BALI – before the tourists invaded…

Trader-colonisers from the coast of Coromandel brought Hinduism to Java. The religion was adopted by the Majapahit kingdom in the eastern part of the island. Bali was a vassal state of Majapahit and became a safe haven for refugees from the kingdom when Islam became the prevailing religion.

The original inhabitants of Bali are the Bali Aga. Though a few Bali Aga villages remain today, it must be assumed that the two groups socialised and mixed greatly. From then Bali and the Balinese were largely left to their own device. The Dutch, who first appeared in 1597, were not really colonisers, a colonial power, yes, but even that was a slow and cumbersome process. It went like this. After the brothers De Houtman laid a first contact with the island, it took the Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, VOC), and after 1800 when the company went bankrupt and was dissolved, the government of the Dutch East Indies, more than 300 years to become the administrative and governing power on Bali. See map of regions held by VOC/Colonial Government.

evolution of the Dutch East Indies

During the centuries, the Balinese kings remained an unruly and obstinate lot, all nine of them: Klungkung as the most powerful, together with Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Bangli, Tabanan, Gianjar, Buleleng, and Jembrana.

Numerous expeditions had to be sent to ensure that trade agreement were adhered to, Dutch ships not plundered, the payment of fines—in one case 75,000 Dutch guilders, that would be millions of euros when converted to the present—and in general to enforce the power of the colonial government. Interestingly, until the British reign (1811-1815) the main commodity traded from Bali was… slaves. The importance of this can be seen from the fact that in 1778 the number of Balinese living in and around Batavia was 13,000. Raffles put a stop to the trade and it was never revived.

Many of the expeditions ended in failure and supremacy of the Dutch was not fully established till the twentieth century. In 1906, the king of Badung together with members of the nobility, some of his wives and children, and the royal household marched into the gunfire of the Dutch troops, preferring death over a curtailment of his power and bending the knee to the Dutch. This puputan was repeated two years later in Klungkung. Unruly elements were deported to Lombok, and law and order was established. This would of course depend on from where this is observed, but Dutch sources of the day report that the local population was not sorry to see the kings, with the accompanying lack of legal certainty for the common people, and the continual state of war, go.

This might, however, be true as only 20 years later a first tourist guide[1] was published, with the writer complaining that woodcarvings of quality were difficult to find, as carvers and traders, having noted that the tourists would be undiscerning in their appreciation of the products, would offer virtually mass produced low-quality work to improve their cash flow.

Tourist flows in those days were negligible according to present day standards. Total length of paved roads was some 800 km, which in 1930 was used by 136 lorries, 264 busses and 787 rental cars, part of these serving the tourist industry. Two hotels in Denpasar offered a total of 56 rooms—Bali Hotel 38 rooms and Hotel Satriya 18. Singaraja had a total of 9 hotel rooms and Kintamani 14 in two pasanggrahan (guesthouse)—one operated by the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM) and one by the government. 

pasanggrahan at Kintamani



The KPM maintained shipping routes between the islands and Batavia, and with Singapore, Penang and Hong Kong. The KPM port on Bali was Buleleng.

The full tourist invasion started when the western countries had recovered from WW-II and economic growth and development kicked in. And in the 80s it really took off.

To be continued.



Sources:  Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie;  Martinus Nijhyoff, 1917
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

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[1] BALI, het land der duizend tempels, G.H. von Faber