THE year was 1839. The Dutch had not yet succeeded in penetrating the fertile rice-growing districts of southern Bali where a glorious and carefully guarded Hindu theater state had flourished undisturbed for a thousand years. In that year, after he had been run off the neighboring island of Lombok by an English rival, the flamboyant Danish merchant-adventurer Mads Johansen Lange (1805-1856) set up a fortified factory (trading post) on Balis south