History of Bali,

The History of Bali covers a period from the Paleolithic to the present, and is characterized by migrations of people and cultures from other parts of Asia. In the 16th century, the history of Bali started to be marked by Western influence with the arrival of Europeans, to become, after a long and difficult colonial period under the Dutch, an example of the preservation of traditional cultures and a key touristic destination.

Geological formation

The island of Bali, like most of the islands of the Indonesian archipelago, is the result of the tectonic subduction of the Indo-Australian plate under the Eurasian plate. The tertiary ocean floor, made of ancient marine deposits including accumulation of coral reefs, was lifted above the sea level by the subduction. Layers of Tertiary limestone lifted from the ocean floor are still visible in areas such as the Bukit peninsula with the huge limestone cliffs of Uluwatu, or in the northwest of the island at Prapat Agung.


The local deformation of the Eurasian plate created by the subduction has encouraged the fissuring of the crust, leading to the appearance of volcanic phenomena. A string of volcanoes line the northern part of the island, in West-East axis along which the western part is oldest, and the eastern part newest. The highest volcano is the active strato-volcano Mount Agung, at 3,142 m (10,308 ft).

Volcanic activity has been intense through the ages, and most of the surface of the island (outside of the Bukit Peninsula and Prapat Agung) has been covered by volcanic magma. Some old deposits remain (older than 1 million years), while most of the central part of the island is covered by young volcanic deposits (less than 1 million years), with some very recent lava fields in the northeast due to the catastrophic eruption of Mount Agung in 1963.

The still active Mount Agung

 

Volcanic activity, due to the thick deposits of ashes and the soil fertility it generates, has also been a strong factor in the agricultural prosperity of the island.
At the edge of the subduction, Bali is also at the edge of the continental Sunda shelf, just west of the Wallace line, and was at time connected to the neighbouring island of Java, particularly during the lowering of the sea level in the Ice Ages. Its fauna and flora are therefore Asian.

Ancient historical period: Indianized kingdoms (800-1343 CE)

The ancient historical period is defined by the appearance of the first written records in Bali, in the form of clay pallets with Buddhist inscriptions. These Buddhist inscriptions, found in small clay stupa figurines (called "stupikas") are the first known written inscriptions in Bali and date from around the 8th century CE. Such stupikas have been found in the regency of Gianyar, in the villages of Pejeng, Tatiapi and Blahbatuh.

This period is generally closely associated with the arrival and expansion of Buddhism and Hinduism in the island of Bali. The Belanjong pillar ("Prasasti Blanjong") in southern Sanur was inscribed in 914 with the mention of the reign of the Balinese king Sri Kesari. It is written in both the Indian Sanskrit language and Old Balinese language, using two scripts, the Nagari script and the Old Balinese script (which is used to write both Balinese and Sanskrit). The pillar testifies to the connections of Bali with the Sanjaya Dynasty in Central Java. It is dated according to the Indian Shaka calendar. According to the inscription, Sri Kesari was a Buddhist king of the Sailendra Dynasty leading a military expedition, to establish a Mahayana Buddhist government in Bali.

The stone temple of Goa Gajah was made around the same period, and shows a combination of Buddhist and Hindu (Shivaite) iconography.
Inter-marriages between Java and Bali royalty also occurred, as when king Udayana Warmadewa of the Warmadewa dynasty of Bali married a Javanese princess, sister of the Emperor of Java Dharmawangsa. Their son became the great ruler of East Java Airlangga, who ruled on both Java and Bali. In the 12th century, descendant of Airlangga are also known to have ruled over Bali, such as Jayasakti (1146-50) and Jayapangus (1178-81).

The island of Java again started to encroach significantly on Bali with the invasion of Singarasi king Kertanegara in 1284. Kertanegara was then toppled by Raden Wijaya, founder of the Majapahit Empire.
Contacts with China were also important during this period. Chinese coins, called Kepeng were in use in Bali from the 7th century. The traditional Barong is also thought to be derived from the Chinese dragon. In the 12th century, king Jayapangus of Bali is known to have married a Chinese princess.

