Multatuli - a tale of the jungles and villages of Indonesia is interknit with one of the houses and warehouses of bourgeois Amsterdam where the tidy profits from faraway brutality not only accrue but are counted as a sign of God’s grace

Multatuli, Max Havelaar Or, the Coffee Auctions of The Dutch Trading Company, Trans. by Roy Edwards, Penguin Classics, 1987. / Trans. by Ina Rilke and David McKay, NYRB Classics, 2019. [1860.]


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A brilliantly inventive fiction that is also a work of burning political outrage, Max Havelaar tells the story of a renegade Dutch colonial administrator’s ultimately unavailing struggle to end the exploitation of the Indonesian peasantry. Havelaar’s impassioned exposé is framed by the fatuous reflections of an Amsterdam coffee trader, Drystubble, into whose hands it has fallen. Thus a tale of the jungles and villages of Indonesia is interknit with one of the houses and warehouses of bourgeois Amsterdam where the tidy profits from faraway brutality not only accrue but are counted as a sign of God’s grace.
Multatuli (meaning “I have suffered greatly”) was the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker, and his novel caused a political storm when it came out in Holland. Max Havelaar, however, is as notable for its art as it is for its politics. Layering not only different stories but different ways of writing—including plays, poems, lists, letters, and a wild accumulation of notes—to furious, hilarious, and disconcerting effect, this masterpiece of Dutch literature confronts the fixities of power with the protean and subversive energy of the imagination.


Max Havelaar - a Dutch civil servant in Java - burns with an insatiable desire to end the ill treatment and oppression inflicted on the native peoples by the colonial administration. Max is an inspirational figure, but he is also a flawed idealist whose vow to protect the Javanese from cruelty ends in his own downfall. In Max Havelaar, Multatuli (the pseudonym for Eduard Douwes Dekker) vividly recreated his own experiences in Java and tellingly depicts the hypocrisy of those who gained from the corrupt coffee trade. Sending shockwaves through the Dutch nation when it was published in 1860, this damning exposé of the terrible conditions in the colonies led to welfare reforms in Java and continues to inspire the fairtrade movement today.


Eduard Douwes Dekker wrote Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company as a condemnation of the abuses of the Dutch colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies.

The book is a frame story with various interwoven storylines. It begins with the tale of Batavus Droogstoppel, a coffee broker and textbook example of a petty bourgeois, unimaginative, miserly man who symbolises how the Netherlands was profiting from its colonies in the East Indies. On a certain day, a former classmate (Sjaalman) visits Droogstoppel and asks him to publish a manuscript.
What follows - interrupted by Droogstoppel’s commentary - is the tale of the manuscript that relates in broad lines the actual experiences of Multatuli (alias Max Havelaar) as assistant-resident in the Dutch East Indies. (This is largely history as experienced by the writer Eduard Douwes Dekker himself as a civil servant.) Assistant-resident Havelaar takes up the cause of the oppressed islanders, the Javanese, but his Dutch superiors and local profiteers who do business with the Dutch, work against him.
A number of native stories are woven into the book, for example, the story of Saidjah and Adinda. Between the lines of this moving love story, lies a bitter indictment of the exploitation and cruelties to which the native Javanese were subjected. At the end of the book, Multatuli addresses a passionate plea directly to King William III, who, as head of state, was ultimately responsible for the abuses and corruption of the administration in the Dutch East Indies.
Initially, the book received a lot of criticism, but it quickly created a storm and was reprinted many times. It is still in print today and has been translated into 42 languages. In 1999, the Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer referred to the book in The New York Times as “The Book That Killed Colonialism”. - http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/book/928/max-havelaar

"The literary professional -- and his readers -- will find it an excellent example of that nineteenth century fiction technique which knew how to combine artistic creation and social advocacy, a secret which contemporary craftsmanship has not quite mastered." - Simeon Strunsky

