The famous fossil remain of the ‘’Java Men’’ show that the species Homo Erectus, a predecessor of modern human race, lived in Java between two million and 500,000 years ago. Much later, around 10,000 B.C., the evidence points to the presence of a Neolithic culture in Bali and Java. But today’s Indonesians mainly descent from migrants who came from south China via the Malay peninsula and moved along the island chain to Bali, Lombok, and beyond, from 3000 to 1000 B.C. Archaeological finds show that there was a flourishing Bronze drum, dating back to around 300 B.C., found in Bali resembles those made in what is today northern Vietnam but whether it’s an import or local copy is not known. Trade and culture exchanges with southeast Asia had certainly begun by then, and there were frequent contacts with India by A.D. 100. About this time, too, wet rice cultivation was introduced to Bali, changing the face of the countryside to that of its present appearance of rice paddy fields and terraces.
Indian traders and teachers brought Buddhism to Java, it had only a limited influence in Bali, however, Where people continued in their ancient animist beliefs, worshiping the spirits of the mountains, rivers, and other natural forces.
Hinduism Come to Bali
In the 8th and 9th centuries A.D., several Buddhist rulers in Java converted to Hinduism, along with their subjects. This time, many people in Bali followed suit, perhaps attracted by the complex Hindu mythology—the Balinese today still have a love of the old stories—and by the way, their local Gods could easily be housed in the crowded Hindu pantheon. Around 930, the kingdom of East Java conquered Bali and the conversion process accelerated. A mild form of the caste system and the concept of the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were introduced. But Bali was mo mere vassal state of Java. From 1019 to 1042, Airlangga, son of the Balinese king Udayana and a Javanese princess, ruled over East Java, while his young brother acted as regent in Bali. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Bali was often independent.
A powerful Hindu empire named after its capital, Majapahit, united all of Java by 1320. The Majapahit General Patih Gajah Mada reconquered Bali in 1343, and added a large part of the Indonesian archipelago besides. Hindu art and scholarship spread through the island, but in the most of them their flowering was to be rather short-lived. With the death in 1389 of King Hayam Wuruk, its last great ruler, the empire of Majapahit began to decline.
Muslim traders and teachers had already started converting several of Java’s princes and people to Islam, especially in coastal areas, and in the 14th and 15th centuries to the movement gathered face and spread to the interior. By around the year 1500, seeing their world breaking up, many Majapahit aristocrats, Priests and scholars fled to Bali, where their culture continued to flourish. Islam never gained a strong food hold in Bali,, which had few products to attract traders and because of its many reef and lack of harbors, was difficult to invade. The early 16th century also brought the first European ships to Indonesian waters, when the Portuguese came in search of spices and set up trading posts—though not on Bali.
In 1550 Bali was united under Batu Renggong, the formidable ruler known as Dewa Agung (God-King) of Gelgel, near Klungkung. His men even succeeded in turning back the tide of Islam for a short while, adding Eastern Java and Lombok to his domains. During his rule, Balinese power, culture and influence reached a peak, with a boom in temple building and the associated crafts of sculpture and woodcarving.
The future colonial power, the Dutch, appeared briefly on the scene in 1597 when battered remnant of an expedition under the Cornelis De Houtman anchored off the coast of Bali.
When he decided to sail away and return to the Netherlands, three of his men stayed behind the serve the Dewa Agung. Almost 250 years passed before the Dutch tried to exert any real control here, in sharp contrast to Java, which they ruthlessly exploited. Left to their own devices, Bali’s rules fell to squabbling among themselves and the island split into ten or more rajadoms. A 17th century Dewa Agung moved the royal capital from Gelgel to nearby Klungkung, but the balance of power shifted from one rajadom to another, notably Buleleng in the north and then Karangasem in the east (which also seized most of Lombok). Bali’s contact with the Dutch was restricted to providing slaves—mainly Balinese who has broken the Raja’s laws or Priests’ taboos—and soldiers for the army of the United Dutch East Indies Company (vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). The company was the instrument of influence of the Netherlands until it went bankrupt in 1799 and was superseded by the government.
Between 1811 and 1817, during the Napoleonic Wars, Britain took control of Indonesia and seriously thought of staying once the wars were over. Britain’s Administrator, Stamford Raffles, who was named Lieutenant Governor, even visited Bali, and may have had it in mind to build a trading station here. After the war, however, the British government decided to restored Dutch territory and interest—and Raffles found another site, the island and future port of Singapore.
