The First Dutch Military Expedition against Bali in 1846 seemed a formidable enough force to cope with any native impu¬dence. The invasion licet consisted of 58 vessels and nearly 3.000 men well-armed and equipped. The force anchored off Buleleng on June 22 and the Dutch sent ultimatums to the rajas ashore. The rajas ignored them and the Dutch attack began six days later. The Balinese put up a strong defense under the guiding hand of Jelantik. but the Dutch nevertheless won a swift victory, losing only 18 dead while the Balinese suffered severe losses of life and property. The Dutch vic¬tory was empty, however, unless they could enforce their will upon the rajas who were Firmly entrenched in the nearby hills.
A flamboyant Danish trader who had set up a profitable enterprise in Kuta. Mads Lange. stepped into the stalemate. He helped negotiate a truce. But the Balinese rajas led by Jelantik failed to deliver on promises to pay reparations and to provision a
Dutch garrison on the island.
A second military expedition against Bali was thus mounted in 184«. This time the Dutch sent even more men and ships. But the Balinese. boldly and brilliantly led by Jelantik. had installed 25 cannon and mus¬tered 16.000 men. 1.500 equipped with firearms. They fought off three attacks in¬flicting severe casualties upon the Dutch, who retreated to plan and prepare an even more forceful assault.
The third expedition arrived off Buleleng in March 1849. This time the fleet numbered over I IK) vessels. — heavily armed frigates, steamships, schooners, and scores of large and small auxiliary craft and manned by 3,000 sailors and 5.000 landing troops. They marched into Buleleng and Singaraja. where the Dutch general set up his headquarters in the raja’s palace.
The final showdown occurred on April 4. The Dutch deployed their troops in full dress uniform. The Balinese troops were dressed in their most splendid costumes as if pre¬pared not for battle but for the bans warrior dance. They carried themselves haughtily, struck theatrical stances, and fingered their weapons suggestively. The Raja and Jelantik were especially magnificent in brilliant red sarongs nattily gathered up to display short tight trousers, below and above which gleamed bare, bronze skin. Their waists were nipped in by golden girdles. At the back each displayed a huge jeweled kris. the ornate handles extending above shoulder height for quick dramatic draw, Their thick, flowing black hair was bound by white headclothes in which the raja wore a green sprig and Jelantik wore a crimson flower.
The encounter, which started as a triumph of Dutch and Balinese showmanship, de¬teriorated into a miserable failure of states¬manship. It ended without a fight or an agreement. Several weeks later, the Dutch attacked the Balinese fortifications at Jaga-raga. They suffered 33 dead and 148 wound¬ed. The Balinese lost thousands. Among the victims was the wife of Jelantik and a party of high-born ladies whom she led in the rite of the puputan, advancing in a state of near trance directly into the line»of Dutch fire in a deliberate act of self-destruction.
Pitched battles continued well into the fol¬lowing year. The Dutch managed to gain allies and troops from Lombok. The Raja of Karangasem, despairing at the news, killed his family and himself!” The Dutch battled their way to the gates of the Dcwa Agung in Klungkung. But they were repelled.
The fluctuating fortunes of war were dra¬matically signalled by the commander of the
Lombok forces, who visited a Dutch colonel on shipboard and displayed to him three especially valuable and significant prizes. The first was the kris of the Raja of Karan-uasern. signifying his death and the fall of that kingdom: the second was the kris of the Raja of Buleleng: the third that of Gusti Ketut Jelantik. The Raja of Buleleng and Jelantik had been ambushed by the wily troops from Lombok. The Raja had been killed on the spot: Jelantik. seeing no escape, had taken poison.
With Jelantik and the two rajas dead, with the Dcwa Agung and his surviving protec¬tors deeply grieved and dismayed, the Balinese resistance was in a state of com¬plete disarray. The Dutch, decimated though they were by tropical diseases, could
scarcely even have blundered into defeat.
Again. Mads Lange stepped in. He negotiated a new agreement between the Dutch and the Dewa Agung. It was a diffi¬cult task which involved the installation of new rulers, the redefinition of overlord-vassal relationships, and also, of course, a whole new Balinese-Dutch modus vivendi.

