Multatuli

(pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker)

(1820–1887)

   Writer. Douwes Dekker at first chose a career in the governmentof the Netherlands East Indies. After a quarrel with his superiors, he resigned and returned to Europe. In 1860, his novel Max Havelaar was published, which later brought him fame. Essentially it is an elaborate complaint against governmental and commercial policies in the Indies, and especially on Java, where native ruling classes were allowed, for commercial reasons, to exploit their sub jects. Multatuli grew into a sharp and critical essayist who reshaped Dutch prose using colloquial language. He became a member of the Freethinkers Society. One of Multatuli’s lifelong ambitions always being short of money—was to invent a viable system for suc cess at roulette. In the 1880s, he lived in the village of Nieder Ingelheim on the Rhinein Germany, where he died. There is a Mul tatuli Museum in Amsterdam. See also CULTUURSTELSEL. MUNSTER, TREATY OF. Accord concluded between Spain and the Dutch Republic as part of the general Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended not only the 80-year Revoltagainst Spain by the North ern Netherlands but also the war between France and Germany and the civil war in the Empire (Thirty Years’ War). Under its terms, Spain recognized the Republic as an independent state, the parties would keep the territories captured during the war, and the River Scheldt would remain closed to traffic by the States General.