Family correspondence reveals a grid of colonial power that official archives miss

Evidence

Names unconnected in official archives are joined in these missives by birthday celebrations, by greetings sent to those close to the person addressed, by news of leaves, and by announcements of births, promotions, marriages, and deaths. Tracking Frans Carl’s relationships through them opens a grid of power, honor, and constraint that eludes official chartings. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1313

Categorization

• SEED: The family letter as a parallel archive to the colonial bureaucracy—what kinship records know that state records don’t. An angle for the reader’s colonial archival work: unofficial documents as counter-archival sources of knowledge about power, honor, and constraint.