Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company is an 1860 novel by
Multatuli (the
pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker), which played 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 then a Dutch
colony.