Like A. Alberts, H.J. Friedericy served as a civil servant in the colonial administration of the Netherlands East Indies, spending most of his career on the island of Celebes, in and around Macassar, under the same magnificent sunsets that Somerset Maugham had witnessed in 1922. Friedericy made his literary debut with the novel Bontorio (1947), which tells of the Buginese general Bontorio and his long drawn-out fight against the Dutch colonial army in the interior of Celebes. This early work, which demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of native culture, was published under the pseudonym Merlijn, since Friedericy at that time was the Dutch government’s spokesman at the United Nations in New York during the Indonesian struggle for independence. Later on he became cultural attaché at the Dutch embassy in London, where he died in 1962 and was buried in Mill Hill cemetery.


The Counselor offers tales from his own life as Tuan Petoro, on his first posting in South Celebes in the 1920s. The central focus of this novel is on the relationship between this young Dutch colonial civil servant and his older and wiser native assistant, Tuan Anwar, who guides him in his dealings with the Buginese and Macassarese, with the old local nobility and the cattle thieves, with cases of superstition, ‘running amuck’ (a local tradition) and murder, and with a communist plot to attack the electricity plant and murder all the Dutch colonialists.


In the course of their conversations, Tuan Petoro and Tuan Anwar develop a common ground of shared civil service ideals — the ideals of bringing order and justice, progress and development to the people of the interior. Although Tuan Petoro has always dreamed of going East, he is severely criticised in Holland for his willing complicity in what many Dutchmen had then begun to see as an abject system of colonial repression and exploitation. Equally, Tuan Anwar stands apart from his own people through his career as an administrative assistant in the Dutch colonial service, and is denounced as a collaborator by the Indonesian nationalists, most painfully by his own son Musa. Yet the two men, despite their different loyalties, find a middle ground where they can meet in mutual respect.

Tuan Petoro looked at him and Tuan Anwar stared ahead and said, ‘It’s my son, sir — I’ll tell you — difficult, sir.’

Softly and hesitantly Tuan Anwar told his story. Musa had been home on vacation — Easter vacation — and he seemed to be a different boy. He did not say much, that was not it, but he criticized his father. Not rudely, surely not, but he asked why his father worked in the government. First, Tuan Anwar had not understood and he had explained it all minutely: first assistant scribe in Pangkadjene, then scribe, then assistant. He could not have become karaeng because of local law regarding inheritance. Musa had asked why his father had not become something else then, a merchant, for instance. Didn’t he think it was terrible to serve under the Dutch ?

Only then had Tuan Anwar understood what was going on in his son’s head.

Tuan Anwar looked sadly at Tuan Petoro and said, ‘Difficult, sir.’

‘Very difficult,’ Tuan Petoro answered, ‘Can’t you explain to him that you are working for the best of this country and these people?’ (p. 169-70, tr. Hans Koning)