One of my listeners requested I give equal time to eastern Indonesia, because in the past when I talked about this vast island nation, I concentrated on the big western islands: Java, Sumatra and Borneo. Well, it turns out I’m going to need more than one episode to fulfill that request, so here’s the first part in a mini-series on eastern Indonesia. Today we will look at the “Island of the Gods,” Bali.
https://blubrry.com/hoseasia/91103881/episode-124-another-look-at-bali/
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This episode is dedicated to Louis C., Ethan P., and Claudia G.; all of them have made generous donations to the podcast, since the previous episode was uploaded. Louis has donated multiple times before, so of course his name is on the Podcast Hall of Fame Page. Those donations were in 2019, 2020, and 2021, meaning Louis received the appropriate icons of recognition, the coveted water buffalo icon for two years of donations, and the ever-popular Shwe Dagon Pagoda icon for three years of donations. Now that he has made a donation for 2022, Louis has become the third person to win the newest icon on the Podcast Hall of Fame Page, the OUTRAGEOUS Merlion! As for Ethan and Claudia, these are their first donations, so we’re glad to have them join the small fraction of listeners who support the podcast. The few. The noble. The generous. The donors. And I also liked the nice comments they included with their donations. Needless to say, Ethan and Claudia’s first names are now on the Podcast Hall of Fame Page, too. As I record this, the Western world’s lengthy holiday season is approaching, so may the days ahead for all three of you be filled with unexpected blessings. And now lets hear the episode your contributions helped make possible.
Episode 124: Another Look at Bali
Greetings dear listeners, for the 124th time, from the hills of Bluegrass country in Kentucky! Unless you are new here and listening to the podcast for the first time, you know that we finished the historical narrative for Southeast Asia with Episode #119. At least for events up to 2021. Now I have just learned that Myanmar has descended into a civil war, following last year’s coup, and the armed forces, who are called the Tatmadaw in Burmese, are losing. One of these days I will have to do an episode on that, but it won’t be today. For now, I will just say I got this news from an Australian podcast. That’s not really a surprise, since I use a Latvian podcast to keep up with the war in Ukraine, and I don’t trust the American media to report either conflict accurately. Heck, our news networks don’t even seem interested in reporting foreign conflicts, presumably because they haven’t yet found a way to blame the troubles in Ukraine or Myanmar on former President Trump. At least with podcasts I already know where the podcaster’s biases are, and can tune them out if I think they are affecting the story.
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Also, while I was working on this episode, one of the world’s worst football tragedies occurred in Indonesia. Or if you are American, it’s one of the world’s worst soccer tragedies. Whatever your name for the sport, it happened in the Malang region of east Java, on October 1, 2022. According to what I heard, when the game ended, fans of the losing team charged onto the field, and the police fired tear gas to disperse them, though FIFA, the international soccer governing body, has regulations against using tear gas in stadiums. In response to this, the fans stampeded toward the exits, and in the crush that followed, at least 132 were killed and 580 were injured, because some of the stadium doors were locked. Two weeks later the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, visited Java, to meet with Indonesian President Joko Widodo and other officials. Afterwards, Widodo announced that the stadium would be torn down, to be replaced by a new stadium that complied with FIFA standards. About this, Infantino said, quote, “This is a football country, a country where football is a passion for over 150 million people. We owe it to them that when they see a match they are safe and secure.” Unquote.
Now where were we? Oh yes, since Episode #119 I have been answering questions that you the listeners sent in, and have been covering topics that you requested. I call these “loose ends,” because I am mainly going into more detail on subjects that you felt didn’t get enough attention in the historical narrative. For example, the narrative finished discussing the Second Indochina War, what we Americans usually call the Vietnam War, with Episode #96, but it wasn’t until Episode #122 — almost two years later in real time — that I devoted an episode to the refugees who fled Indochina in the war’s aftermath.
