Colonial secrets were often public to people on the ground in Batavia

Evidence

If one could argue that the presence of European beggars and homeless Dutchmen in the streets of Batavia in the 1870s were “secrets” to those in the Netherlands, they certainly were not to European post office clerks, Javanese construction workers, or Chinese storekeepers who lived on the sprawling low-lying peripheries inhabited by the impoverished of Java’s urban centers. Similarly, was a letter written in 1848 by a Dutch lawyer to the Resident of Batavia a “highly secret” document because he signed it—“I remain like our King, a liberal Dutchman”—when to be “vrijzinnig” (liberal and modern) in the colonies bordered on a subversive act? — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 163