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In the description of Java and the coffee trade, the author shows the injustice trickling down into individual despair. The Dutch did not even expect Javanese to have a point of view.
This is, to my knowledge, the first book where the point of view of foreigners is introduced. Writers are not good at that anywhere: how many novels do you know where a white person describes well what a black person goes through.
With all 19th century books, you got to be patient: the rewards start to come here after the first 50 pages. The same attitude was true a century ago for the Dutch and their colonies: they claimed that they had brought to their colonies roads, "civilization" and Christianism and kept silent on the exploitation side.
I remember living in France in the 60s and meeting so many people who thought that France had been so good for Algeria and Morocco (much better than the British with their colonies would the French claim). Even nowadays, you cannot find many French novels showing what Algerians were really thinking at the time, you just find ideological books against colonialism.
The Javanese side of things makes of Max Havelaar a great book without any theory or political agenda: this is about daily life in Java. It makes the book timeless.
This novel is by far the most fascinating novel I have ever read.The background stories alone make it worth reading. Plus, as an Indonesian, I felt obligated to read the novel.It was a very good read. Solid plot with a very unconventional ending. A masterpiece indeed.
Approached in the right frame of mind it is at the same time desparately funny and funnily desparate.I recently asked 8 Dutch university students if they had read it - the most famous book in Dutch literature. However the book is stunningly contemporary as a picture of universal human types, and of a particular type, which is especially well refined and developed in the Netherlands. Most people turn to this book in order to learn about 19 century colonialism. 7 had not. I suppose because of the Netherlands history of Calvinism, wealth, "apartheid", provincialism - people living in separate sub communities defined by religion, who only care for those in their own group. Moreover the book is a multimedia self-referring extravaganza avant-la-letter, masterfully written. One had started but had thrown it away half finished because it was all so depressingly familiar. (Familiar as a picture of present day attitudes in the Netherlands).
The novel hastened abolition of the Dutch Cultural System requiring compulsory growing of particular crops. Indeed, the author himself describes his work as "chaotic, disjointed, striving for effect, bad in style, lacking skill.but the substance is irrefutable." Most appealing are descriptions applicable today.
The billing piqued my search for the novel.Max Havelaar, of the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company was written in 1860 by Eduward Douwes Dekker under the pen name Multatuli. The intrigue unfolds from the points of view of Droogstoppel, a stuffy Dutch coffee broker; Scarfman, an aspiring writer; Havelaar, an idealist and newly appointed Resident of Labak, Java; Blatherer, a preacher; Saijah, a young servant yearning for his love; and others, all affected by coffee markets.
Max Havelaar is the best story of the 1000 years and the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Dutch East Indies, according to the Indonesian novelist Pramodeya Ananta Toer. Not an easy read, yet intriquing enough to drive me to keep turning the pages.
Interspersed are direct writings from author to reader. These asides are at times lengthy, quaint, or preachy.
Anyone who has ever been expected to report only the positive to corporate superiors, is bothered by products made by "millions who are maltreated or exploited in your name," or notices empires go to war more easily than mills are moved is bound to welcome this book. Toer's characterization, if over the top, afforded me the opportunity of a brilliant read.
Finally, his way with words is just dragging you through this novel in a way I've only seen Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde come close to. Even if he did write it as a kick to the boss's shin it still is a major work. One can say that this work is a small man's grudge against hsi former employer.But one cannot really sunstantiate such a point. p.s. Apart from the message which was and sadly still is and perhaps increasing issue in this world, it is magnificently told.Perspective in perspective tell you in often as much as four layers and thus four filters the point the writer is stating. As stated above by a more undoubtedly more learned reader, his technigues of argument are simply brilliant and any scholar should read this book just to brush up his essay writing. Note to the guy above, did you happen to know that Multatuli indeed lived many years in poverty because of his believes, that when he became a succesful writer he dropped the pen after realising people only read his work and didn't act on it. Living his last years as a recluse in Germany, bittered, and hopeless, instead of cashing on his succes.
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