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That being said, today we begin a deeper look at eastern Indonesia. One of you said I gave too much attention to the big islands in the west — Sumatra, Java and Borneo — and thus requested an episode that would give equal time for the eastern islands. Yes, I did concentrate on the west, and there’s a reason for that. For just about all of history, the western islands were the place where the action was. When the ancestors of today’s Malayo-Polynesians settled in the islands, roughly 4,000 to 2,000 years ago, they found that Java and Sumatra had the most land suitable for growing rice. Then when commerce between India and the Far East became important, two key waterways were next to these islands — the Malacca Strait between Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, and the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java. Therefore the most important Indonesian states were based here; Srivijaya had its capital, Palembang, on Sumatra, close to both straits, while Majapahit was based in a city by the same name on Java. Then when the Dutch made Jakarta, also on Java, their base of operations, they almost guaranteed that Jakarta would become a future Indonesian capital, too. And today, most of the cities in Indonesia are still on the western islands. The eastern islands are not only without big cities, they have never produced a major state, and before the Dutch took over the whole archipelago in the nineteenth century, the only time the eastern islands were ruled by one government was during the period in the late fourteenth century when Majapahit was at its peak, under the king Hayam Wuruk and his multi-talented chief assistant, Gajah Mada. Go to Episode #6 if you want to refresh your memory concerning the Majapahit Empire. Finally, I will remind you that when independence for Indonesia was discussed in the late 1940s, the Dutch proposed putting all the eastern islands under their own government, separate from the governments ruling Java, Sumatra and Borneo, and calling that state Negara Indonesia Timur, or the State of Eastern Indonesia, with the capital on Bali. I mentioned that proposal in Episode #60, and because it turned out to be unworkable, Indonesia came together as a single state just a few months after independence.
I think we need to start with a short refresher course on Indonesian geography. To start with, Indonesia is the world’s biggest archipelago. For those who don’t know what that is, an archipelago is a fancy word meaning a group of islands. Other examples of archipelagoes include the Philippines, the Caribbean islands, Japan, and the state of Hawaii. The Indonesian islands are spread out across a stretch of ocean three thousand miles miles wide, covering an area the size of the continental United States.
My sources don’t agree on how many islands Indonesia has. The number ranges from 13,466 to 18,307; the most often cited figure is 17,508 islands, and it comes from the CIA World Factbook. The larger numbers came from surveys that included the rocks and temporary islands, the tiny bits of rock, sand and coral that are visible at low tide, but become submerged at high tide. Most of the smaller islands do not have names or permanent residents. Three of the world’s largest islands — Sumatra, Borneo and New Guinea — are included in the archipelago.
This is one of the most geologically active places on Earth. Indonesia sits on the edge of one of the earth’s tectonic plates, the Asian plate, and it grinds against the Australian plate, causing frequent earthquakes. If an earthquake occurs in the surrounding ocean, this can lead to a tsunami, like the devastating one that struck all around the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Because of this, and because the earth’s crust is unusually thin in this area, there is also a lot of volcanic activity. No country has more volcanoes than Indonesia; there are at least 400 volcanoes in these islands, of which 150 are active. On that note, let us end the refresher course.
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Because the Indonesian islands have not been united for most of their history, I have decided that the best way to discuss the eastern islands is to divide them into specific regions and cover each region separately, until we get to the date where the Dutch rule them completely. From there we can go back to the episodes in this podcast that were about Dutch rule of the islands, World War II, and the on-and-off war for independence. Therefore, here are the regions I am defining for eastern Indonesia. To start with, three single islands, Bali, Sulawesi and Timor, will each be considered a region. The fourth region will be the long string of islands running from Bali to Timor; we call these the Lesser Sunda Islands. Some of the islands you may have heard of in this chain are Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Komodo, Flores, and Alor. Komodo and three neighboring islands are the home of the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizard. Flores was mentioned in Episode #1, because here is where the bones were found of homo floresiensis, a remarkable stone age man that was only three feet tall. Bali and Timor are also considered part of the Lesser Sundas, but as I already mentioned, we will deal with them separately. And two small island groups, the Barat Daya and the Tanimbar Islands, are part of the Lesser Sundas, but the Indonesian government has put them in the province of Maluku, so whatever I have to say about them will be covered there.
