Colonial authorities understood sentiment’s governance role before scholars did

Evidence

It might look at imperial interventions in the emotional economy of the everyday. Not least, it would ask why colonial authorities knew what we are only beginning to grasp: that the viability of colonial regimes depended on middling masters struggling to predict and prescribe what sentiments, in whose hands, would be contagious and portable across the globe—and which would not. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 613

Categorization

• QUESTION: ‘Contagious and portable’ sentiments — this hints at a colonial theory of emotional transmission that anticipates modern affect theory. Who exactly counted as viable conduits?