"But this motley is, in fact, its flavour. It is not only a modern satire but a "mixture" of the old Latin sort; and its variety brings every resource into play with a singular power of assertion. (...) His book is still vivid because it is the whole of the man and flashes an intense light of the real on shams and unreality." - Arthur Sydney McDowall

"Like Burmese Days, Max Havelaar is so sound morally that one sorely regrets its vulnerability to carping criticism." - Michael Thorpe


A passionate and largely autobiographical attack on the injustices of the colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies, originally published in 1860, Max Havelaar is a surprising success as a novel.
Its central story follows Dutch public servant Max Havelaar, appointed Assistant Resident of a regency in West Java, who attempts to prevent abuses of power by the native regent but is thwarted by government corruption. Accompanying this is an embedded short story about a Sundanese peasant boy Saijah and his buffaloes and ill-fated love. This is thinly-veiled autobiography by Eduard Douwes Dekker, writing under the pseudonym Multatuli. And his narratorial intrusions are open and frequent: there is elaboration, for example in almost laudatory praise for the polymath and idealist Havelaar, and there is explanation of background necessary to understand the story, notably of the workings of government in the Dutch East Indies. Framing this is an outer story set in Amsterdam, told in the first person by the sanctimonious, money-grubbing, and hard-hearted coffee broker Droogstoppel, a caricature of the worst traits of the Dutch bourgeoisie. He can't understand Havelaar at all and has no use for him except appropriation of his writings: the implausible conceit is that Droogstoppel's son and a German intern write most of Max Havelaar using Havelaar's notes, with Droogstoppel providing an introduction and occasional commentary. This seems an unlikely recipe for a successful novel, but it worked in the Netherlands 150 years ago, where it contributed to changing government policy, and it still works today. Dekker's passion for justice overrides any self-serving elements, even if he isn't as idealistic as his hero. Comedy and tragedy are nicely balanced. And the apparently haphazard conglomeration of components works effectively together. A precocious anti-colonial novel, Max Havelaar is a key work for anyone studying colonial literature or the history of the Dutch East Indies. But it is remarkably modern in outlook and could, I think, be enjoyed by those with no knowledge of its setting. - Danny Yee
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Max_Havelaar.html




D. H. Lawrence shrewdly understood Douwes Dekker as above all a satirist and ironist. He wrote...‘The great dynamic force in Multatuli is as it was, really, in Jean Paul and in Swift and Gogol, and in Mark Twain, hate, a passionate, honourable hate.’...Max Havelaar amply confirms this estimation and shows the reader how hatred creates a narrative bridge across two continents...A call, not for an antifeudal insurrection of natives against their abusive chiefs, but rather for the overthrow of colonialism itself. —Benedict Anderson


