From Batuparang to Ayudhya; Bali and the outside world, 1636-1656

Abstract

Balinese society was not a passive or an unchanging society, however: it withstood the effects of Islamic incursions, experienced a shift in political system from a strong dynastie centre to powerful local polities, intervened in the affairs of the neighbouring areas, and played a crucial role in the regional slave trade. Though the idea of Bali as a living museum for pre-Islamic Javanese culture hardly misleads serious researchers today, the scarcity of historical studies has helped keep alive a perhaps unintended picture of the island as a kind of hermit kingdom, relatively unaffected by the currents of change affecting maritime Southeast Asia in the early modern era. For the period 1636-1656 we additionally have a number of VOC texts, included in the Batavian Letterbook (ARA, The Hague), which so far remain unpublished, however, and have hardly been referred to in the scholarly literature.3 This material covers the final phase of the rule of a Bali-wide dynastie centre, when signs of internal dissent were becoming visible - a phase that may constitute an appropriate period for further study. [...]there are several letters mentioning Bali incidentally, which sometimes contain rather surprising information.