Jonathan Koshy Varghese, an associate researcher at the CSH and an Assistant Professor at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, has published a new article titled “Imperial Testimonies: Rereading Max Havelaar Through the Dutch Malabar Archives” in Bandung: Journal of the Global South (Brill) on 11 May 2026.

The piece revisits Multatuli’s Max Havelaar — often read as a landmark anti-colonial novel — and asks whether its critique actually reinforces the imperial logic it claims to oppose. Drawing on petitions and testimonials from the Dutch Malabar archives, I use testimonio as a framework for reading Global South archives, tracing how both literary and administrative texts of the Dutch empire mobilise a shared rhetoric: acknowledging native suffering while casting Dutch officials as reluctant saviours. The result is an anxious empire that silences its subjects even as it purports to defend them.

The article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/21983534-20262014