Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  The louder the criticism of my book, the happier I will be, for the greater the chance that I will be heard. And that is what I want!

  But all of you whom I disturb in your “business” or your “retirement,” you cabinet ministers and governors-general, don’t set too much store by the inexperience of my penmanship. That pen of mine could go on practicing, and, with a little effort, even become proficient enough to persuade the public of the truth at last, in which case I’d ask for a seat in the lower house of Parliament,157 if only to protest against the certificates of virtue that Indies experts keep awarding to one another,158 perhaps to create the extraordinary impression that virtue is something they hold dear . . .

  And to raise a protest against the endless expeditions and “heroism” perpetrated against poor miserable creatures who were maltreated until they had no choice but to revolt.

  And to protest against the scandalously craven circulars that besmirch our nation’s honor by calling for public charity for the victims of chronic piracy.159

  What ho! The rebels were famished skeletons, and the pirates hale and hearty!

  And if I were denied that seat . . . if my readers continued to disbelieve . . .

  Then I would translate my book into the few languages I know, and the many I can learn, to ask Europe for what I sought in vain in the Netherlands.

  And in every capital city, songs would be sung with refrains like this: “There is a piratical state by the sea, between the Scheldt and East Frisia!”

  And if that didn’t work either?

  Then I would have my book translated into Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Alfurese, Buginese, Batak . . .

  And I would sling sword-whetting war songs into the hearts of the poor martyrs to whom I promised my aid, I, Multatuli.

  Aid and rescue by lawful means, where possible . . . and by the legitimate use of force, where necessary.

  And all this would have a most injurious effect on the coffee auctions of the Netherlands Trading Company!160

  For I am no poetical sparer of flies, no mild-mannered dreamer like the downtrodden Havelaar, who did his duty with the courage of a lion and is now going hungry with the patience of a guinea pig in winter.

  This book is merely an introduction . . .

  I will make my weapons as strong and sharp as necessary . . .

  God grant that it may not be necessary!

  No, it will not be necessary! Because I dedicate my book to You, William the Third, King, Grand Duke, Prince . . . more than Prince, Grand Duke, and King . . . EMPEROR of the magnificent Realm of INSULINDIA, which winds around the equator like a girdle of emeralds . . .

  I ask, with confidence, is it your imperial will:

  That Havelaar be sullied by mudslinging Slymerings and Drystubbles?

  And that your more than thirty million subjects out there be MISTREATED AND EXPLOITED IN YOUR NAME?161

  *The British painter and author William Hogarth believed that certain “serpentine” lines played an essential role in aesthetic experience, evoking liveliness and motion.

  Comments and Clarifications Accompanying the 1875 Edition (Revised, Altered, and Expanded in 1881)

  For the delay in publishing this edition it is I who am to blame, and certainly not my very enterprising publisher. Yet the word “blame” may be ill-chosen. The right to blame implies guilt, and I wonder whether that could really apply to my almost insurmountable aversion to reliving, page by page, word by word, letter by letter, the tragic events that led me to write this book. This book! For to the reader, it is no more than that. To me, however, these pages are a chapter of my life . . . and editing them was torture, sheer torture! Time and again, the pen slipped from my hand, and my eyes grew dim as I reread the sketch—still incomplete and understated!—of what happened more than twenty-five years ago on the once obscure patch of earth called Lebak. And my sorrow grew deeper still when I thought of what has followed in the more than twenty years since the publication of Max Havelaar. I kept tossing the proof pages aside and trying to turn my inner eye to less tragic subjects than those summoned before it by the tale of Havelaar’s fruitless struggle. For weeks, and sometimes months—as my publisher can confirm!—I lacked the courage to inspect the proof sheets sent to me. After repeated sallies, I have now wrestled my way through the editing, which took more out of me than the original writing.

  In the winter of 1859, when I was writing Havelaar—partly in an unheated room, and partly at a grimy, rickety table in a Brussels tavern, surrounded by good-natured but fairly unaesthetic faro drinkers—I believed I would bring about something, achieve something, accomplish something. That hope gave me courage; that hope, at times, made me eloquent. I still recall the sensation that came over me when I wrote to her, “My book is finished, my book is finished! Soon all will be well!” I had fought my way through four long, four difficult years—alas! to no good end!—in my efforts to bring about, without publicity, without commotion, and above all without scandal, some measure that might improve the circumstances under which the Javanese languish. The wretched Van Twist—who should have been my natural ally, if honor and duty had meant anything to him—could not be persuaded to lift a finger. My letter to him has been published countless times and covers almost all the main incidents in the Havelaar affair. The man never replied, never gave any sign of wishing to repair the damage done by his wrongs. When his unscrupulous indifference forced me to appeal to the public, to choose a different path, my outrage finally gave me the means of attaining what had seemed unattainable: a moment’s attention. What the lazy Van Twist had refused me, I managed to wring out of the nation: Havelaar was read, and I . . . was heard. Heard, yes, but to my sorrow, I never received a full hearing! I was told that I had written a “good book,” and if I had any more such tales to tell . . .

