A sojourn in ‘Ceilon’ and carefree life of Dutch colonial society View(s):
Book facts: Life Under the Palms: The Sublime World of the Anti-Colonialist Jacob Haafner- by Paul van der Velde Translated by Liesbeth Bennink Reviewed by Richard Simon
In 1926, a translation of Reize te voet door het eiland Ceilon (Travels on Foot through the Island of Ceylon) by Jacob Haafner was published in the Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union. The translators, L.A. Prins and J.R. Toussaint, included in their work several passages critical of British rule in India that had been left out of the original, 1821 English translation of Haafner’s book. The Twenties were a period of intense political ferment in colonial Ceylon, and the author’s fulminations against the British were very much the point of the project.