At the beginning of the 19th Century, Bali remained relatively unaffected by the Western influences which were already transforming much of the Indonesian archipelago. 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 officials failed to gain a foothold in Bali at first. By 1830, Dutch officials in The Hague, Amsterdam 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 interests of the long since bankrupt and defunct V.0.C., was intimately involved in these intrigues.

The aftermath of the 1906 Denpasar puputan: the bodies of Balinese victims piled outside the place, above: and , the body of the Raja og Badung wrapped in the moven mat, right.

A time-honorefkbalinese concept of ship salvage eventually'provided the catalyst for Dutch military intervention. In accordance with their principle of regpf rights, tqwan karang, honoring the sea deity Batara Baruna, the rajas accepted as a gift of the gods whatever ship came to grief on the treacherous reefs which ringed their island. They took the ship, the cargo, the crew and the passengers as their pefsgnal pro, perty, naturally sharing with those who Actually performed the act of salvage or rescue, but entertaining 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 flag and expected Dutch protection. It was quite intolerable if the ship in question was Dutch owned and operated.

By the end of the 1830s, 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 "contractsluiter" or contract-maker, H.J. van Huskus Koopman, was dispatched to the island to try to coax the rajas into giving the Dutch virtual sovereignty over the island. 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 Plymouth to Surabaya with a valuable cargo of machinery, hit the Kuta reef and was promptly plundered. Subsequent Dutch outrage served in part to cloak humiliation that a large and heavily armed frigate was wrecked by reason of a flagrant navigational error. The captain had mistaken the coast of Bali for Java. The Dutch were equally embarrassed that the ship was looted despite the presumed 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 reconfirmation of earlier promises that the Balinese would give up the practice of salvaging 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 enforced by the Dutch. He landed at Buleleng to meet with its raja and council of state. It was on this occasion that the great hero of mid-19th Century Bali identified himself. He was Gusti Ktut Jelantik, a dramatic, dynamic young prince, the brother of the rajas of Buleleng and Karangasem. He defied the Dutch commissioner in the following apocryphal words:

Never while 1 live shall the state recognize the sovereignty of the Netherlands in the sense in which you interpret it. After my 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.

The Dutch began preparations for an expeditionary force, which assembled at Besuki, to sail to Bali on the cast monsoon of 1846. Jelantik began building fortifications, raising troops, and acquiring arms, relying, as the Dutch correctly surmised, upon certain 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.

the political and military aims of the Dutch. They had the blessing of the Dewa 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 likewise. The other states were allied r&her tenuously with Klungkung but were attentive 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.

As a result of the military expeditions, the Dutch began to exercise rapidly increasing control over northern Bali and to interfere more frequently and vigorously in Balinese domestic affairs.

Buleleng became the first of the Balinese principalities to fall under Dutch administration. In 1855, the Dutch also assumed coiitrol over Jembrana. In each case, the Dutcli adopted the administrative device they bad found to be effective in Java. Thev appointed a member of the royal family as regent and assigned him a Dutch controleur who, as the title clearly implied, controlled both the regent and the kingdom. Thus, as of the mid-1850s, the Dutch actually began to acquire the sovereign power which they had long claimed, at least in northern and western Bali. Half a century later, they ruled the entire islarrd.

The colonial administration in Bali remained centered in the port town of Buleleng and the adjoining royal capital of Singaraja. The first resident Dutch official

Was Herr P.L Van Bloeman Waanders, who like certain of his successors, was to become a serious and sympathetic student of Balinese life and customs. After the difficulties of the first few years were overcome and the Dutch and Balinese had made certain basic accommodations to each other, the latter part of the 19th Century was reasonably peaceful and saw satisfactory development for the northern states. But continuing strife between the warring factions in the states of the south resulted in several more Dutch military campaigns.