  Yes, my readers had found the book “amusing,” and hadn’t realized—or pretended not to understand—that in giving up the prospect of a brilliant career in middle age, my aim was not to become an entertainer, and that I had found no amusement in risking death by poison for myself, my brave and loyal wife, and our dear child. Havelaar was a most entertaining book, I was told outright, and much of this fulsome praise came from readers who would cry out in alarm at the slightest everyday threat—not to life and limb, but to the smallest part of their wealth. Most readers seemed to believe that I had exposed myself and my family to poverty, humiliation, and death in order to provide them with a pleasant read.

  This delusion—but enough of that. I can tell you, in any case, that I had little suspected such naive, heartless buffooneries when I rejoiced, “My book is finished, my book is finished!” In my conviction that I was telling the truth, that I had done what I described—overlooking the fact that the reading and listening public has grown used to cant, to meaningless babble, to an almost constant contradiction between words and actions—I was filled, back in 1859, with all the hope that, in fact, I required for the painful process of writing Havelaar. But now, more than twenty years later, when it has become only too clear that the Nation sides with the Van Twists and their cronies—in other words, with villainy, robbery, and murder—and against me, which is to say against Justice, Human Kindness, and enlightened Statecraft—now it was infinitely harder for me to review these pages than in 1859, although even then I was often all but overcome by painful bitterness. Here and there—on p. 114, for example—it welled up, despite my sincere wish to suppress it. Anyone wishing to hear more about the emotions stirred in me by my memories of what happened in Lebak and afterwards may refer to my first pamphlet on freedom of labor.*

  And then there is all my sorrow at the continuing failure of my attempts, my pain at the loss of the woman who so heroically stood by me in my struggle against the world, and will not be there when the hour of triumph has finally struck! Yes, reader, the hour of triumph. For, as strange as it may seem, I will triumph! In spite of the artifice and fumbling of those Mice of State to whom the Netherlands has entrusted its vital i
nterests. In spite of our foolish Constitution, which puts a premium on mediocrity or worse, ruling out anything that might cure what everyone admits is rotten in our state. In spite of the many people with an interest in Injustice. In spite of the base envy of my “writing skills”. . . isn’t that the term? for believe me, I am not a writer, you makers-of-many-books who wish to see in me a peer and rival! In spite of the coarse defamation that will stop at nothing, however crude and senseless, to stifle my voice and destroy my influence. And lastly, in spite of the lamentable faintheartedness of a Nation that simply goes on tolerating all this . . . I will triumph!

  I have been reproached by certain writers for achieving nothing or not enough, changing nothing or not enough, accomplishing nothing or not enough. I will return below to the source of these accusations. As for the matter at hand, I fully acknowledge that nothing has improved in the Indies. But . . . changed? Those who—first in the wake of Havelaar, and later due to our wretched constitutional seesaw system—have exploited the movement inspired by my book to place themselves in the seat of power . . . they have done nothing but make changes. What else could they do? Their vocation as political acrobats demanded it. The gang that “fell upwards into power for lack of weight” after 1860—some incompetent, others less than incorruptible—understood that they had to do something, although preferably not the right thing, which—as I acknowledge—would have smacked of political suicide. To do justice to the maltreated Javanese would have been tantamount to acknowledging the truth of Havelaar’s claims, and that would have been a harsh verdict on most of them.† Yet they had to keep up the appearance of striking out in a new direction and threw many a bone to the People—who were “quivering” with indignation—not really to satisfy their hunger for reform, but simply to keep their jaws occupied, if only with putative politico-economical claptrap. These government men threw choice morsels to their electoral colleges, the newspaper publishers, and finally the coffeehouse public, a practice for which I coined the enduring term “penny-striking.” For years—and even before Havelaar—“Freedom of Labor” was the principal dish, the mainstay of their perfidious menu. For variety, those gentlemen would serve their gullible guests a selection of controversies about the Indies currency system, followed by the land registry controversy, the Priangan controversy, the culture system emolument controversy, the Agricultural Act controversy, the private land ownership controversy, and one or two others. Each new act of Parliament was followed by another, and every time, the men in power—liberal or conservative, it made no difference!—deluded the People into believing that the only possible resolution of the unanimously acknowledged difficulties was, in truth and at long last, whatever nostrum they had just proposed. No, really, this time it would do the trick! Thus each worn-out experiment was followed by a new one, each used-up quackery by a fresh quackery. Each new ministry had a new elixir, and for every new elixir there were new ministers, most of them destined to spend more years burdening the overloaded pensions register than months in office. And Parliament went on debating! And the electoral colleges went on manufacturing heroes and black sheep! And the People went on listening! All those novelties were investigated, tested, applied, and implemented. In the Indies, incessant changes of scenery left the chiefs, the European officials, and above all the People bingung . . . and they say nothing changed after Havelaar? Or because of Havelaar? Come, come! After and because of that book, the same thing happened in the Indies that happened to Mr. Punch’s timepiece. When that philosopher was told that his watch wouldn’t run because the clockwork was dirty, he promptly threw it in the gutter and swept it clean with a stable broom. Our politicians in The Hague, following the traditions of our parliamentary puppet show, simply crushed the mechanism under their heels instead. I can assure the reader, all sorts of changes were wrought in that watch!

