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BEST STORY

The Book That Killed Colonialism

As the West clamored for spices, the novelist 'Multatuli' cried for

justice.

By PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER

Photograph by Dan Winters

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About 50 years ago, at a diplomatic reception in London, one man stood

out: he was short by European standards, and thin, and he wore a black

fezlike hat over his white hair. From his mouth came an unending cloud

of aromatic smoke that permeated the reception hall. This man was Agus

Salim, the Republic of Indonesia's first Ambassador to Great Britain.

Referred to in his country as the Grand Old Man, Salim was among the

first generation of Indonesians to have received a Western education.

In this regard, he was a rare species, for at the end of Dutch

hegemony over Indonesia in 1943, no more than 3.5 percent of the

country's population could read or write.

Not surprisingly, Salim's appearance and demeanor -- not to mention

the strange smell of his cigarettes -- quickly turned him into the

center of attention. One gentleman put into words the question that

was on everyone's lips: "What is that thing you're smoking, sir?"

"That, your excellency," Agus Salim is reported to have said, "is the

reason for which the West conquered the world!" In fact he was smoking

a kretek, an Indonesian cigarette spiced with clove, which for

centuries was one of the world's most sought-after spices.

Is my tale about an Indonesian at the court of King James the greatest

story of the millennium? Certainly not, though I must smile at the

irreverence shown by my countryman. I include it here because it

touches on what I would argue are the two most important "processes"of

this millennium: the search for spices by Western countries, which

brought alien nations and cultures into contact with one another for

the first time; and the expansion of educational opportunities, which

returned to the colonized peoples of the world a right they had been

forced to forfeit under Western colonization -- the right to determine

their own futures.

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Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a novelist. "The Mute's Soliloquy," a

chronicle of his years as a political prisoner in Indonesia, will be

published this month. This article was translated by John H. McGlynn

from the Indonesian.

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The latter process is exemplified by what is now an almost unknown

literary work: "Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch

Trading Company," a novel by Eduard Douwes Dekker, a Dutchman, which

he published in 1859 under the pseudonym Multatuli (Latin for "I have

suffered greatly"). The book recounts the experiences of one Max

Havelaar, an idealistic Dutch colonial official in Java. In the story,

Havelaar encounters -- and then rebels against -- the system of forced

cultivation imposed on Indonesia's peasants by the Dutch Government.

D. H. Lawrence, in his introduction to the 1927 English translation of

the novel, called it a most "irritating" work. "On the surface, 'Max

Havelaar' is a tract or a pamphlet very much in the same line as

'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' "Lawrence wrote. "Instead of 'pity the poor Negro

slave' we have 'pity the poor oppressed Javanese'; with the same

urgent appeal for legislation, for the Government to do something

about it. Well, the [American] Government did do something about Negro

slaves, and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' fell out of date. The Netherlands

Government is also said to have done something in Java for the poor,

on the strength of Multatuli's book. So that 'Max Havelaar' became a

back number."

Before telling you more about "Max Havelaar" and its author, I would

like to go back in time, even before the start of the present

millennium, to tell you about the search for spices. The key word to

remember here is "religion."

or hundreds of years, spices -- clove, nutmeg and pepper -- were the

primary cause of religious conflict. Their value was inestimable: as

food preservative (essential in the age before refrigeration), as

medicine and, at a time when the variety of food was almost

unfathomably limited, for taste.

The publication of 'Max Havelaar' in 1859 was nothing less than

earth-shaking. Just as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' gave ammunition to the

American abolitionist movement, 'Max Havelaar' became the weapon to

shame the Dutch in Indonesia.

In A.D. 711, Moorish forces conquered Cordoba in southern Spain. By

756, the Muslim ruler Abdar Rahman proclaimed that he had achieved his

goal of spreading Islamic culture and trade throughout Spain. That

country became the world's center for the study of science and the

guardian of Greek and Roman learning that had been banned by the Roman

Catholic Church. By controlling the land on both sides of the entrance

to the Mediterranean, the Moors were also able to maintain control

over trade with the East, source of spices and other important goods.

Christian ships were not allowed to pass.

For several centuries, the development of the Christian countries of

Europe came to a virtual standstill; all available human and economic

resources were being poured into the Crusades. The Holy Wars were

waged not just to reclaim Jerusalem but also to expel the Moors from

Spain and, in so doing, gain control over the spice trade.

