Ai the beginning Of the 19th Century. Bali remained relatively unaffected by the West¬ern influences which were already trans-formim. much of the Indonesian archipela¬go. Bali’s 16th Century Hindu civilization was still inviolate to any serious religious, commercial, or political infiltration either by Muslims or by Christians.
Dutch traders, agents and colonial offi¬cials failed to gain a foothold in Bali at first. By IK3H. Dutch officials in The Hague. Am¬sterdam and Batavia. having engaged in a prolonged exchange of government and company papers formulating various policy alternatives with regard to Bali, decided to infiltrate traders, then assert sovereignty. The N.H.M.. successor to the trading in¬terests of the long since bankrupt and de¬funct V.O.C.. was intimately involved in these intrigues.
A time-honored Balinese concept of ship salvage eventually provided the catalyst for Dutch military intervention. In accordance with their principle of reef rights, luwan karang. honoring the sea deity Batara Baru-na. the rajas accepted as a gift of the gods whatever ship came to grief on the treacher¬ous reefs which ringed their island. They took the ship, the cargo, the crew and the passengers as their personal property, natur¬ally sharing with those who actually per¬formed the act of salvage or rescue, but en¬tertaining no doubts at all regarding the •sanctity of the deed. From the Dutch point of view, it was bad enough if the Balinese exercised their so-called reef rights upon a Chinese, an Arab, a Bugis or a Javanese craft, many of which sailed under the Dutch Hag and expected Dutch protection. It was quite intolerable if the ship in question was Dutch owned and operated.
A Son-) Shipwreck, a Defiant Pledge
By the end of the IK30s. all circumstances combined to prompt the Dutch to address themselves quite earnestly to discussion with the Balinese rajas of the delicate subjects of trade and politics, slavery and plunder. They tried to blanket these various topics with treaties of friendship and commerce, in fact, recognition of Dutch sovereignty and monopoly.
A famous Dutch colonial official known as a ‘contractsfuilfir” or contract-maker. I I.J. van lluskus Koopman. was dispatched to
the island to try to coax the rajas into givinn the Dutch virtual sovereignty over the is¬land. His efforts met with little success. The Dutch finally decided to resort to force. As a pretext for invasion, they used the wreck of the Dutch frigate Overijssel on the Kuta reef — and the plunder of its cargo by Balinese exercising their reef rights. The sorry saga of the Overijssel began on July 19. 1841. when the vessel, on its maiden voyage from Ply¬mouth to Surabaya with a valuable cargo of machinery, hit the Kuta reef and was promptly plundered. Subsequent Dutch out¬rage served in part to cloak humiliation that a large and heavily armed frigate was wreck¬ed by reason of a flagrant navigational error. The captain had mistaken the coast of Bali for Java. The Dutch were equally embarras¬sed that the ship was looted despite the pre¬sumed vigilance of the ship’s company against exactly that contingency.
As the furor over the incident increased in Holland, a Dutch mission was sent to Bali to protest continuing outrages and demand re¬confirmation of earlier promises that the Balinese would give up the practice of sal¬vaging ships that foundered off their shores. A new Dutch commissioner for Bali arrived with a new set of agreements scheduled to be formally ratified by the rajas and rigidly en¬forced by the Dutch. He landed at Buleleng to meet with its raja and council of slate. It was on this occasion that the great hero of mid- 19th Century Bali identified himself. I le was Gusti Ktut Jelantik. a dramatic, dyna¬mic young prince, the brother of the rajas of Buleleng and Karangasem. He defied the Dutch commissioner in the following apoc¬ryphal words:
Never while I live shall the state recog¬nize the sovereignty of the Netherlands in the sense in which you interpret it. After mv death, the Raja may do as he chooses Not by a mere scrap of paper shall any man become the master of another s lands. Rather let the kris decide.
Preparations lor War
The Dutch beean preparations for an ex¬peditionary force, which assembled at Be-
Preceding pages: Balinese choose the suicidal rite of puputan rather than surrender to the Dutch m this modern painting by Bud,. At left. Balinese warriors in battle dress 1880s.
suki. to sail to Bali on the east monsoon of 1846. Jelantik began building fortifications, raising troops, and acquiring arms, relying, as the Dutch correctly surmised, upon cer¬tain enterprising merchants in the British colony of Singapore for large shipments of weapons. Balinese-Dutch relations were rapidly moving into a new and tragic phase.
Balinese military preparations centered upon the northern rajadom of Buleleng. ruled by Gusti Madya Karangasem. the elder brother of the Raja of Karangasem. Buleleng and Karangasem. the two most powerful rajadoms of the island but long¬time rivals, were now closely allied in oppos¬ing the political and military aims of the Dutch. They had the blessing of the Dcwa Agung of Klungkung. who was in no posi¬tion to provide much more than that. The Raja of Badung in the south, who wished to preserve the profits of trade and was no friend of the turbulent northerners, sought to remain detached from the conflict and exercised his influence upon his friendly neighbor, the Raja of Tabanan to do like¬wise. The other states were allied rather tenuously with Klungkung but were atten¬tive to Badung. They were not disposed to become involved.
Once the Dutch set themselves to subdue Bali, the outcome was never in doubt. But it took three campaigns to shatter the Balinese defenses and morale, campaigns in which the Dutch did not always by any means achieve either glory or victory’