Colonial officials’ categories divided crime into personal and political threat

Evidence

His adherence to the prevailing understanding of the “political”—actions of direct threat to government authority—remains largely intact. Still, his belief in a collective threat to European security, based on patterned revenge, falls somewhere between the personal and political, anticipating his failed challenge to those categories. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1169

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the colonial ‘political’ as a specific category meaning direct threat to government authority.