Travelling to Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys

Adrian Vickers

Oxford University Press, 1994 - Travel - 278 pages

This collection of writings about the Indonesian island of Bali is a presentation of the various facets of travel and the myriad persepctives on the island. The anthology covers four hundred years of journeys, including reports of the 1957 Dutch `first fleet', Francois Valentijn's baroque account of slavery and sodomy, the effusive outpourings of 1920s travelllers to `paradise', and the reflections of Balinese writers on what was happening to their island in the 1970s and 1980s. Extracts are grouped broadly by theme - getting to Bali, encounters on the island, political and social events, the wonders of nature, places, culture and the arts, and religion - which together form an entertaining and edifying collection which can be read for its prose, for its amusing stories, or as a historical `reader'.

About the author

Adrian Vickers (born 1958) is an Australian writer and historian. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Sydney. He holds a personal chair in Southeast Asian Studies and is director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Sydney. His first book was published in 1986, The Desiring Prince; A Study of the Kidung Malat. He and Julia Martinez are co-authors of The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network, the winner of the 2016 Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award. and the winner of the 2016 Queensland Literary Award for History.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Travelling to Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys; Oxford in Asia paperbacks
• Editor: Adrian Vickers
• Compiled by: Adrian Vickers
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1994
• ISBN: 9676530816, 9789676530813
• Length: 278 pages
• Subjects: Travel / Asia / Southeast; Travel / General