In their densities these documents registered distributions of adminis- trative concern that gained cumulative and historical weight. Archives could arm the state with evidence and, in so doing, justify inaction, re- duce allocations, and abort policy. In this sense, they are archival events, not non-events, of capacious quality. They register the conditions of pos- sibility in which colonial authorities operated. They tell us about how im- plausibility was measured, about the constrictions in which plausible colonial truths were framed.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 806