But who and what comprised the threat was not clear, certainly not in Governor-General Rochussen’s letter to Baud four days after the gather- ing: was there subversion among the well-to-do, European-born city fa- thers, led by liberals like Van Hoëvell, or among the more extreme “hot- heads” who stayed on at de Harmonie that night after the bulk of the crowd had retired? Was it a creole uprising among the Indies-born and - bred Europeans or a seditious bid to break off from the Netherlands by destitute “coloreds” with nothing to lose?

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 524