The Dutch Take Ihc North

As a result of the military expeditions, the Dutch began to exercise rapidly increasing control over northern Bali and to interfere more frequently and vigorously in Balinese domestic affairs.
Buleleng became the first of the Balinese principalities to fall under Dutch administra¬tion. In 1855. the Dutch also assumed con¬trol over Jembrana. In each case, the Dutch adopted the administrative device they had found to be effective in Java. They appointed a member of the royal family as regent and assigned him a Dutch contrôleur who. as the title clearly implied, controlled both the regent and the kingdom. Thus, as of the mid-1850s.
the Dutch actually began to acquire the sovereign power which they had long claimed, at least in northern and western Bali. Half a century later, they ruled the entire island.
The colonial administration in Bali re¬mained centered in the port town of Buleleng and the adjoining royal capital of Singaraja. The first resident Dutch official
was Heer P.L. van Bloemen Waanders. who like certain of his successors, was to become a serious and sympathetic student of Balinese life and customs. After the difficul¬ties of the first few years were overcome and the Dutch and Balinese had made certain basic accommodations to each other, the lat¬ter part of the 19th Century was reasonably peaceful and saw satisfactory development for the northern states. But continuing strife between the warring factions in the states of the south Above, Dutch soldiers board small craft as they prepare to land on Bali’s Sanur Beach in 1906.
military campaigns.
Meanwhile, the Dutch under van Bloc-men Waanders and his successor announced strict new regulations against slavery and undertook to improve economic conditions. They encouraged extension of the irrigation system to improve the rice harvest, the planting of coffee as a cash crop and by 1875. northern Bali was already a distinctly profit¬able colonial enterprise, the ever-increasing contact between Buleleng and the outside-world resulted in an attempt to introduce Christian missions. But they met with little success. The colonial successes and failures produced a policy of benevolent paternalism which resulted in Bali in a relatively enlight¬ened administration. Still, the darkest days of the Dutch colonial penetration lie ahead.
Disasteria enlisted the aid of Karangasem The rajadom of Gianyar enjoyed its turn at the top during “the middle of the 19th Century. Under Dewa Manggis Disasteria (VII). Gianyar became the most prosperous and powerful of the states of the south and he earned island-wide fame as a shrewd ruler. In the process, however, he made a host of enemies among other rajas bv continually attempting to expand his kingdom by swallowing up villages in their areas.
The Dewa Agung even created a military coalition against Gianyar and he found a ready ally in the Raja of Bangli. whose sister was a favorite in the Klungkung harem. But large contingent of Sassak Muslims.
and Lombok and managed to shatter the Klungkung army in 1868.
After its victory. Gianyar enjoyed well over a decade of relative immunity from in¬vasion and ever-increasing prosperity. In fact, a Dutch visitor to Bali. Dr. Julius Jacobs, reported in 1883 that Gianyar was by far the most pleasant and prosperous of the southern slates.
The island of Lombok also played an in¬tegral part in the trilogy of tragedies that marked Bali’s total takeover by the Dutch alter the turn of the century. The trouble began when the Dutch sent a military ex¬pedition in 1894 to punish the Balinese rul¬ers of Lombok for reported complaints of cruelty and discrimination toward Lomhok’s
Dutch soldiers who had no place to take The Dutch, led by Major-Generals J.A. Vetter and P.P.M. van llam marched into the heart of the island without encountering any resistance. Just as it seemed they would win a bloodless victory, thousands of Balinese warriors staged a surprise attack on the Dutch camp in the town of Jakranegara. “Ihey fired their rifles with deadly aim and their battle cries proved as blood-curdling as ‘heir attack was furious as they massacred
Above, the Dutch staff of the Lombok expedi¬tion and Balinese royalty: front row 11 to r), Ra|a Anak Agung Ketut, Generals van Ham and vetter, and Gusti Jelantik. Right. Dutch guns on Sanur Beach.
cover. General van Ham himself was fatally wounded. In all. Dutch casualties totaled 98 dead and 272 injured. The Dutch govern¬ment and people in Batavia and The Nether¬lands were outraged and the battle entered Dutch colonial history as “The Lombok Treachery.”