Anyone who has heard of Max Havelaar likely thinks they know what to expect. It is known as a novel about Dutch colonialism in what is now Indonesia. As D.H.Lawrence wrote in his introduction to the 1927 translation by W.Siebenhaar:
     On the surface, Max Havelaar is a tract or a pamphlet very much in the same line as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Instead of 'pity the poor Negro slave' we have 'pity the poor oppressed Javanese'; with the same urgent appeal for legislation.
       In fact, this aspect of the novel only eventually surfaces: it doesn't reveal itself immediately, as Multatuli goes through some remarkable contortions in getting there. Indeed, the novel is striking from the start because of Multatuli's indirect, creative, and very playful approach -- beginning with an extended epigraph, a fragment from an 'unpublished play' (which, as translator Roy Edwards points out in a note, is likely all there ever was of this particular drama). (The fragment is also the source of the proverbial (in Holland) "Barbertje moet hangen" ('Babbie must hang', describing -- so Edwards -- "a situation in which a particular scapegoat is to be made to suffer at all costs".)
       The book proper begins with the writer -- or at least the first would-be writer -- introducing himself: 
     I am a coffee broker, and I live at No.37 Lauriergracht, Amsterdam. I am not in the habit of writing novels or things of that sort, and so I have been a long time in making up my mind to buy a few extra reams of paper and start on the work which you, dear reader, have just taken up, and which you must read if you are a coffee broker, or if you are anything else.
       Batavus Droogstoppel is incredibly sure of himself and very (self-)righteous. He also seems a very unlikely author, with little respect for versifiers and the like:
     Truth and common sense -- that's what I say, and I'm sticking to it. Naturally, I make an exception for Holy Scripture.
       Yes, Max Havelaar is a very funny and very subversive text, and Droogstoppel the guide who unwittingly leads readers to something entirely different from what he planned. For Droogstoppel's plan is to present a book titled and on The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company -- and that's certainly not what either he or the readers end up with.
       Two things conspire against the original plan. First, Droogstoppel meets someone he knew in his youth, a man whose name he doesn't give, referring to him solely as 'Scarfman' (though he clearly resembles both Max Havelaar and Multatuli). As a boy Scarfman came to Droogstoppel's rescue: with Droogstoppel about to get beaten up by a Greek shopkeeper the younger boy:
gave the Greek a punch, and I was saved. Later on, I heard that the Greek had given him a drubbing, but because it's a firm principle of mine never to meddle with things that don't concern me, I ran away immediately. So I didn't see it.
       Yes, Droogstoppel proves principled (in this and similar ways) throughout his life -- and in this is, of course, presented as the typical Dutchman of the times (among other things: always willing to turn a blind eye ...). It is not a flattering portrait.
       Scarfman doesn't seem to have fared too well, but to Droogstoppel's chagrin takes this chance encounter to impose on him, sending over a big parcel and asking Droogstoppel to consider fronting him the money to pay for the publication of some of his work. Yes, Scarfman is a writer. But of course, Droogstoppel just has to read: "Ever since I was a child I have expressed my emotions in verse" to be quite put off. And he certainly isn't going to spend any of his money on helping this misguided soul get published -- but he does look over what the parcel contains. And though he doesn't take it seriously, he does list (for some six pages !) the titles of the "dissertations and essays" included (offering also the occasional comment about what he finds) -- such as:
On the gravity of light.
On the decline of civilization since the rise of Christianity. (What ?!)
On Icelandic mythology.
On Rousseau's 'Emile'.
On civil law in commerce.
On Sirius as the centre of a solar system.
On import duties as ineffectual, offensive, unjust and immoral. (I never heard anything about this.)
On verse as the oldest language. (I don't believe that.)
On white ants.
On the unnaturalness of schools.
       It's all not Droogstoppel's cup of tea (or coffee), but Scarfman does write a good hand, so he considers giving him a job. And he's still having trouble getting started on his own book .....
       Meanwhile, Droogstoppel has also hired young Stern -- purely in the hopes of keeping the Stern-family's business (reasoning that "old Stern can't very well transfer his business to Busselinck & Waterman while his boy is in our office"). Stern is something of a dreamer and romantic -- and he "has literary leanings". And he is willing to write Droogstoppel's book -- under certain conditions, including that Droogstoppel can't change a word of what Stern writes (though he "should be entitled to write a chapter myself from time to time, so as to give the book an appearance of respectability" -- which he does). The final condition is:
11. (Stern emphatically insisted on this.) That I should send Scarfman a ream of paper, a gross of pens, and a bottle of ink.
       The resulting book, then, is the story of Max Havelaar, and it's no great leap to believe that it is Scarfman, not Stern, who actually writes the story -- and that Scarfman is, in fact, writing his own story.
       Droogstoppel is, of course, flummoxed when he sees the result: this isn't what he had in mind at all. He pops up a few more times, but by then it's too late:
     Oh, to be sure, if I had guessed how he was going to write the book which is going to be so important to all coffee brokers -- and others -- I'd have sooner done it myself. But he's backed up by the Rosemeyers, who are in sugar, and it's that that makes him so brazen.
       But as a businessman (and one who agreed to the conditions that prevent him from interfering), and as a man of principle, he's stuck with this:
As you know, I am a coffee broker -- 37 Lauriergracht -- and my profession's my life. So anyone can understand how little satisfied I am with Stern's work. I had hoped for coffee, and he has given us ... Heaven knows what !
       Heaven knows what, indeed. The book Stern presents to Droogstoppel, chapter by chapter, is the story of the newly appointed assistant resident of Lebak, Max Havelaar. (Adding insult to injury, it's a part of the Dutch East Indies where they don't even grow coffee .....)
       Havelaar is in his mid-thirties, and a remarkable character. Too remarkable, it might seem, but in the way he is presented -- in how he deals with everything, especially as he first arrives to take up his position -- very realistic. But he is described as, for example:
A poet in the highest sense of the word, he dreamt solar systems from a spark, people them with beings of his own creation, felt himself lord of a world which he himself had called into existence... and yet, immediately afterwards, he was perfectly capable of carrying on, without the slightest dreaminess, a conversation about the price of rice, the rules of grammar, or the economic advantages of an Egyptian poultry farm. No science was wholly foreign to him.
       He's also terribly helpful, handing out money to those he sees in need and helping where he can -- and this, of course, is a great weakness. Especially given the fiscal irresponsibility and untenable conditions in the colonial system. Not surprisingly, Max has gotten himself into situations that defy even the best intentions.
       Multatuli daringly creates a character who is both a visionary dreamer and yet also a bureaucrat (and a very efficient one). It's an unlikely mix, but Multatuli's no-holds-barred style and approach allow him to pull it off -- even as he claims, for example:
     If anyone should remark that the originality of Havelaar's style of address was not altogether indisputable, since his language recalled that of the Old Testament prophets, I would remind him that I have already said that in moments of exaltation he really became more or less a seer. fed on the impressions communicated to him by a life in forests and mountains, and by the poetry-breathing atmosphere of the east, he would not have spoken otherwise even if he had never read the sublime poems of the Old Testament.
       The story of the assistant resident does become an exposé (of a colonial system completely out of kilter) and a polemic. Multatuli balances it with a more traditional narrative, but the polemic does win out. And in a way this, too, is convincing, so outrageous are the conditions (and so frustrating Havelaar's attempts to right them). It comes as no surprise that Multatuli himself finally explodes the book:
Havelaar wandered about, poor and forsaken. He sought ...

