Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  But whenever he spoke yet again to the Adipati, he came away with the distinct impression that the promises of betterment were empty, and he was sorely troubled by the failure of his efforts.

  •

  Let us leave him to his sorrows and difficult labors for a while, to tell the reader the tale of Saijah, who lived in the Javanese désa of Badur. I have taken the names of the man and the village from Havelaar’s notes.108 It will be a tale of extortion and robbery, and if you consider a fiction like this one—not just the details, but the main point—inadmissible as evidence, I assure you that I can provide the names of thirty-two people, in the district of Parangkujang alone, from whom thirty-six water buffalo were taken for the Adipati’s use. Or more precisely, I can list the names of the thirty-two people from that district who in one month’s time had the courage to state their grievances and whose grievances Havelaar investigated and judged well founded.

  There are five such districts in the regency of Lebak . . .

  If the reader chooses to suppose that the number of seized buffaloes was smaller in the regions that did not have the honor of being ruled over by a son-in-law of the Adipati, I’ll concede the point, though the question remains: doesn’t the brazenness of other chiefs rest on grounds every bit as firm as powerful relatives? For example, the District Chief of Cilangkahan on the southern coast may not have had a dreaded father-in-law, but he knew how difficult it would be for the poor locals to bring charges against him: they would have to travel forty to sixty miles before they could hide at nightfall in the ravine next to Havelaar’s house. And if you also think of the many who set off on that journey, never to reach the house . . . and the many who never left their villages, scared into silence by personal experience or because they had witnessed the fate of those who complained, then I believe it would be wrong to conclude that multiplying the number of stolen buffaloes in one district by five would yield too high a figure for the livestock stolen each month in five districts to meet the demands of the court of the Regent of Lebak, the Adipati.

  And it wasn’t only buffaloes that were stolen, nor was buffalo theft the most serious crime. In the Indies, where corvée labor is still mandated by law, it takes less effrontery to summon people unlawfully to work without pay than it does to confiscate their property. It is easier to make the people believe that the government needs their labor but does not see fit to pay for it than to demand that they turn over their buffaloes for nothing. And even if the timid Javanese dared to look into whether the unpaid service demanded of them was lawful, it would be impossible to tell, since no one ever knows how many other people are in the same position, so no one can calculate whether this number is ten—or why not fifty?—times the statutory limit. And when the more dangerous, more readily detected crime of buffalo theft is committed so brazenly, what are we to think of the abuses that are easier to perpetrate, with less risk of discovery?109

  I said that I would proceed to the story of Saijah, the Javanese. First, however, I must make a digression of the type that can scarcely be avoided when describing circumstances utterly foreign to the reader. This in turn will lead me to point out one of the obstacles that make it so extraordinarily difficult for people outside the Indies to gain an accurate impression of how things work there.

  I have spoken repeatedly of the Javanese, and however natural this may seem to a European reader, my use of the term will nonetheless have struck anyone familiar with Java as inappropriate. The western regions of Banten, Batavia, Priangan, Karawang, and part of Cirebon—known collectively as the Sunda lands—are seen as essentially separate from Java, and leaving aside for now the foreigners from overseas who live there, the indigenous population is certainly quite distinct from that of central Java and what is known as the Eastern Salient. Their mode of dress, character, and language differ so thoroughly from those further east that the difference between a Sundanese or orang gunung and a true Javanese is greater than that between Englishman and a Dutchman.110 It is such differences that often underlie disagreements about Indies affairs. For when you realize that Java alone is so sharply divided into two dissimilar parts, without even considering their many subparts, you can see how great the difference must be between tribes still farther removed from each other and separated by the sea. If all you know of the Dutch East Indies is Java, you can no more form an accurate image of the Malays, the Ambonese, the Bataks, the Alfuros, the Timorese, the Dayaks, the Bugis, or the Makassarese than those who have never left Europe, and to anyone who has had a chance to observe the differences between these groups it is often amusing to hear the conversations—and both entertaining and distressing to read the speeches!—of people who have picked up their knowledge of Indies affairs in Batavia or Buitenzorg. I have often been taken aback by the temerity with which an ex-governor-general, say, attempts to lend weight to his words in Parliament by pretending to draw on local knowledge and experience. I greatly admire expertise acquired through serious study in your library, and I have often been astonished by the comprehensive knowledge of Indies affairs shown by people who have never set foot on the soil of the Indies. If ever an ex-governor-general shows that he has absorbed such knowledge in that way, he should be shown the respect owed to long years of painstaking and productive labor. Still greater respect would be due to such a man than to a scholar who had fewer difficulties to overcome because, remaining at a great distance without direct observation, he ran less risk of falling into the errors that result from faulty observation, as the ex-governor-general unmistakably did.

  I said I was taken aback by the temerity certain people show in debates on Indies affairs. They must realize, after all, that their words reach not only those who think spending a few years in Buitenzorg is enough to know all about Indies affairs. Surely they must be aware that those words are read by the very people who witnessed their ineptitude in the Indies, and who are as astonished as I am by the effrontery with which a person who so very recently tried to bury his incompetence under the high rank conferred upon him by the King now suddenly talks as though he truly understood the matters at hand.

