Topasses

Topasses (Tupasses, Topas, Topaz) were a group of people in maritime Asia in the early modern period, who claimed Portuguese ancestry or had taken up Portuguese culture and language. Topasses were found in the various places of South Asia and Southeast Asia which were frequented by the Portuguese, such as Goa, Malacca and Batavia. In particular they are associated with the ethnically mixed Portuguese group that dominated politics on Timor in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The etymology of the name is obscure. It is most likely derived from the Tamil expression tupasi (man of two languages, interpreter), but it may also be influenced by the Hindi word topi, hat. It partly overlapped with the Dutch concept mardijker, "free men", who also usually had a Portuguese cultural background, but had no European blood in their veins. While the mardijkers served under the Dutch colonial authorities, the Topasses of Timor were staunchly opposed to the Dutch and used the symbol of the King of Portugal as their ultimate authority. [Boxer, C.R., The Topasses of Timor, Amsterdam 1947]

As a political entity in the eastern part of the Southeast Asian Archipelago, they arose with the Portuguese settlement on the small Island of Solor (from the 1560s), using Solor as a stepping-stone to the trade in sandalwood on Timor. When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) conquered Solor in 1613, the Portuguese community moved to Larantuka on Flores. In spite of continuous hostilities with the Dutch, the Topasses managed to obtain a steady foothold on Timor after 1641, and part of the population of Larantuka moved over to West Timor in the late 1650s, as a response to the establishment of the VOC in Kupang in 1653. They were able to defeat Dutch military expeditions on Timor with the help of Timorese allies, in 1653, 1655, 1656 and 1657. The peace treaty between Portugal and the Netherlands in 1663 removed the acute threat from the latter. By this time the Topasses consisted of an ethnic mix of Portuguese, Florenese, Timorese, Indians, Dutch deserters, etc. Through their military skills they were able to dominate large parts of Timor, with their center in Lifau in the present-day Oecussi-Ambeno enclave. [Hägerdal, H., 'Colonial or Indigenous Rule? The Black Portuguese of Timor in the 17th and 18th Centuries', IIAS Newsletter 44 2007, p. 26.]

The Topass community was led by their own appointed captains, and had little contact with the Portuguese Viceroy of Goa in India. They pressed Timorese princes to deliver sandalwood to the coast, which was sold to merchants from Macao or to the Dutch. After 1664 they were governed by the Hornay and Da Costa families, who held the titles captain major (capitão mor) or lieutenant general (tenente general) in turn. In 1702 the Portuguese authorities installed a regular governor in Lifau, a move that was violently opposed by the Topass community. For long periods up to 1785, a state of warfare existed between the two Portuguese groups. In 1749 a political crisis involved the Topass leader Gaspar da Costa in war with the Dutch in Kupang. When he attacked Kupang with a considerable force he was routed and killed at the Battle of Penfui. Many Timorese princedoms which had hitherto been subordinated to Topass authority now fell away and allied with the VOC instead. The Topass still managed to hang on in Oecussi, and killed the Dutch commander Hans Albrecht von Plüskow in 1761, when he attempted to expand the Dutch sphere on Timor. In 1769 they furthermore forced the official Portuguese governor to abandon Lifau in order to settle in Dili in East Timor. Their power nevertheless receded by the late eighteenth century, due to diminishing economic and political opportunities. The concept Topass disappears from the records in the nineteenth century. Hornay and Da Costa descendants continued to govern locally as Rajas or Liurais of Oecussi up to modern times. [Yoder, L.S.M., Custom, Codification, Collaborating: Integrating the Legacy of Land and Forest Authorities in Oecusse Enclave, East Timor, Ph. D. Thesis, Yale University 2005.]

References

Further reading

Leitão, Humberto (1948), "Os Portugueses en Solor e Timor de 1515 a 1702", Lisboa: Liga dos Combatantes da Grande Guerra.

Matos, Artur Teodoro de (1974), "Timor Portugues, 1515-1769", Lisboa: Instituto Histórico Infante Dom Henrique.

Roever, Arend de (2002), "De jacht op sandelhout: De VOC en de tweedeling van Timor in de zeventiende eeuw", Zutphen: Walburg Pers.

Yule, Henry, & Burnell, A.C. 1996), "Hobson-Jobson. The Anglo-Indian Dictionary", Ware: Wordsworth.