The colonial archive grows through contestation, not just official accumulation.

Evidence

Activation of the archive and an expansion of its breadth occurred both within the official domain and in the accumulations that gathered on its contested edges. Thus those who opposed or endorsed the public 1901 commission had accounts to convey and stories of their own to tell; newspapers reported on the creation of the commission and the nature of opposition to it; articles appeared in the Indies press and scholarly journals by those claiming firsthand knowledge of the white pauper class. Poignant anecdotes aimed at metropolitan readers called up a range of sentiments that moved quickly between sympathy and disgust. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 828

Categorization

• XREF: Archive-adjacent genres — newspapers, journals, firsthand accounts — expand what official record-keeping alone produces; resonates with scholarship on counter-archives and subaltern documentation.