Max Havelaar

by Multatuli

  6 Romances in Malay: Leaving aside for now that question of what Drystubble may have seen, I can tell you for certain that I originally wrote the song of Saijah—which begins on p. 234 in this edition—in Malay. I don’t know where those pages have got to, and at this point I wouldn’t be able to write it afresh in that language. It’s probably in one of the boxes or parcels of papers that I had to leave behind during the tragic odyssey that followed my departure from Lebak. Incidentally, a speculative trade in ersatz posthumous articles can be counted upon in our age of forgery. And if that falsification could be expected to limit itself to writing, you might consider it bearable for a dead man. But when I think of the conjuring tricks that will be performed with my life, my deeds, my character! Every day now I read and hear about incidents that involve me, events in which I play a leading role, and the news is more of a surprise to me than it ever could be to anyone else. The stories about me—even the benign ones—strike all who really know me as comical—no, idiotic! Not to shed any light on this, but simply to show how history is written: a certain anthologist has already seen fit, only thirty-seven years after my departure for the Indies, to shift the date of that departure by a couple of years. You might well wonder, then, how much precision can be expected in the chronological ordering of Chinese dynasties, and above all, how much scholarly and moral integrity in character studies? Yet there are lessons to be learned from this error. By taking note of such blunders, the reader can cultivate the habit of asking, “Mr. Anthologist, do you even know the material you claim to be teaching us? If not, why are you meddling with it?”

  7 Signatures certifying that they were identical to the original: This is truly the case for the items of evidence that I present in Havelaar and Minnebrieven (“Love Letters”). I similarly established the authenticity of still other documents, in the belief that they would one day be scrutinized. But no one has ever taken the trouble of doing so, a fact I regard as most peculiar. I am, of course, still willing to present the documents in question to anyone with a demonstrated interest in the truth. For the time being, I merely reiterate my demand for Duymaer van Twist to come out and say that the documents I claim to be authentic are mere fabrications. As long as he does not dare, I will go on insisting that those documents demand justice.

  8 The lawful ownership of Havelaar: Drystubble regretted not having cheated the gullible Shawlman out of the copyright to his own work. I probably included this remark because I felt that it formed an essential part of my characterization of that hypocritical villain. But what I didn’t realize is that these words of mine were, albeit in a very limited way, prophetic. By the very means that Drystubble regrets not having employed, I was deprived of control over Havelaar. The support offered to me—pressed upon me, in fact—which was supposed to provide me with six months of peace and quiet after my miserable wanderings and pending the outcome of my plea—was used as a pretext to treat Havelaar such that the plea was drained of its force. And this was done deliberately. In a “Letter” addressed to me, Mr. Van Lennep states that he wanted to prevent my work from becoming popular. This from the same man who, with such a display of ardent sympathy, had asked me to entrust its publication to him! Yet justice demands that I warn the reader not to identify Mr. V.L. with the loathsome Drystubble. When V.L. first became involved with Havelaar, his intentions were good. But he gradually began to have regrets, and his weakness took such hold of him that he soon preferred to betray me—which must have pained him, since he wasn’t a bad man!—rather than be regarded by his peers as the defender of a cause that was very wrongly decried as revolutionary.

  9 When I was a child, book auctions were held in the Wapen van Bern, a building in Spui Square in Amsterdam. I don’t know whether that’s still the case, or even whether the establishment still existed at the time of which Drystubble is presumably speaking, i.e., a few years after the date of the official documents included in Havelaar.

  10 Pandeglang and Lebak: Here, for the first time, I had the pleasure of writing a few names in full that had been defaced with ellipsis points in previous editions. Until now, very many of my readers didn’t know the name of the province where the incidents described in Havelaar took place and had to content themselves with the syllable “Leb.” It goes without saying that these irritating omissions detracted from the vividness of my scenes and made my claims less convincing. In fact, this was the point of that treacherous castration. The English author Wallace—who, I might add, cannot have seen the English translation of Havelaar, in which the names and dates are printed in full—denied that my work had any value, because I had not included places and dates.

