Colonial officials caricature the colonized even as they depend on individuals among them

Evidence

If Frans Carl Valck attended to some of the space in which he dwelled, he did not always do so. His assessments of those Indies people that lived around him were subject to caricature more than insight, both attenuated attention and studied disregard. On the north Bali coast where he was posted for four years between 1872 and 1876, just prior to leaving for Sumatra, his final report as Assistent Resident of Boeleleng to his successor marks acute differences in attentiveness and analytic style. There is no temporal lag between how he sought to describe individual Balinese (on whose alliances he depended), and what he thought was reasonable to parse as a generic Balinese character. In treating the latter, he mocked their “semblances of sincerity,” their untrustworthiness, their implacable pleasure in boldfaced lies. As a subtext heading in the left margin, he underlines the phrase: “Not to be trusted, is an unabashed liar” and notes in the text that that only “fear can make them control their passions and desires.” Here Valck’s “insights” prepared for his successor and his superiors rehearse clunky, scripted sterotypes and narratives. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1391

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: A concrete archival example of colonial disregard in action, fitting the reader’s stated focus on archival research in colonial contexts.
• XREF: connects to: The colonized were cast as both evil and childlike to justify western intervention