Colonial racial logic rationalized native violence while condemning European violence as the root horror

Evidence

But why were the “bloodthirsty” Malays out for revenge when it was Chinese workers who were being victimized by the planters, here “helpless” and barred from leaving their dwellings with “traps” set by the assailants? Hot-blooded native rage contrasts with cold-blooded and calculated murder by Europeans. Native excesses are explicable and deemed excusable within a frame that expects natives to express quick bursts of passion, in contrast to the sustained, long-range reasoning on which he saw more insidious European violence to rest. Valck deploys this racial logic to turn the prevailing explanation of violence on its head and to get to his central point: that the killing “in cold blood” done by Europeans was the “the horror” (gruwel) that preceded all other violence—that allowed it and called it forth. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1135

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the poacher/fence dynamic and how colonial categories determine what counts as legitimate violence vs. crime; resonates with Stoler’s ‘Along the Archival Grain’ and racial epistemologies of violence.