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Thesis FGMG

THE WHITE RAJA OF BALI:
MADS LANGE

The year was 1839. The Dutch had not yet succeeded in penetrating the fertile rice-growing , district of southern where a glorious and carefully guarded Hindu theater state had flourished undisturbed for a thousand years. In that year after he had been run off the neighboring island of Lombok by an English rival, the flamboyant Danish merchant-adventurer Mads Johansen Lange (1806-56) set up a fortified factory (trading post) on Bali's southern peninsula near the fishing village of Kuta. The Balinese were eager for trade contacts, but at the time foreigners were strictly confined to the edge of the island in pieces like Kuta, a political Freeport and no men's land where outcasts and opponent could find refuge . Lange's busy emporium became a vital link between inter Asia trade and the island Balinese economy. Although his sojourn on Bali lasted only 10 years, it was to change Balinese history.
Although a few Chinese and Buginese monsoon trades had settled near the main harbor of the island in the 19th century , mostly serving as intermediaries in the slave , Mads, Lange established the first large trading post. Surrounded by an imposing wall with an elaborate gateway, the hug complex contained warehouse, a pasar, comfortable residence and an open dining pavilion with billiard table where foreign quests. Merchants, ship captains, early tourist, Ideologists, botanist, linguists were sumptuously entertained. Lange lived there with his Chinese and Balinese concubines, his Dalmatian dogs, and his retinue of servant.
In the evening cosmopolitan parties were held there, from where the Kuta villager could hear Danish folk music and bawdy song sung and played by Lange and his friends on flutes, violins, and a piano. Half the races of Europe were represented at the trader's hospitable. The Balinese gentry scrounged and Para soled, were also often invited to the gay parties and treated with the utmost care and deference relations with the dirt-poor Kuta villagers, however, were not as cordial. Once, when one of. Lange's servants struck a Balinese, his factory was surrounded by a howling mob who wanted to bum it to the ground. Deftly, the trader bought the peace with 200 guilders and two balls of opium.
Lange himself came to play a crucial role in early colonial expansion. He fell under the protection of the highest ranking raja of south Bali, Gusti Ngurah Gde Kesiman of Badung , who made Lange a prebekel ( district official ) Not only was he powerful commercial broker who gained great profit from trade, but Lange also served as an indispensable link between the Dutch and southern Balinese rulers. In 1844, the Dane was appointed Dutch agent and official middleman , maintaining many personal relationships with the quarrelsome Balinese prices. He served as a channel of information between the vastly different worlds of east and west, able to solve most problems by simply buying protection and goodwill . Lange was also an adept mediator between conflicting parties, acting as a human buffer and diplomat between Dutch colonial interests and internal Balinese court political . To avoid conflict between catfish Europeans and the Balinese natives, no one but Lange and his brother Hans were allowed into the island's interior.