  I have been assured—though I don’t know whether it’s true—that Mr. Van Lennep donated my manuscript to the Maatschappy der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (Society of Dutch Literature) in Leiden. If so, that Society would surely be in a position to judge whether it’s my fault that the names of places and people and the dates were spelled, in previous editions, with pusillanimous dots.

  11 High road across Java: This road runs from Anyer on the Sunda Strait, one of the island’s westernmost points, to Banyuwangi at the southeastern tip, across the strait from Bali. It takes 270 hours to travel from one end to the other. Its construction was such a massive project that the job could only be done by a man like Daendels, who combined great willpower with utter disdain for special interests. The tales of his harshness approach the unbelievable. Yet in some cases, people of that kind are needed. I argue that now, again, we need people with the strength and courage to break free, on their own initiative, of the usual routine. I tell you, there are deeds to be done in the East Indies in our time compared to which that post road is child’s play! We hope and expect that a new Daendels will step forward, but it remains doubtful whether the qualities that served him so well seventy years ago would be adequate today. In this passage, I write of “opposition from rivals in Holland.” In our own day, what becomes of a person who tries to improve conditions in the Indies? However daunting Daendels’s task may have been, he did not have to suffer the impertinence of the lower house and the kinds of ministers emerging from a parliamentary system like ours.

  I might add that as for “Marshal” Daendels himself—the maréchal de Hollande, reduced to the rank of general after the annexation of that puppet state—it is unfortunate, in this case as in so many others, that our Dutch literature offers such a poor crop of memoirs, a failing that makes our history dry as dust, and comprehensible only to those who lack the good sense not to understand and are therefore perfectly content with incoherence. Daendels’s life was a tragedy, as we can glean from the few official records, as well as the many anecdotes circulating in the Chinese church (see note 78). A well-written biography of the man would shed light on an important period in our history, from the revolutionary Patriot period to the restoration of the House of Orange. I have described the wretched bumbling that accompanied the annexation of our little country elsewhere. If, when reading that piece, you bear in mind that our “Marshal of Holland” had once been a Patriot—and one of the most committed revolutionaries!—you will be astonished at the man’s complete lack of character, unless the endemic nature of this malady has rendered you incapable of further astonishment. Mr. Van Lennep’s very important work (Het leven van Mr C.v.L. en Mr D.J.v.L., “The Lives of Cornelis van Lennep and David Jacob van Lennep”‡) contains valuable though dispiriting contributions to our appreciation of this truth. Those who study history more thoroughly than the officially approved schoolbooks permit will acknowledge that the figures they present for our contemplation rarely include anyone with character.

  The question remains whether Daendels can be judged fairly on the sole basis of his lackluster performance in the month of February 1811. The deep suspicion with which he was viewed some years later by King William I suggests that he was deemed capable of extraordinary things. His appointment as governor of the Dutch possessions on the Gold Coast—which, all in all, were less significant
than many a subregency in Java!—was a kind of prison sentence, and I know from reliable sources that he himself saw it that way, too. When the time is ripe, I will offer a few glimpses of his inner life. Although he does not deserve a place among famous men, he was certainly a peculiar figure. That is something, at any rate, in our age of deplorable ordinarism!

  12 Raden Adipati Karta Natta Negara: The three last words are his name; the first two express his title. It goes without saying that such a title is hard to translate correctly. But that didn’t stop old Valentyn from attempting to do so in his Dutch works on the East Indies. He writes of hertogen, “dukes,” and graven, “counts.” For those familiar with native chiefs, there is something distinctly odd about this. After the many titles of putatively independent rulers, that of pangéran is the most exalted. A pangéran could, with some semblance of accuracy, be called a prince, because this rank is conferred by kinship on one of the ruling houses of Solo (Surakarta) or Yogya (Yogyakarta), although there are, I believe, some exceptions, which will not be dealt with here. The following title is adipati, or written in full, raden adipati. On its own, “raden” indicates a lesser rank, though one well above that of the common people. Somewhat below the adipati is the tumenggung.

