Jungle encampments held a multiethnic underclass defying neat colonial ethnic categories

Evidence

In offi- cial missives the terms “Gayo” and “Acehnese” were distinguished in some accounts, but used interchangeably in others. How did Valck and his fellow reporters know how to tell a Gayo thief in the night from an Acehnese dissident? As we shall see, these terms often served to mark not ethnic identity but the degree of threat to this new colonial enterprise, those whose actions were to be classified as “common criminal” or “insurgent rebel.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1100 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Poor mixed-race Europeans were erased from both colonial and postcolonial Indonesian historiography; Colonial documentary practices failed to capture a racial underclass of mixed-race vagrants; Colonial ethnic categories broke down under acts both personal and political (+5 more)

Related

• Colonial ethnic categories broke down under acts both personal and political (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial ethnic labels measured threat level rather than actual ethnicity (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial documentary practices failed to capture a racial underclass of mixed-race vagrants (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial ethnic categories failed to describe actual mixed refuge communities (similarity 0.82)
• Brazilian planters assigned different African ethnic groups different natural temperaments (similarity 0.81)
• Gayo encampments held ex-coolies of several ethnicities by choice (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial historiography reproduced administrative maps that erased mixed-ethnic encampments (similarity 0.80)
• The “cannibal” label classified which natives would submit to colonial rule (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial discourse framed poor Indos as a biological racial threat (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial archive labels disclosed political anxieties about mixed-blood domesticity. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial ethnic labels measured threat level rather than actual ethnicity #contradicts (0.55) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1100
• Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance #expands (0.50)