This elegantly composed volume describes how Chinese immigrants and their descendants (called Cina Timor, “Timorese Chinese”) contributed to the making of Timor-Leste (or East Timor). The book is a meticulously researched, timely, original study that analyzes in a welter of detail the sociological, cultural, political, and economic implications of the Chinese presence there. Cina Timor explains why immigrants, traversing various routes, left China and directly or indirectly fetched up in the Portuguese colony during the nineteenth century. It traces their fortunes through the decades to contemporary times with a scrupulous attention to detail that demonstrates why the Chinese became an enduring influence in society, economy, and politics.

Douglas Kammen and Jonathan Chen emphasize “the critical role” that the Chinese played “in the formation of Portuguese Timor and, by extension, of Timor-Leste today” (p. 4.). They draw attention to a misapprehension that observers of—and participants in—Timorese life too readily indulge in. Cina Timor are a culturally variegated population, whose members hail from different regions of China and belong to several Chinese speech groups. Hakka, Hokkien speakers, Macanese, and Cantonese are the most prominent, each defined by a distinct identity. In the early years of the twentieth century, Hakka speakers were more numerous than other speech groups, but “claims of Hakka dominance conceal Baba, ‘other’ Hakka, Cantonese, and Macanese elements in the making of Cina Timor” (p. 178). At the same time, despite these different identities, “the Chinese minority enjoyed an unusually high degree of sociological and ideological uniformity” (p. 8).

The Chinese could hardly be described as numerous, and only a minority intended to settle permanently in Portuguese Timor when they arrived. This, Kammen and Chen suggest, may account for the fact that their social organization did not develop as much as might have been expected. Dili seems to have had a Chinese temple, a cemetery, a funeral association, and a figure known as the Chinese “captain,” but, it appears, no secret societies, clan/surname associations, or guilds. Nevertheless, the Chinese economic impact steadily grew as Cina Timor entrepreneurs became the oil in the machinery of trade and made possible a substantial increase in the production of coffee, which came to replace sandalwood as the major export, with Macau and Makassar being prime destinations. Kammen and Chen describe how, during the second part of the nineteenth century, the rise in the importance of coffee and other developments had a powerful impact on the Portuguese administration and Chinese merchants. Interestingly, they reveal the influence the Chinese had in the political realm as local kings (liurai) acquired firearms from the merchants. This allows the kings, empowered by more potent weapons than their customary swords, to fortify their existing mutual military alliances. The European colonial officers took note of what they regarded as a potential challenge to their wished-for hegemony. They also worried about the increasing financial and military consequences of permitting the production of, and trade in, coffee outside the vigilance of the state. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, their agitation grew so intense that the colonial army was launched on a series of “pacification” campaigns into the interior against kings whom the authorities judged recalcitrant to regulation.

Among other features of Cina Timor history discussed is “the dynamism of Dili's Chinese community in the mid-twentieth century” (p. 171) and the later contributions that the community made to the present independence of Timor-Leste. These contributions are impressively celebrated in an imposing photograph displayed on page 176, one of many illustrations that vividly reveal long-distant pasts as well as the more recent present. The text is further graced with a complement of helpful maps showing where the Chinese immigrants came from and the different routes they followed after they left Dili searching for promising commercial prospects in more remote parts of the colony.

A meticulously researched work of scholarship standing above other studies of the Chinese in Timor-Leste, this authoritative work is informative reading for scholars interested in Chinese communities elsewhere in Southeast Asia. But most of all—and in line with Kammen and Chen's intent—Cina Timor will surely be found enthralling by all Timorese readers, whether or not they are Cina Timor.