Trouble and strife: demographic shocks, agrarian change and marriage in Portuguese Timor

ABSTRACT Marital exchange between origin ‘houses’ is central to Timorese narratives and has been a central concern of anthropological study of Portuguese Timor and independent Timor-Leste. This article challenges the notion of stable patterns of marital exchange between named houses across time. Drawing on data from the colonial census, this paper finds a severe imbalance in the sex ratio during the first half of the twentieth century. Starting from subsistence agriculture, demographic shocks, the head tax and the introduction of forced coffee cultivation, the paper identifies the neglect and mistreatment of females, inflationary pressures on the bride price, increasing polygamous marriage and significant maternal mortality as key causal mechanisms that led to a highly imbalanced sex ratio. These dynamics impacted the age of marriage for men and women, and resulted in a sharp increase in the number of men who were unable to marry.