  Time after time, one hears complaints of unqualified participation in public debate. Time after time, one school of thought or another in Colonial Administration is challenged by denying the competence of its leading advocate, and it may not be wholly without interest to conduct a serious investigation of the characteristics that qualify a person to . . . judge qualifications. Important questions are usually assessed on the basis not of the matter at hand, but of the value ascribed to the opinions of whoever is speaking on the topic, and—since this is usually the person who passes for an expert, and preferably someone “who held a very high office in the Indies”—the outcome of any vote usually reflects the misapprehensions that seem to be acquired along with those “high offices.” If this is true even when the influence of such expertise is exerted by a mere member of Parliament, how much greater the predisposition to misjudgment must be when such influence is compounded by the trust of the King, who gave in to the pressure to place just such an expert in charge of his Ministry of Colonies.

  It is a curious phenomenon—perhaps stemming from a kind of lethargic failure to take the trouble to form a personal opinion—how easily trust is invested in people who manage to project an air of superior knowledge, as long as this knowledge can only be gleaned from sources not generally accessible. This may be because one’s self-esteem is less injured by acknowledging that sort of superiority than it would be if one had access to the same resources, in which case a degree of rivalry might ensue. A member of Parliament has no trouble deferring to someone else’s views as long as the person opposing him can be presumed to have more knowledge of the question than he has, and as long as this supposedly greater knowledge can be accounted for, not by personal superiority—which would be harder to acknowledge—but entirely by the special circumstances in which the opponent in question happens to have found himself.

  And without speaking of those “wh
o held such high offices in the Indies,” it’s certainly strange to see how often value is attached to the opinions of people who can show absolutely nothing to justify such value, except the “recollection of so many years spent in those parts.” This is especially odd considering that those who take this sort of argument seriously would not be so quick to accept any statements made to them about, for instance, the economy of the Dutch state, by someone claiming to have spent forty or fifty years in the Netherlands. There are people who have spent almost that much time in the Dutch East Indies without having any dealings whatsoever with either the general population or the native chiefs, and sad to say, the Council of the Indies very often consists entirely or largely of such people—in fact, the King has even been induced to sign appointments to the office of governor-general for persons who were experts of this stamp.111

  When I said that a belief in the competence of a newly appointed governor-general should be seen as entailing a belief in his genius, in no way did I mean to recommend the appointment of geniuses. Aside from the objection that such an important office should not be left vacant for long, there is another reason to oppose this idea. A genius would be unable to work under the authority of the Ministry of Colonies, and would therefore be unfit, as geniuses often are, to serve as governor-general.

  It might be a good thing if the main pitfalls, which I have described in terms of a medical history, drew the attention of those charged with selecting new governors-general. Besides insisting, as a prerequisite, that all eligible candidates must be of sound moral character and possess intellectual faculties that will more or less enable them to learn what they must know, I also consider it essential to have at least some justified confidence in their ability to avoid the usual arrogant presumptuousness of the beginner and, above all, to escape the usual apathetic narcolepsy in the latter years of their term in office. I have pointed out that Havelaar, in times of difficulty, believed he could rely on the Governor-General’s assistance, and I added that this opinion was naive. The Governor-General was looking forward to the arrival of his successor; a quiet life in the Netherlands was just around the corner!

  We shall see what impact this narcoleptic tendency had on the regency of Lebak, on Havelaar, and on Saijah the Javanese, whose monotonous tale—just one of many such tales!—I will now relate.

  Yes, monotonous it will be! As monotonous as the tale of the industrious ant having to drag her contribution to the winter stores over a clod of earth—a mountain to her—that blocks the way to the storehouse. Time after time, she tumbles down with her load. Time after time, she tries anew to gain a firm foothold, at last, on that pebble at the top—the boulder on the mountain’s lofty summit. But between her and that summit is a chasm she must traverse, a rift too deep for a thousand ants to fill. So she, with scarcely the strength to bear her load onward over level ground—a load many times heavier than herself—must hoist it up, and keep her footing on an unstable surface. She must maintain her balance as she stands, clutching her burden between her forelegs. She must hurl it upwards and to one side, so that it lands on the ledge jutting from the cliff. She sways, staggers, starts, stumbles . . . tries to cling to the half-uprooted tree whose crown points into the depths—a blade of grass!—but fails to find the purchase she seeks: the tree swings back—the blade slips from beneath her—and the painstaking wretch falls into the depths with her load. There she lies motionless for a moment, for a whole second . . . a long time in the life of an ant. Is she dazed from her fall? Or has she conceded, with some regret, that all her effort was in vain? But no, she doesn’t give up. Once more she hoists her load, and once more she drags it up the mountain, only to plunge again, and yet again, into the depths.

  Such is the monotony of my story. But I won’t speak of ants, whose joy and pain elude observation by our crude senses. I’ll tell of people, beings of like passions with us. True, those who shrink from tender emotion and tiresome compassion will say that these people are yellow, or brown—many call them black—and the difference in color will be reason enough for them to avert their eyes from the misery, or at least, if they do gaze down on it, to gaze down unmoved.

