J. F. (Johann Friedrich ) Scheltema

Born in 1855, Johann Friedrich Scheltema wrote in both historical and journalistic modes, and is most often remembered today for books connected with Java and the Dutch East Indies. His best-known work, Monumental Java (published in 1912), explores the island’s ancient Hindu and Buddhist monuments and reflects his long interest in its past and material culture.

Library and catalog records also connect him with Java and with a translated, annotated study on Syria and Lebanon, showing that his interests ranged beyond one subject alone. Contemporary bibliographic records further identify him as a former editor of the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, and the title of one of his 1903 works makes clear that he became involved in a press-freedom and colonial policy controversy in the Dutch East Indies.

Scheltema died in 1922. What survives most clearly in the record is the breadth of his work: part cultural interpreter, part commentator, and part historian of the world he knew firsthand.