Formal legal recourse was structurally inaccessible to immigrant coolies in colonial Deli.

Evidence

The advice of Van Benthem was at best naive, and, given the planters’ power and the rudimentary judicial system in Deli, at worst absurd. How could a laborer leave work and travel at least two days round trip to complain to a Dutch officer about a “kick”? Or does this exchange suggest that what was everyday fare for immigrant estate workers with nowhere to vent their grievances was not for those Malays from surrounding villages and with more tenuous ties to the estates? — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1160

Categorization

• QUESTION: The closing question opens a productive line: how grievance channels differed between immigrant coolies and locally-rooted Malays — worth chasing in the archival record.