In 1236, the Catholic forces of Europe finally succeeded. Islam was

pushed from Europe. To their credit, the victors refrained from

vandalizing symbols of Moorish heritage. Nonetheless, revenge toward

Islam continued to burn -- as did the passion to drive Muslim forces

from any country they reached.

The first place to fall was Ceuta in Morocco, on Africa's north coast,

which, together with Gibraltar, has always served as the gateway to

the Mediterranean. With this, the Europeans had established an

important toehold in wresting control of the spice trade. The problem

was, they had little idea where spices actually came from.

Spain and Portugal, Europe's two great seafaring nations of the time,

set out to find the answer. To preserve order among Catholic

countries, a line of demarcation was drawn (later made official by

Pope Alexander VI in 1493), giving Spain the right to conquer all

non-Christian lands to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, and

Portugal the authority to take pagan countries to the east of the

islands and as far as the 125th meridian (which falls near the

Philippines). It was for this reason that Columbus, helmsman for the

Spanish fleet, sailed west and found a continent instead of the source

of spices. Portugal, on the other hand, sent its ships eastward to

Africa, from which they returned laden with gold, ostrich eggs and

slaves -- but no spices.

In early 1498, Vasco da Gama reached the island of Madagascar, off the

coast of east Africa. There he found a guide to lead him across the

Indian Ocean to the port of Calicut in southwestern India. Arriving on

May 20, da Gama "discovered" India. Unfortunately for the weary

sailor, he also found that of the spices he sought, only cinnamon was

in abundance. To reach the true source of spices, he would have to

sail thousands of miles southeast to what is now known as Indonesia

and then on to the Moluccas (located, incidentally, in Spain's half of

the world). Over the next century, the Portuguese forged their way

southeast, consolidating Muslim-held trade routes and converting souls

along the way. By the time da Gama's ships made it to the Moluccas in

the middle of the 16th century, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and

Malaya had all been subjugated in the name of both trade and Christ.

Other travelers had visited the region before -- including Marco Polo

-- but it was the Portuguese who established the first permanent

foreign presence. With the help of handheld firearms, Portugal quickly

spread its power across the archipelago. In no time, the country

controlled the spice route from beginning to end.

There was a problem, though. Portugal lacked the population required

to support a maritime force capable of controlling half the

non-Catholic world. As a result, it was forced to hire sailors from

Germany, France and especially the Netherlands. This weakness would

eventually spell the downfall of its monopoly in the spice trade.

One Dutch sailor in the Portuguese fleet, Jan Huygen van Linschoten,

made extensive notes during his six years of travel throughout the

archipelago. He paid particular attention to the weaknesses of his

employers. Portugal, not surprisingly, had done its best to mask its

vulnerabilities, but all these were exposed in 1596, when van

Linschoten returned home and published a book, "A Journey, or Sailing

to Portugal India or East India." The book -- a virtual travel guide

to the region -- was quickly translated into French, English, German

and Latin.

Two years after van Linschoten's work was published, the Netherlands,

through a consortium of Dutch companies, sent its own fleet to

Indonesia. The Dutch fleet's first attempt failed, but gradually, wave

after wave of Dutch ships reached the islands, driving out the

Portuguese and bringing untold wealth to the Netherlands. Lacking not

only manpower but also the diplomatic stature to protect its

interests, the Portuguese were unable even to put up a fight.

In part, the success of the Dutch can be attributed to their good

working relationship with Java's powerful feudal lords and to their

professionalism. Initially at least, they had come to trade, not to

conquer / and on that basis created what was then the largest maritime

emporium in the world at its seat in Batavia (now Jakarta).

Over time, however, the Dutch shippers needed military force to

safeguard their monopoly. To keep international market prices high,

they also limited spice production. For this reason, almost the entire

populace of the Banda Islands, source of nutmeg, was exterminated in

the early 17th century. The island was then stocked with European

employees of the company. For field workers they brought in slaves and

prisoners of war.

Also for the purpose of controlling spice production, people from the

Moluccas were forcibly conscripted, placed in an armada of traditional

Moluccan boats and sent off to destroy competitors' nutmeg and clove

estates. Buru Island, where I was a political prisoner from 1969 to

1979, was turned from an island of agricultural estates into a vast

savanna.