Enough, my good Stern ! I, Multatuli, take up the pen. [...] It is enough, Stern, you may go !
       Another layer is as easily dismissed, as Multatuli spews:
I created you ... you grew into a monster under my pen ... I loathe my own handiwork: choke in coffee and disappear !
       One of the stories related along the way is that of Saïjah, a typical, terrible local fate, sketched out in its basics, with some heart-tugging parts. The narrator admits that some of the details may be invented or embellished -- but the essence (which is tragedy) is truth:
I know, and I can prove, that there were many Adindas and many Saïjahs, and that what is fiction in particular is truth in general.
       Ultimately, Multatuli doesn't believe fiction is enough, believing that it can't contain all that he is trying to convey, the true magnitude of what colonialism has wrought. He admits: "I want to be read !" He wants to attract attention with his book, he is desperate for notice -- not for himself or his literary efforts, but for the problems he's addressing. And that's why he also undermines the fiction, why he doesn't allow the book to remain a simple, cohesive whole, imagining the obvious criticism (because he's calling for those criticisms):
     'The book is chaotic ... disjointed ... striving for effect ... the style is bad ... the writer lacks skill ... no talent ... no method ...'
     Right, right ... all right ! But ... THE JAVANESE IS MALTREATED !
     For: the SUBSTANCE of my work is irrefutable !
       It's a daring approach to social and political fiction; the fact that it still can impress, when all these literary tricks have grown far too familiar, is testament to Multatuli's abilities.
       Ironically, a contemporary reading of Max Havelaar likely finds it more impressive as literary creation rather than socio-political commentary, as Multatuli's picture of those times -- while still shocking -- has become more historic curiosity, and far less immediate than it was to the audience the book was originally intended for. But in any reading, it remains a remarkable work of fiction.
       Multatuli almost undermines his undertaking with the comic tour de force that is the section ascribed to Batavus Droogstoppel, raising expectations of a certain kind of novel that are then not met. Yet from the pitch-perfect voice of this satire, Multatuli shifts gears radically after some sixty pages to the realistic description of Havelaar's arrival to take up his post -- and as easily holds the reader's attention by again showing a complete command of the material, even though something entirely different (both in fact and intent) is being presented. And yet this, too, is not sustained, as the pressure of the polemic Multatuli wants to unfurl comes to bear on (or to crush) the narrative, ultimately completely exploding it.
       Max Havelaar is consistent only in Multatuli's critical certainty, but otherwise it is almost a model of inconsistency. In a way this makes the book frustrating, as it never continues to be what the reader might have grown accustomed to or wish more of, and yet the madness of Multatuli's method -- and his manifested anger -- is perhaps the only possible approach, given the subject matter.
       Unusual, occasionally frustrating, often brilliant -- and very funny --, Max Havelaar is a book of its times that has (somewhat surprisingly) nevertheless transcended them. The parts perhaps now outshine the whole, but it is still well worthwhile.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/niederld/multatuli.htm




