Deli’s subject populations fed colonial officials amplified rumors about native violence

Evidence

Valck’s knowledge was limited in multiple ways: by the fact that he had only just arrived, by the planters’ hostility to what he proudly referred to as his “clean-up” task, and not least by different groups within Sumatra’s subject population who themselves played European fears and rumors of revenge back to their authors. In the fractious social and political environment that characterized Deli’s mythic “pioneering” years, rumor carried uneven weight—sometimes dismissed as everything the “facts” were not, at other moments the best sources of them. Workers, in turn, further amplified European stories of native violence, interrupting official efforts to identify its sources and perpetrators. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1038

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to reading purpose on colonial epistemic anxiety—shows knowledge flows were distorted by subject populations strategically echoing European fears, a two-way rumor economy.
• QUESTION: Why did workers amplify European stories of native violence—self-protection, redirecting blame, or signaling loyalty? The mechanism behind this amplification is left implicit.