The form of colonial records itself carried political content beyond their stated facts

Evidence

Colonial commissions, incessant reportage in the absence of evidence, and secret missives contained political content in their archival form. … In all of these concerns the middling and elite echelons of government stumbled in the face of sentiments that were as hard to assess among their own ranks as among the colonized. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 39

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes, in archival register, the point that administrative form itself is meaning-making — parallels your prior reading on how communication media shape culture.
• DEFINE: ‘Political content in their archival form’ is a compact thesis about reading the archive as artifact rather than transparent record — a generative analytical move.