Java: Facts and Fancies

by Augusta de Wit

When Augusta de Wit toured Java in the 1910s she found not only "the airy fancies, the legends and the dreams" but also "a busy manufacturing country, prosperous and prosaic." In fact she arrived during a crucial phase of the island's development, when the colonial Dutch regime had just embarked on its "Ethical Policy" not only to repay its "debt of honour" to an impoverished peasantry but also to facilitate the interests of modern capitalism. An illuminating record of her observations of both the Javanese aristocracy and peasantry, Java, through numerous illustrations, presents an important social document and a fascinating narrative account of a society in transition.

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1898

About the author

Anna Augusta Henriette de Wit was een Nederlands romanschrijfster. Haar bekendste werk is Orpheus in de dessa (1903).

Reviews

[Hanifati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enthusiastic report from female traveler across East-Indies. The impression that the writer render throughout her journey was Java as the fairy-land with rich soil and enervating climate. Muddy rivers over the hills and vales, sprouting rice of admirable irrigation and filled with vibrant-color landscape of the sky at the beach and mountain. From the idyllic grace of natural landscape to oddly familiar white-washed big building around Batavia, de Witt describe every little detail of her new experience in Java, western Java in particular. Not only have the places; city, village, natural landscape, but she also described her astonishment meeting the natives. Instead narrating white superiority, which was common during that time, she told the story in both sides as she carefully put,"... to rightly judge the manners and custom of a country is to look at them from the point of view of the natives..." (p.250)

She close her frenetic image of her journey on Java with beautiful phrase," I know that the fancies are every whit as real and living as the facts, that the poetry and the romance are as faithful representation of things as they are, as the driest prose could be." (p.315)

[Tobias · Rating 2 out of 5]

colonial travelogue with boring prose and lots of racism

[Asnāte Morozova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful image of old time Java. Felt like walking trough Batavia's streets.