fund. Portuguese and Tetum are both official. Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta, who won a Nobel prize in 1996, both served as president. Dili is the capital. The country has about 1.4 million people and includes the Oecusse exclave inside Indonesian territory. It joined the United Nations in 2002 and ASEAN in 2025. Coffee is the main non-oil export. Its currency is the US dollar. Around thirty languages are spoken. It is one of only two majority-Catholic countries in Asia, along with the Philippines, and one of the youngest populations in the world.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history