Balai Pustaka (hall or bureau of books) was a Dutch colonial-government agency, active from around 1905 until World War II, whose purpose was to provide literature to the native population of the Dutch East Indies colonies. The author discusses the influence of Balai Pustaka on modern Indonesian literature. She looks at six main projects that were initiated during Dutch colonization of Indonesia ( the standardization of Malay, the distribution of literature, the collection and publication of traditional oral literature, the translation of European works, the sponsorship of original Malay novels, and the publication of magazines and newspapers) in order to show how Balai Pustaka, under the guise of developing literature in the Indies, determinedly manipulated and disrupted local literary practices in the interest of promoting European values and maintaining Dutch power.