List of colonial Residents of Dutch Timor
From the mid-1600s until 1949, Dutch Timor was ruled by colonial Residents as part of the Dutch East India Company and later by the Dutch state. The Dutch and the Portuguese fought over Timor since 1613 because of the sandalwood trade. The Dutch settled on Solor island in 1646 and built Fort Concordia in Kupang in 1653, making Kupang their main base by 1657. The administrator at Fort Concordia was called an opperhoofd, or Resident. At first the Dutch controlled only the area around Kupang, known as the sespalen gebied.
After 1749, much of West Timor came under Dutch influence, and in 1756 a treaty brokered by Johannes Andreas Paravicini tied local rulers to the VOC. Attempts to subdue East Timor failed by 1761. The VOC was dissolved in 1799 and replaced by the Batavian Republic. Fort Concordia fell to the British in January 1812 and remained under British rule until 1816, when it was returned to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Borders with Portuguese Timor were fixed in 1851 and 1859.
In the late period, the Residency of Timor and Dependencies included West Timor, Roti, Savu, Sumbawa, Flores, the Solor Islands, and the Alor Islands. The Dutch regime ended with the Japanese invasion in 1942, and Dutch forces, aided by Australia, returned in late 1945. During the Indonesian Revolution (1945–49) there was strong anti-colonial feeling but little fighting. The last Dutch Resident, A. Verhoef, handed power to Indonesia in late 1949.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:03 (CET).