Middle historical period: Majapahit dynastic rule (1343-1846)

Majapahit Golden Age

The Majapahit Empire rule over Bali became complete when Gajah Mada, Prime Minister of the Javanese king, defeated the Balinese king in Bedulu in 1343. The Majapahit capital in Bali was established at Samprangan and later Gelgel. Gelgel remained the paramount kingdom on Bali until the second half of the 17th century.
The rule of the Majapahit marks the strong influx of Javanese culture into Bali, most of all in architecture, dance and the theatre, in literature with the introduction of the Kawi script, in painting and sculpture and the wayang puppet theatre. The few Balinese who did not adopt this culture are still known today as "Bali Aga" ("Original Balinese") and still live in a few isolated villages.

With the rise of Islam in the Indonesian archipelago, the Majapahit empire finally fell, and Bali became independent at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, with much of the Javanese aristocracy finding refuge in Bali, bringing an even stronger influx of Hindu arts, literature and religion. According to later chronicles the dynasty of Majapahit origins, established after 1343, continued to rule Bali for 5 more centuries until 1908, when the Dutch eliminated it in the Dutch intervention in Bali (1908). In the 16th century, the Balinese king Dalem Baturenggong even expanded in turn his rule to East Java, Lombok and western Sumbawa.



Around 1540, together with the Islamic advance, a Hindu reformation movement took place, led by Dang Hyang Nirartha, leading to the introduction of the Padmasana shrine in honour of the "Supreme God" Acintya, and the establishment of the present shape of Shiva-worshipping in Bali. Nirartha also established numerous temples, including the spectacular temple at Uluwatu.

European contacts

The Magellan expedition (1519-1522) is thought to have sighted the island, and early Portuguese and Spanish charts mention the island under various names such as Boly, Bale and Bally. Sir Francis Drake briefly visited the island in 1580.
In 1585, the Portuguese government in Malacca sent a ship to establish a fort and a trading post in Bali, but the ship foundered on the reef of the Bukit peninsula and only 5 survivors could make it ashore. They went into the service of the king of Gelgel, known as the Dalem, and were provided with wives and homes.

In 1597, the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived in Bali with 89 surviving men (out of 249 who had departed). After visits to Kuta and Jembrana, he assembled his fleet in Padang Bai. Enthusiastic, he christened the island "Young Holland" (Jonck Hollandt). They were able to meet with the Dalem, who produced for them one of the Portuguese who had been in his service since 1585, Pedro de Noronha.
A second Dutch expedition appeared in 1601, that of Jacob van Heemskerck. On this occasion, the Dalem of Gelgel sent a letter to Prince Maurits, a translation of which was sent by Cornells van Eemskerck. This letter was subsequently used by the Dutch in their claims to the island:

"God Be Praised
The King of Bali sends the King of Holland his greetings. Your Admiral Cornelis van Eemskerck has come to me, bringing me a letter from Your highness and requesting than I should permit Hollanders to trade here as freely as the Balinese themselves, wherefore I grant permission for all who You send to trade as freely as my own people may when they visit Holland and for Bali and Holland to be one.
This is copy of the King's letter, which was given to me in the Balinese language and which Emanuel Rodenbuch has translated into Dutch. There was no signature. It will also be sent from me to you.

—7 July 1601, Cornells van Eemskerck.

Slave and opium trade

Dutch records of contacts with Bali in the 17th and 18th century are extremely scarce. Although the VOC was very active in the Moluccas, Java and Sumatra, it took little interest in Bali. The opening of a trading post was attempted in 1620, with the mission given to the First Merchant Hans van Meldert to purchase "rice, beasts, provisions, and women". The enterprise was abandoned in the face of hostile relations with the kings of Bali, and Meldert returned with only 14 female slaves.





Besides these attempts, the VOC left the Bali trade to private traders, mainly Chinese, Arab, Bugis and occasionally Dutch, who mainly dealt with opium and slave trade. According to Hanna, "Balinese slaves were highly prized both in Bali and oversease. Balinese male slaves were famous for their manual skills and their courage, the females for their beauty and artistic attainments".





The kings of Bali would typically sell as slaves opponents, debtors, criminals or even orphans or widows. Such slaves would be used in Batavian households, the Dutch Colonial Army, or sent abroad, the biggest market being French Mauritius. Payment to the Balinese kings would usually be made in opium. The main port for this trade was the harbour of Buleleng in north Bali. The English also started to make various attempts to participate in the Balinese trade, to the great worry of the Dutch.

