Abstract
The years 1750–1870 encompass a period of significant change in Bali, a time when interaction with Europeans, in particular the Dutch, became crucial, and cultural and political transformations occurred as colonialism, even though largely at a distance, was consolidated throughout the archipelago. This period, however, does not encapsulate Bali’s ‘last stand’. The Balinese political crisis that had seen the centralized realm of Gelgel replaced with a multi-centred polity had taken place nearly a century earlier, sometime between 1650 and 1686. At the other end of this timescale, it was to be another forty years before colonial domination over the island was finally established in 1908.
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Notes
The chronology of events is somewhat contested — at least in western academic debate. See C.C. Berg, De Middeljavaansche Historische Traditie (Santpoort: Mees, 1927);
H. Creese, ‘Balinese babad as historical sources: A re-interpretation of the fall of Gelgel’, BKI, Vol. 147 (1991), pp. 236–60;
H. Hägerdal, ‘Bali in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: suggestions for a chronology of the Gelgel period’, BKI, Vol. 151 (1995), pp. 1–25;
H. Creese, ‘Chronologies and chronograms: An interim response to Hägerdal’, BKI, Vol. 151 (1995), pp. 26–32.
Aernoudt Lintgens, ‘Bali 1597’, BKI, Vol. 5 (1856), p. 206.
Franck van der Does, ‘Cort verhael van de navagatie ofte schijpvaert gedaen bij oostende Cabo Bona Speij’, in G.P. Rouffaer and J.W. Ijzerman, De Eerste Schipvaart der Nederlanders naar Oost-Indië onder Cornells de Houtman, 1595–1597 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1915–29), Vol. II, pp. 239–378.
See P.A. Leupe, ‘Schriftelijck rapport gedaen door den predicant Justus Heurnius, aengaende de gelegentheijt van ‘t eijlandt Ende, tot het voortplanten van de Christelijke religie, en van wegen de gelegentheijt van Bali, 1638’, BKI, Vol. 3 (1855), pp. 250–71, ‘Het gezantschap naar Bali onder Gouverneur-Generaal Hendrik Brouwer’, BKI, Vol. 5 (1856), pp. 1–71.
The annexation of Buleleng apparently took place sometime before 1768, since in a letter received in Batavia that year, Buleleng is described as the possession of Anglurah Karangasem. See J. Kats, ‘Een Balische brief uit 1768 aan den Gouverneur van Java’s Noordkust’, Feestbundel Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap, Vol. I (1929), pp. 291–8.
A number of recent studies have successfully integrated these historical and textual threads. See, for example, R. Rubinstein ‘Allegiance and alliance: the Bañjar war of 1868’, in A. Vickers, (ed.), Being Modern in Bali (Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1996); Schulte Nordholt, ‘Een Balische dynastie’;
H. Schulte Nordholt, ‘Origin, descent and destruction: text and context in Balinese representations of the past’, Indonesia, Vol. 54 (1992), pp. 27–58;
A. Vickers, ‘The desiring prince: a study of the kidung Malat as text’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1986;
A. Vickers, ‘Balinese texts and historiography’, History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1990), pp. 158–78;
A. Vickers, ‘Ritual written: the song of the Ligya, or The Killing of the Rhinoceros’, in H. Geertz, (ed.), State and Society in Bali: Historical Textual and Anthropological Approaches (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1991f).
For the bad press given to this period of Southeast Asian history, see A.J.S. Reid and C. Trocki, ‘The last stand of autonomous states in Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1870: problems, possibilities and a project’, ASR, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1993), pp. 103–120, and the response by
A. Vickers, ‘Southeast Asia in the eighteenth century’, ASR, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1994), pp. 61–9. Mataram-Lombok has generally been depicted as the most ‘successful’ of the Balinese kingdoms. See especially,
A. van der Kraan, Lombok: Conquest, Colonization and Underdevelopment, 1870–1940 (Singapore: Heinemann, 1980).
For a detailed study of these aspects of Balinese power, see M. Wiener, Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic and Colonial Conquest in Bali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
There may well have been a hiatus in this continuity in the mid to late eighteenth century. The fourth Dewa Agung of Klungkung, Dewa Agung Sakti, was mad and apparently unfit to rule. His own son was raised in Karangasem, while Sakti’s eventual successor, Dewa Agung Putra II, was unable to claim sovereignty until after his grandfather’s death in c.1815. The earliest nineteenth-century European accounts, however, depict Klungkung once again at the apex of the hierarchically ordered kingdoms. See A. Vickers, Bali: A Paradise Created (Ringwood: Penguin, 1989), pp. 66–7.