Meanwhile, the Dutch under van Blocmen Waanders and his successor announced strict new regulations against slavery and undertook to improve economic conditions. They encouraged extension of the irrigation system to improve the rice harvest, the planting of coffee as a cash crop and by 1875, northern Bali was already a distinctly profitable colonial enterprise. The ever-increasing contact between Buleleng and the outside world resulted in an attempt to introduce Christian missions. But they met with little success. The colonial successes and failures produced a policy of benevolent paternalism which resulted in Bali in a relatively enlightened administration. Still, the darkest days of the Dutch colonial penetration lie ahead.

The First Dutch Military Expedition against Bali in 1846 seemed a formidable enough force to cope with any native impudence. The invasion fleet consisted of 58 vessels and nearly 3,000 men well-armed and equipped. The force anchored off Buleleng on June 22 and the Dutch sent ultimatums to the rajas ashore. The rajas ignored them and the Dutch attack began six days later. The Balinese put up a strong defense under the guiding hand of Jelantik, but the Dutch nevertheless won a swift victory, losing only 18 dead while the Balinese suffered severe losses of life and property. The Dutch victory was empty, however, unless they could enforce their will upon the rajas who were firmly entrenched in the nearby hills.

A flamboyant Danish trader who had set up a profitable enterprise in Kuta, Mads Lange, stepped into the stalemate. He helped negotiate a truce. But the Balinese rajas led by Jelantik failed to deliver on promises to pay reparations and to provision a Dutch garrison on the island.

A second military expedition against Bali was thus mounted in 1848. This time the Dutch sent even more men and ships. But the Balinese, boldly and brilliantly led bv Jelantik, had installed 25 cannon and mustered 16,000 men, 1,500 equipped with firearms. They fought off three attacks inflicting severe casualties upon the Dutch, who retreated to plan and prepare an even more forceful assault.

The third expedition arrived off Buleleng in March 1849. This time the fleet numbered over 100 vessels, - heavily armed frigates, steamships, schooners, and scores of large and small auxiliary craft and manned by 3,000 sailors and 5,000 landing troops. They marched into Buleleng and Singaraja, where the Dutch general set up his headquarters in the raja's palace.

The final showdown occurred on April 4. The Dutch deployed their troops in full dress uniform. The Balinese troops were dressed in their most splendid costumes as if prepared not for battle but for the baris warrior dance. They carried themselves haughtily, struck theatrical stances, and fingered their weapons suggestively. The Raja and Jelantik were especially magnificent in brilliant red sarongs nattily gathered up to display short tight trousers, below and above which gleamed bare, bronze skin. Their waists were nipped in by golden girdles. At the back each displayed a huge jeweled kris, the ornate handles extending above shoulder height for quick dramatic draw. Their thick, flowing black hair was bound by white headclothes in which the raja wore a green sprig and Jelantik wore a crimson flower.

The encounter, which started as a triumph of Dutch and Balinese showmanship, deteriorated into a miserable failure of statesmanship. It ended without a fight or an agreement. Several weeks later, the Dutch attacked the Balinese fortifications at Jagaraga. They suffered 33 dead and 148 wounded. The Balinese lostthousands. Among the victims was the wife of Jelantik and a party of high-born ladies whom she led in the rite of the puptitan, advancing in a state of near trance directly into the line of Dutch fire in a deliberate act of self-destruction.

Pitched battles continued well into the following year. The Dutch managed to gain allies and troops from Lombok. The Raja of Karangasem, despairing at the news, killed his family and himself. The Dutch battled their way to the gates of the Dewa Agung in Klungkung. But they were repelled.

The fluctuating fortunes of war were dramatically signalled by the commander of the Lombok forces, who visited a Dutch colonel on shipboard and displayed to him three especially valuable and significant prizes. The first was the kris of the Raja of Karangasem, signifying his death and the fall of that kingdom; the second was the kris of the Raja of Buleleng; the third that of Gusti Ktut Jelantik. The Raja of Buieleng and Jelantik had been ambushed by the wily troops from Lombok. The Raja had been killed on the spot; Jelantik, seeing no escape, had taken poison.

With Jelantik and the two rajas dead, with the Dewa Agung and his surviving protectors deeply grieved and dismayed, the Balinese resistance was in a state of complete disarray. The Dutch, decimated though they were by tropical diseases, could scaircely even have blundered into defeat.