  •

  The Netherlands did not choose to do the right thing in the Havelaar affair. As long as two times two is four, there can be no doubt that this failure—this crime!—marks the first step towards the loss of its East Indian possessions. Those who are skeptical of this prediction because today, only twenty years after circumstances forced me to act, the Dutch flag still flies over Batavia, betray the narrowness of their political perspective. Do they truly believe that upheavals like the ones that await Insulindia, which have, as a matter of fact, already begun—can’t you see that, people of the Netherlands?—could take place within a time span that would suffice for a mundane incident in private life? In the lives of states, twenty years is less than the twinkling of an eye.

  Still, the catastrophe will unfold fairly quickly. The reckless war with Aceh—one of the last bits of penny-striking required by a certain minister to distract attention from his incompetence—will prove just as catastrophic in its outcome and influence as it was rash and criminal in its conception. The teetering edifice of Dutch authority cannot withstand debacles like the ones we are suffering there.‡ Yet even before I reveal the wider consequences to which this cruel and costly idiocy is certain to lead, we must ask—where in this whole business is the vaunted principle of ministerial responsibility? Is the Nation now simply supposed to accept that a certain Mr. Fransen van de Putte saw fit to create a situation that—leaving aside, for the moment, our staggering loss of prestige in the Malay Archipelago!—has cost so many millions in treasure and so many human lives? Yes, of course! That man, too, has his name on the list of state pensions! It would seem the Dutch taxpayer has money to burn.

  As for the war with Aceh, I will have no choice but to revert to the subject now and again in my notes to Havelaar. For now, suffice it to say that this, too, shows how inattentively my book has been read. Rarely, if ever, have I seen any sign of understanding that the present war, and my prediction thereof, are connected with the contents of the thirteenth chapter. Havelaar had been so widely distributed that it was very strange to observe—in September 1872, when my warning letter to the King was published, and the following year, when war was declared—that so few people recalled how, back in 1860, I mentioned our strained relations with the Sultanate of Aceh and presented evidence that I knew more about the matter than our newspapers and members of Parliament. Otherwise, perhaps my well-meant warning of September 1872 would have borne more fruit! Even today, when old Jupiter wants to destroy kings and nations, he still makes them blind, deaf, mad, and conservative—or liberal. For it makes no difference. The essential thing is always to seek the truth, to acknowledge the weight of the truth, and above all to act on the facts that, by this method, may be held true. Anything else is unacceptable, and Holland will lose the Indies because of its failure to do me justice in my struggle to protect the Javanese from mistreatment.

  There are those who still cannot comprehend the link between these two assertions, but is that my fault? To stifle my complaints is to protect untruth and encourage lies. Is it really so hard to understand the impossibility of governing such vast possessions for any length of time when people persist in demanding nothing but false reports concerning the country and its people? To organize, to administer, to rule, surely it is necessary first of all to know the present condition of the matters to be addressed, and as long as the facts contained in Havelaar are swept aside, we do not know!

