Valck’s revenge theory straddled personal and political categories but left them intact

Evidence

Unlike for the planters, Valck’s schema stages robbery as retribution for justified grievance. His effort to flesh out the context of retaliation shapes both the chronology and logic of his argument. His adherence to the prevailing understanding of the “political”—actions of direct threat to government authority—remains largely intact. Still, his belief in a collective threat to European security, based on patterned revenge, falls somewhere between the personal and political, anticipating his failed challenge to those categories. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1169

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows what ‘the political’ meant in colonial discourse — actions threatening government authority — and how Valck’s revenge thesis subtly pushed its boundaries without breaking them.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s concern with epistemic categories — how colonial officials’ analytic frameworks (personal vs. political) shaped what could be seen and argued.