About 50 years ago, at a diplomatic reception in London, one man stood out: he was short by European standards, and thin, and he wore a black fezlike hat over his white hair. From his mouth came an unending cloud of aromatic smoke that permeated the reception hall. This man was Agus Salim, the Republic of Indonesia's first Ambassador to Great Britain. Referred to in his country as the Grand Old Man, Salim was among the first generation of Indonesians to have received a Western education. In this regard, he was a rare species, for at the end of Dutch hegemony over Indonesia in 1943, no more than 3.5 percent of the country's population could read or write.
Not surprisingly, Salim's appearance and demeanor -- not to mention the strange smell of his cigarettes -- quickly turned him into the center of attention. One gentleman put into words the question that was on everyone's lips: "What is that thing you're smoking, sir?" "That, your excellency," Agus Salim is reported to have said, "is the reason for which the West conquered the world!" In fact he was smoking a kretek, an Indonesian cigarette spiced with clove, which for centuries was one of the world's most sought-after spices. Is my tale about an Indonesian at the court of King James the greatest story of the millennium? Certainly not, though I must smile at the irreverence shown by my countryman. I include it here because it touches on what I would argue are the two most important "processes"of this millennium: the search for spices by Western countries, which brought alien nations and cultures into contact with one another for the first time; and the expansion of educational opportunities, which returned to the colonized peoples of the world a right they had been forced to forfeit under Western colonization -- the right to determine their own futures. The latter process is exemplified by what is now an almost unknown literary work: "Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company," a novel by Eduard Douwes Dekker, a Dutchman, which he published in 1859 under the pseudonym Multatuli (Latin for "I have suffered greatly"). The book recounts the experiences of one Max Havelaar, an idealistic Dutch colonial official in Java. In the story, Havelaar encounters -- and then rebels against -- the system of forced cultivation imposed on Indonesia's peasants by the Dutch Government. D. H. Lawrence, in his introduction to the 1927 English translation of the novel, called it a most "irritating" work. "On the surface, 'Max Havelaar' is a tract or a pamphlet very much in the same line as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' "Lawrence wrote. "Instead of 'pity the poor Negro slave' we have 'pity the poor oppressed Javanese'; with the same urgent appeal for legislation, for the Government to do something about it. Well, the [American] Government did do something about Negro slaves, and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' fell out of date. The Netherlands Government is also said to have done something in Java for the poor, on the strength of Multatuli's book. So that 'Max Havelaar' became a back number." Before telling you more about "Max Havelaar" and its author, I would like to go back in time, even before the start of the present millennium, to tell you about the search for spices. The key word to remember here is "religion." or hundreds of years, spices -- clove, nutmeg and pepper -- were the primary cause of religious conflict. Their value was inestimable: as food preservative (essential in the age before refrigeration), as medicine and, at a time when the variety of food was almost unfathomably limited, for taste.