The Dutch Take over
Once reestablished in Java, the Dutch tried to poster trade with Bali, aiming to increase their influence and also to prevent the Balinese from plundering ships wrecked off coast. They failed, and their frustration was perpetuated by the fact that a Danish trader called Mads Lange was enjoying great success in Bali. Following the looting of a ship in 1841, the Dutch negotiated a treaty with Bali’s rajas which they thought guaranteed an end to such practices. A when it became clear that the Balinese didn’t see it that way at all, the Dutch then decided for the first time to use force. Some 1,600 men recruited mainly in the Moluccas and other Indonesian islands, landed on the north coast in 1864 and burned Singaraja. The Balinese prepared for a battle, but before it could take place, mads lange persuaded the two side to sign a truce. The rajas agreed to stop the plundering of wreck, and to pay compensation for the 1841 incident, but it soon emerged that they had no intention of sticking to the deal, and In 1848 the Dutch landed their second military expedition in the north of Bali. Advancing inland to attack the Balinese base at Jagaraga, they were ambushed by a bigger but less well-armed force led by Jelantik, younger brother of the king of Buleleng. In spite of appalling losses, the Balinese won the day. The defeated Dutch invaders retreated in disorder to their ships.
Such a humiliation could not got go unavenged, and following year, a third Dutch military expedition, far stronger than its predecessor, landed near Singaraja. The northern rajadoms sued for peace, they were offered terms calling for them to disarm and submit to Dutch rule. The response of Jelantik was was to fall back to Jagaraga and prepare to fight. This time were Balinese overwhelmed and thousands were killed, some in suicidal march toward enemy guns, a ritual death in battle known as Puputan. After a second Dutch landing at Padang Bai, the Puputan ritual was repeated when the Raja of Karangasem and his family threw themselves on the enemy guns.
For the rest of the 19th century, the Dutch, using the rajas and other aristocrats as regent, took control over most of Bali, but their influence in the south remained limited. This was emphasized in 1904 when a ship wrecked off Sanur was plundered of its cargo. The Dutch demanded reparations for this act; the southern rajas refused. In 1906 a force of mainly Moluccan troops led by Dutch officers marched on Denpasar to enforce compliance. They found the place almost deserted, until suddenly the rajas of Badung, together with his family and hundreds of courtiers, emerged from the palace. On a signal from the rajas, one of his priests stabbed him with a Kris (a secret Balinese weapon), and then, pausing only to stab their children first, the rest of the royal party begun a Puputan, either killing themselves or running suicidally toward to enemy. When the dreadful scene was repeated by the Dewa Agung and his wives and followers in 1908 in front of the palace at Klungkung, the raja’s resistance to Dutch rule was at an end.
The public in the Netherlands were appalled by these grisly events. From then on, Bali and Balinese came to be to be looked on as unique, to be protected from the colonial treatment that had turned the other islands into plantations exploited for profit. Tourism was discouraged, although a few foreigners did make the journey and brought back with them news of the island’s extraordinary culture to the outside world. Some artists came in the 1920s and a few stayed, both influencing Balinese painting styles and being influenced by them.
In the way of colonial powers, the Nederland began to considerate processes that were to lead to its own demise. Many young Indonesians received a Dutch education, with the brightest students going to universities in the Netherlands. The Dutch language gave the vast polyglot archipelago a sense of unity, even among islands that had been bitter enemies for centuries. Between 1910 and 1930, Indonesian began to form a variety of radical political groups, namely nationalist, religious, socialist, and also communist. Strikes were organized and minor insurrections erupted. Then in 1927 a graduated engineer, Soekarno, along with others, formed a nationalist association which was to evolve into the Partai Nasional Indonesia (Indonesians nationalist Party) or PNI. Sukarno was imprisoned for four years in 1929 as a political agitator Flores and later on the island of Sumatra.
War and Independence
Early in 1942, soon after their attacks on Pearl Harbor and Singapore, the Javanese invaded and occupied Indonesia, with the intention of exploiting its oil and rice to work. It suited them to work with the Indonesian nationalists led by Mohammad Hatta and Soekarno, who hoped to extract concessions in return. Indonesians replaced the Dutch administrators, who had either fled or been interned.
In the dying days of the World War II, the Javanese promised to hand over power to Indonesia’s Nationalist leaders. In the event, it happened that decision was not theirs to make. Following the Japanese surrender on August 14th, 1945, Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Indonesia an independent republic on August 17th, with soekarno as its first president.
The years 1946 to 1949 saw the Dutch trying to reassert control. Recovering from years of Nazi occupation, they could not muster the huge force needed to take all the islands, but they were able to seize major cities and the eastern islands, and to launch so-called ‘’police action’’ against the nationalist-held areas, primarily in Java.
In Bali, a young colonel in the nationalist army, Ngurah Rai, organized a force to resist the return of the Dutch, but it was not strong enough to oppose their landing early in 1946. The nationalist retreated into the hills to conduct a guerrilla campaign, and in November 1946 they found themselves trapped close to a village called ‘Marga village’, north of Tabanan. Outnumbered and outgunned, Ngurah Rai and all 96 of his followers were killed in what is regarded as the last Puputan. Their sacrifice is commemorated by a monument and museum at the site, together with the stones bearing the names of each of those who died on the island of Bali during the struggle for independence.
