Colonial legal remedies were physically inaccessible to estate laborers

Evidence

The advice of Van Benthem was at best naive, and, given the planters’ power and the rudimentary judicial system in Deli, at worst absurd. How could a laborer leave work and travel at least two days round trip to complain to a Dutch officer about a “kick”? Or does this exchange suggest that what was everyday fare for immigrant estate workers with nowhere to vent their grievances was not for those Malays from surrounding villages and with more tenuous ties to the estates? — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1160

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: The author’s speculative distinction between immigrant workers with ‘nowhere to vent’ and local Malays with ‘more tenuous ties’ is worth chasing — is this a real analytical distinction or rhetorical?

Related

• Formal legal recourse was structurally inaccessible to immigrant coolies in colonial Deli. (similarity 0.91)