European colonial families sustained identity across continents through regular correspondence networks

Evidence

Here, Frans Carl Valck appears as just one affinal member (for it is the Lucassens who are fully present) of a family whose broad clan spent generations moving between Europe and the Indies, whose births, engagements, deaths, and dishonor they chronicle in a steady stream of missives that made their way across the Netherlands on canal barges, across Europe by train, and most often by ship to Marseille via Singapore and then Java. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1312