Letting Indos assimilate into native society was feared as a path to independent statehood

Evidence

One was to simply eliminate “the distinctions between nationalities” and to allow the lower class of Europeans “to dissolve into the [native] whole.” As many were struggling to maintain a European standard, this was understood as something many of the Indo population “would prefer.” But this dangerous option was seen as one that could easily give rise to an independent state, a concern that had emerged a half-century earlier. The second solution, considered in the “better interest of Motherland and the Indies itself, and not least the Native population,” was to adhere to the existing policy and to maintain the hierarchical relations of privilege that distinguished Natives from Europeans. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 976

Categorization

• XREF: The fear that racial integration breeds nationalist independence connects to broader studies of how colonial divide-and-rule logic anticipated decolonization.