Violence in the Library: The Precolonial History of Looted Manuscripts from Lombok

There are mounting campaigns to repatriate cultural heritage objects that were wrongfully seized under colonial rule. Studying the history of these objects before their encounters with colonialism is essential to understanding why they remain valuable today. This article investigates the history of a collection of about 500 palm-leaf manuscripts that were looted during the conquest of Lombok by the Netherlands East Indies in late 1894. It shows how the production, purchase, and theft of manuscripts had been intertwined with struggles for power in Bali and Lombok since the seventeenth century. Violence was involved in the very creation of the Lombok Collection, and its seizure by victorious Dutch troops was just another chapter in its long and bloody story. This kind of study is especially urgent as the demand for provenance research grows, because it helps us to better understand the complex historical trajectories of these cultural heritage objects.