Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company is a culturally and socially significant 1860 novel by Multatuli which was to play a key role in shaping and modifying Dutch colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the novel, the protagonist, Max Havelaar, tries to battle against a corrupt government system in Java, which was a Dutch colony at the time. The colonial control of the Dutch East Indies had passed from the Dutch East India Company to the Dutch government due to the economic failure of the VOC. In order to... increase revenue, the Dutch colonial government implemented a series of policies termed the Cultivation System , which mandated Indonesian farmers to grow a quota of commercially tradable crops such as tea and coffee, instead of growing staple foods such as rice. At the same time, the colonial government also implemented a tax collection system in which the collecting agents were paid by commission.
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| Author: | Multatuli |
| Year published: | 1860 |
| Number of editions: | 4 |