  And another thing. My book gave proof that the present laws are not being enforced. So, pray tell, how does it help for our parliamentarians and candidates for office to make a fuss about needing new laws, as if that will change anything? I still believe that the old laws were, in the main, not so bad. But the choice was made not to obey them. Aye, there’s the rub!§

  There, and not in endless debates about subjects of purported or pretended political importance, the kind of quibbling that gives journalists material for their front pages, ministers another week in office, and parliamentary debaters the chance for a pointless display of their talents, but brings us not one step closer to the only thing that counts: protecting the Javanese from the greed of their chiefs in comp
licity with a corrupt Dutch administration.

  •

  While preparing the Notes to this new edition, I was in constant doubt as to how much explanation was required. There are two difficulties: clarifying Malay or foreign-sounding expressions and giving evidence for the facts stated in Havelaar. I am still not sure how deeply the myth spread by the Van Twists that I wrote “nothing more than a novel” has taken root. Does anyone challenge the authenticity of the official documents I have put forward? No such news has reached my ears. And yet, considering that I have still not been given the credit due to me if their authenticity is acknowledged, it was difficult for me to steer a middle course between too much and too little justification. Again and again, I ran the risk of failing to justify something for which some readers might require proof, while providing evidence for other things that required no clarification whatsoever, an error that could expose me to the—usually misguided!—reproach, “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” But I have no excuses to make, since I did my duty. The Netherlands did not do its duty and should apologize for siding against Havelaar and with villainy. That’s the situation! Vacillating between too much and too little justification of the stated facts became a great hindrance to my progress. But in a fairly advanced stage of editing the Notes, I discovered that I would greatly exceed the space allotted to me—a space I had originally estimated to be sufficient. My notes, explanations, and clarifications of philological, geographical, ethnological, and historical matters threatened to outgrow the original book. The pruning thus required was a sorrowful chore for me, and I cannot help but believe it was something of a loss for the reader. The accursed ellipsis points with which Mr. Van Lennep saw fit to blight my work have, of course, been replaced in this edition with legible words composed of letters. I have left the pseudonyms Slymering, Verbrugge, Duclari, and Slotering unchanged, since those names have gained popular currency. My poisoned predecessor was named Carolus. The names of Controleur Verbrugge and Commander Duclari were Van Hemert and Collard. The Resident of Bantam was named Brest van Kempen, and Michiels was the name of the little Napoleon of Padang. Why did I change these names in the manuscript that I entrusted to Mr. V. L.? I refer you to the close of the nineteenth chapter and, beyond that, suffice it to say that I wished to shield the honest but less than heroic Controleur from malice. Although he didn’t support me in my endeavor, he didn’t stand in my way either, and he made frank declarations when I asked for them. This alone was a great step and could have been regarded as a crime. The name Slymering helped me to show the character of my model. And finally, those substitutions led me to change the names Carolus and Collard to Slotering and Duclari, for consistency. My intent was not by any means to keep their identities secret, as must be clear from the entire thrust of my book. I simply couldn’t stomach the thought of exposing certain individuals to the judgment of the lay reading public. I believed that readers in the official world—whose business it was—would know whom to contact for more information about the matters I had brought to light. And sure enough, they did. As soon as my book arrived in the Indies, Governor-General Pahud hurried to Lebak “to investigate a few complaints of abuses there.” I will return to the book’s title in one of my notes. The full title, Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, is neither a farce, as some have claimed, nor “a signboard that was apparently necessary in Holland to attract buyers” as one commentator maintained in the Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Politik. Oh, no, the title is an epigram. As for the spelling I use, I tend to follow the fashion of the day, as I do in my other works. “Not,” as I said in the preface to the fifth edition of my Ideas, “because I feel the least reverence for the linguistic insights of those who are, these days, as good as official authorities in that field, but so as not to offend the eyes of my readers with unfamiliar spelling. The game’s not worth the candle.” To be sure, true linguistic science is another matter altogether! Yet even here, the ugly ij that some use to represent the y sound has been sent packing. Too bad for the purist who mourns it. Letter-men of that ilk will probably never make peace with my punctuation. Nor I with theirs. Well, I will do as I believe our great humorist Hildebrand did somewhere and present the purists with a couple of sacks of commas to scatter as they please until they reach the desired slyminess and can rest content, amen. Mr. C. Vosmaer, in his book Zaaier, remarks that Havelaar reflects an inadequate command of language and the struggle to find forms for its abundant subject matter. I agree wholeheartedly. As I was revising the book, I was repeatedly struck by a certain awkwardness of sentence structure, which was probably what prompted Mr. V.’s criticism. To the best of my knowledge, I have rectified that shortcoming in the present edition.