Valck’s prior career in Bali prepared him to recognize planter-state collusion

Evidence

Deli’s plantation belt had been “opened” for just over ten years on Sumatra’s northeastern coastal plain when Valck arrived in mid-July 1876. It was not his first post. He was not new to the Indies, or to life in the Indies outside of the Javanese heartland. He had spent the four preceding years in relative isolation, first as a Controleur (the administrative position just below that of Assistent Resident) in Bali and then, for two years, as an Assistent Resident in the opium entrepot of a Dutch outpost on Bali’s still loosely subjugated northwest coast. Nor was he new to the fact of corruption between local rulers and Dutch officials. Early in his career he had helped expose just such collusion and was rewarded with a promotion for his initiative. What was new to him in Deli were the vociferous tactics of the planters and the extremes they would go to protect their profits. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1069