A colonial officer’s career collapsed when he refused to ignore planter brutality

Evidence

It was during his very brief and troubled post as Assistent Resident in 1877-78 in East Sumatra’s plantation district of East Sumatra that his career came to a crashing halt. Just months after his arrival, Valck, as we know, was confronted with a series of murders of European planters that he was convinced were the consequence of their own brutal labor policies and coercive tactics. Wholly unfamiliar with the local situation, he poorly judged what consequences would follow if he did not look away. Blocked by the steely silence of the planters, he at- 20 See Roger Knight, “The Sugarmen’s Women and the Tensions of Empire,” in Narratives of Colonialism: Sugar, Java, and the Dutch (Huntington, N. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1355

Categorization

• QUESTION: The paragraph truncates at ‘he at’ — the archival record here cuts off the action, worth chasing what Valck actually did next.