Let us now fast forward to the mid-19th century. As a result of the

Napoleonic and Java wars, the Netherlands and the East Indies had

entered an economic downturn. Sugar, coffee, tea and indigo had

replaced spices as the archipelago's cash crops, but with increased

domestic production and limited purchasing power abroad, they were

becoming increasingly unprofitable for the Dutch consortium. To

replenish profits, the Governor General, J. van den Bosch, decided

that the Government must be able to guarantee long-term property

rights for investors and that a fixed supply of crops should be

exported every year.

To that end, van den Bosch put into effect on Java a system of forced

cultivation, known as cultuurstelsel, in which farmers were obliged to

surrender a portion of production from their land to the colonial

Government. Through this plan, the Government was able to reverse the

Netherlands' economic decline in just three years. Java, however, was

turned into an agricultural sweatshop. In addition to surrendering

land for Government-designated production, paying high taxes to the

Dutch and "tithes" to local overlords, peasants were forbidden by law

to move away from their hometowns. When famine hit or crops failed,

there was literally no way out. As a result, tens of thousands of

peasants died of hunger. Meanwhile, Dutch authorities and feudal lords

grew richer by the day.

On Oct. 13, 1859, in Brussels, Eduard Douwes Dekker, a former employee

of the Dutch Indies Government, finished "Max Havelaar." Concern for

the impact of the colonial policies on the Indonesian people had

marked the career of Dekker, who originally studied to be a minister.

When he was posted in North Sumatra, he defended a village chief who

had been tortured, and unwittingly found himself on the opposite side

of a courtroom from his superior. As a result, he was transferred to

West Sumatra, where he protested the Government's efforts to incite

ethnic rivalry. Before long, he was called back to Batavia. Only his

writing skills saved him from getting the sack entirely. After a few

more bumpy stops, Dekker wound up in West Java. It was there, when

Dekker was 29, that his disillusionment came to a head and he

resigned. Judging from his autobiographical novel, we can assume he

wrote the Governor General something like this: "Your Excellency has

sanctioned: The system of abuse of authority, of robbery and murder,

under which the humble Javanese groans, and it is that I complain

about. Your Excellency, there is blood on the pieces of silver you

have saved from salary you have earned thus!" He returned to Europe --

not to the Netherlands, but to Belgium, where he poured his

experiences into "Max Havelaar."

Dekker's style is far from refined. In depicting the cultuurstelsel he

writes: "The Government compels the worker to grow on his land what

pleases it; it punishes him when he sells the crop so produced to

anyone else but it; and it fixes the price it pays him. The cost of

transport to Europe, via a privileged trading company, is high. The

money given to the Chiefs to encourage them swells the purchase price

further, and ... since, after all, the entire business must yield a

profit, this profit can be made in no other way than by paying the

Javanese just enough to keep him from starving. Famine? In rich,

fertile, blessed Java? Yes, reader. Only a few years ago, whole

districts died of starvation. Mothers offered their children for sale

to obtain food. Mothers ate their children."

The publication of "Max Havelaar" in 1859 was nothing less than

earth-shaking. Just as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" gave ammunition to the

American abolitionist movement, "Max Havelaar" became the weapon for a

growing liberal movement in the Netherlands, which fought to bring

about reform in Indonesia. Helped by "Max Havelaar," the energized

liberal movement was able to shame the Dutch Government into creating

a new policy known as the ethical policy, the major goals of which

were to promote irrigation, interisland migration and education in the

Dutch Indies.

The impact of the reforms was modest at first. By the beginning of the

20th century, however, a small number of Indonesians, primarily the

children of traditional rulers, were beginning to feel their effects.

One of them was Agus Salim, the man with the clove cigarette, whose

reading of "Max Havelaar" in school proved an awakening. He, along

with other Indonesians educated in Dutch, fostered a movement for

emancipation and freedom, which eventually led, in the 1940's, to

full-scale revolution.

The Indonesian revolution not only gave birth to a new country, it

also sparked the call for revolution in Africa, which in turn awakened

ever more of the world's colonized peoples and signaled the end of

European colonial domination. Perhaps, in a sense, it could be no

other way. After all, wasn't the world colonized by Europe because of

Indonesia's Spice Islands? One could say that it was Indonesia's

destiny to initiate the decolonization process.

To Multatuli -- Eduard Douwes Dekkera whose work sparked this process,

this world owes a great debt.

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