Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asiabut rebelled after the demise of a ruler in c. 1546.^16 This is virtually all
that can be gleaned from external contemporary sources before the ap-
pearance of detailed Dutch reports in the late sixteenth century.
By contrast, the late babad literature provides a set of narratives about
the post-Majapahit Bali-wide kingdom centred in Gelgel close to the
south-eastern coast. This kingdom has a defining role in the historical
consciousness of the Balinese, since it took over the symbols of classical
Javanese kingship. The narratives about the polity are focused on the
various Triwangsa lineages and are undoubtedly streamlined to fit into
an idealized pattern of kingship and ritual order.^17 The Gelgel Kingdom
is historically known to have existed up to 1686, and was therefore partly
contemporary with the VOC (Veerenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).
The differences in outlook and aims of the babad writers compared to
the VOC archival reports are however so great that it is unsure when and
if they relate the same events.^18
Nevertheless, some general conclusions can be drawn about the
ability of the Balinese to expand outside their own island. In general
terms it falls within the trend of “post-charter” states in Southeast Asia
that stabilized in about the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, as pointed
out by Victor Lieberman.^19 The establishment of these polities is clearly
connected to what Anthony Reid has called “Southeast Asia’s age of
commerce” in c. 1450–1680, where the presence of Asian traders and
the demand for certain products in maritime Asia made for increasingly
complex commercial networks and strengthened statecraft.^20 Although
Bali was not a large-scale producer of commodities, sources from the
decades around 1600 show that it was involved in such networks, bar-
- Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto, 392.
- There are numerous babad texts dealing with the Gelgel period. The emblem-
atic text, which has influenced much of the later babad literature, is Babad Dalem
(Warna, et al. [eds], Babad Dalem. Teks dan Terjemahan), presumably dating from
the eighteenth century. - Creese, “Balinese Babad as Historical Sources”, 236–60; Hans Hägerdal, “Bali in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century: Suggestions for A Chronology of the
Gelgel Period”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 151.1 (1995): 101–24. - Lieberman sees this as a global trend, paralleling Muscovy, Valois France, etc.
and strengthened by “textual religions, expanding long-distance trade, firearms,
intensifying warfare, and local experiment”. Lieberman, Strange Parallels, 2.765. - Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680.