Expansion and Internalization of Modes of Warfare in Pre-colonial Balieven colonizing, formally Muslim areas in the process. In that respect it
resembles some maritime-oriented polities elsewhere in the Archipelago.
This is all the more interesting because the level of military sophistication
was initially not particularly high. Campaigns were conducted with kris,
lances, blowpipes and some firearms, with rudimentary strategic and tac-
tical devices. Furthermore there was little indigenous shipping to support
the movement of troops – in fact this is a major difference compared with
other expansive island Southeast Asian realms of the pre-modern period.
Clearly, the degree of political cohesion of Gelgel and some of its succes-
sor states must be taken into account, as well as the larger geopolitical
situation of eastern Java and the islands to the east. Expansion tended
to take place before and after the heyday of the Mataram and Makassar
empires (that is, before c. 1600 and after the 1660s/1670s). Gelgel and
later Mengwi (supported by Gelgel’s heir Klungkung), with an economic
base in the South Balinese sawah economy, gained success in obtaining
a loose suzerainty over overseas territories, and so did Buleleng with its
long northern coastline and access to archipelagic trading routes.^79
More surprising are the wide military ambitions of the relatively mar-
ginal Karangasem; early successes in the fertile areas of West Lombok
in the 1670s in combination with efficacious leadership were likely
important in this case.^80 Expansion, at least such that departed from Bali
itself, broke off in simultaneously in the western and eastern directions
in the 1760s. This was due to European intervention, which for the first
time involved Balinese polities in direct military confrontation with the
Dutch. It quickly became evident that Balinese troops could not stand
up against European military organization, or the political network that
allowed the VOC to use other “Indonesian” groups for its enterprises. In
contrast Balinese campaigns were usually not sustained; from what we
know they consisted in brief raids, assaults and sieges, although the case
of Karangasem expansion possibly suggests a degree of overall strategy.^81
Still, global technological advances did not fail to make their mark. By the
nineteenth century, the lively trade with European and Asian merchants
- H. J. de Graaf, “Gusti Pandji Sakti, vorst van Buleleng”: 59–82; Schulte Nordholt,
The Spell of Power. - Hägerdal, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects, 132–33.
- NA, VOC 3137, letter from the Resident of Bima to the Governor of Makassar, 23
October 1765, fol. 165; Bijvanck, “Onze Betrekkingen tot Lombok”, 150.