Warring Societies of Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia_ Local Cultures of Conflict Within a Regional Context

Expansion and Internalization of Modes of Warfare in Pre-colonial Bali

Adrian Vickers (1986) and Helen Creese (1991), there is more to be
done here.^3
There is also a very limited amount of non-Dutch European and
non-Balinese indigenous sources that yield additional information on
warfare, state, and society in pre-colonial Bali. These include Portuguese
and other European reports or travel accounts from the early modern
period.^4 Indonesian outsider perspectives on Bali are occasionally given
in texts from Java, Lombok and Sumbawa, islands sometimes involved
in warfare with the Balinese, or even subjected to invasion and conquest
from Bali.^5

Bali and Southeast Asia from a Military Perspective

When the first Dutch visitors to Bali stepped ashore at Gelgel and met
with the king of the island in 1597, their attention was drawn to the
weaponry found in the royal watch-huts. They noted that the shotguns
were of inferior quality compared to the European ones, and that the
gunpowder did not have one-fourth of the power of their own stuff.
They further noted the long and carefully ornamented lances, the
shields made of ox hide “in the Turkish manner”, the blowpipes with
attached “bayonets”, and quivers with poisoned arrows.^6 What is inter-
esting with this eyewitness account is that it partly parallels accounts of
the nineteenth century. While new types of firearms including cannon
were introduced by then, and the Balinese soldiers were even praised as

3. W. G. C. Bijvanck, “Onze Betrekkingen tot Lombok”, De Gids 58.4 (1894); H. J. de
   Graaf, “Gusti Pandji Sakti, vorst van Buleleng”, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land-
   en Volkenkunde 83 (1949); Schulte Nordholt, The Spell of Power; Adrian Vickers,
   “The Desiring Prince: A Study of the Kidung Malat as Text” (PhD diss., University
   of Sydney, Sydney, 1986); Helen Creese, “Balinese Babad as Historical Sources: A
   Reinterpretation of the Fall of Gelgel”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
   147 (1991).


4. J. V. Mills, “Eredia’s Description of Malaca, Meridional India, and Cathay”, Journal
   of the Malay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 8 (1930): 1–288; Hubert Jacobs,
   “An Abortive Mission Effort: The Island of Bali in 1635”, Archivum Historicum
   Societatis Iesu 53 (1984): 313–30; C. Wessels, “Een Portugeesche missie-poging
   op Bali in 1635”, Studiën; Tijdschrift voor Godsdienst, Wetenschap en Letteren 99
   (1923): 433–43.


5. Hans Hägerdal, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Lombok and Bali in the Seventeenth
   and Eighteenth Centuries (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2001).


6. Aernoudt Lintgensz, “Bali 1597”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 5
   (1856): 207.