Colonial officials believed political agitation threatened to undo civilizing work

Evidence

Colonial scripts prompt us, their distant readers, to imagine that concern with the affective was centered on unbridled passions, irrational outbursts, or at least the unpremeditated affective states their bearers embraced. They make it plausible to imagine that what European authorities feared most was that “hidden force” that Dutch novelist Louis Couperus so powerfully described at the turn of the century as that to which the colonized had access and colonials unknowingly could be subject, a display of sentiments that showed more powerful mystic and mental states. But, as the public assembly of 22 May suggests, this may not have been the case. 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. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578; Colonial violence was driven by officials’ fantasies and anticipatory fears.; Missionary-educated Africans became politically demanding and threatened colonial administrators. (+9 more)

Related

• Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial officials stumbled over sentiments impervious to rational state control. (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial officials discounted attacks as personal revenge absent political significance (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial authorities understood that regime viability depended on managing sentiment contagion (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial officials feared settlers’ emotional investment in the Indies more than fiscal costs (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial violence was driven by officials’ fantasies and anticipatory fears. (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial authorities aimed to manage subjects’ aspirations as a political necessity (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial secrets signaled official unease about unrest without a name (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial officials fixated on subject populations they feared far more than evidence warranted (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial officials took the political force of affect more seriously than later historians did (similarity 0.79)
• Metropolitan ideologies and science shaped colonial governors’ assumptions about uplifting Africans. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial governors struggled to know their own officials’ sentiments (similarity 0.79)
• Historians often over-assume the dispositions colonial officials’ positions encouraged (similarity 0.79)
• Dutch colonial governance centered on managing subjects’ affective states (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-colonial revolt gets dismissed as neurotic madness rather than political action (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Missionary-educated Africans became politically demanding and threatened colonial administrators. #corroborates (0.80)
• Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts #corroborates (0.70) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578
• Colonial authorities aimed to manage subjects’ aspirations as a political necessity #expands (0.65)
• Colonial violence was driven by officials’ fantasies and anticipatory fears. #expands (0.60)
• Colonial officials stumbled over sentiments impervious to rational state control. #expands (0.60)
• Colonial secrets signaled official unease about unrest without a name #corroborates (0.55)
• Colonial officials discounted attacks as personal revenge absent political significance #contradicts (0.50)
• Dutch colonial historiography has downplayed the political force of affect #complicates (0.50)
• Colonial officials displaced anxiety about empire onto bodily and comic self-descriptions #expands (0.50)