Multatuli.online

[14 februari 1868
Beoordeling in de Evening Star]

14 februari 1868

Beoordeling van de engelse Max Havelaarvertaling in The Evening Star. (British Museum, London; fotokopie M.M.)

in Amsterdam in 1863: het congres was in 1864.

The Dutch have long figured in the history of Europe as enlightened and resolute upholders of the principles of liberty. Their long and heroic resistance to despotism - in itself, perhaps, the most splendid struggle recorded in the annals of freedom - identified their name with the cause of liberty; and their domestic legislation in peace has always proved their resolution to maintain the character they had acquired in war. Unfortunately, however, the same kind of moral inconsistency which made Cromwell the champion of religious freedom on the Continent and its relentless oppressor in Ireland, makes the Dutchman whom Motley describes as battling so heroically for liberty at home, a very different sort of person, indeed, when he has to deal with the rights of subjected races abroad. The Hollander in Amsterdam or Utrecht is one sort of person; the Hollander in Java or Sumatra quite another. It is certain that no people whatever, even if we include the Portuguese, have dealt more recklessly and selfishly with the natives of their colonies than the Dutch have done and still are doing. We have so often called attention to this singular and painful fact in these columns, that we cannot be suspected of taking our opinions rashly and at random, even from the too convincing statements of the remarkable book we are about to notice. Perhaps some of our readers have already anticipated that we desire to draw public attention to the famous work, of which an English translation has just been published by Messrs. Edmonston and Douglas of Edinburgh, ‘Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company.’ Those who do not yet know anything of the book will, if they take the trouble to get it and read it, thank us for having directed their attention to a work so full of interest, of power, of a pathos whose principal strength lies in its truth, of an eloquence inspired by enlightenment, by honest indignation, and by genius.

‘Max Havelaar’ is in form a novel; in substance an exposure and denunciation of the system of oppression which is practised towards the natives of Java and other parts of the Dutch East Indian possessions. The book was published in Amsterdam some few years ago, and created a profound sensation there. Again and again the Colonial Ministry of the Netherlands was challenged to refute its allegations, and again and again did silence give them new confirmation. At the International Congress for the Promotion of Social Science which was held in Amsterdam in 1863 the author invited the contradiction of anyone from any country who could impeach his statements, and they remained, we are assured, unimpeached. The author is Mr. Eduard Douwes Dekker, and, like Max Havelaar, the hero of his story, he was for seventeen years in the East India service of the Dutch Government. We cannot pretend to compress into a column even the mere substance of the charges which are made by Mr. Dekker against the system which robs, and starves, and scourges the natives of Java. The source of the whole evil may, however, be found in the fact that the Hollanders, in many respects so far beyond ourselves in true enlightenment, still regard their colonies as we once did ours - merely as places to grow commodities useful to the ruling State, and to find lucrative situations for the ruling State's enterprising and ambitious youth. Indeed, it is impossible to travel through Holland without becoming aware of this fact. If you make no other acquaintances even than those you meet in railway carriages it is strange if you do not come in contact every now and then with some clever, well educated young Dutchman, speaking fluently several languages - your own included - and who in the course of conversation frankly tells you that his prospects in life are an appointment in Java or Sumatra, which may enable him to return comfortably to his native land before he has outlived the years of enjoyment. Men go to the colonies simply to squeeze what they can out of them and come away. The whole administrative system there is, therefore, bound by the interest of a common object - almost, one might say, united in a common conspiracy. Every official has an interest in serving and screening his colleague, in order that the system may be kept safely up, and his colleague enabled to do him the same good office in turn. In some of the colonies, as in Java especially, the native princes and chiefs are cunningly made part of the Dutch Government. They are not feudatories or tributaries, but salaried servants of the King of Holland. Thus the Government secures the traditional and almost religious influence of these chiefs over the natives, and it is converted into a new instrument of rapacity and oppression. Oriental cruelty and European cupidity work hand in hand. The chiefs will do anything for the sake of being allowed to retain their dignities, and luxuries, and money; they make themselves the instruments of the great Dutch officers who govern each province; in their turn they are supported by these officers in any cruelty, rapacity, or excess of whatever kind they may choose to practise at the expense of the natives. The system of forced and unpaid labour is carried on to a frightful extent. The poor native's time and labour are not his own; neither is his buffalo; neither, for that mat-ter, are his wife and daughter. Some heavy hand is always on him, plundering him, working him to death. Does he complain? Better he had never lived! One official protects another; and the wretched sufferer who saw his cattle dragged away last night, and in his passion rushed to some officer and made a complaint, is only too glad, when cool reflection comes, to disavow his own words, and declare he consented to the plunder rather than incur an enmity which would pursue him to the death. Whole regions become nearly depopulated by the flight of families into the swamps, anywhere out of the reach of some more than ordinarily rapacious persecutor. All the usual practices of jobbery, speculation, sham contracts, falsified reports, and so forth, fringe this hideous system of colonial government. Of course populations sometimes rise in revolt, and then, need we tell any Englishman who remembers what lateley came of a local riot in Jamaica, how vigorously and effectually the ruling race deals with the disturbers of official order?

‘Max Havelaar’ is the story of an Assistant Resident, of character remarkably eccentric for a colonial official. He has a deep-feeling heart, a noble sense of justice; he has keen eyes and high talents. He tries to do good in Java, and he fails. He tries to stand between the people and an abominable system. He tries to arouse the attention and the feelings of the Governor of the East India colonies and of the Home Government. He fails utterly. He is dismissed and disgraced, and he returns to Europe to tell, not of his own wrongs, but of those inflicted on Java. That is the whole story. A book which combines more humour, knowledge of character, high thought, deep pathos, and vigorous political intelligence than any we have read for a long time, is strung together on this slender thread. We should tell the reader that there is no piling the agony in it. The author apparently disdains the vulgar arts which would appeal to our emotion by elaborate descriptions of individual suffering and shame. It is a system which he pictures, and except for one exquisitely pathetic episode, there is little in the book to make a sensation drama or a sensation picture out of. The reader who cannot be moved to pity or aroused to anger by the description of systems which leaves him to infer the condition of those who suffer under them, will, perhaps, find little in this book to stir his emotions. Certainly he will find no elaborate and ghastly description of torturings and hangings, no morbid gloating over scenes of lust and cruelty, such as coarser workers love to produce effect with. But we much mistake if most readers are not profoundly impressed by the calm, restrained style, the stern bare narrative, the grim humour, the unexaggerated, homely pathos, which are the principal elements of this work. We do not wonder that it created a sensation in Holland. Familiar as Englishmen must be with the histories of colonial Governments, which at least in past days sanctioned oppressions no whit less shameful than those against which Max Havelaar vainly strove, we must acknowledge a new and thrilling power in this Dutch author's treatment of the subject. Even as a novel the book has a rare charm; as a political treatise it possesses a value not easily overrated.