Colonial bureaucracies collected information largely irrelevant to actual decisions

Evidence

How often were central authorities dealing with “loose” local talk and how often did they know it? Facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the other way around. Rumor was a source of “what happened” in subtle if unmanaged ways. But then the archives themselves are, as Paul Veyne notes, “mutilated knowledge,” sometimes no less so than rumors themselves. Rumors registered what people believed could have happened in the past and what could happen in the future. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Colonial administrative decision-making consolidated conflicting local knowledge into packages; Colonial commissions relied on hearsay and common knowledge rather than investigation; Colonial administrative overviews signaled assumed mastery rather than real knowledge — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 143 (+13 more)

Related

• Colonial survey data collection was uneven and often fabricated by officials (similarity 0.89)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse (similarity 0.89)
• Colonial knowledge production was driven by uncertainty, not clarity (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial commissions relied on hearsay and common knowledge rather than investigation (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial authority rested on incomplete knowledge and hierarchies of rumor, not omniscience (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial administrative decision-making consolidated conflicting local knowledge into packages (similarity 0.87)
• Rumor blurred the boundary between witnessed and envisioned events in colonial knowledge. (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial officials’ family histories shaped and discredited their accounts (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial officials could transmute rumor into actionable evidence (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial officials ritualistically framed rumor-derived reports as verified facts (similarity 0.85)
• Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial officials’ disjointed accounts shared vocabulary but not sources of knowledge. (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial administrative documents exceeded the demands for proof and causation (similarity 0.84)
• Rumor blurred witness and imagination in what colonial agents claimed to know (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial officials suppressed knowledge of Sumatran plantation violence while distinguishing rumor from fact (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Information asymmetries result from bureaucratic structures rather than merely legal inadequacies. #expands (0.70)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse #corroborates (0.65) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274
• Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies #expands (0.55)