Portents of power: Natural disasters throughout Indonesian history

The Indonesian archipelago plays a major role in the global history of natural disaster. Traditional sources can provide crucial insights into this history, but their full potential has yet to be realized. This paper investigates a diverse range of sources from Java and Bali, spanning the eighth to the twentieth centuries, to ascertain cultural attitudes to disasters, the impacts of disasters on society, and practices of recording disaster events. These sources include royal charters, historical chronicles, temple ruins, traditional paintings, and divination manuals. The paper finds that natural disasters were considered to be signs of power, broadly conceived to include political, spiritual, and natural power. Disasters were therefore closely associated with political change and divine activity. The impacts of disaster, while sometimes severe, were normalized in Indonesian society through practices of augury and tactics of resilience. The paper’s culture-focused approach allows for more reliable interpretations of traditional records of specific disaster events, such as a major eruption of Bali’s Agung volcano in 1710–11. It can therefore offer valuable insights into how natural disasters have shaped global history in the long term.