Colonial officials defined European need relative to native status rather than absolute poverty

Evidence

Repeatedly, the commission reissued statements to affirm that it was not after “the details of people’s lives,” but rather wanted a “global approximation” of the conditions of the less-advantaged: “Those Europeans who, though not in a strict sense belonging to “personae miserabiles,” of European society, [those] seen as needy in relationship to the circumstances and the proper quality of life demanded of the European race and who have not yet sunk to the level of the lesser Natives.” These were not to be considered “pauper statistics in the strict sense of the word,” as so many thought, but merely the “broad limits” within which pauperism might be considered and framed. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 923

Categorization

• DEFINE: The quoted commission language is a primary-text definition of ‘less well-off’ Europeans as race-relativized paupers.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what exactly does ‘not yet sunk to the level of the lesser Natives’ reveal about the racial floor built into colonial welfare categories?