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History
of Bali
The Tragic Puputan
In 1906, the face of
Bali was forever changed when a Dutch warship anchored off
Sanur, on Bali's southern shore. Dragging their cannons and
heavy artillery, some 2,000 soldiers of the colonial army
marched through the tropical heat of a September morning to
the palace of the king of Denpasar. Two years previously, a
Chinese ship that had sunk off the coast had been looted by
Balinese and the Dutch had demanded that the king of
Denpasar take responsibility. When their command met with
refusal -- traditionally all shipwrecks were believed by
Balinese to be gifts to the local people from Baruna, the
god of the sea -- the Dutch seized the opportunity to go to
war against the Balinese and take over the island for good.
As fire from the Dutch guns began to rain upon the royal
residence, the king, his family and his courtiers made their
preparations for a puputan -- Balinese for
"ending" -- or fight to the death. Thousands of
Balinese, from elderly grandfathers to mothers with their
babies still at the breast, adorned themselves in white
ceremonial clothing and their finest gold and jewels and
paraded in an elaborate procession to meet the invading
forces. As the confused Dutch army looked on, the king of
Denpasar dismounted from his golden litter. He motioned to
his priest, who took hold of a holy keris dagger and
stabbed the king through the heart. Determined to follow
their sovereign to the end rather than face the shame of
submission to their foreign attackers, the Balinese turned
their knives on each other, as priests moved among the
bodies sprinkling holy water on the dying. As brothers
killed sisters and sons released fathers from the sufferings
of the world, the Dutch fired shot upon shot into the crowd.
The Balinese, led by the 12-year-old younger brother of the
king, made a last charge against their invaders, before
falling in a bloody, tangled heap of bodies. By the time it
was over, some 3,600 Balinese, including the entire royal
family, were dead, while only one Dutch soldier lost his
life. Today the puputan is commemorated by a yearly
day of remembrance and by a monument in the center of
Denpasar.
With the fall of Denpasar,
Dutch rule of the island was virtually assured. Only the
kingdom of Klungkung, in central Bali, remained resistant to
colonial control. Two years later, this last royal house
fell in the same manner, when the king and his family
marched into an attacking army to meet their end. For Bali,
it was the close of a glorious era of royal power and
pageantry. Those traditional rulers who remained on Bali
lost most of their worldly powers as the Dutch consolidated
their rule of the island to make Bali into another corner of
the vast empire of the Netherlands East Indies.
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