Colonial fears centered durable resentments rather than momentary passions

Evidence

Rather than extemporaneous passions was the threat of sustained sensibilities, resentments against ongoing unfreedoms, and the political standards they called into question. Outbursts were manageable. It was those durable sentiments, those of parental distress and the wounds of estrangement, that expressed judgment and critique. … Some sentiments mattered not because they were in conflict with reason but because they demanded “specific sorts of reason” that indicated social knowledge of expectations and a rich evaluative vocabulary. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the familiar reading of colonial affect-regulation as aimed at irrational native passion, connects to broader theory of sentiment as cognitive appraisal. — connects to: Past imperial glory activates fury when present conditions contradict it