Culture and history info

Since very early times, the Florinese have been confronted with people from many parts of the world. Some of them came with purely economic intentions, others with ideas of power and belief. Whatever their interest in Flores might have been, it is certain that these outside influences left their footprints and contributed to the already manifold social and cultural diversity.

Flores has had its own history long before the first traders or missionaries arrived. However, as ancient Florinese societies shared their history through oral tradition, little is known about the origins of many of them. The first foreign visitors to Flores probably encountered dispersed, independent settlements consisting of several lineages which descended from a common ancestor. By that time, political authority was locally limited.

Before the first Europeans reached Flores, Makassarese and Bugis seafarers from Southern Sulawesi came to Flores for trading and slave raiding and took control of some of the coastal areas. While the eastern coastal areas of Flores were under the authority of the emperors of Ternate in the Moluccas, West Flores was prominently ruled by the sultanates of Bima in Sumbawa and Goa in Sulawesi.

Colonial era
A Portuguese expedition crew reached the island in the early 16th century and named it ‘Cabo das Flores’, which means ‘Cape of Flowers’. The island became an important strategic point for the economic activities of Portuguese traders. However, Flores itself was neither a source of valuable spices nor sandalwood. After a long period of struggling with other trade powers, the Portuguese were finally defeated and withdrew themselves to Dili in East Timor in 1769. They renounced all their spheres of influence in Eastern Indonesia and sold their remaining enclaves on Flores to the Dutch administration.

Even though the Dutch administration was eager to expand its influence in Indonesia, it hardly interfered in local political issues at the beginning. When the Dutch administration decided to increase Flores’ potential as a source of income for its state treasury, systematic measures were taken to improve the island’s infrastructure and educational system. Being increasingly challenged with rebellions and inter-tribal wars, the Dutch army launched a massive military campaign in 1907 to settle the disputes. After being subdued in 1909, the island was provided with a new administrative system, dividing it into the five major districts of Manggarai, Ngada, Ende, Sikka, and Flores Timur. Each of these administrative units was headed by a local leader who was appointed by the Dutch colonial government. Except for a short period of Japanese occupation during World War II, the Dutch remained the dominating colonial force until Indonesia became an independent nation-state in 1945.

The uniqueness of Flores lies in its amazing wealth of cultures, languages, and history. One of the explanations for these local varieties lies in the island’s mountainous nature: it hindered the access to the interior areas and made communication between individual communities difficult, thus preserving a huge range of long-standing local peculiarities. Flores is inhabited by 1.8 million people who roughly belong to the major ethnolinguistic entities of Manggarai, Ngada, Nagekeo, Ende and Lio, Sikka and Lamaholot. These groups can be further divided into many sub-entities with their own cultural features and dialects.

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), the official language, is used in the context of education, business, and formal affairs. However, everyday conversations in Flores are still carried out in the countless local languages and dialects, which all belong to the so-called Austro-Polynesian language family.