He achieved his doctorate in September 1879 on the thesis: "Zijn naar de grondwet onze koloniën delen van het rijk" ("are, according to the constitution, our colonies part of the Dutch empire").

[2] On 20 August 1880 he was made available to the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies by the Ministry of Colonies to be appointed as civil service official.

[5] As early as 1881 Van Deventer was already seen by the public as an authority in the case of the issue of the economic position of the Dutch East Indies in relation to motherland the Netherlands.

[7] In March 1883 he was appointed member of the Council of Justice in Semarang[8] and that same year he wrote a series of articles in the Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, under the title Gedichten van F.L.

[21] In September 1892 he was appointed acting member of the Committee of Directors of the Nederlands-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij (Dutch East Indian Railway Company).

[23] He left for a second short stay in Europe in May 1894 and was, after his return, appointed member of the supervisory committee of the HBS in Semarang.

[25] He left the Dutch East Indies (permanently) in April 1897 by steamboat Koningin-Regentes;[26] back in Europe he visited the Wagner festivals and wrote about "Wagneriana" in The Locomotief of 11 November and 16 December 1897.

[30] In 1899 Van Deventer wrote a very influential article, called "Een Ereschuld" (a debt of honour) in the Dutch magazine "De Gids".

B. van Heutsz, in which he was complemented with the submission of Panglima Polim (a local leader), which was achieved by military force, in Aceh.

[44] On 19 September 1905 Van Deventer was elected as a Free-thinking Democratic member of the House of Representatives for the constituency Amsterdam IX[45] and as such he emphasized his three focus points regarding Dutch East Indian policy: education, irrigation and emigration.

[46] He was also a promoter of the so-called Dutch Ethical Policy[45] but at the same time said in a speech given in the House of Representatives on 16 November 1905, that if persuasion did not work it would be inevitable to use military force.

[47] In a series of articles in the "Soerabajasch Handelsblad" in August 1908 called "Insulinde's toekomst" (the future of the Dutch East Indies) he wrote about the importance of education and the creation of new jobs for natives on higher management levels.

[57] For the most part Van Deventer wrote about Dutch East Indian finance, the rights of the native officials and their education and about the sugar industry.