The Man for the Faire – Max Havelaar

by on with No Comments

I am not certain wether this name is recognized in the US or not, but here in Switzerland it is a household name.

By Coop Newspaper, Switzerland, Feb.2020

Max Havelaar never lived.
Yet he exists twice: as the main character in a Dutch bestseller from 1860 that denounced colonialism, and today as a symbolic figure for fairly produced and traded products.

In 2020, Swiss consumers spent around 860 million Swiss francs on goods with the Max Havelaar label. This makes our country one of the leaders in the trade of fairly produced products. The Swiss Max Havelaar Foundation was founded in 1992, and Coop, a Swiss Supermarket company, has been a partner of the foundation for 30 years

But who is Max Havelaar, really?

1. The novel Character

In the 1860 book “Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company”, Max Havelaar is a humanist colonial official who fights for the rights of the natives on Java and against exploitation by the Dutch.

2. The Author

Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887) wrote under the pseudonym “Multatuli” (roughly: “who has suffered much.”) He was himself a colonial official and became a sharp critic of colonialism in Indonesia.

3. The Injustice

Indonesia was exploited as part of the Dutch colonial empire for 350 years. Peasants were forced to grow coffee and work 66 days a year for the colonial masters. The coffee was sold in the Netherlands with great profit.

4. The Foundation

In 1988, an initiative for fair trade coffee was founded in the Netherlands, which gave itself and its label the name Max Havelaar. Four years later, the Max Havelaar Foundation was established in Switzerland. Coop was one of the first retailers to include coffee with the new label in its product range.

5. The New Max Havelaar

The fact that the foundation is named after the character in the novel has a special reason: around 1990, the price of coffee sank to rock bottom, and small farmers were barely earning any more. Like Havelaar in the novel, the new organizations also aimed at fair payment for producers in countries of the South.

6. Coop and Max Havelaar

Over the past 30 years, Coop of Switzerland, has expanded its food and non-food range to include 1300 products bearing the Max Havelaar label. Coop thus has the largest Fairtrade range in the world.