  The aristocracy plays a major role in the Javanese administration. The Dutch government has arrogated the right to award aristocratic titles, a practice that actually runs counter to the fundamental idea of distinction by birth. The same thing is done in Europe. Strictly speaking, a government can permit a person to use a certain title and enjoy the privileges of a certain rank, but no power in the world can suddenly transform a man of unknown ancestry into the scion of a lineage that has been held in esteem for centuries. In the case of Java, the beneficiaries have stoically accepted the advantages heaped upon them. It is said, however, that among less fortunate parties—and perhaps even among the common folk, who show a religious devotion to authentic genealogies—there is a plan to review the certificates awarded by the old Dutch East India Company and today’s secretariat in Buitenzorg at the earliest opportunity. There are few, if any, aristocratic families in Java—the rulers of Solo and Yogya not excepted—whose titles and official positions would offer no ground for controversy and opposition, as soon as a hole opens up in the net under which the entire Javanese administration is held captive.

  13 Workings of government: Young people reading Havelaar for the first time in this edition cannot begin to imagine how essential it was, in 1860, to provide the sketch that follows of the organization of our regime in the Indies. What is more, even in the major cities of the Indies, the workings of government were, until quite recently, a closed book. I could offer staggering examples of this ignorance. But for a full understanding of the ingenious—yet simple!—way the mighty Insulindia is kept under the thumb of a weak nation, I refer you to my two brochures on Free Labor.§ The mistake of the Dutch is that they have grown so accustomed to the strangeness of this overseas relationship that they no longer see anything unusual about it and believe it will always remain the same.

  Regarding the organization of the Colonial Administration, I should mention that a few years ago the Residents were replaced as chairmen of the regency council by so-called judicial officers. This division of authority, aside from its pernicious political consequences, greatly exacerbates the wretched conditions that prevail in Java’s native justice system. The security of people and goods has suffered an alarming decline since the adoption of this naive measure. Highway robbery is becoming more frequent by the day.

  14 Dutch East Indies: Some refer to the group of islands that may once have connected New Holland to the East Indies mainland, along with New Holland itself, as Australia. Others speak of Polynesia or Melanesia. In still other sources, we read of Oceania. In all these cases, it is purely a matter of personal preference whether the term in question includes the Society Islands and the Marquesas. These distinctions are and remain conventional. It is a weightier matter whether our possessions in the area can truly be called “Dutch.” Politically, yes. But not socially, any more than geographically. Nothing could be less Dutch than the soil, the climate, the flora, and the fauna of all those islands. Nor could anything be less Dutch than the history of the inhabitants, their traditions, their religion, their ideas, their character, their customs, and . . . their interests. Even without the least thought of the political connotations of the term “Dutch East Indies,” the inaccurate associations that it evokes have always rankled me. This led me to introduce the term “Insulindia,” which by now will be at least slightly more familiar to the reader than it was to Drystubble when he first encountered it in Shawlman’s parcel (p. 36).

  15 Sawahs, gogos, and tipars: Different types of rice fields, distinguished by their location and the method of cultivation, especially regarding the possibility of water supply.

  16 Paddy: Rice in the husk.

  17 Désa: Village. Kampung is used elsewhere.

  18 Plantation bonuses: Such bonuses have been abolished for European officials. It goes without saying that I, having pointed out the devastating effects of this force-pump mechanism, was not mentioned by name in the debate on the subject. It is doubtful, I might add, that the measure led to the intended improvements in Java, since it was not accompanied by any increase in the regular income of European officials in the interior. They are still compelled to demand goods and services from the Javanese, goods and services that are not specified anywhere.

