Poor Europeans evaded colonial visibility by retreating into native kampongs

Evidence

Sometimes they pointed to abandoned mixed blood children wandering the cities and towns. Elsewhere the reports made reference to adult Europeans and their descendants begging on roads into the cities, squatting in the European quarters, or hiding in the back alleys of Batavia. An even larger number were said to have retreated even further into “the remote corners of the native neighborhoods [kampongs] of Semarang, Batavia and Soerabaja,” where they could avoid all other Europeans. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 860

Categorization

• QUESTION: What does the act of choosing native neighborhoods over European quarters suggest about the felt costs of visibility to colonial authority?
• XREF: Links to racial passing and the spatial dimensions of racial classification — resonates with the sumptuary laws material in article (2).