Lauriergracht: The Coffee Broker at Number 37
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly along the Lauriergracht and count the house numbers until you reach 37. Whatever you see there, a door, a window box, a bicycle, picture instead a stout, satisfied man in a dark coat, counting his money. He never existed. And yet he is the most famous resident this canal ever had.
Key Facts
| Place | Lauriergracht: The Coffee Broker at Number 37 |
|---|---|
| Address | Lauriergracht 37, 1016 RG Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37130, 4.88120 |
| Part of Walk | Behind the Green Doors: Hidden Hofjes and Market Days of the Jordaan, Amsterdam |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly along the Lauriergracht and count the house numbers until you reach 37. Whatever you see there, a door, a window box, a bicycle, picture instead a stout, satisfied man in a dark coat, counting his money. He never existed. And yet he is the most famous resident this canal ever had.
In 1860 a novel appeared called Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company. Its first lines are spoken by a coffee broker called Batavus Droogstoppel, who introduces himself proudly: he is a broker in coffee, and he lives on the Lauriergracht, number 37. Every Dutch schoolchild knows that sentence.
Droogstoppel is a joke, a pompous, penny-pinching hypocrite. But the book around him was deadly serious. Its author signed himself Multatuli, Latin for I have suffered much, and his real name was Eduard Douwes Dekker, an Amsterdammer who had served as a colonial official in Java. He had seen how the colonial system forced Javanese farmers to grow coffee and sugar for the Dutch market, and how local rulers, with Dutch officials looking away, squeezed the people until they starved.
Max Havelaar caused a sensation. It did not end colonial rule, not by a long way, but it changed how the Dutch talked about their empire, and some call it the book that killed colonialism. Over a century later, in 1988, the first Fairtrade label for coffee was launched in the Netherlands, and it was named Max Havelaar.
So the cosiest canal of the Jordaan carries the address of the man who stood for everything Multatuli hated, a sober Dutch house paid for, indirectly, by somebody else's hunger. Multatuli has a statue on the Singel, gazing over the water. Now walk west along the canal and take a cross street south to the Elandsstraat, where another hidden courtyard is waiting.