Racialized common sense shaped colonial archival claims when evidence was spare or absent

Evidence

This is the ethnographic space of the colonial archives, where truthclaims compete, impervious or fragile, crushed by the weight of convention or resilient in the immediate threat of the everyday; where trust is put to the test and credibility wavers. Here I linger over unspoken orders of rubric and reference that did more than define plausible evidence. Specific if not unique to the shape of these colonial archives is a racialized common sense about people and places—about Javanese coolies and Acehnese insurgents, about the sensibilities of the Indische population, Indies-born and bred Dutch versus imported, transient, and echte Europeans. Such implicit common sense figured centrally when reporting preceded inquiry, when evidence was spare—or absent. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 148

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘ethnographic space of the colonial archive’ and the role of racialized common sense as epistemic filler when evidence ran short.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 148