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General Information: History
Bali was inhabited by Austronesian peoples by about 2000 BCE who
migrated originally from Taiwan through Maritime Southeast Asia.[2]
Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are thus closely related
to the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, and
Oceania.[3] Stone tools dating from this time have been found near
the village of Cekik in the island's west.[4]
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian and Chinese, and
particularly Hindu culture, in a process beginning around the 1st
century AD. The name Balidwipa has been discovered from various
inscriptions, including the Blanjong charter issued by Sri Kesari
Warmadewa in 913 AD and mentioning Walidwipa. It was during this
time that the complex irrigation system subak was developed to grow
rice. Some religious and cultural traditions still in existence
today can be traced back to this period. The Hindu Majapahit Empire
(1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343.
When the empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals,
artists, priests and musicians from Java to Bali in the 15th
century.
The first European contact with Bali is thought to have been made by
Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman who arrived in 1597, though a
Portuguese ship had foundered off the Bukit Peninsula as early as
1585.[citation needed] Dutch colonial control was expanded across
the Indonesian archipelago in the nineteenth century (see Dutch East
Indies). Their political and economic control over Bali began in the
1840s on the island's north coast by playing various distrustful
Balinese realms against each other.[5] In the late 1890s, struggles
between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by
the Dutch to increase their control. The Dutch mounted large naval
and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and were met by the
thousands of members of the royal family and their followers who
marched to certain death against superior Dutch force in a suicidal
puputan defensive assault rather than face the humiliation of
surrender.[5] Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated
4,000 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders. In 1908,
a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in
Klungkung. Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise
little influence over the island, and local control over religion
and culture generally remained intact.
Dutch rule over Bali had come later and was never as well
established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.
Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II during which time a
Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese
'freedom army'. In the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson, and artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies,
and musicologist Colin McPhee created a western image of Bali as "an
enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature",
and western tourism first developed on the island.[6] Following
Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch promptly
returned to Indonesia, including Bali, immediately to reinstate
their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the
Balinese rebels now using Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the
Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I
Gusti Ngurah Rai, 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east
Bali at Marga Rana, where they made a suicide attack on the heavily
armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking
the last thread of Balinese military resistance. In 1946 the Dutch
constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the
newly-proclaimed Republic of East Indonesia, a rival state to the
Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and
Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of
Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence
on 29 December 1949.
The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic
havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to
other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions
across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict
between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those
rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was
represented by opposing supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and
ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs.[5]
An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General
Suharto. The army became the dominant power as it instigated a
violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for
the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were
killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali,
equivalent to 5 per cent of the island's population.[7] With no
Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI
landlords led the extermination of PKI members.[8]
Bali blast monument.
As a result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to maneuver
Sukarno out of the presidency, and his "New Order" government
reestablished relations with western countries. The Bali as a
tourist paradise which was instigated during the pre World War II
colonial time was revised in a modern form, and the resulting large
growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese
standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the
country.[5] A bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the tourist
area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and
another in 2005, severely affected tourism, bringing much economic
hardship to the island.
Source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali
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