Local conflicts

Attempts were made for alliances between the Dutch and the Balinese in their conflicts with the Mataram Sultanate of Java. In 1633, the Dutch, who were themselves at war with Mataram sent an ambassador, Van Oosterwijck, to obtain the collaboration of the King of Bali in Gelgel, who was apparently preparing a similar offensive against Mataram. The attempt failed however. When Mataram invaded Bali in 1639, Dewa Agung requested Dutch help in vain, and finally succeeded in repelling Mataram alone. After 1651 the Gelgel kingdom began to break up due to internal conflicts. In 1686 a new royal seat was established in Klungkung, four kilometers north of Gelgel. The rulers of Klungkung, known by the title Dewa Agung, were however unable to maintain power over Bali. The island was in fact split in nine minor kingdoms (Klungkung, Buleleng, Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Tabanan, Gianyar, Bangli, Jembrana). The various kingdoms fought a succession of wars among themselves, although they accorded the Dewa Agung a symbolic paramount status. This situation lasted until the coming of the Dutch in the 19th century.

Franco-Dutch alliance with Bali (1808)

Herman Willem Daendels signed a Franco-Dutch alliance with the Balinese king of Badung in 1808.

 

For a brief period, in 1806-1815, the Netherlands became a province of France, and Bali was thus in contact with a Franco-Dutch administration. Napoleon handpicked a new Governor-General, the "Iron Marshall" Willem Daendels, sent ships and troops to reinforce the East Indies against British attacks, and had military fortifications built through the length of Java. A treaty of alliance was signed in 1808 between the new administration and the Balinese king of Badung, to provide workers and soldiers for the Franco-Dutch defensive effort, but Java fell to the British in 1811, and the agreement was not implemented.

Conflict with Great Britain (1814)

During the British occupation of the East Indies by Stamford Raffles (which lasted from 1811 until 1816, right after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire), the British made fruitless advances to the Balinese kings. Raffles' abolition of slavery on the contrary triggered the indignation of the Rajas of Buleleng and Karangasem, who sent a military expedition against Blambangan, where they fought British Sepoys in February 1814. In May, Raffles sent an expeditionary force to Bali under Major General Nightingale to obtain assurances of "submission". Raffles himself visited the island in 1815.

Return of the Netherlands (1816)

The British returned the East Indies to the Netherlands in 1816. After that, the Dutch endeavoured to reassert and reinforce their control over their colonial possessions. This would open the way to a much more assertive Dutch presence in the East Indies and Bali. Raffles, still looking for an island to colonize, finally settled on Singapore.


A first special commissioner named H.A. van der Broek was sent to sign "concept contracts" with the Balinese kings, which the kings did not accept, but became quasi-valid in the mind of the Dutch.
Meanwhile, a few European traders managed to act as intermediaries between Bali and Europe, such as the Danish merchant Mads Lange, nicknamed the "White king of Bali".

Modern historical period (1846-present)

Dutch seizure of Bali island

Dutch colonial control expanded across the Indonesian archipelago in the nineteenth century, to become the Dutch East Indies. In Bali, the Dutch used the pretext of eradicating opium smuggling, arms running, plunder of shipwrecks, and slavery to impose their control on Balinese kingdoms.

Northern Bali campaigns (1846-49)

A series of three military expeditions between 1846 to 1849, the two first ones initially countered successfully by Jelantik, permitted the Dutch to take control of the northern Bali kingdoms of Buleleng and Jembrana. The king of Buleleng and his retinue killed themselves in a mass ritual suicide, called a Puputan, which was also a hallmark of the subsequent Dutch military interventions.

Colonial administration

Subsequently, the Dutch established a colonial administration in northern Bali. They nominated a member of the royal family as regent, and attached to him a Dutch Controller.


The first resident Controller was Heer van Bloemen Waanders, who arrived in Singaraja on 12 August 1855. His main reforms included the introduction of vaccination, the banning of self-sacrifice or suttee, the eradication of slavery, the improvement of the irrigation system, the development of coffee production as a cash crop, the construction of roads, bridges and port facilities for improved commerce and communication. The Dutch also drastically revamped and increased the tax revenues from the people and from commerce, especially of opium. By the mid-1870, Buleleng was visited by 125 European-style ships annually, and another 1,000 local ships. Christianization was attempted but proved a total failure.


