Bali, Indonesia Travel HD - Bali, Indonesia
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Bali is an island and the smallest province of
Indonesia, and includes a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably
Nusa Penida. It is located at the westernmost end of the
Lesser Sunda Islands, between
Java to the west and
Lombok to the east, and has its capital of
Denpasar at the southern part of the island.
With a population of 3,890,
757 in the
2010 census, and currently 4
.22 million, the island is home to most of Indonesia's
Hindu minority. According to the
2010 Census, 84.5% of Bali's population adhered to
Balinese Hinduism,12% to
Islam, and most of the remainder followed
Christianity. Bali is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. A tourist haven for decades, the province has seen a further surge in tourist numbers in recent years.
History of Bali
Bali was inhabited around
2000 BC by
Austronesian people who migrated originally from
Southeast Asia and
Oceania through
Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the
Balinese are thus closely related to the people of the
Indonesian archipelago,
Malaysia, the
Philippines, and Oceania.
Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.
In ancient
Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely
Pasupata,
Bhairawa, Siwa Shidanta, Waisnawa,
Bodha,
Brahma, Resi,
Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal
Godhead.
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by
Indian, Chinese, and particularly
Hindu culture, beginning around the
1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by
Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 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 in 1585 when a
Portuguese ship foundered off the
Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of
Dewa Agung. In 1597 the
Dutch explorer
Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali and, with the establishment of the
Dutch East India Company in
1602, the stage was set for colonial control two and a half centuries later when Dutch control expanded across the Indonesian archipelago throughout the second half of the
19th century (see
Dutch East Indies). Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the
1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various distrustful Balinese realms against each other
. In the late
1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.
In June
1860 the famous
English naturalist
Alfred Russel Wallace travelled to Bali from
Singapore landing at Bileling on the northcoast of the island.
Wallace's trip to Bali was instrumental in helping him devise his
Wallace Line theory.
The Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that run through the strait between Bali and Lombok, which, though a short distance, is a boundary between species of Asiatic origin in the east and a mixture of
Australian and
Asian species to the west. In his travel memoir
The Malay Archipelago Wallace writes of his experience in Bali
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 fought against the superior Dutch force in a suicidal puputan defensive assault rather than face the humiliation of surrender.
Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated
200 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders. In the
Dutch intervention in Bali, a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in
Klungkung.
Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture generally remained intact.
Dutch rule over Bali came later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and
Maluku.
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.
- published: 28 Feb 2014
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