Podcast footnote: Now that I have described the Lesser Sundas, you may be wondering where the Greater Sunda Islands are. “Greater Sunda” is a collective term for Indonesia’s four largest islands: Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Sulawesi. Of those only Sulawesi will be discussed in this series; the others have gotten enough attention already, as we noted. Madura, a medium-sized island on the east side of Java, is considered part of the Greater Sundas as well, because it has been under Java’s influence for as long as anyone can remember. End footnote.
Finally, there are the Moluccas. Before the twentieth century, these were usually called the Spice Islands, because Europeans in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries couldn’t get enough of their primary product. Spices were probably the most sought-after commodity for trade until the 18th century, when Caribbean sugar was grown in large enough amounts to make Europeans go for that instead. Today the two provinces of Indonesia next to western New Guinea are called Maluku and North Maluku, after the Moluccas. Besides the southern part of the traditional Spice Islands, Maluku includes the Banda Islands; the Leti, Babar, Kai and Aru Islands; and the previously mentioned Barat Daya and the Tanimbar Islands. All this will be the fifth region covered in this episode. Western New Guinea won’t be covered here, because it got its own episode already, Episode #102.
When I was researching the material, “mission creep” set in. This is a common thing with history podcasts; you find out you have bitten off more than you can chew with one episode. At first I thought two episodes of the usual length would be enough to cover the subject of eastern Indonesia. Now I expect it will take more than two, so let’s start with Bali and see how far we can go in 40 minutes or so. If you are ready, let’s get into the content.
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<say yeah>
I thought so.
<Interlude>
What you just heard was a gamelan from Bali. A gamelan is Indonesia’s most famous contribution to music; it’s an orchestra where all the instruments are metal percussion; bells, gongs, xylophones, what have you. There are also styles of gamelan music from east Java and west Java, but the Balinese gamelan is the most energetic.
Anyway, we are starting with what is probably eastern Indonesia’s most famous island, Bali, the so-called “Island of the Gods.” Today it has a reputation as a beautiful island paradise, like Tahiti and Hawaii, and is a popular tourist destination for that reason. And that reputation has crept into our pop culture. Some thirty years ago, I read some novels written by Alan Dean Foster. In his “Humanx” series, Foster imagined a future earth that was run by one government, with its capital on Bali. Personally, I don’t think that would work the way Foster portrayed it; knowing how today’s governments require lots of buildings and are constantly buzzing with activity, I don’t see how you can put all that on Bali without ruining the scenery. But then, these are science fiction stories, where anything the author thinks of can happen.
Because Bali is next to Java, it has been inhabited since the stone age; perhaps even Pithecanthropus, also known as Java Man, lived here. We know this because stone age tools, like hand axes, have been found here. Arrowheads and tools made of animal or fish bones have also been found, and we think they came from more modern cave men who moved in at a later date, such as the Australoids, the ancestors of today’s Aborigines, migrating on their way from Asia to Australia. Most recently, the Malays arrived between 3000 and 600 B.C., and because they knew how to grow rice, they could support a larger community than the previous groups; in fact, they are the ancestors of the people living on Bali today. See Episode 2 for more about that migration. Between 600 and 200 B.C., the Balinese traded with the Dong Son culture of northern Vietnam, and thus learned how to mix tin and copper to make bronze. We know this because Dong Son-style artifacts, like bronze ceremonial drums, have turned up on Bali as well.
