Colonial officials feared settlers’ emotional investment in the Indies more than fiscal costs

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: The colonial governor feared internal European treason more than external enemies; Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578; Colonial officials displaced anxiety about empire onto bodily and comic self-descriptions (+3 more)

Related

• Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial officials stumbled over sentiments impervious to rational state control. (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial officials believed political agitation threatened to undo civilizing work (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial authorities understood that regime viability depended on managing sentiment contagion (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial officials discounted attacks as personal revenge absent political significance (similarity 0.84)
• The colonial governor feared internal European treason more than external enemies (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial fears centered durable resentments rather than momentary passions (similarity 0.80)
• Dutch colonial rule was preoccupied with sentiment and affect, not reason alone. (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial anxiety also circulated as irony among European officials themselves. (similarity 0.79)
• Dutch colonial officials worried that emotional attachments threatened racial and cultural boundaries. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial officials fixated on subject populations they feared far more than evidence warranted (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial authorities aimed to manage subjects’ aspirations as a political necessity (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial secrets signaled official unease about unrest without a name (similarity 0.79)
• Historians often over-assume the dispositions colonial officials’ positions encouraged (similarity 0.78)
• Colonial authorities understood sentiment’s governance role before scholars did (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial officials displaced anxiety about empire onto bodily and comic self-descriptions #corroborates (0.70)
• Colonial sentiment discipline targeted colonizers themselves, not only the colonized #corroborates (0.65)
• Colonial authorities feared steady sensibilities more than emotional outbursts #corroborates (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 578
• Colonial officials stumbled over sentiments impervious to rational state control. #corroborates (0.60)
• Dutch colonial rule required the Indies never become settlers’ home #corroborates (0.55)