His discrepant messages combine high morals and bold indif- ference, callousness and compassion, utter effectualness and power, de- pression and racialized distaste. They remind us that Valck’s humanist in- dignations and disregard were both nourished by colonial politics, were lived through those politics and on its edges. His first promotion occurred on Bali’s north coast, when he took a small part in blowing the whistle on the collusion of a Dutch official and a local regent. His demise followed his indictment of Deli’s European planters and high-ranking colonial offi- cials in Batavia who turned their backs on what they knew. But even within this do-good bent, the colonized appear with only walk-on roles. It is a sobering reminder of Salman Rushdie’s warning that if colonial his- tory has been written with the colonized as bit players, that gives no li- cense for contemporary historians to do the same.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 1509