Solor

The island supports a small population that has been whaling for hundreds of years.

West Solor District (kecamatan Solor Barat) is sub-divided into the town (kelurahan) of Ritaebang and fourteen rural villages (desa), as listed below with their areas and populations as at mid 2023.

This made Solor a relevant part of the mercantile networks of the wider region, a situation that would be reversed with the arrival of the Portuguese.

In 1562, Dominican priests built a palm-trunk fortress which Javanese Muslims burned down the following year.

The fort was rebuilt from more durable materials and the Dominicans commenced the Christianisation of the local population.

[14] In 1851 the Portuguese governor José Joaquim Lopes de Lima sold Solor and other areas of the Lesser Sunda Islands, which had been under Portuguese sovereignty, to the Netherlands for 200,000 florins without authorization from Lisbon.

Although the Dutch occupied the fort with a small force, the occupation was withdrawn again in 1869 for economic reasons but the official affiliation to the Netherlands remained.