Bali and Lombok Residency

Bali and Lombok Residency (Dutch: Residentie Bali en Lombok) was an administrative subdivision (residency) of Dutch East Indies as part of Great East after the complete Dutch conquest of the Bangli and Klungkung kingdom in 1908. This residency located in western half of Lesser Sunda Islands east of Sumbawa and Eastern Java. This residency covers Bali, Lombok and surrounding small islands including Gili Islands and Nusa Penida.The capital is located in Singaradja now Singaraja, Buleleng, Bali.

Bali
Dutch colonial control expanded across the Indonesian archipelago in the nineteenth century, to become the Dutch East Indies. In Bali, the Dutch used the pretext of eradicating opium smuggling, arms running, plunder of shipwrecks, and slavery to impose their control on Balinese kingdoms.

Northern Bali campaigns (1846–1849)
A series of three military expeditions occurred between 1846 and 1849; the first two were initially countered successfully by Jelantik. The "kingdoms of Buleleng and Bangli waged continuous disputes, and in 1849 Bangli assisted the Dutch in their military expedition against Buleleng", permitted the Dutch to take control of the northern Bali kingdoms of Buleleng and Jembrana. The king of Buleleng and his retinue killed themselves in a mass ritual suicide, called a puputan, which was also a hallmark of the subsequent Dutch military interventions.

Colonial administration
Subsequently, the Dutch established a colonial administration in northern Bali. They nominated a member of the royal family as regent, and attached to him a Dutch Controller.

The first resident Controller was Heer van Bloemen Waanders, who arrived in Singaraja on 12 August 1855. His main reforms included the introduction of vaccination, the banning of self-sacrifice or suttee, the eradication of slavery, the improvement of the irrigation system, the development of coffee production as a cash crop, the construction of roads, bridges and port facilities for improved commerce and communication. The Dutch also drastically revamped and increased the tax revenues from the people and from commerce, especially of opium. By the mid-1870, Buleleng was visited by 125 European-style ships annually, and another 1,000 local ships. Christianization was attempted but proved a total failure.

Uprising occurred, necessitating further Dutch intervention. In 1858, the Balinese nobleman Njoman Gempol raised a rebellion by claiming that the Dutch were exploiting Java. A fourth military expedition was sent in 1858 with 12 officers and 707 infantrymen and eliminated the rebellion, sentencing Njoman Gempol to exile in Java.

Another rebellion was led by Ida Mahe Rai against which was sent a fifth military expedition in 1868, consisting of 800 men under Major van Heemskerk. Initially unsuccessful, the expedition was reinforced by 700 men and a new commander, Colonel de Brabant, and prevailed with only two officers and 10 soldiers killed.

Lombok and Karangasem campaign (1894)
In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control. A war of the Rajas between 1884 and 1894 gave another pretext to the Dutch to intervene. In 1894, the Dutch defeated the Balinese ruler of Lombok, adding both Lombok and Karangasem to their possessions.

Southern Bali campaigns (1906–1908)
A few years later, with the pretext of stopping the plundering of shipwrecks, the Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 in the Dutch intervention in Bali (1906), leading to the elimination of the royal house of Badung and about 1000 deaths. In the Dutch intervention in Bali (1908), a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung, sealing the end of the Majapahit dynasty which had ruled the island, and the total rule of the Dutch over Bali. Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture was generally left intact.

The Dutch military interventions however were followed closely by the western press which supplied a steady stream of reports of the violent, bloody conquest of the southern part of the island. The disproportion between the offense and harshness of the punitive actions was pointed out. The image of the Netherlands as a benevolent and responsible colonial power were seriously affected as a consequence. The Netherlands, also under criticism for their policies in Java, Sumatra and the eastern island, decided to make amends, and announced the establishment of an "Ethical policy". As a consequence, the Dutch in Bali turned students and protectors of Balinese culture and endeavoured to preserve it in addition to their initial modernization role. Efforts were made at preserving Bali culture and at making it a "living museum" of classical culture, and in 1914, Bali was opened to tourism.

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.

Lombok
The Dutch occupation of Lombok to join the residency was related to the request of the king of Lombok to help them repel the Balinese people of Karangasem occupation in the west part of island



The Balinese from Karangasem Kingdom have long controlled territory in Lombok from garrisoned forts. While Sasak village government remained in place, the village head became little more than a tax collector for the Balinese. Villagers became a kind of serf and Sasak aristocracy lost much of its power and land holdings.

During one of the many Sasak peasant rebellions against the Balinese, Sasak chiefs sent envoys to the Dutch in Bali and invited them to rule Lombok. In June 1894, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, Van der Wijck, signed a treaty with Sasak rebels in eastern Lombok. He sent a large army to Lombok and the Balinese raja capitulated to Dutch demands. (see Dutch intervention in Lombok) The younger princes however overruled the raja and attacked and pushed back the Dutch. The Dutch counterattacked overrunning Mataram and the raja surrendered. The entire island was annexed to the Netherlands East Indies in 1895. The Dutch ruled over Lombok's 500,000 people with a force of no more than 250 by cultivating the support of the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy. The Dutch are remembered in Lombok as liberators from Balinese hegemony.

World War II and Indonesian independence
Imperial Japan occupied Bali and Lombok during World War II with the declared objective of forming a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" that would liberate Asian countries from Western domination. Future rulers such as Sukarno were brought forward by the Japanese. Sukarno famously said: "The Lord be praised, God showed me the way; in that valley of the Ngarai I said: Yes, Independent Indonesia can only be achieved with Dai Nippon...For the first time in all my life, I saw myself in the mirror of Asia". The harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule more resented than Dutch rule. Most of all, independence was strongly desired among the populace.

Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Balinese took over the Japanese weapons. The following month Bali and Lombok was liberated by the British and Indian 5th infantry Division under the command of Major-General Robert Mansergh who took the Japanese surrender. Once the Japanese forces had been repatriated the island was handed over to the Dutch the following year.

The Dutch with their return to Indonesia reinstated their pre-war colonial administration. One Balinese, Colonel Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they were trapped by heavily armed Dutch troops. On 20 November 1946, in the Battle of Margarana, the Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last of Balinese military resistance. The successor of I Gusti Ngurah Rai however, was Widja Kusuma. He continued to fight the Dutch in 1947 and 1948, after which he surrendered with his troops from the mountains.

In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali and Lombok as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. The Balinese and Sasak resistance on the island was so extensive, that the Dutch set op a network of 50 prison camps, in which violence against prisoners was common place. Finally, Bali and Lombok was included in the United States of Indonesia when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949. The Dutch gained more than 103 Billion euro in financial benefits with the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia. The first governor of Bali, Anak Agung Bagus Suteja, was appointed by President Sukarno in 1958, when Bali became a province.

Colonial administration
The government Zelfbestuurend landschappen (self-government) the Dutch established a colonial administration in Bali and Lombok. They nominated a member of the royal family (Swapraja) as regent, and attached to him a Dutch Controller.

Bali and Lombok were divided into several Swapraja and ruled by the gouverneur and royal family except for Kloengkoeng which became a princely state 'kesusuhan' ruled by a local king and also can become a gouverneur in same time

Bali Administration

 * Kloengkoeng
 * Boeléléng
 * Badoeng (ie. Denpasar)
 * Tabanan
 * Karangasem-Bangli-Gianyar
 * Djembrana

Lombok administrasiom
Lombok is divided by region:
 * Eastern
 * Central
 * Northern
 * Western (i.e. Mataram)