It was a time when famine and war ruined cities Haafner’s testimony provides a horrifying account of despair suffered by the Indians as well as the Dutch to some extent. Paul van der Velde’s biography of Jacob Haafner, translated into English as Life Under the Palms: The Sublime World of the Anti-colonialist Jacob Haafner by Liesbeth Bennik, is a rich source of insight not just into the subject but also into the times in which he lived-when the British were fast gaining control of various kingdoms in India and the hold of the Dutch was waning. His works came to be translated into German, French, Danish, Swedish, and English. It was towards the time of his death that he came to be recognized as an authentic writer with an intimate understanding of local culture (as opposed to the “armchair travellers” or “travel liars” who would base their fantastic tales on their reading of others’ travelogues). His travel-writing about India, vituperative views on colonialism and writings on missionary activity in India and the East in general made him unpopular among the Dutch elite whose help he desperately needed to be employed as a bureaucrat or to sponsor his writing. The man reached India as the servant of the VOC (or the Dutch East India Company) after having lived in South Africa and Java for a while.
Indology-a field of study about India’s history and culture associated with 19th-century British and German figures-had an interesting German-Dutch predecessor, Jacob Haafner (1754-1809).
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