A colonial official argued that justice toward laborers, not force, secured the planters.

Evidence

After all of the above, it need not be said that when it comes to retaliation no one is safe, even if one were surrounded by a complete battalion… . We only agreed to leave a detachment with planters in the Langkat lowlands who were most afraid. This was merely done to calm the feelings of these gentlemen. No government, no matter how well organized, no police force, no matter how diligent, no troops, no matter how numerous, are capable of securing the planters from attacks like those which have taken place. Fairness and justice toward their subordinates will always be the best weapons against them. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1196

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: A colonial official arguing that repression cannot secure labor relations and that fairness is the real weapon — strikingly anticipates later 20th-century arguments about legitimate authority vs. coercion, connecting to James C. Scott’s ‘Weapons of the Weak’ and ‘Seeing Like a State’.
• SHARE: For a colleague working on anticolonial labor history or sovereignty-as-legitimacy theory — a mid-ranking Dutch official articulating that brute force is self-defeating in plantation regimes.

Related

• Colonial official Valck argued planter abuses, not insurgent incitement, caused attacks on estates. (similarity 0.87)