Under the rule of Gusti Gde Ngurah Denpasar, Badung was subjected to the Dutch invasion in 1906. The king refused to strike a compromise with the colonisers, rejecting their demands and opting to go to war rather than surrender to the Dutch. Only just two years on the throne, the patriotic king engaged his army in an anti-colonial war, now known as the Puputan Badung War. Dressed all in white and armed only with keris (swords with curved blades), and the king and his soldiers faced the Dutch army's firearms, and were massacred in no time. Thus ended the kingdom of Badung.
Kings may die, but life goes on. Under the Dutch, the Denpasar Palace (now Jaya Sabha, the Governor's official residence, located on the northern side of Puputan Square) had been destroyed in the battle and its surviving inhabitants were forced to move to the Satria Palace on the southern end of the Square. The Dutch had taken Badung, but the courtly way of life continued as before and surviving heirs were allowed to retain their titles and position. This is because, in Bali as in Java, the Dutch practised a system of colonisation they called 'indirect rule', by which they controlled Denpasar's various kingdoms by means of a process of co-optation.
Once they had taken Badung, the Dutch, following the policy that was being applied throughout the Dutch East Indies at the time, concentrated their efforts on developing the city as a modern capital. They improved the roads, built bridges, and a port at Sanur, and developed a modern banking system. Interestingly, as well as its technocratic aspects, the colonial notion of modernity encompassed the preservation and exhibition of local history and civilisation, and it was under Dutch sponsorship that the island's first Museum, the Bali Museum, was built. Construction began on the Museum in 1910, and not until 15 years later, in 1925, was it completed. The colonial administration must have recognised the Museum's potential as a tourist attraction, for only a year after its completion, the island's first hotel, the Bali Hotel, was opened in Jalan Veteran, a short walk from the Museum.
On 19 February 1942, the Japanese landed at Sanur and, without further ado, wrenched Denpasar from the Dutch in an invasion that met with little resistance. Thus began the Japanese occupation of Bali, which lasted three years, and centred on the training Balinese youths in Japanese modes of militarism.
Following Indonesia's Declaration of Independence in 1945, the city was overcome with a wave of political activism, at its most pronounced amongst the youth. Although Singaraja had been the main port during the colonial era, Denpasar quickly developed as independent Bali's administrative centre, and it was here that the political parties based their headquarters. In the two years between 1945 and 1947, young Denpasar-based republicans united in an effort to ward off Dutch efforts to enlist certain Balinese leaders' co-operation in establishing a separate East Indonesian state, independent of Jakarta.
In the 1950s, only several years after Indonesia proclaimed its independence, Denpasar was actually the centre of the tourism industry in Bali. Art shops, travel agents, tourist transport companies developed around the Bali Hotel. Two of the travel agents that were established then, Natour and Bali Tour, competed for guests of the Bali Hotel.
Between 1945 and 1947, Balinese republicans had been united in their efforts to oust the Dutch and establish Bali as a part of an independent Indonesia. By the early 1960s however, rivalry between the island's two main parties, the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI: Partai Nasionalis Indonesia) and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI: Partai Komunis Indonesia) had a deeply polarising effect on Balinese society as a whole. After a coup attempt on Indonesia's first President Soekarno on October 1, 1965, the Armed Forces moved in to 'restore order', pointing to Communist Party leaders as masterminds of the coup, and calling for the party to be outlawed and disbanded. Consequently, a little over half a century after the slaughter of Balinese soldiers in the Puputan Badung, Denpasar once again became the scene of mass bloodshed, as indeed did all of the island and, for that matter, much of the archipelago. Balinese were massacred in large numbers in an anti-communist witch-hunt that began in December 1965 and continued through 1966. (According to Geoffrey Robinson in The Dark Side of Paradise [1996, OUP], an estimated 80,000 people, or 5% of Bali's population, were slaughtered, ed.)
Considering its violent past, it seems somewhat ironic that Denpasar is now considered Indonesia's safest city. Indeed, in May last year, while the riots that rocked Jakarta spread through Java and to cities on other islands, Denpasar remained relatively calm. Even the violence that was anticipated in October 1998, during the national congress of the pro-Megawati Soekarnoputri faction of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI: Partai Demokrasi Indonesia), did not eventuate. The temporary in-migration of thousands of congress participants failed to ignite unrest on the island, and the congress proceeded without upset.