Eventually, under pressure from U.N. and the Unite State, which use force-war aid as a lever, the Dutch were force to give up the attempt to rebuild their colonial empire. On August 17th 1950, five years to the day after independence was first declared, the fledgling Republic of Indonesia was recognized by the Netherlands.
The 1955 Afro-Asian conference in Bandung (a city in west of Java) heralded the arrival of the new nation, and its leader Soekarno was welcomed to the world stage. Together with India’s Nehru and Tito of Yugoslavia, he was credited with the foundation of the non-aligned movement.
Years of Confusion
A succession of short-lived coalition government wrestled with the problem posed by separatist movement on the various island groups, dislocation caused by the war its aftermath, a badly neglected infrastructure, and the colonial legacy of over-exploited plantations. Frustrated by Indonesia’s loss of direction, Soekarno declared a form of martial law in 1957. A so called ‘’guided democracy’’ and an appointed national council and non-party government took the place of the elected assembly and ineffectual coalitions.
The period between 1959 and 1965 was a surreal time of government by means of slogans and Orwellian acronyms. Soekarno attempted to control the competing nationalist, religious, and communist group; NASAKOM (nasional, agama, dan komunis) was the word he used to represent their supposed commons interests. As he wasn’t enough, procession paraded with placards emblazoned with MANIPOL (Soekarno’s political manifesto) and DEKON (his economic declaration) written on them, and there were others which condemned NEKOLIM (neo-colonialism and Imperialism). In the meantime, the Indonesian economy collapsed and hyper-inflation destroyed in currency.
The country’s limited foreign exchange reserves were squandered o prestigious projects, grand monuments, and stadia to host the Asian Games of 1962, seen as a showpiece for the nation. Travel Agent were given a tour, including a visit to Bali that coincided with an important ceremony in march 1963 at the so-called ‘’mother temple’’ Besakih, on the slope of the island’s highest mountain, Gunung Agung A long dormant volcano, it chose it particular moment to begin emitting smoke and firing rocks into the air, but the ceremony went ahead anyway, literally under a cloud. The official guests had scarcely left Bali when Gunung Agung exploded in what was the most violent eruption the island had seen in centuries. Lava flowed down its slopes, but despite the impressions conveyed by the stories still told now (and photographs seen in many books), it covered only a limited area. The chief instrument of destruction was the volcanic ash that showered down on the northern half of Bali, covering it with a layer typically 40 centimeters (15 inches) thick. Crops were wiped out; the rice terraces were devastated, and starvation threatened.
A more immediate disaster added to the islander’s woes. The ash had blocked rivers, and the dams it formed could not retain the water for long. When they broken, torrents of mud and rock tore down the valleys and through the villages and towns along the river banks, The official death toll 1,600 was certainly a wild under estimate. They had been black even over south of Bali, although the capital Denpasar received only sprinkling of ash.
Coup and Revenge
On 30 September 1965, a group of army conspirators based near Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, kidnapped and killed six army generals. The circumstances have never been fully explained, although the murderers claimed they acted to prevent a possible coup against Soekarno. In the following days, General Soeharto, one of the most senior surviving commanders, moved speedily to isolate the conspirator and effectively seized power, the blame for the killings was pinned on the Communist Party, the PKI, who denied any involvement. A pogrom was then unleashed, first in Java and next in Bali, with widespread killings of Communists, in revenge and also to settle old scores. The Chinese minority, mainly shopkeeper, moneylender, and other small business people, were another target. In common with the other immigrant groups, they had been compelled by low to display the flag of their country of origin, even if a century had passed since their ancestors had left it. So every Chinese business was marked by the flags of China—Communist China—and associated in people’s minds with communism. The numbers killed will never be known: in Bali alone the total casualties may have exceeded 60,000.
Soekarno’s associated with the PKI and suspicion of his involvement in the coup cost him much of his popularity and authority. Only his honored role in the independence struggle saved him from trial. The army forced him to yield most of his powers to Soeharto, who in 1968 took over the presidency itself. Soekarno died two years later.
Growth and Modernization
In the decades following, the economy stabilized as growing oil revenues fuelled expansion. The Chinese community carefully rebuilt its commercial interests, this time much less visibly. Tourism to Bali was seen as a money-spinner: the 1970s saw a rapid increase in the numbers of foreign visitors. During the 1980s, the Authorities strategy was to develop more profitable business; and they designated Nusa Dua as a huge tourist enclave where only luxury hotels would be built. To bring the necessary volume if visitor traffic to fill all the new rooms, Denpasar Airport’s runway was extended out into the sea to handle big airlines.
The holiday market is hungry fir new places and the government is eager to create jobs and earn foreign currency. These are two factors that transform Bali, and they have slowly begun to take effect in next-door Lombok, too. You may be here to relax and enjoy a slower pace, but there’s no escaping the fact that Indonesia is an important part of the world’s fastest-growing economic region.
My other website www.baliblisstour.com
