BEFORE the 17th Century, Lombok consisted of numerous competing and feuding petty states, each presided over by a “prince” from the island’s indigenous Sasak population.
The island’s disunity was exploited by the neighbouring Balinese who took control of western Lombok in the early 17th Century. The Makassarese meanwhile invaded eastern Lombok from their colonies in neighbouring Sumbawa.
The Dutch had first visited Lombok in 1674 and the Dutch East India Company concluded its first treaty with the Sasak Princess of Lombok.
By 1750, Balinese invader-settlers had managed to take over the whole island, but Balinese infighting resulted in the island being split into four feuding Balinese kingdoms. In 1838, the Mataram kingdom brought its rivals under control.
Relations between the Sasak and Balinese in western Lombok were largely harmonious and intermarriage was common. In the island’s east, however, relations were strained and the Balinese maintained control from garrisoned forts.
While customary Sasak village government remained in place, the village head became little more than a tax collector for the Balinese. Villagers became serfs and Sasak aristocracy lost much of its power and land holdings.
History records that during one of the many Sasak rebellions against the Balinese, Sasak chiefs sent envoys to the Dutch in Bali (they had ports at Kusamba and Kuta in Bali by that time) and invited them to rule Lombok. In June, 1894, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Van der Wijck, signed a treaty with Sasak rebels in eastern Lombok.
He sent a large army to Lombok and the Balinese Kingdom eventually capitulated to Dutch demands. The younger princes, however, overruled the King and attacked the Dutch whose counterattack overran Mataram and gained a Balinese surrender.
The entire island was annexed to the Netherlands East Indies in 1895. The Dutch ruled over Lombok’s 500,000 people with a force of only 250 by cultivating the support of the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy. While the period was one of deprivation for the Sasaks, the Dutch are remembered as liberators from Balinese domination.
During World War II a Japanese invasion force comprising elements of the 2nd Southern Expeditionary Fleet invaded and occupied the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Lombok.
The fleet sailed from Surabaya harbour at 9am on 8 March, 1942, and entered the port of Ampenan at 5pm on 9 May, rapidly overcoming the Dutch defenders and occupying the island.
After the Japanese surrender in 1945 Lombok returned temporarily to Dutch control. Following Dutch acceptance of Indonesian independence – unilaterally declared on August 17, 1945 – the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy continued to dominate Lombok.
In 1958, the island was incorporated into the province of West Nusa Tenggara with Mataram becoming the provincial capital.
Mass killings of communists occurred across the island following the1965 abortive coup attempt in Jakarta and Central Java. Then, during President Suharto‘s New Order administration, Lombok experienced a degree of stability and development but not to the extent of the boom and new wealth on Java and Bali.
Crop failures led to famine in 1966 and food shortages in 1973. The national government’s transmigration program moved many people out of Lombok.
The 1980s saw external developers and speculators create the beginnings of a tourism boom, although the local share of earnings was limited. Indonesia’s political and economic crises of the late 1990s hit Lombok hard.
In January 2000, riots said to have been orchestrated by provocateurs from outside Lombok broke out across Mataram, targeting Christians and ethnic Chinese. Tourism slumped, but in recent years has seen a renewed growth and a concerted government effort to develop the province’s economy and infrastructure by realising its vast tourism potential through attracting investment.
Snapshot of an Island
THE ISLAND of Lombok, in Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) province, forms part of the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands. The Lombok Strait separates it from Bali to the west – the strait also forms part of the Wallace Line delineating the boundary between Eurasian flora and fauna to the east and Australasian flora and fauna to the west. The Alas Straitseparates it from Sumbawa Island to the east.
Lombok is roughly circular, with a “tail” – Sekotong Peninsula in the southwest – and is about 70km across with an area of about 4725 square kilometres. The provincial capital and largest city on the island is Mataram.
Lombok is similar in size and population density to neighbouring Bali with which it shares some cultural heritage, but along with sparsely populated Sumbawa forms the separate province of NTB. It is surrounded by many smaller islands, locally named gili.
The island is home to about 3.2 million people living in four regencies and in Mataram city. The island’s highest point is Mount Rinjani (3276 metres), Indonesia’s second highest volcano.
Meet the People
LOMBOK’S people are 85 percent Sasak, who are thought to have migrated from Java in the first millennium BC.
At least 10 percent of Lombok’s people are Balinese Hindu, many of them people who resettled on Lombok after the disastrous eruption of Bali’s Mount Agung in 1963, with small minorities of Tionghoa-peranakan, Javanese, Sumbawanese and Arab Indonesians.
The Sasak people are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Balinese, but the majority are Muslim rather than Hindu and their island landscape is punctuated with mosques and minarets. Lombok is known as the Island of a Thousand Mosques and Islamic traditions influence the community’s daily life.
About 3.2 million people live on Lombok – about 71 percent of NTB’s population of 4.5 million.
Source:enchanting-lomboksumbawa.com
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