Uprising occurred, necessitating further Dutch intervention. In 1858, the Balinese nobleman Njoman Gempol raised a rebellion by claiming that the Dutch were exploiting Java. A fourth military expedition was sent in 1858 with 12 officers and 707 infantrymen and eliminated the rebellion, sentencing Njoman Gempol to exile in Java.


Another rebellion was led by Ida Mahe Rai against which was sent a fifth military expedition in 1868, consisting of 800 men under Major van Heemskerk. Initially unsuccessful, the expedition was reinforced by 700 men and a new commander, Colonel de Brabant, and prevailed with only two officers and 10 soldiers killed.

Lombok and Karangasem campaign (1894)

In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control. A war of the Rajas between 1884 and 1894 gave another pretext to the Dutch to intervene. In 1894, the Dutch defeated the Balinese ruler of Lombok, adding both Lombok and Karangasem to their possessions.

Southern Bali campaigns (1906-08)

A few years later, with the pretext of stopping the plundering of shipwrecks, the Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 in the Dutch intervention in Bali (1906), leading to the elimination of the royal house of Badung and about 1000 deaths. In the Dutch intervention in Bali (1908), a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung, sealing the end of the Majapahit dynasty which had ruled the island, and the total rule of the Dutch over Bali. Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture was generally left intact..

The Dutch military interventions however were followed closely by media coverage, and reports of the sanguinary conquest of the southern part of the island shocked the West. The disproportion between the offense and harshness of the punitive actions was pointed out. The image of the Netherlands as a benevolent and responsible colonial power were seriously affected as a consequence. The Netherlands, also under criticism for their policies in Java, Sumatra and the eastern island, decided to make amends, and announced the establishment of an "Ethical policy". As a consequence, the Dutch in Bali turned students and protectors of Balinese culture and endeavoured to preserve it in addition to their initial modernization role. Efforts were made at preserving Bali culture and at making it a "living museum" of classical culture, and in 1914, Bali was opened to tourism.



In the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature", and western tourism first developed on the island.

Second World War and Indonesian independence

Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II with the declared objective of forming a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" that would liberate Asian countries from Western domination. Future rulers such as Sukarno were brought forward by the Japanese. Sukarno famously said: "The Lord be praised, God showed me the way; in that valley of the Ngarai I said: Yes, Independent Indonesia can only be achieved with Dai Nippon...For the first time in all my life, I saw myself in the mirror of Asia". The lack of institutional changes from the time of Dutch rule however, and the harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule little better than the Dutch one. Most of all, independence was strongly desired.



Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Balinese took over the Japanese weapons. The Dutch returned to Indonesia in 1946, including Bali, to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. One Balinese, Colonel Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they were trapped by heavily armed Dutch troops. On 20 November 1946, in the Battle of Marga, the Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military resistance.



In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the United States of Indonesia when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.

Post Indonesian independence

The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was represented by opposing supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs.

An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto. The army became the dominant power as it instigated a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population. With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members. As a result of the 1965-66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno out of the presidency, and his "New Order" government re-established relations with western countries.

Balinese dancers show for tourists, Ubud.

 

The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in a modern form, and the resulting large growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the country. Rather than destroy Bali's culture, "in Bali's case, tourism has helped to reinforce a separate sense of Balinese identity, and given Balinese players in Indonesian society the means by which to support their island's idea of uniqueness".


In 1999, about 30,000 hotel rooms were available for tourists. As of 2004, the island achieves over 1,000,000 visitors per year, versus an initial "planned" level of 500,000 visitors, leading to over-development and environmental deterioration: "The result has been polluted and eroded beaches, shortages of water, and a deterioration "of the quality of life of most Balinese". Political trouble has also affected the island, as the bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the tourist area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and another in 2005, severely affected tourism, bringing much economic hardship to the island.

Writing in 2004, Professor Adrian Vickers expressed that "the challenge of the twenty-first century will be to restore tourism while making Bali livable". Tourism has strongly picked up again, with a 28% increase in the first quarter of 2008 with 446,000 arrivals. By the end of 2008, tourism in Bali had fully recovered, with more than 2 million visitors, but the long term livability of Bali, plagued with over-development and traffic jams, remains an issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bali