Rural colonial reform appealed to officials chiefly because it limited state spending

Evidence

The “rural romance” that gained momentum in the 1870s was directly responsive to the failures of the artisan-based reform effort. But it was also responsive to what the Indies administration saw as a “terrifying increase” of European pauperism, with Europeans and their descendants “living in wretched conditions” in virtually all of Java’s main cities—Batavia, Soerabaja, and Semarang, the latter “probably the worst of all.” The fact that the rural vision outlined a much more limited set of financial responsibilities for the state conferred on it broad government appeal. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 757

Categorization

• XREF: The insight that a reform’s political appeal rests on its cheapness to the state recurs across imperial governance studies — connects to the reader’s broader colonial commonsense theme.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone working on Dutch colonial welfare policy — the finding that European pauperism in Java’s cities drove the rural-turn is a specific archival datum.