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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the killing of Europeans by indigenous warriors as a critical trope in the colonial imagination of crisis. The paper looks at an episode of slaughtering of a military column and the decapitation of the Portuguese officers by indigenous headhunters in East Timor, in 1895.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the killing of Europeans by indigenous warriors as a critical trope in the colonial imagination of crisis. In 1895 the slaughtering of a military column and the death of all the Portuguese officers at the hands of indigenous headhunters in East Timor (a former colony of Portugal) caused great alarm both in Timor and Portugal. The paper looks at this episode so to consider simultaneously the epistemic processes involved in the interpretation of certain colonial events as collective crisis; as well as the varied actions taken with a view to manage such events as crisis of power and empire. In focusing on this episode and on the attempts to retrieve the decapitated Portuguese officers' heads, the intention is also to call attention to the collecting of white men's human remains as an action meaningful in the light of histories of colonial crisis.