C. Geertz, Negara the Theatre State in Nineteenth century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980).
For an Indonesian translation of the Babad Dalem, see I Wayan Warna et al., Babad Dalem: Teks dan Terjemahan (Denpasar: Dinas Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Propinsi Daerah Tingkat I Bali, 1986).
Vickers (1989:69), following Damais (1963:136), suggests 1819 as the time of composition of the Babad Pamañcangah, although other interpretations of the very obscure chronogram data are possible, including a dating of AD 1795. (1717 saka). The manuscript mentions as patron Wiryatmaja, a name that is undoubtedly synonymous with Wiryaputra, and is thus a reference to either Dewa Agung Putra I (d.1809) or Dewa Agung Putra II (c. 1815–51). For further discussion of the identity of the patron of the Kidung Pamancangah as Dewa Agung Putra I, see H. Creese ‘In Search of Majapahit: The Transformation of Balinese Identities’ Monash University Centre for Southeast Asian Studies Working Paper (forthcoming) and H. Creese ‘Pieces in the Puzzle: The Dating of Several Kakawin from Bali and Lombok’, Archipel Vol. 52 (1966), pp. 143–71.
The manuscripts of the Lombok Collection are listed in Th. Pigeaud, Literature of Java: Catalogue raisonné of Javanese manuscripts in the library of the University of Leiden and other public collections in the Netherlands (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), Vol. II, pp. 252–320.
Although in terms of trade volume the perahu-based trade was soon outstripped by western shipping, the increase in square-rigged trade between Bali/Lombok and Singapore of 75 per cent was matched by a parallel growth in the perahu-based trade both to Singapore and Java. The Bali-Singapore trade was largely in the hands of the Bugis trading networks and increased from 72 vessels carrying 1,441 tons in 1829–30 rising to a peak of 264 vessels with 7,539 tons in 1841–42. The Java trade in the hands of the Chinese also flourished. There was a sharp rise in the trade with Bali’s north coast at Singaraja particularly in the illicit trade in Java coffee which was valued at $636 in 1835–36 but had risen to $20,436 in 1845–46. Bali also served as the exchange point for trade in opium and British manufactures between Singapore and Java. See Wong Lin Ken, ‘The trade of Singapore’, JMBRAS, Vol. 33 (1960), p. 63, p. 284.
The Siamese trader Chinkak noted that in 1846 there were several ports at which boats could anchor, and that in every port there was a Chinese merchant. See E. Graves and Charnvit Kaset-Siri, ‘A nineteenth century Siamese account of Bali with introduction and notes’, Indonesia, Vol. 7 (1969), pp. 77–123. Chinkak names six ports, including those situated in Buleleng and Karangasem, as belonging to Klungkung. Only Badung-Tabanan was outside its sphere of influence. P.L Van Bloemen Waanders, ‘Aanteekeningen omtrent de zeden en gebruiken der Balineezen, inzonderheid die van Boeleleng’, TBG, 8 (1859), pp. 105–279, reported that there were between 12 and 15 bandars in Buleleng and that approximately one third of the raja’s revenue derived from import and export duties.
H. Schulte Nordholt, ‘The Mads Lange connection. A Danish trader on Bali in the middle of the 19th century: Broker and buffer’, Indonesia, Vol. 32 (1981), pp. 17–47. See also A. van der Kraan’s many studies: Lombok: Conquest, George Pockock King: Merchant Adventurer and Catalyst of the Bali War, 1846–49 (Hull: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, 1992); ‘Rajas, bandars and trade in nineteenth century Bali’, in
J. Butcher and H. Dick (eds), The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming: Business Elites and the Emergence of the Modern State in Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 1993); ‘Bali and Lombok in the world economy, 1830–50’, RIMA, Vol. 27 (1993), pp. 91–105. A quite different version of events can be found in Wiener, Visible and Invisible Realms.
A. Vickers, ‘The writing of kakawin and kidung on Bali’, BKI, Vol. 138 (1982), pp. 493–5.
F.A. Liefrinck, De Landsverordeningen der Balische Vorsten van Lombok, 2 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915).
V.E. Korn, Balische Overeenkomsten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1922).
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Creese, H. (1997). New Kingdoms, Old Concerns: Balinese Identities in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. In: Reid, A. (eds) The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies. Studies in the Economies of East and South-East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25760-7_14
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