Colonial distinctions of criminal versus insurgent persisted as modern categories to 1945

Evidence

Native assaults on European plantation personnel and property continued to be debated until the end of Dutch rule in similar terms: distinctions between personal and political and between criminals and insurgents were still being made right through the national revolution of 1945.74 These were not residual categories of intelligibility, nor were they out of date. Indeed they had sustaining power and weight. In the 1930s they remained viable “modern” categories, relevant and wholly unreliable. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1250

Categorization

• DEFINE: Identifies the persistent epistemic schema (criminal/insurgent, personal/political) as a defining feature of colonial intelligibility.