  19 Entire districts died of starvation: This was probably a reference to the famine that depopulated the regencies of Demak and Grobogan. But so many disasters of this kind have been reported since 1860—and right up to the present day—that it would be too much trouble to list them all. The claim that Java is in a permanent state of famine has become a truism. As for Lebak in particular, the famines there came at regular intervals. I will return to this topic.

  20 Alun-alun and kraton: The alun-alun is a spacious forecourt to a regent’s premises. Such a space generally holds two stately banyan trees whose advanced age shows they were not planted in the alun-alun—rather, the regent’s home was built beside them and probably because of their presence.

  Since I neglected to add a note on the word kraton on p. 57, I would like to correct that error here—all the more so because it gives me the opportunity to discuss a certain deception recently practiced on the Dutch by their officials, which some people have not yet seen through. In order to place the Acehnese hostilities in a chauvinistic light, the “kraton” of the sultans of Aceh has been portrayed as a fortress whose capture was a brilliant success. I do not suppose there has ever been a kraton in Aceh, or that the Acehnese had ever heard the word, since the phenomenon is very specific to Java. Yet even if I am mistaken about that, a kraton is no fortress, no “military site.” The capture of a kraton is a feat of arms roughly equivalent to the seizing of a fenced, or perhaps walled, Dutch country estate. In this affair, as usual, the political leaders involved have sought to placate the public with hot air!

  No enemy force was overcome when the kraton in Aceh was “entered”—I use this word advisedly. That also explains the unusual way in which the “capture” took place. The commander, General Van Swieten, wandered inside the “fortifications” without realizing it. Considering that Van Swieten presents this fact as plain as day in one of his reports, he can’t have been in on the scheme—or have felt the same need as the minister!—to hoodwink the nation. But the success of that scheme proves, for the thousandth time, that the nation cannot read! After all, Van Swieten’s humble, sincere report was published, and even so . . . and even so, the news spread that we had captured a fortress!

  21 Diplomatic caution in dealings with native chiefs: It is generally forgotten that we ourselves are more than a little responsible for the duplicity of which we accuse Javanese grandees. They have an expression: “wicked as a Christian.” And this epithet will not seem so baseless if you call to mind the tricks and schemes that we have used, fro
m Houtman to the present, to cling to our advantage.

  As a rule I have not personally found native chiefs to be more hypocritical than Europeans. And why would they be? The diplomatic axiom that speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts is not Asian in origin. I will leave aside the question of whether this blunder can truly be attributed to Talleyrand—who in that case was not concealing his thoughts in the slightest and was therefore, by his own lights, rather stupid! True diplomacy consists in sincerity.

  22 Southwest monsoon: In Java, the rainy season lasts from October to March. In the north of Sumatra, however, the seasons are reversed. Storms from the west bring heavy rains there, even as all living things in Java are yearning for moisture. Strangely enough, the government in Buitenzorg has demonstrated its ignorance of this fact. They sent their famed first expedition to Aceh at a time when Horsburgh’s India Directory—and any cabin boy on a coaster!—could have told them that Sumatra’s west coast was very dangerous. Another fine example of the consequences of bureaucracy. They mean to wage war without even knowing the ins and outs of their own country!

  Returning to the difference in climate: in southwestern Sumatra, the seasons seem to run together. In Padang, for example, you can’t rely either on regular, constant winds or on the rains or dry weather that depend on them.

  23 Sirih, pinang, and gambier are the ingredients that, along with lime and tobacco, form the betel quid so indispensable to the Javanese. I met people in some regions of Insulindia who abstained from chewing sirih (betel leaf), but few or none in Java, the women not excepted. Brown tobacco juice, reddened by gambier, stains every lip and tooth. It’s not a pretty sight, but they hold the practice to be very cleansing for the mouth. The use of betel and its accompaniments is so widespread that instead of the European term pourboire, or “drink money,” in the Indies the usual term for a gratuity is wang sirih, “betel money.”