Colonial settlers’ attention was selective, not panoptic, and oriented to Europe

Evidence

Virtually none of the European settlements are there. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1354 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The official documents of colonial archives like those of the Netherlands Indies are so weighted with fixed formats, empty phrases, and racial clichés that one is easily blinded by their limpid prose and numbing dullness. Our readings are blunted by what often has been parsed as the seemingly panoptic glare of a vacuous, stylized official gaze. But in these archives the panoptic is a frail conceit. Administrative overviews index conventional forms of assumed mastery less than comprehensive knowledge. Such overviews—of regions, problems, or target populations— were rendered from cribbed and cluttered, spare and hurried reports of the disorder of things, written in the studied ineloquence of bureaucratese. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 143 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The colonial state was equipped to police natives but not wayward Europeans; European maps ignored Native settlements in favor of colonial ones. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1354; Colonial administrative overviews signaled assumed mastery rather than real knowledge — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 143 (+4 more)

Related

• European maps ignored Native settlements in favor of colonial ones. (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial administrative overviews signaled assumed mastery rather than real knowledge (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial historiography inherited administrative map distinctions its practice violated (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial settlers’ letters show a selective gaze, not a panoptic one (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial curricula taught the effects of French power rather than French history proper (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial administrative overviews index assumed mastery more than actual comprehension. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial officials’ disjointed accounts shared vocabulary but not sources of knowledge. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial knowing relied on inattention and adverted gazes more than surveillance (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• European maps ignored Native settlements in favor of colonial ones. #exemplifies (0.70) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1354
• Colonial administrative overviews signaled assumed mastery rather than real knowledge #corroborates (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 143