Colonial officials explained European poverty through innate character and cultural deficiency

Evidence

But no matter. For some commissioners the causes were ones they already knew. The answers were evident and ready at hand. They could be found in the psychic space of “character.” For Heer Weijhenke the distress of the Indies’ European poor could be traced to a deeply impoverished cultural milieu. The desire to curl up with a good book had to be awakened, as did strivings of other kinds—thus his recommendation to establish children’s libraries in the orphanages for abandoned Indo youths. Unrealistic proposals were subject to criticism, and sometimes ridicule. Weijhenke’s idyllic vision of orphan children, redeemed by reading and made content with their racial lot through books—even in the conjured world of colonial authorities so evident in the last chapter—was discreetly bypassed. Chortled coughs might have accompanied the reading, but Heer Weijhenke was sincere and well meaning. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 811