The publication of 'Max Havelaar' in 1859 was nothing less than earth-shaking. Just as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' gave ammunition to the American abolitionist movement, 'Max Havelaar' became the weapon to shame the Dutch in Indonesia.

In A.D. 711, Moorish forces conquered Cordoba in southern Spain. By 756, the Muslim ruler Abdar Rahman proclaimed that he had achieved his goal of spreading Islamic culture and trade throughout Spain. That country became the world's center for the study of science and the guardian of Greek and Roman learning that had been banned by the Roman Catholic Church. By controlling the land on both sides of the entrance to the Mediterranean, the Moors were also able to maintain control over trade with the East, source of spices and other important goods. Christian ships were not allowed to pass. For several centuries, the development of the Christian countries of Europe came to a virtual standstill; all available human and economic resources were being poured into the Crusades. The Holy Wars were waged not just to reclaim Jerusalem but also to expel the Moors from Spain and, in so doing, gain control over the spice trade. In 1236, the Catholic forces of Europe finally succeeded. Islam was pushed from Europe. To their credit, the victors refrained from vandalizing symbols of Moorish heritage. Nonetheless, revenge toward Islam continued to burn -- as did the passion to drive Muslim forces from any country they reached. The first place to fall was Ceuta in Morocco, on Africa's north coast, which, together with Gibraltar, has always served as the gateway to the Mediterranean. With this, the Europeans had established an important toehold in wresting control of the spice trade. The problem was, they had little idea where spices actually came from. Spain and Portugal, Europe's two great seafaring nations of the time, set out to find the answer. To preserve order among Catholic countries, a line of demarcation was drawn (later made official by Pope Alexander VI in 1493), giving Spain the right to conquer all non-Christian lands to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, and Portugal the authority to take pagan countries to the east of the islands and as far as the 125th meridian (which falls near the Philippines). It was for this reason that Columbus, helmsman for the Spanish fleet, sailed west and found a continent instead of the source of spices. Portugal, on the other hand, sent its ships eastward to Africa, from which they returned laden with gold, ostrich eggs and slaves -- but no spices. In early 1498, Vasco da Gama reached the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa. There he found a guide to lead him across the Indian Ocean to the port of Calicut in southwestern India. Arriving on May 20, da Gama "discovered" India. Unfortunately for the weary sailor, he also found that of the spices he sought, only cinnamon was in abundance. To reach the true source of spices, he would have to sail thousands of miles southeast to what is now known as Indonesia and then on to the Moluccas (located, incidentally, in Spain's half of the world). Over the next century, the Portuguese forged their way southeast, consolidating Muslim-held trade routes and converting souls along the way. By the time da Gama's ships made it to the Moluccas in the middle of the 16th century, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Malaya had all been subjugated in the name of both trade and Christ. Other travelers had visited the region before -- including Marco Polo -- but it was the Portuguese who established the first permanent foreign presence. With the help of handheld firearms, Portugal quickly spread its power across the archipelago. In no time, the country controlled the spice route from beginning to end. There was a problem, though. Portugal lacked the population required to support a maritime force capable of controlling half the non-Catholic world. As a result, it was forced to hire sailors from Germany, France and especially the Netherlands. This weakness would eventually spell the downfall of its monopoly in the spice trade. One Dutch sailor in the Portuguese fleet, Jan Huygen van Linschoten, made extensive notes during his six years of travel throughout the archipelago. He paid particular attention to the weaknesses of his employers. Portugal, not surprisingly, had done its best to mask its vulnerabilities, but all these were exposed in 1596, when van Linschoten returned home and published a book, "A Journey, or Sailing to Portugal India or East India." The book -- a virtual travel guide to the region -- was quickly translated into French, English, German and Latin. Two years after van Linschoten's work was published, the Netherlands, through a consortium of Dutch companies, sent its own fleet to Indonesia. The Dutch fleet's first attempt failed, but gradually, wave after wave of Dutch ships reached the islands, driving out the Portuguese and bringing untold wealth to the Netherlands. Lacking not only manpower but also the diplomatic stature to protect its interests, the Portuguese were unable even to put up a fight. In part, the success of the Dutch can be attributed to their good working relationship with Java's powerful feudal lords and to their professionalism. Initially at least, they had come to trade, not to conquer / and on that basis created what was then the largest maritime emporium in the world at its seat in Batavia (now Jakarta). Over time, however, the Dutch shippers needed military force to safeguard their monopoly. To keep international market prices high, they also limited spice production. For this reason, almost the entire populace of the Banda Islands, source of nutmeg, was exterminated in the early 17th