Wider native knowledge of planned attacks suggests communal tolerance of anti-planter violence.

Evidence

Valck represents the Gayos as avengers, not thieves. Specific Europeans are targeted for assault, while others are informed in advance that they will go unharmed: “Mr Thompson [of the Ayer Ham estate] later told me repeatedly that an inlander not belonging on his estate had told him that same day that he had nothing to fear since nobody had anything against him.” Here again, Valck insists that the attacks were strategically directed and planned. He makes no comment, however, on a more unsettling implication: that many more people from Sumatra’s subject populations knew in advance about the assaults than those who actively participated in them. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1192

Categorization

• XREF: Builds a picture of a ‘genocidal silence’ / tacit assent network among colonial subject populations — parallels the reader’s archival interest in what colonial officials failed or refused to perceive, echoing Ann Stoler’s ‘Along the Archival Grain’ work on colonial epistemics.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what does the widespread advance knowledge among non-participating populations imply about the social base of this resistance — passive endorsement, communal protection, or fear of reprisal?