The commission defined European pauperism by race-based expectations of living standards

Evidence

Repeatedly, the commission reissued statements to affirm that it was not after “the details of people’s lives,” but rather wanted a “global approximation” of the conditions of the less-advantaged: “Those Europeans who, though not in a strict sense belonging to “personae miserabiles,” of European society, [those] seen as needy in relationship to the circumstances and the proper quality of life demanded of the European race and who have not yet sunk to the level of the lesser Natives.” These were not to be considered “pauper statistics in the strict sense of the word,” as so many thought, but merely the “broad limits” within which pauperism might be considered and framed. “These figures are not meant to say that the persons within the stated limits are ‘paupers’ per se, but only that they, considering their nationality, can be regarded as ‘less well-off.’” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 923

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the colonial category of pauper: a needy European framed against racial quality-of-life expectations rather than absolute poverty.
• QUESTION: How did the racial baseline of ‘proper quality of life demanded of the European race’ shape what counted as pauperism vs. ordinary Native poverty?