In 1597, the Dutch explorer 

Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali, and the Dutch East India

Company was established in 1602. The Dutch government expanded its control across the
Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the 19th century. Dutch political and economic
control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast when the Dutch pitted various
competing for Balinese realms against each other.[24] In the late 1890s, struggles between
Balinese kingdoms on the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.
In June 1860, the famous Welsh naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled to Bali from
Singapore, landing at Buleleng on the north coast of the island. Wallace's trip to Bali was
instrumental in helping him devise his Wallace Line theory. The Wallace Line is a faunal
boundary that runs through the strait between Bali and Lombok. It is a boundary between
species. In his travel memoir The Malay Archipelago, Wallace wrote of his experience in Bali, of
which has a strong mention of the unique Balinese irrigation methods:
I was both astonished and delighted; for as my visit to Java was some years later, I had never
beheld so beautiful and well-cultivated a district out of Europe. A slightly undulating plain extends
from the seacoast about ten or twelve miles (16 or 19 kilometres) inland, where it is bounded by
a fine range of wooded and cultivated hills. Houses and villages, marked out by dense clumps
of coconut palms, tamarind and other fruit trees, are dotted about in every direction; while
between them extend luxurious rice-grounds, watered by an elaborate system of irrigation that
would be the pride of the best cultivated parts of Europe. [25]
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 rather than yield to the
superior Dutch force committed ritual suicide (puputan) to avoid the humiliation of surrender.
[24]
 Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated 200 Balinese killed themselves rather
than surrender.[26] In the Dutch intervention in Bali, a similar mass suicide occurred in the face of
a Dutch assault in Klungkung. Afterwards, the Dutch governours exercised 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, artists Miguel
Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee all spent time here. Their
accounts of the island and its peoples created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land
of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature". Western tourists began to visit the island.
[27]
 The sensuous image of Bali was enhanced in the West by a quasi-pornographic 1932
documentary Virgins of Bali about a day in the lives of two teenage Balinese girls whom the film's
narrator Deane Dickason notes in the first scene "bathe their shamelessly nude bronze bodies".
[28]
 Under the looser version of the Hays code that existed up to 1934, nudity involving "civilised"
(i.e. white) women was banned, but permitted with "uncivilised" (i.e. all non-white women), a
loophole that was exploited by the producers of Virgins of Bali.[29] The film, which mostly consisted
of scenes of topless Balinese women was a great success in 1932, and almost single-handedly
made Bali into a popular spot for tourists.[30]
Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II. It was not originally a target in their
Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were inoperative due to heavy
rains, the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy Bali, which did not suffer from comparable
weather. The island had no regular Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There
was only a Native Auxiliary Corps Prajoda (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native
soldiers and several Dutch KNIL officers under the command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P.
Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942, the Japanese forces landed near the town of Sanoer
(Sanur). The island was quickly captured. [31]
During the Japanese occupation, a Balinese military officer, I Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a
Balinese 'freedom army'. The harshness of Japanese occupation forces made them more
resented than the Dutch colonial rulers.[32]