In order to comprehend the effects of tourism on Ngadha villages it is necessary to understand development and tourism in Indonesia, both at the national level and more specifically in Eastern Indonesia. It is equally important to appreciate how wider global and national events have affected the development of tourism in Ngadha. The latter half of this chapter links this case with the theoretical arguments about tourism as part of the development process in less economically developed countries. The brief background here concentrates on the most recent development discourse: poverty reduction (cf. Mowforth & Munt, 1998). This is because the people of Ngadha are poor and tourism in Ngadha is small scale and, in the near future, unlikely to become ‘mass’. Tourists visit Ngadha for its culture and for this reason I have unpicked some of the academic debates about this phenomenon, and explain why I reject the often-used concept of ‘ethnic tourism’ and the complications of the term ‘indigenous tourism’ particularly in the Indonesian setting.

Development in Indonesia

Three forces have shaped life in Ngadha villages: the state, the Church and the ancestors. The history of Indonesia and its present governance shapes the way tourism is mobilised and how the villagers experience it. A little history and politics of the nation is thus essential to understand the way the village works and way the villagers interact with tourists and tourism.

Indonesian nationalists declared independence on 17 August 1945. Most of the vast archipelago of the former Dutch East Indies finally became an independent state in 1949. Although Flores was first colonised by the Portuguese, who brought Catholicism to the island, the colonial legacies are largely Dutch. Dutch legal and political institutions and bureaucratic systems still affect the workings of the state across the archipelago, as do the extremely uneven patterns of development that the Dutch began.