The letters course through colonial concerns but as many do not. Still, empire is the watermark of these relations. Somehow they always return to an uncle just returned from Java, a niece marrying the son of a former colonial officer, an inade- quate pension, a bolt of cloth lost in voyage, a tobacco or sugar stock that crashed, a squabble that endures continental divides.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 1461