Hidden Force

Ian Buruma In a way this is a bit like Passage to India, although it was written earlier, at the very beginning of the 20th century. It’s a very early example of a novelist who saw the futility of colonialism, and how a small number of Europeans – in this case the Dutch rulers of the Dutch East Indies – thought they knew what they were doing. Like Forster, he’s not being polemical. But he does describe, very sympathetically, the illusion the Europeans had that they would control these countries forever. Even then they didn’t have as much control as they thought. The story is about the wife of a Dutch... (Source)