Rumors from plantation society shaped official colonial administrative decisions

Evidence

Rumors resonated not only in the confines of local plantation culture, but in official missives that passed from Deli to Batavia, from Batavia to The Hague, and back again to the Deli estates. Rumors, directly and indirectly, placed army units on plantations, curfews in workers’ barracks, watch guards at estate crossroads, and prompted labor contracts to be more strictly enforced. Rumors also prompted vague concerns over “peace and order” to translate into judicial action and military reconnoiters. This is not to suggest that rumor permeated the official discourse undigested and unchallenged. On the contrary, official reports self-consciously engaged the doubts of a readership that might suspect that these statements were based on hearsay alone. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1273

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader work on rumors and colonial state-making, and to how informal knowledge channels (like the reputation systems in the law-merchant literature) feed formal institutions.