PC: French communists in the Dutch East Indies?

A few nights ago, I stumbled upon a peculiar book whilst researching for my timeline. The work, written in 1880, is mainly devoted to the author's travels in Sarawak with a few snippets of the Dutch East Indies and Spain in the final chapters. In one particular paragraph, he noted that the state of the Dutch armed forces in Java were simply deplorable with a part of the recruits actually being French communists who fled Europe during the past decade.

I'm not familiar with the communist movement, but I haven't found any supporting evidence yet that backs up his claim. Are there really escaped communists that fled to East Asia during this time period? Or is the author just biased against the Dutch in general? He certainly didn't view them kindly in the book.
 

MrHola

Banned
I would disregard anything Brits have written about the DEI. They had a nasty little axe to grind ever since the Dutch managed to barter Java back from them after Napoleon. One exception is John Sydenham Furnivall; his comparing the British colonial civil service with the Dutch colonial civil service in rather interesting.
 
Top