Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Plantation Company (1860) is a novel written by a Dutch colonial official, Edward Douwes Dekker. Published under the pen name of Multatuli, the protagonist who in many ways resembles Dekker severely criticizes the Dutch colonial policy in the East Indies. This book led to the formulation of a new Ethical policy in the East Indies. Almost an unknown literary work in the field of postcolonialism, this book has been subjected to contradictory reviews. While critics like Pramoedya Ananta Toer hailed it as `a book that killed colonialism', other critics like D H Lawrence denounced it as a `most irritating work'. This discrepancy is mainly due to the narrative structure of the novel. The narrative is curiously shaped with four narrators who give their opinion on Dutch colonialism. The reader is then left to baffle with which version he/she should believe and identify with. In this paper, I would like to examine if there exists a specific link/relationship between colonialism and narration in the novel.

Anne Marie Fenberg argues that the idea of the Empire in the early nineteenth century Europe was taken for `granted' (1997, 817) and `becomes visible when it illuminates an element of the plot or the characters' (820). Quite unlike other European novels of the nineteenth century, which concerned themselves with the realistic depiction of social issues in European countries, Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of a Dutch Plantation Company (1860) is a novel in which the Empire occupies a central position.

As the main storyline begins, Havelaar, a Dutch official moves with his wife and child to Lebak, a remote and poor district of the Dutch Indies. Through his professional career as a colonial official, Havelaar comes to realize the harsh nature of Dutch colonial policies in the East Indies. In contrast to the colonial strategies of other powers, the Dutch chose to use the existing pre-colonial hierarchies rather than to impose their own organization in the East Indies. This had little to do with respect for the relatively advanced organization of the indigenous society, and much to do with the fact that the Dutch lacked the manpower necessary to develop their own administrative structures.Max Havelaar's main narrative is a report of the events leading to Havelaar's suspension as a colonial official because of his concern for the natives of Java.

Commonwealth Literature Journal, Coffee Auctions, Dutch Plantation Company, Dutch Colonialism, Colonial Strategies, Historical Movements, Colonial Civil Service, Dutch Colonial Administration, Dutch Colonial Policies, Administrative Structures, Dutch Trading Companies.