This book relates the story of Bali – the paradise island of the Pacific – its rulers, its people, and its often traumatic encounters with the Western world. Spanning the entire period since the beginning of recorded Balinese history, it sketches the history, economics, culture and politics of the island as a background to the dilemma confronting the Balinese: the choice between economic decay or cultural decadence in the face of “cultural tourism,” Bali’s only really promising industry.
For a thousand years or more, the peculiar splendor of Balinese-Hindu culture came as close as possible to satisfying all the economic, social, religious, and artistic needs of its people in one aesthetic package.
The changing economic scene, the complications of domestic and international politics, and the arrival of European visitors in the 1920s and 1930s who soon made the island’s magical charm well known to the outside world, all impacted on the “real, unspoiled” Bali.
The author, Willard A. Hanna, a preeminent Indonesianist, graduated from the College of Wooster, Ohio, in 1932. He maintained a lifelong interest in Asia, first as a teacher in China and later with the U.S. Navy, the US Foreign Service, and the American Universities Field Staff.
Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Mr. Hanna prepared hundreds of field reports on Southeast Asian affairs and authored a dozen books on Asia, among them Toward a History of Bali: People, Events and Circumstances. He co-authored Bali’s first true travel guide published by APA productions in the mid-1970s.
An introduction by Bali expert Dr. Adrian Vickers from Wollogang University in Australia, places Willard Hanna’s series of essays in the context of the mid-1970s when the book was written and the impact of the Western world and mass tourism on Bali was just beginning.
The book’s last chapter, “Basics of Balinism,” is a very useful and well-written synopsis of all the main cultural and religious characteristics of Balinese society.
Bali Chronicles is a lively account of the island’s history from early times to the 1970s and, like few other books published before or since, tells the full story of the vulnerability – and durability – of an anachronistic feudal system in a chaotically changing modern world.
Bali Chronicles by Willard A. Hanna, Introduction by Adrian Vickers, Periplus Editions 2004, ISBN 0-7946-0272-X, black and white illustrations, tonal drawings and lithographs, bibliography, 256 pages.
Available for Rp125,000 at Periplus Bookshops in the Bali Galleria and in the Matahari in Kuta, Warung Made in Seminyak, Ngurah Rai Airport (both international and domestic terminals), in Gramedia Bookstores, and in Ary’s, Ganesha and Periplus bookshops of Ubud.
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Copyright@2004 PakBill
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