Bali
history , some paradise in Indonesia
History
Main
article: History of Bali
Ancient
Bali was
inhabited around 2000 BC by Austronesian people who migrated originally from
Southeast Asia and Oceania through Maritime Southeast Asia.[8][9] Culturally
and linguistically, the Balinese are closely related to the people of the
Indonesian archipelago, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Oceania.[9] Stone tools
dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's
west.[10][11]
In
ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Bhairawa, Siwa
Shidanta, Waisnawa, Bodha, Brahma, Resi, Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered
a specific deity as its personal Godhead.[12]
Balinese
culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu
culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali
island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the
Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and
mentioning "Walidwipa". It was during this time that the people
developed their complex irrigation system subak to grow rice in wet-field
cultivation. Some religious and cultural traditions still practised today can
be traced to this period.
The
Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony
in 1343. When the empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals,
artists, priests, and musicians from Java to Bali in the 15th century.
a.
At
religious festivals on Bali the sculptures are dressed and umbrellas are placed
by the temples.
Portuguese
contacts
The
first known European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1512,
when a Portuguese expedition led by Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrão sighted
its northern shores. It was the first expedition of a series of bi-annual fleets
to the Moluccas, that throughout the 16th century usually traveled along the
coasts of the Sunda Islands. Bali was also mapped in 1512, in the chart of
Francisco Rodrigues, aboard the expedition.[13] In 1585, a ship foundered off
the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung.[14]
Dutch
East India
In 1597
the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali and, the Dutch East
India Company was established in 1602. The Dutch government expanded its
control across the Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the 19th
century (see Dutch East Indies). Dutch political and economic control over Bali
began in the 1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various
competing Balinese realms against each other.[15] In the late 1890s, struggles
between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to
increase their control.
In June
1860 the famous Welsh naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled to Bali from
Singapore, landing at Bileling on the northcoast of the island. Wallace's trip
to Bali was instrumental in helping him devise his Wallace Line theory. The
Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that runs through the strait between Bali and
Lombok. It has been found to be a boundary between species of Asiatic origin in
the east and a mixture of Australian and Asian species to the west. In his
travel memoir The Malay Archipelago, Wallace wrote of his experience in Bali:
I was both astonished and delighted; for as
my visit to Java was some years later, I had never beheld so beautiful and
well-cultivated a district out of Europe. A slightly undulating plain extends
from the seacoast about ten or twelve miles inland, where it is bounded by a
fine range of wooded and cultivated hills. Houses and villages, marked out by
dense clumps of coconut palms, tamarind and other fruit trees, are dotted about
in every direction; while between them extend luxurious rice-grounds, watered
by an elaborate system of irrigation that would be the pride of the best
cultivated parts of Europe.[16]
The
Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and
were met by the thousands of members of the royal family and their followers
who fought against the superior Dutch force in a suicidal puputan defensive
assault rather than face the humiliation of surrender.[15] Despite Dutch
demands for surrender, an estimated 200 Balinese marched to their death against
the invaders.[17] In the Dutch intervention in Bali, a similar massacre
occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung. Afterward the Dutch
governors exercised administrative control over the island, but local control
over religion and culture generally remained intact. Dutch rule over Bali came
later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as
Java and Maluku.
In the
1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, artists Miguel
Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee all spent time
here. Their accounts of the island and its peoples created a western image of
Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and
nature." Western tourists began to visit the island.[18]
b.
Balinese
dancers show for tourists, in Ubud.
Imperial
Japan occupied Bali during World War II. It was not originally a target in
their Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were
inoperative due to heavy rains, the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy
Bali, which did not suffer from comparable weather. The island had no regular
Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There was only a Native
Auxiliary Corps Prajoda (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native soldiers
and several Dutch KNIL officers under command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P.
Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942 the Japanese forces landed near the town of
Senoer [Senur]. The island was quickly captured.[19]
During
the Japanese occupation, a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed
a Balinese 'freedom army'. The harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule
more resented than Dutch rule.[20] Following Japan's Pacific surrender in
August 1945, the Dutch returned to Indonesia, including Bali, to reinstate
their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the Balinese rebels,
who now used recovered Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the Battle of
Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by
then 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where
they made a suicide attack on the heavily armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion
was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military
resistance.
Independence
from the Dutch
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
"Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands
recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.
Contemporary
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 this system. Politically, the opposition was
represented by 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.[15] 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.[15][18][21] With
no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords
led the extermination of PKI members.[21]
As a
result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno out of
the presidency. His "New Order" government reestablished relations
with western countries. The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in
a modern form. 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.[15] A bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the
tourist area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and
another in 2005, severely reduced tourism, producing much economic hardship to
the island.