Throughout Southeast Asia, the prehistoric era ended around 250 B.C., when Indian merchants found their way across the Bay of Bengal and began trading with Southeast Asians. I say the prehistoric era ended because the Indians brought ideas as well as merchandise. From them, Southeast Asians learned to write in Sanskrit, the old language of India; later they would develop other alphabets to use with their own languages. Missionaries soon followed, converting the Southeast Asians to Buddhism and Hinduism. Even so, more centuries would go by before we can report on actual historical events; the oldest inscriptions found are religious texts. For Bali, the oldest inscription that has historical value was carved in 914 A.D. This was the Belanjong Pillar Inscription; it is written in two languages, Sanskrit and Balinese, and it mentions a local king named Sri Kesari. Over the next few centuries, there were marriages between the royal families of Bali and Java, and some of Java’s 12th century kings claimed to rule both Java and Bali. Kertanagara, the last ruler of the Singosari kingdom on Java, invaded and conquered Bali in 1284, but when he was overthrown in 1292, Bali regained its independence. Singosari was replaced by the Majapahit Empire, and it conquered Bali in 1343. Bali stayed part of Majapahit until 1478, when that empire in turn fell to an Islamic invasion. For more about all this, go back to Episodes 6 and 11 of this podcast.
With the fall of Majapahit, Islam swept across most of Indonesia, but this also marked the beginning of Bali’s best years. When Bali became independent from Majapahit, a kingdom named Gelgel was established. Around the same time, there was a massive exodus of aristocrats, priests, artists and intellectuals who didn’t want to convert to Islam, and they fled from Java to Bali. Over the next generation, the rulers of Bali built dozens of Hindu temples to accomodate the new arrivals. As for the rulers themselves, they claimed to be descended from members of the Majapahit royal family who fled there, and so would all of Bali’s kings, up until the Dutch took over.
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The kings of Bali in the 16th century are poorly documented; we don’t have exact dates on the first five of them. One of those kings, Sri Aji Baturenggong, ruled around 1550, and he was powerful enough to rule not only Bali, but also Lombok, west Sumbawa and the eastern tip of Java. East Java at this time was the last part of the island where the inhabitants were predominantly Hindu, and from at least 1598 onwards, Bali defended the Hindu state there, Blambangan, from attacks by its Moslem rivals. This went on until 1639, when Blambangan surrendered to Sultan Agung of Mataram, but after the Mataram troops withdrew, Blambangan managed to regain its independence and survive with the southern part of the territory it held previously, because after the death of Sultan Agung in 1645, Mataram lost interest in campaigning in this area.
The culture now established on Bali was apparently so strong that Islam bypassed the island. In fact, today the island’s population is still 86.9% Hindu. However, the chief god for Balinese Hindus is not a god imported from India, like Brahma or Shiva, but a local deity, a sun-god named Acintya. Acintya is portrayed as a naked man surrounded by flames, and the other Hindu gods are often seen as avatars or manifestations of him. This is an outgrowth of the government’s nationalist ideology, which calls for all religions in Indonesia to be monotheistic, having one god.
Podcast footnote: Despite what I have just said about Majapahit culture being preserved on Bali, the island is not a perfect time capsule of what Indonesia used to looked like. One of the most popular tourist attractions on Bali is the Ramayana Monkey Chant, called the Kecak by natives. This is a dance performed every evening, where 50 to 150 men imitate the chattering of monkeys, like this:
<kecak sound clip>
However, this isn’t an ancient ritual. While the dance is dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey king from Hindu mythology, it was invented in the 1930s, and has been performed since then because the tourists will pay to see it. So did you think you could avoid tourist traps by traveling to a Third-World country? Think again! End footnote.
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We now believe the first Europeans to visit Bali arrived in 1512. This was a Portuguese expedition led by Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrão; they went on to discover the location of the Spice Islands in the same year. Over the course of the next century, Portuguese ships traveling to the Spice Islands got there by following the coasts of the Lesser Sunda Islands, meaning they would go past Bali. The Magellan expedition, now led by Sebastian del Cano because Magellan was killed in the Philippines, may have sighted the island, but we don’t think they landed there. The second expedition to sail around the world, led by Sir Francis Drake, made a brief stop on Bali in 1580.
In 1585, the Portguese sent a ship from their outpost at Malacca to establish a fort and a trading post on Bali, but it ran aground on a coral reef, and only five survivors made it to shore. The king of Bali recruited them into his service, and gave them wives and homes. Then when the first Dutch expedition to Indonesia, led by Cornelis Houtman, came to Bali in 1597, the king let them meet one of the Portuguese who worked for him, Pedro de Noronha. I talked about the Houtman expedition in Episode #17. Listen to it if you haven’t already; that expedition was a special kind of disaster!