century. The island was then stocked with European employees of the company. For field workers they brought in slaves and prisoners of war. Also for the purpose of controlling spice production, people from the Moluccas were forcibly conscripted, placed in an armada of traditional Moluccan boats and sent off to destroy competitors' nutmeg and clove estates. Buru Island, where I was a political prisoner from 1969 to 1979, was turned from an island of agricultural estates into a vast savanna. Let us now fast forward to the mid-19th century. As a result of the Napoleonic and Java wars, the Netherlands and the East Indies had entered an economic downturn. Sugar, coffee, tea and indigo had replaced spices as the archipelago's cash crops, but with increased domestic production and limited purchasing power abroad, they were becoming increasingly unprofitable for the Dutch consortium. To replenish profits, the Governor General, J. van den Bosch, decided that the Government must be able to guarantee long-term property rights for investors and that a fixed supply of crops should be exported every year. To that end, van den Bosch put into effect on Java a system of forced cultivation, known as cultuurstelsel, in which farmers were obliged to surrender a portion of production from their land to the colonial Government. Through this plan, the Government was able to reverse the Netherlands' economic decline in just three years. Java, however, was turned into an agricultural sweatshop. In addition to surrendering land for Government-designated production, paying high taxes to the Dutch and "tithes" to local overlords, peasants were forbidden by law to move away from their hometowns. When famine hit or crops failed, there was literally no way out. As a result, tens of thousands of peasants died of hunger. Meanwhile, Dutch authorities and feudal lords grew richer by the day. On Oct. 13, 1859, in Brussels, Eduard Douwes Dekker, a former employee of the Dutch Indies Government, finished "Max Havelaar." Concern for the impact of the colonial policies on the Indonesian people had marked the career of Dekker, who originally studied to be a minister. When he was posted in North Sumatra, he defended a village chief who had been tortured, and unwittingly found himself on the opposite side of a courtroom from his superior. As a result, he was transferred to West Sumatra, where he protested the Government's efforts to incite ethnic rivalry. Before long, he was called back to Batavia. Only his writing skills saved him from getting the sack entirely. After a few more bumpy stops, Dekker wound up in West Java. It was there, when Dekker was 29, that his disillusionment came to a head and he resigned. Judging from his autobiographical novel, we can assume he wrote the Governor General something like this: "Your Excellency has sanctioned: The system of abuse of authority, of robbery and murder, under which the humble Javanese groans, and it is that I complain about. Your Excellency, there is blood on the pieces of silver you have saved from salary you have earned thus!" He returned to Europe -- not to the Netherlands, but to Belgium, where he poured his experiences into "Max Havelaar." Dekker's style is far from refined. In depicting the cultuurstelsel he writes: "The Government compels the worker to grow on his land what pleases it; it punishes him when he sells the crop so produced to anyone else but it; and it fixes the price it pays him. The cost of transport to Europe, via a privileged trading company, is high. The money given to the Chiefs to encourage them swells the purchase price further, and ... since, after all, the entire business must yield a profit, this profit can be made in no other way than by paying the Javanese just enough to keep him from starving. Famine? In rich, fertile, blessed Java? Yes, reader. Only a few years ago, whole districts died of starvation. Mothers offered their children for sale to obtain food. Mothers ate their children." The publication of "Max Havelaar" in 1859 was nothing less than earth-shaking. Just as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" gave ammunition to the American abolitionist movement, "Max Havelaar" became the weapon for a growing liberal movement in the Netherlands, which fought to bring about reform in Indonesia. Helped by "Max Havelaar," the energized liberal movement was able to shame the Dutch Government into creating a new policy known as the ethical policy, the major goals of which were to promote irrigation, interisland migration and education in the Dutch Indies. The impact of the reforms was modest at first. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, a small number of Indonesians, primarily the children of traditional rulers, were beginning to feel their effects. One of them was Agus Salim, the man with the clove cigarette, whose reading of "Max Havelaar" in school proved an awakening. He, along with other Indonesians educated in Dutch, fostered a movement for emancipation and freedom, which eventually led, in the 1940's, to full-scale revolution. The Indonesian revolution not only gave birth to a new country, it also sparked the call for revolution in Africa, which in turn awakened ever more of the world's colonized peoples and signaled the end of European colonial domination. Perhaps, in a sense, it could be no other way. After all, wasn't the world colonized by Europe because of Indonesia's Spice Islands? One could say that it was Indonesia's destiny to initiate the decolonization process. To Multatuli -- Eduard Douwes Dekkera whose work sparked this process, this world owes a great debt. - PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER
http://movies2.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m1/toer.html

