Bali was inhabited by about 2000 BC by
Austronesian peoples who migrated originally from
Taiwan through
Maritime Southeast Asia.
Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are thus closely related to the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, and Oceania.
Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian and 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 nineteenth 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.
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 1,000 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders.
In the
Dutch intervention in Bali (1908), 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.
Balinese dancers show for tourists,
Ubud.
Imperial Japan occupied Bali during
World War II, during which time a Balinese military officer,
Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. The lack of institutional changes from the time of Dutch rule however, and the harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule little better than the Dutch one.
Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch promptly returned to Indonesia, including Bali, immediately to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the Balinese rebels now using Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the
Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they made a
suicide attack on the heavily armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military resistance. In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali 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. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.
The 1963 eruption of
Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be
transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional
caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was represented by opposing supporters of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the
Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs.
An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto. The army became the dominant power as it instigated
a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population.
With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members.
As a result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno
out of the presidency, and his
"New Order" government reestablished relations with western countries. The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in a modern form, and the resulting large growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the country.
A bombing in 2002 by militant
Islamists in the tourist area of
Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and
another in 2005, severely affected tourism, bringing much economic hardship to the island. Tourist numbers have now returned to levels before the bombings.
