Van Rees gathered verbatim multilingual testimony revealing diverse motives among participants

Evidence

Van Rees called more than fifty men to appear in person before him between 31 May and 19 July 1848, to describe what they saw, what they did, who was present, and what they said. Some were interviewed in Dutch, some in Malay. Most strikingly, the transcripts were verbatim, conveying vibrant movement, rumors careening across the city, people accosting one another on horseback and on foot about whether they planned to go to the gathering, and what they understood it to be. Some stated outright that they were excited by the prospect, others that they were curious, and still others that they went under threat. Some directly denied “with passion and impertinence” that they had actually carried out the actions attributed to them. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 493

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in colonial archival micropractices and how verbatim records register rumor and motive — echoes themes from similar colonial archival studies.