Max Havelaar is the protagonist in a Dutch novel of the same name written by Multatuli (the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker), first published in 1860. In the novel, Max Havelaar tries to battle against a corrupt government system in Java, which was a Dutch colony at a time.
The colonial control of Indonesia had passed from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the Dutch government due to economic failure of the VOC. In order to increase revenue, the Dutch colonial government implemented a system called the cultuurstelsel, which mandated Indonesian farmers to grow commercially traded crops such as tea and coffee, instead of growing only basic crops such as rice. A certain percentage of the crops must be made in these commercially traded crops. At the same time, the colonial government also implemented a tax collection system in which the collecting agents are paid by commission (in a system called cultuurprocenten). The combination of these two strategies caused widespread abuse of colonial power, especially on the islands of Java and Sumatra, resulting in abject poverty and starvation among the farmers. This in turn fomented anti-colonial sentiment and several figures such as Prince Diponegoro obtained popular support in central Java against the colonials.
Max Havelaar was written in protest of these colonial policies. The impact of this book cannot be overstated: despite its terse writing style, it raised the awareness of Europeans living in Europe at the time that the wealth that they enjoyed was the result of suffering in other parts of the world. This awareness eventually formed the nucleus of the new, ethnical policy by which the Dutch colonial government attempted to "repay" their debt to their colonial subjects by providing education to the chosen natives, usually members of the royalty loyal to the colonials.
The character's name has been used in the Max Havelaar Foundation, a fairtrade labelling organization.
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