Bali Chronicles. Willard A. Hanna
followers. Arja Damar received, in fact, virtually the whole of the lush rice growing area of the south which then constituted the states of Tabanan and Mengwi, from which later split off Badung and Bangli. To Gadjah Mada went the large but not so desirable central mountain region and the coastal areas beyond, out of which, presently, were created the radjadoms of Buleleng. Karangasem, and Djembrana. Gadjah Mada’s services in the Bali campaign had not been deemed especially meritorious, for he had idled away his time in various pleasures leaving it to Arja Damar to fight the major battles and to lead the main invasion forces southward from Buleleng. Thus there originated the jealousies and rivalries of two different sets of rulers, those of the South, who stemmed from Arja Damar, and those of the North, who stemmed from Gadjah Mada. The latter all but openly repudiated their allegiance to the Dewa Agung in the mid-eighteenth century. The former continued to pay homage and tribute, however meager, up until the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century.
Decline of Dewa Agung’s Authority
The conspicuous decline of the Dewa Agung’s own power and prestige, according to this reading, dates from approximately the year 1750 when there occurred a series of incidents which shocked all of Bali. The Radja of Karangasem, an ascetic sage of repulsive physical habits and appearance, generally so engrossed in meditation that he let his excrement drop where it might, paid a visit of homage to Klungkung in the course of which he greatly shocked and outraged the Dewa Agung. When the Radja set out again for home, the Dewa Agung gave orders that he should be ambushed and assassinated, and the Radja was accordingly murdered. His three filial sons immediately sought to take vengeance. They raised an army and marched into Klungkung to invest the puri. Some residue of respect for tradition deterred them from either killing or deposing the Dewa Agung or even depriving him of much of his realm. But they made virtual declaration of independence and returned home to rule Karangasem without much further regard for the Dewa Agung’s authority. The eldest son succeeded as radja; presently, he conquered Buleleng, where he made his younger brother radja, and then Lombok, which he assigned to the other. From that time on, Karangasem, Buleleng, and Lombok were more often hostile than amenable to Klungkung. But at the time of the Balinese–Dutch wars of 1846–1849, both Karangasem and Buleleng, but not Lombok, solicited and reciprocated the Dewa Agung’s support.
The long and the short versions of centuries of Balinese history, much of which, technically, is pre-history, converge upon one famous personage, Gusti Gde Karangasem, Radja of Karangasem at the turn of the nineteenth century, the gadfly of the Dewa Agung and the kingpin of a new coalition. Once having made himself master of Buleleng as well as of Lombok and having made his brothers the radjas, he next added Djembrana to his domain. He did so over the vigorous protest of Badung, which had recently treated that state as an appendage of its own but had tolerated the rule of a Bugis prince from Makassar named Kapiten Patimi. Karangasem put rude pressures upon other states as well and stirred up widespread resentment and resistance.
By this time the patterns of Balinese power and politics were becoming almost incomprehensible even to the Balinese, as is still further indicated by the sudden emergence in the late eighteenth century of the state of Gianjar as a rival to Klungkung and a military threat to Buleleng, Karangasem, Mengwi, and Bangli. Buleleng itself presently rebelled successfully against Karangasem (1823), and the Radja of Karangasem, Gusti Gde Ngurah Lanang, was forced to flee to Lombok. There he built a new puri and attempted to impose central authority over the mutually jealous little Lombok radjadoms, which welcomed his defeat in Bali as an invitation to defiance; he sought at the same time to force his onetime vassals in Bali itself yet once again to recognize him as ruler. Gusti Gde Ngurah Lanang thus did much to create the insular and inter-insular turbulence which the Dutch found conducive to the imposition of Western rule.
CHAPTER 2
Western Intruders
(Pre–1800)
Early Portuguese and Other European Visitors
Up until the time that the Dutch seriously interested themselves in Bali, which was at a very late date in their colonial history, Western contacts with the island were infrequent and transitory. The early Portuguese explorers, adventurers, merchants, missionaries, and conquerors, who reached Malacca in 1509 and the Moluccas in 1511, all but by-passed Bali in their eager rush to acquire riches, souls, and territory. So did the Spaniards. The Magellan expedition (1519–1522) sighted an island, probably Bali, which it identified as “Java Minor,” but apparently no one went ashore. Fernando Mendez Pinto, the great Portuguese navigator and Munchausen-like narrator, may have visited Bali briefly in about the year 1546, but the evidence is not clear. Various others of the pioneer Portuguese and Spanish no doubt sighted Bali if they did not actually explore it, and they made due notation of the island (under various names: Boly, Bale, Bally) on the early charts. Sir Francis Drake called briefly in 1580 and Thomas Cavendish perhaps visited Bali itself as well as its East Java dependency of Blambangan in 1585, but they left no written record.
The Portuguese were the first to entertain any designs upon Balinese trade and territory. The Malacca government fitted out a ship to dispatch to Bali in 1585 with soldiers and merchants, building materials and trade goods, the intent being to build a fort and to open a trading post. The ship foundered on the reef off Bukit and most of the ship’s company were drowned. Five survivors found their way to shore, where they were impressed into the service of the Dewa Agung, who treated them on the whole quite kindly, providing them with homes and wives, but refused to permit them to return to Malacca.
Houtman Expedition of 1597; Shore Party in Kuta and Gelgel
In 1597, twelve years after the ill-fated Portuguese enterprise, Cornelis de Houtman, the earliest of the Dutch explorers and traders in the East Indies, paid a visit. The record of his expedition—an official report and a detailed personal letter by one of the ship captains— constitutes the first substantial body of information about the island available to the Western world. Although its two-year voyage had been punctuated by mutiny, murder, piracy, brigandage, and such ill-natured haggling over prices of local produce that it failed ever to find cargo, the expedition’s conduct in Bali was almost blameless. Cornelis de Houtman, the braggart and scoundrel to whom the leadership had fallen after the mysterious demise en route of several predecessors, was so moved by the beauty and wealth of the island that he indulged in an unaccustomed but characteristically inappropriate flight of poetic fantasy and christened it Jonck Hollandt (Young Holland). It was a description so evocative of misapprehension as to lead later Dutchmen to fancy that in introducing Dutch civilization and commerce they were guiding the islanders toward their manifest destiny.
The three surviving ships of the expedition, the Hollandia, the Mau ritius, and the diminutive pinnace, the Duifje (Little Dove), with company of 89 men (out of the original 249), arrived by relays in Balinese waters—the Mauritius on December 25, the Hollandia on January 27, the Duifje shortly thereafter. The Mauritius anchored first off the coast of Djembrana, the Hollandia first at Kuta; the Duifje for a time shuttled in between; all three presently assembled in the safer waters of Padang Bai.
Four members of the Houtman company spent most of the period February 9–14 on shore, mainly in Kuta, but they made one trip to Gelgel and went on one expedition into the countryside, along with Balinese escorts, to hunt wild birds. They had been sent ashore to negotiate with the Balinese rulers for opening of trade, an enterprise which came to nothing since the Balinese could offer only a very limited quantity of spices and the Dutch, as usual, were too parsimonious in their bids for other goods. The four men on shore actually gave little thought to trade but occupied themselves in quite agreeable and informative intercourse with the hospitable Balinese. The rulers treated them as honored guests—also as prized hostages, Houtman himself having already seized three Balinese whom he was holding on shipboard—and made many occasions to elicit information about European life and customs. They were especially skillful about exacting gifts, most notably a chart of the world which the Dutch repeatedly promised and only belatedly delivered, declining, however,