In the novel, the protagonist, Max Havelaar, tries to battle against a corrupt government system in Java, which was then a Dutch colony.

The novel's opening line is famous: "Ik ben makelaar in koffie, en woon op de Lauriergracht, Nº 37."

In order to increase revenue, the Dutch colonial government implemented a series of policies termed the Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel), which mandated Indonesian farmers to grow a quota of commercial crops such as sugar and coffee, instead of growing staple foods such as rice.

The former rulers maintained their absolute power and control over the natives: a quite common strategy used by many colonising countries.

In addition, the Dutch state earned a fortune with the sale of opium to the natives, a practice begun centuries earlier under VOC rule.

At that time, opium was the only known effective pain killer, and a considerable percentage of the natives were addicted to it, being kept poor in this way.

Multatuli wrote Max Havelaar in protest against these colonial policies, but another goal was to seek rehabilitation for his resignation from governmental service.

Despite its terse writing style, it raised the awareness of Europeans living in Europe at the time that the wealth that they enjoyed was the result of suffering in other parts of the world.

Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer argued that by triggering these educational reforms, Max Havelaar was in turn responsible for the nationalist movement that ended Dutch colonialism in Indonesia after 1945, and which was instrumental in the call for decolonization in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

In Indonesia, the novel was cited as an inspiration by Sukarno and other early nationalist leaders, such as the author's Indo (Eurasian) descendant Ernest Douwes Dekker, who had read it in its original Dutch.

[4] In the novel, the story of Max Havelaar, a Dutch colonial administrator, is told by two diametrically opposed characters: the hypocritical coffee merchant Batavus Droogstoppel, who intends to use Havelaar's manuscripts to write about the coffee trade, and the romantic German apprentice Stern, who takes over when Droogstoppel loses interest in the story.

The opening chapter of the book nicely sets the tone of the satirical nature of what is to follow, with Droogstoppel articulating his pompous and mercenary world-view at length.

At the very end of the novel Multatuli himself takes the pen and the book culminates in a denunciation of Dutch colonial policies and a plea to king William III of the Netherlands to intervene on behalf of his Indonesian subjects.

(This summary seems to be based on the film adaptation, not the book as originally published) By the 1860, lived a small boy from a farmer's family in Parang Koedjang, Lebak Regency in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia) named Säidjah.

Not long after that, the group of the Demang (chief district) of Parang Koedjang, Raden Wira Koesoema, came to them on horseback.

That sermon is attended by Max Havelaar, an ex-Assistant Resident of Manado and Lebak who resigned from this official charges and becomes unemployed in Amsterdam.

Havelaar is inaugurated in Gouverneur-Generaal's palace in Buitenzorg and departs to Lebak in the next day with his controller names Verbrugge.

At first, Havelaar tries to ignore what is happened in the past, yet he keeps to maintain his feudal relationship with the Regent, Raden Adipati, as the highest local ruler in Lebak.

Havelaar visits the Regency to make a speech which essentially states that he wants everything goes fine and no violation under during his term of office.

He finds some sawahs abandoned because all men in some villages are forcedly working to pull the grass and clean the Regent's houseyard.

But in the few weeks when he makes a visit to Säidjah's village, he finds the Demang of Parang Koedjang with his group was collecting kerbaus.

When he arrived there, his brother-in-law, who served as the Gouverneur-Generaal's aide, locks Havelaar in a room and told him to be silent and go home to the Netherlands.