Rizal’s Dutch connections

A bust of Jose Rizal was unveiled on July 4 in the courtyard of the Philippine Embassy in The Hague, with the Knights of Rizal’s supreme commander flying in from Manila.

There are an increasing number of monuments and markers overseas that honor our national hero, from Madrid to Chicago and Hong Kong, thanks to his prodigious accounts of the places he had visited in his lifetime. It is not clear if Rizal had ever set foot on Dutch soil, unlike Ghent in nearby Belgium, where his novel “El Filibusterismo” was published in 1891.

Why then this monument in the Netherlands?

For starters, Rizal wrote of the young Dutch girls—sisters—he had met on the sea voyage from Singapore to Marseilles. He also wondered about possible materials in Leiden and Utrecht that could shed light and give more information about early Philippines, in the same way he used annotations to Antonio de Morga’s 1609 “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas” to correct misimpressions about Filipinos and their culture before the Spaniards came.

Rizal had planned to meet Leiden University’s linguist and Orientalist, professor Hendrik Kern, as well. As a master of languages, Rizal undoubtedly understood Dutch. As he wrote to his friend Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt in April 1890: “I am studying Dutch and searching the bookstores to complete my collection.”

More significantly, Rizal admired the Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker whose novel “Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company,” written in 1860 under the pen name Multatuli, made a deep impression on him when he was writing “El Filibusterismo.”

In his letter to Blumentritt dated Dec. 6, 1888, while in London, he wrote “the book by Multatuli that I will send you as soon as I get it, is very interesting. Without a doubt it is superior to my book. But since the author is a Dutchman, his attacks are not as violent as mine. It is more refined and more artistic, but only shows one side of the life of the Dutch in Java.”

The two writers had similar views on the harsh realities of colonialism and wanted to expose them—Dekker on his country’s rule in the East Indies (now Indonesia), Rizal on the Spaniards’ rule in the Philippines. Dekker’s earlier observations about colonialism affirmed Rizal’s own. Max Havelaar tells the story of a Dutchman who fights against corrupt Dutch colonial policies. Similar to Rizal’s character Crisostomo Ibarra/Simoun, Havelaar is an idealistic young man who works for the Dutch colonial administration in Java. Although his Dutch colleagues want him to control the natives and exploit them for their labor, Havelaar would like to reform the system and help them prosper.

Dekker however wrote: “My presentation is chaotic, … disjointed, … striving for effect, … the style is bad, … the writer lacks skill, … no talent, … no method, … Right … right … all right! But the Javanese is maltreated! For the substance of my work is irrefutable!”

Though his novel “Max Havelaar” was published over a century and a half ago, Dekker remains one of the most celebrated Dutch writers. Historians and critics credit the book for radically overhauling Dutch colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies in the late 19th century. A museum dedicated to Dekker’s writings and thoughts can be found in Amsterdam.

The issue of colonialism is not something relegated to the past among the Dutch. On July 1, King Willem-Alexander apologized for the practice of slavery in the Dutch colonies, including Indonesia. He said, “At a certain point you have a moral duty to act. All the more so considering that here, in the European Netherlands, slavery was strictly forbidden. What was thought normal in the colonies overseas—practiced on a large-scale and encouraged, in fact—was not allowed here … I ask forgiveness for the clear failure to act in the face of this crime against humanity.”

Credit the Dutch for the courage, fortitude, and sense of justice to honestly look at their past and make amends. Dekker had passed on before Rizal’s time in Europe, but they shared similar aspirations for oppressed peoples, with the writer Peter Schreurs describing Dekker as Rizal’s “soul brother.”

Sept. 18 marks the 132nd anniversary of the publication of “El Filibusterismo.” It is fitting that a Dutch translation of “El Filibusterismo” was undertaken by writer, translator, and publisher Gerard Arp in 2020, which has made the novel more accessible to the Dutch people. Documenting the Rizal-Dekker connection is the major reason behind the installation of the Rizal bust in The Hague. It is a meaningful people-to-people link between Filipinos and the Dutch.

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J. Eduardo Malaya is Philippine ambassador to the Netherlands and editor of “Philippine Treaties in Force 2020” and “Frontlines of Diplomacy: Conversations with Philippine Ambassadors.”