Evidence that contradicted officials’ plot assumptions unsettled their confidence

Evidence

Valck’s 11 November 1876 report on the discovery of the benting is troubled and perplexed. Forest hideouts do not fit his plot. He doubts their existence and takes a military convoy to Panglima Selan’s encampment to see the benting for himself. He learns that two letters have been discovered there, addressed in German to Luhmann. When he questions the local Malay heads about the hideouts, he finds that they knew for at least six months about Panglima’s activities but continued to report rust (peace) in their districts nonetheless. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1213

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The villagers reporting ‘rust’ while withholding information echoes the silences in the peasant world Scott describes — the colonized community’s own protective inscrutability.

Related

• Local Malay chiefs concealed rebel activity for months from Dutch officials (similarity 0.86)
• Villagers actively protected forest encampments by warning off colonial spies. (similarity 0.79)
• Contradictory evidence forced Dutch officials to doubt Malay chiefs’ loyalty (similarity 0.79)
• Higher officials suppressed Valck’s insights and amplified unverified rumor numbers (similarity 0.79)