Colonial administration openly pursued the inculcation of rule through persuasion

Evidence

Two, he recommends that the increased number of government officials in Langkat be charged with “the task [of] drilling our ideas of rule into the chief heads by means of gentle persuasion.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1221

Categorization

• QUESTION: This candid phrase — ‘drilling our ideas of rule into the chief heads’ — raises whether similar tutelary self-descriptions appear across other colonial archives, worth chasing in the reader’s research.