Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Bali had not yet obtained this reputation. At the time, it was still divided among a dozen tiny, squabbling kingdoms in an almost perpetual state of war. In fact, its reputation among the Dutch merchants and officials ensconced in nearby Java was almost exactly the opposite of what it is today. Balinese were considered a rude and violent people ruled by decadent, opium-addicted nobles whose wealth was based almost exclusively on their willingness to sell their subjects to foreigners as slaves. By the time the Dutch were fully in control in Java, Bali had been turned largely into a reservoir for the export of human beings—young Balinese women in particular being in great demand in cities through the region as both prostitutes and concubines.83 As the island was drawn into the slave trade, almost the entire social and political system of the island was transformed into an apparatus for the forcible extraction of women.