Multatuli, The Oyster and the Eagle: Selected Aphorisms of Multatuli, Trans. by E. M. Beekman, University of Massachusetts Press, 1974.


read it at Google Books


The remarkable Eduard Douwes Dekker -- the self-styled 'Multatuli' -- the author of the iconic Max Havelaar can, indeed, be described as E.M.Beekman does in his Introduction, as:
Holland's greatest writer of the nineteenth century, the father of contemporary Dutch literature, and one of the great figures of modern European intellectual history.  
       As you may have gathered, however, his reputation doesn't exactly precede him in the Anglo-Saxon world; even Max Havelaar, to be had in a Penguin Classics edition, hasn't had much impact or attracted much notice (to which I can only say: if you don't have a copy, get one now). The Oyster & the Eagle, a 1974 collection, was a valiant attempt by Beekman to (re-)introduce the author to English-speaking readers -- but you can see how that's turned out .....
       Beekman's helpful Introduction is certainly a good, brief overview of Multatuli's life and work for those entirely unfamiliar with him; The Oyster & the Eagle itself is then a hundred-page Multatuli-sampler.
       Beekman begins with several short excerpts from Max Havelaar, which hardly seem necessary: it's hard to imagine any reader, then or now, coming to this volume without first having stumbled across Multatuli's most famous work. In his Introduction Beekman introduced Multatuli's Ideeën as the author's "main work" -- noting also that it ultimately came to seven volumes (tantalizingly described as: "somewhat reminiscent of Karl Kraus's one-man periodical, Die Fackel" ...); the bulk of this volume is then made up of selections from Ideeën, but at little more than seventy pages one is hard-pressed to consider it an adequate selection, much less a generous one.
       This entire collection, which also draws from other works by Multatuli, consists of a variety of pieces, including parables, short tales, aphorisms, and, as Beekman notes, "plain outcries from the author to his public". On offer here are a few actual stories -- tales 'of authority', for example -- most of which make a rather clear point, while many of the Ideeën are even more direct in their messages. Multatuli's world-view, which includes strong support for women's rights as well as anger at the hypocrisy of (moral and other) authorities, including religious ones, is on clear display throughout.
       Typical is a statement such as:
The extermination of a single prejudice is worth more than the invention of ten new systems. 
       Many of the aphorisms are beautifully concisely stated:
Faith is the voluntary incarceration of the mind. 
       The Oyster & the Eagle does offer a commendable variety; the mix of stories (of sorts), reflections, and aphorisms suggests the breadth of Multatuli's talents -- and of his concerns. Regrettably, however, there's only so much -- which is not all that much. In the absence of more this collection is certainly welcome ... but the thought of seven volumes out there ...... - M.A.Orthofer
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/niederld/multatuli2.htm