Deli planters organized collective concealment of coolie abuse

Evidence

[The Pieterse affair] has taught us a noteworthy lesson. The gentlemen of the Deli Company and the most important planters have gone so low as to hold back witnesses and to assure they disappear. One of them admitted this to me personally, and another said, “All of us have been guilty of things such as those that occurred at Rudolphsburg [Pieterse’s estate].” All of these men have been accomplices in the offenses committed by Pieterse; by assisting him they have shown themselves to be a tightly grouped gang of Cartouche. It is anything but an enviable task to have to fight against them. If only you knew all that has happened here; if only you could hear what the planters themselves have to tell, even though that of course can never be proved; you would be deeply saddened. Heaven knows how many Chinese have been killed and tortured by the so-called pioneers of civilization! — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1057

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim ‘even though that of course can never be proved’ sits at the heart of how colonial common sense absorbed and neutralized knowledge; worth pursuing how European officials reconciled knowing with evidentiary impossibility.