Then in 1603 the newly formed Dutch East India Company sent its first ship to Bali. The king of Bali allowed the Dutch to freely trade on Bali, but this turned out to be a mistake. Soon Bali was exporting slaves, rice and various animals, in return for opium from the French and Dutch. Yes, the Dutch East India Company was one of the original drug cartels.
Also in the 17th century, an era of instability began; by 1651, internal wars caused the kingdom of Gelgel to break up into smaller states. In 1686 the king abandoned the village of Gelgel and built a new palace at Klungkung, two or three miles to the north. From 1686 to 1908 there were eight kings of Klungkung, called by the title of Dewa Agung, but now they were only ceremonial rulers. In practice, Bali was now split into nine kingdoms, named Klungkung, Buleleng, Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Tabanan, Gianyar, Bangli and Jembrana. The Dewa Agung was regarded as the first among equals, and was allowed to keep calling himself the king of Bali, but that was it; the rulers of the other states had the real power now. Petty wars between those rulers would allow Dutch invaders to get a foothold on Bali in the 19th century.
I already talked about the Dutch conquest of Bali in Episode 22. Here is a sound clip from that episode, recounting what happened. Let me apologize in advance for the sound quality; remember, I recorded this five years ago, and I am using a different computer now! Episode quote:
Most of the outer islands were conquered without much resistance. The main exceptions were Bali and Aceh. I’ll admit Bali surprised me, because of its reputation as a real-life paradise; before the 2002 terrorist attack on it, anyway. It took three campaigns, in 1846, 1848 and 1849, to subjugate northern Bali. The first two expeditions were defeated, and when the third succeeded, one of the local rajahs and 400 of his retainers committed ritual suicide, or as the natives called it, puputan. In 1894 the Dutch intervened in a local war between the rajahs of southern Bali and the neighboring island of Lombok, and that gave then an excuse to conquer Lombok. The Dutch waited until 1906 to move against southern Bali; they brought modern warships and launched a naval bombardment before landing their troops, so the natives had no chance of winning. The battle ended with another puputan, as another rajah and 4,000 men, women and children either killed themselves or each other, choosing death instead of surrender.
As you might expect, the news of the puputan raised a big stink when the outside world heard about it. Some believe that the last king of the mighty Majapahit empire fled to Bali when Majapahit was overthrown in the early sixteenth century, so if that is true, the Majapahit dynasty was wiped out not by Indonesian syltans, but by the Dutch invasions of Bali. For that reason, a member of the Dutch Upper House of Parliament labeled the mass suicide (quote) the “extermination of a heroic race” (end quote), and public opinion became increasingly critical of the colonial administration. To other Western nations, the Netherlands no longer looked like a responsible and evenhanded colonial power. That was a major motivator in the so-called “Ethical Policy” which was introduced in the early twentieth century to replace the Liberal Program; we’ll talk more about that in a future episode.
However, the was one independent rajah left on Bali, and there would be one more puputan when Dutch troops went for him in 1908. The rajah came out to meet them armed only with a kris, a wavy-bladed dagger that was believed to have magic powers. He was brought down with one bullet, and when his six wives saw this, they killed themselves, too, and then their retainers followed them in death. Although the Dutch had finally won, it was a hollow, morally empty victory, and the Dutch governors who took charge after that felt it was best to leave the culture of Bali alone.
End of the sound clip. The rest of Bali’s history is closely tied in with the history of all Indonesia, so I don’t see the need to talk about Bali separately after this. If you want to listen to the episodes about Indonesia in the 20th and 21st centuries, those episodes are 32, 39, 60, 97, 102, 103, and 115. I’m going to end the episode here, so as not to keep you waiting any longer than you have already waited for this one. Join me next time as we continue our deep dive with a look at more of Eastern Indonesia.
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<Outro>
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