Administrative maps shaped which colonial events historians recorded

Evidence

The fact that there is no trace of these encampments in the colonial historiography of Sumatra’s East Coast—or in more recent histories—merits reflection. Colonial historiography arguably followed the administrative maps that demarcated Aceh from Deli and that distinguished what was feared to be a belligerent “Islamic stronghold” from a region of intensive capitalist venture. But these distinctions made for purpose of governance were not maintained in practice. In working from this sharply differentiated administrative and cognitive map, Valck found certain kinds of relations among these groups at once logically inconsistent and inadmissible as he sought to piece together the events leading up to and subsequent to the Luhmann family murders. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1096

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated purpose: epistemic anxieties and colonial commonsense, the gap between archival categories and lived reality. — connects to: Colonial management required objectifying territories through maps and data-gathering surveys. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 311
• SEED: The erasure of mixed encampments from historiography is a strong angle for an essay on how governance categories silently determine what later historians can even see.