Alfredo de Lacerda Maia

Lieutenant Captain ( Capitão-tenente ) Alfredo de Lacerda Maia († March 3, 1887 near Dili , Portuguese Timor ) was a Portuguese military and colonial administrator.

From 1885 to 1887 he was governor of Portuguese Timor . He is described as young, enthusiastic, hardworking, and apparently honest; a governor who wants to move the fallow colony forward. In collaboration with some Liurais (traditional rulers) he tried to revive coffee cultivation. He traveled several times to the interior of the island, to the scattered Portuguese posts on the north coast and to the south coast of the island, which had been almost abandoned by the Portuguese in previous years.

Between May and June 1886 he had to contend with a revolt of the Maubara Empire , in the northwest of the colony. At the beginning of his tenure, Maia only had 50 European soldiers, 150 Mozambicans and eight cannons. In the expedition against Maubara were first breech-loading cannon used that allowed a faster firing. There was no real pacification, but there was also no defeat for the Portuguese, as they had often against Maubara in the past.

On March 3, 1887, Maia was slain by Moradores , local soldiers in Portuguese service, on the road from Dili to Lahane . It was the beginning of the so-called revolt of the Moradores . The murder shook the Portuguese officials so much that they declared a state of siege on Dili and posted cannons and machine guns on the streets while the killers fled into the mountains.

Some articles claim that Maia previously raped the wife of Dom Boaventura , the Liurai of Manufahi, while visiting Dili . Here, however, various historical events are mixed up. Boaventura did not begin until 1895 with his revolt against the Portuguese, still under his father, the then Liurai of Manufahi Dom Duarte . Portuguese investigations brought to light the abuse of office by Maia's secretary, Sub-Lieutenant ( alferes ) Francisco Ferreira , as the cause of the Moradores uprising . This had spanned the bow in the name of the governor. Since the governor refused to listen to the multiple complaints of the Moradores, a hundred of them decided to ambush Ferreira.

Unfortunately for Maia, the Moradores did not find the secretary, but Maia. When he tried to flee badly injured, they decided to give him the coup de grace. He was spared beheading alone, a ritual of the Timorese headhunters. Two officers of the Moradores prevented this because they feared that the mystical connection to the Portuguese crown would otherwise be severed, which would shake the island.

Others

Alfredo's brother Eduardo was an anarchist and a member of the First International .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Os efeitos do 5 de Outubro de 1910 em Timor (Portuguese)
2. ↑ Data on rulers.org
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} René Pélissier : Portugais et Espagnols en "Océanie". Deux Empires: confins et contrastes ( Memento of the original from April 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Éditions Pélissier, Orgeval 2010. 
4. ↑ Monika Schlicher: Portugal in East Timor. A critical examination of the Portuguese colonial history in East Timor from 1850 to 1912. Aberag, Hamburg 1996. ISBN 3-934376-08-8
5. ↑ Revista da Armada: A história da presença da Marinha em Timor ( Memento of January 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (Portuguese)
6. ↑ ^{a b} History of Timor - Technical University of Lisbon (PDF; 824 kB)
7. ↑ Chronologie de l'histoire du Timor (1512-1945) suivie des événements récents (1975-1999) (French; PDF; 887 kB)

predecessor	Office	successor
Cipriano Forjaz	Governor of Portuguese Timor 1885–3. March 1887	Antonio Joaquim Garcia