A Brief Biographical Introduction to Mads Lange

Mads Lange (1807-1856) was a remarkable Danish sailor and merchant who went to sea from his home town of Rudkobing in Denmark at the age of 17 and later became the most distinguished foreign resident of the island of Bali in the 19th century. He is often referred to in historical texts as “The White Raja of Bali”.

Lange’s life on Bali followed a series of youthful adventures at sea and about six years of work and residence on the neighboring Indonesian island of Lombok where he established a trading post in 1833. Eventually, due to financial difficulties and often violent political intrigues, Lange was forced to flee Lombok for his life so in 1839 he sailed away from Lombok and later appeared off the coast of Kuta Beach in his armed bark, the Venus. After being granted an audience with the Raja Gusti Ngurah Gede of Kesiman in nearby Badung-Denpasar he rode to that Raja’s palace where he successfully secured permission from the Raja to build a fortified trading post in Kuta.

Thus began one of the mid-19th century’s most fascinating stories of a western man in the exotic East. During Lange’s 17 years of life on the island of Bali, he lived a life that most men can only dream about.

Lange was an unpretentious and practical man who knew how to take advantage of opportunities in the East without offending the “savage” princes his livelihood depended upon. At first viewed with suspicion by both the locals and the Dutch

he eventually won the trust and friendship of both. His Kuta home-fortress-trading post became a well-known social salon and within its environs Lange hosted several notable scholars and other visiting dignitaries who enjoyed his extended hospitality while studying Bali and even pursuing seminal early studies of the island. Most were referred to him by Wolter Robert Baron van Hoëvell, a Dutch colonialist who like Sir Stamford Raffles had a great admiration for the Balinese. Among Lange’s guests in Kuta were the brilliant German linguist R. H. Friederich (who studied Kawi and Sanskrit) and the naturalist Z. H. Zollinger. Their reports developed under Lange’s patronage were among the first positive eye-witness accounts of Bali to appear in the two centuries since Dutch colonialists first appeared in Indonesia.

Lange’s and Kuta’s, importance increased rapidly during the two decades that Lange lived and worked there. Indeed, by 1845 the once sleepy fishing village of Kuta had become the hub of a commercial empire owned and operated by the enterprising and diplomatic Lange. With a fleet of fifteen ships he was doing several million guilders a year business in trade with Java, Singapore and China. Lange engaged in the import and export of various and sundry items including Chinese brass coins that were the currency of the island, called Kepeng coins, weapons for the princes’ soldiers, tobacco, produce, rice and opium, as well as fine wines and liquors for everyone’s enjoyment. As his influence grew his services as a mediator were repeatedly enlisted by both the Dutch and the Balinese during a series of violent conflicts. And even though he was Danish, in 1844 he was given Dutch citizenship and appointed as the official agent in Bali of the Dutch East Indies Government. Certainly the most prestigious event in his life and in Kuta in the 19th century was an important peace conference he proudly hosted between Balinese and Dutch colonial dignitaries in 1849. The treaty that resulted from that conference put an end to mid-19th century hostilities between the Dutch and Balinese and secured the south side of Bali an additional half century of independence.

Lange was not only an able businessman but also a dedicated bon vivant who enjoyed his life to its fullest and also shared his bounty with friends and guests with generous grace. His home and factory which housed more than one hundred people was replete with a well-stocked wine cellar, a billiards room and a special pavilion for evening musical performances by a band in which he played violin. He was certainly the first expatriate to live like a king on the island of the gods, mixing and matching the best that Bali and the West had to offer. He never married, but in the Oriental fashion he would take two beautiful wives, one a Balinese with whom he had two sons, and an another a Chinese lady with whom he had Cecilia that later became the wife of the Sultan of Johor Baru . A patron of the arts, he sent a number of beautiful krises, palm leaf manuscripts and Balinese carvings to the King of Denmark and the National Museum in Copenhagen where they are still housed. Unfortunately his bounty and health declined soon after the peace conference and he would pass away in 1856 (some sources say he was poisoned by a jealous prince) before fulfilling a dream to visit Denmark one last time. His grave (marked by a white obelisk) can still be seen in Kuta in a Chinese cemetery where it has been completely restored and now becoming a major tourists sight in Bali. Its maintained by private funds. The few remains of his factory and fortified trading post (which stood until a few years ago) have been completely demolished. The grave is located on a street that’s called Jalan Tuan Lange.