Colonial authorities normalized European beggars and vagrants as expected phenomena

Evidence

The Raad concurred, noting that in a colony with so many former soldiers and offi- cers, “a number of beggars and vagrants” were “to be expected and posed no threat.” Nor did the Raad deem it prudent to send such a destitute (and often aged) group back to the Netherlands to burden local charities, as at least one commissioner urged. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 882

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to scholarship on colonial poverty and white vagrancy — e.g. Stoler’s work on degenerate Europeans in colonial racial categories.

Related

• Dutch colonial officials accepted European vagrancy as inevitable and refused repatriation (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial law distinguished European beggars from tolerated Chinese and Javanese vendors. (similarity 0.82)
• European vagrants in colonial Java lived itinerantly in native settlements, alarming the 1872 commission (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial states lacked tools to discipline destitute Europeans despite mastering control of natives (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial rulers obsessed over a handful of poor Europeans while ignoring vast native dispossession (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The colonial state was equipped to police natives but not wayward Europeans #expands (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 881