In 1904, the Sri Kumala, a Chinese schooer became wrecked off Sanur in Bali. Claiming the vessel had been sacked by the Balinese, the Dutch attack recorded in history as the brutal Puputan Wars, was to change Bali and its culture forver. Entire kingdoms perished as wave upon wave of the island's inhabitants committed suicide. European artists become entrenched, integrating with the Balinese. Their stories of surviving the Dutch invasion, then the Japanese and the brutal slaughter of more than eighty-thousane Balinese, reveals an unspoken image of Bali, The Island of the Gods.'
Source: Back-cover blurb.