<p>History turned into one of the foci of concern in anthropology during the 1980s. This "historical turn" in anthropology developed from the broad diffusion of post-colonialism into this discipline, which began late in the 1970s. In other words, anthropology, like many other socio-cultural sciences, was involved in a struggle for the liberation of non-Western peoples from the so-called "essentialism" that perceives and narrates them as if they were atemporal beings. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that, in the early stages of that "turn", to historicize the Other was regarded as anthropologists' "moral imperative" rather than what was required in the course of empirical investigation. It seems that the political and academic significance of historicizing the Other has already been argued out. In addition, the criticism of anthropology based on superficial historical description has also played out its course. It is unclear what course historical investigation in anthropology should pursue in the future. Yet it will probably not touch on the dim and remote past that indirectly relates to the understanding of the present. As long as ethnographic studies based on field research retain canonical importance in anthropology, I think historical investigation in the discipline will probably endeavor to understand the present through exploring that vast network of causal nexuses that brought the present into being, bearing in mind that the present is the cumulative effect of the past historical processes. This article is an attempt to practice such a historical study for understanding the present. Specifically I explicate how trade and warfare conducted actively in central Flores until the early 20th century causally relates to the present state of social life there. Notwithstanding, this is a small but important part of the vast network of historical causal nexuses which should be taken into consideration in the ethnographic study of central Flores. For instance, Dutch colonial policy, Catholic missionary work and the development policy of the Soeharto Government are also of great importance for understanding present-day central Flores society, although I am scarcely able to mention them in this article for reasons of space. Section I and II of this essay firstly describe a correspondence, too remarkable to be a coincidence, between the use of the Lionese therms for "north" and "south" with the uneven south-north distribution of population in central Flores. Secondly, these sections argue that it is difficult to explain these correspondences in therms of natural environmental factors, and that they were caused mainly by trade. Ecological factors do not vary between the Dutch administrative "subdivisions"(onderafdeeling) labeled Ende and Maumere in central Flores. However, in the 1970s the south coastal area was far more densely populated than the north coastal area in Ende but not in Maumere. Moreover, a closer examination reveals that the most heavily inhabited areas in those "subdivisions", namely Ende/Pulau Ende in Onderafdeeling Ende and Geliting/Ili in Onderafdeeling Maumere, were the hubs of the trading activities conducted in the waters surrounding Flores to which Dutch colonial rule pit an end early in the 20th century. The following section, based mainly on oral histories widely known in central Flores' largest political domain, Lise, elucidates how the trade conducted on the south coast I the vicinity of Ende/Pulau Ende, as well as warfare over profit and firearms obtained from commerce, were a matter of life-and-death for the local people until early in the 20th century. Political domains that failed to obtain gold and firearms could not but surrender to, or be defeated by, those who had preempted them. The aforementioned uneven distribution of population around Ende/Pulau Ende was</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>