[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for posting that alternate view Gustav, you are of course correct in this reporting, most especially so in your reference the massacres of 1965.

I was in Bali in 1966, at that time I was not related to any of the people who died during those events that contributed to the formation of Indonesia as a nation, but I did later become so.

The observance that a very great number of people passed from this world to the next at that time deserves more than just the reporting of numbers, the background to these occurrences should also be understood. This forum is in my opinion not the place to address that.

Yes, Geertz' commentary in Negara has been subjected to opposing opinions, and we can find opposing opinions to very many things in very many fields of academic endeavour. I am not an academic, but my own study and personal experience inclines me to a similar opinion to that of Geertz.

It is also true that the Balinese did serve as mercenaries for the Dutch, as did the Madurese and the Bugis people. One thing that contributed to the popularity of Balinese men as mercenaries and Balinese women as concubines & wives (especially for the Dutch: Balinese had no aversion to pork, something forbidden to Muslim women) was the fact that many, if not most of these Balinese people entered service for the Dutch as slaves. The Balinese slave trade is something that has been well researched and reported, but now tends to be pushed into the background.

A notable characteristic of Balinese people in general, is that they do tend to be quick to anger, but as soldiers and servants they did also have a reputation for unreliability.

Gustav, if I wished I could use select evidence and create an argument that would support the idea that the Balinese were a nation of warriors who just happened to live by farming. However, if I were to do that, somebody else could just as easily create an opposing argument.

If you, or others, wish to believe that the Balinese were warriors who lived by indulging in warfare, and only grew rice in their spare time, I have no problem with that, we do tend to believe the things that our own experience indicates to us are true.

However, there is one inescapable truth:- in the English language a warrior is a person whose profession is war. When the word warrior is used in other senses than this it is either poetic usage, rhetorical usage, or eulogistic usage.

Occasional, or forced participation in armed conflict does not make a warrior, if it did, virtually every nation in the Western World would be a nation of warriors.