Max Havelaar, Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, is an 1860 novel by Multatuli (the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker) (1820-1887) 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.