  So my story is addressed only to readers capable of believing that there are hearts beating under that dark skin, and that it might just be possible for those blessed with paleness—and the concomitant advantages of civilization, magnanimity, knowledge of God and commerce, virtue, etc.—to use those pale qualities in a different manner than has thus far been experienced by those not as blessed in skin color and excellence of soul.

  But my confidence in your compassion for the Javanese does not go so far that, if I describe how the last buffalo was stolen from the kendang,112 in broad daylight, without scruple, under the protection of the Dutch authorities . . . how, as the animal was driven off, its owner followed with his crying children . . . how he sat on the steps of the robber’s house, speechless and listless and sunk in sorrow . . . how he was driven away with jeers and insults, with threats of caning and the block-and-chain . . . you see, I don’t demand—nor do I expect, O Dutch readers!—you to be as moved as you would be if I were describing the fate of a Dutch farmer deprived of his cow. I’m not asking for a single teardrop when I describe the tears running down those dark faces, nor for righteous anger when I speak of the victims’ despair. No more do I expect you to rise up and go to the King with my book in your hand, and say, “Behold, O King, what has come to pass in your Realm, your glorious Realm of Insulindia!”

  No, no, no, I expect none of that! All the suffering closer to home lays so much claim to your feelings that you can’t spare equal emotion for people in faraway lands! Aren’t your nerves stretched to their limit by the distressing need to elect a new member of Parliament? Isn’t your tormented soul torn between the world-renowned accomplishments of Nonentity A and Nobody B? And don’t you need your precious tears for more serious purposes than . . . but what more need I say? Wasn’t it a sluggish day on the Exchange yesterday, and didn’t a slight oversupply threaten to depress the coffee market?

  •

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t write such silly nonsense to your father, Stern!” I said, and my tone may have been a bit harsh, because I can’t abide untruth; that has always been a firm principle of mine. The very same evening, I wrote to the elder Stern to tell him to hurry up with his orders and, most of all, not to be led astray by false reports, because coffee is booming.

  The reader will appreciate what I have endured while listening to these latest chapters. I found a game of peg solitaire in the playroom, and I’ll bring that along to our next get-together. Well, wasn’t I right when I said Shawlman’s parcel had driven them all out of their minds? Would a person ever guess that behind all of Stern’s scribblings—and Frits has a hand in it too, that’s for certain!—there are young men brought up in a respectable household? What are these ridiculous rants about a disease that manifests itself as the desire for a house in the country? Is that a jab at me? Am I not to retire to Driebergen when Frits becomes a broker? And what sort of person brings up abdominal complaints in the presence of ladies and young girls? It’s a firm principle of mine always to maintain my composure—I consider it useful in business—but I must admit I often found it very difficult with all the balderdash Stern was reading to us. What on earth is he after? Where will this end? When will we finally come to something solid? What do I care if this Havelaar person keeps his garden tidy, or whether people come into his house the front or back way? At Busselinck & Waterman you have to go down a narrow alley next to an oil warehouse, which is always very dirty. And then that twaddle about buffaloes! Why do those blacks need buffaloes, anyway? I’ve never had a buffalo, and look how contented I am. There are always complainers. And as for all the swipes at forced labor, it’s obvious he didn’t attend Pastor Waffler’s sermon. Otherwise he would know how useful that labor is in expanding God’s kingdom. True, Stern is a Lutheran.

  To be sure, if I’d guessed how he would go about wri
ting this book, which is supposed to be of such importance to all coffee brokers and everybody else, I’d have preferred to do the job myself. But he has the support of the Rosemeyers, who are in sugar, and that’s what makes him so bold. I told him frankly—for I speak my mind in these matters—that we could do without this story of Saijah, but Louise Rosemeyer up and turned on me. Stern had apparently told her there would be love in it, and girls like her adore that sort of thing. Now, I wouldn’t have let that stop me, but then the Rosemeyers said how eager they were to meet Stern’s father. Their hope, of course, is that the father will pave their way to the uncle, who’s also in sugar. If I take too strong a stand in favor of common sense and against young Stern, it will look as if I mean to cut them off from him, which is the last thing I want, because they’re in sugar.

  I can’t begin to fathom what Stern means to accomplish with his ink slinging. There are always malcontents, and when he has so many good things to be grateful for here in Holland—this very week my wife made him chamomile tea—is it right and proper for him to mock the government? Does he hope to fuel the flames of public discontent? Does he wish to become governor-general? He is conceited enough . . . to have that wish, I mean. I asked him about it two days ago, and told him man to man that his Dutch was still very poor. “Oh, that’s neither here nor there,” he replied. “Apparently very few of the governor-generals ever sent out there have had any knowledge of the local language.” Now, what am I supposed to do with a wiseacre like that? He doesn’t have the least respect for my practical experience. Earlier this week, when I reminded him that I’ve been a broker for seventeen whole years and on the Exchange for twenty, he brought up Busselinck & Waterman, who’ve been brokers for eighteen years, “and therefore have one more year of practical experience.” What could I say to that? For I must acknowledge, since I love the truth, that Busselinck & Waterman know next to nothing about business, and are cheats.