Stoler 1992

"In Cold Blood": Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives
Author(s): Ann Laura Stoler

Source: Representations, No. 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories
(Winter, 1992), pp. 151-189
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928658 .
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ANN LAURA STOLER
"In Cold Blood": Hierarchies

of Credibilityand the Politics
of Colonial Narratives
IN 1985 I CAME ACROSS a thirty-page handwritten letter dated 28

October 1876 by a certainFrans Carl Valck,who was then Assistant-Resident on
Sumatra'sEast Coast.' It was addressed to someone named Levyssohn,withwhom
the writerseemed to have had an ongoing correspondence(Valckthankshim for
his advice in a previousletter).Levyssohnmighthave been a familyfriend(Valck
sends greetingsto his "sweetestwife")and influentialenough thathe mightpass
on Valck's troubling observations to the powers that be. Henry Levyssohn
Norman, I learned later,was a formerlaw school classmateof Valck'sin Leiden,
recentlypromoted to the Raad van Indie, the advisorybody to the Governor-
General in Batavia.2
On its own the letterwas of unusual intereston several counts. It was cata-
logued in the personal documentationcenterof the Royal Instituteof Linguistics
and Anthropologylibraryin Leiden withno accompanyingprivateor officialcor-
respondence. Its author'sname appears in no colonial or contemporaryhistories
of Sumatra's East Coast.3 It was writteneleven days after what subsequent
accounts have referredto as one of the "mosthorrendous"multiplemurdersof
Europeans in the plantationhistoryof Deli, in which the wife and two young
childrenof a planternamed Johannes Luhmann were knifedand dismembered
by workers formerlyemployed on Luhmann's estate.4What is remarkable in
Valck'sletteris thatitis notabout the horrorof thesemutilations.Instead itindicts
Luhmann and other Europeans for their brutalities;it names names, giving
detailed testimonyto the atrocitiesperpetratedbythesepeople, whom Valckcalls
"so-called pioneers of civilization."
In thisessay I draw on the dense corpus of correspondenceand officialmis-
sives about the Luhmann familymurder thatcirculatedbetween 1876 and 1877
between Valck,militarycommanders,high officialsin Batavia and in the Hague.
But it is Valck's narrativesabout the murder-three composed in late October
and one in December 1876-that framemy argument.I take them as an entry
point to explore the kinds of storiespeople told about violence,the sortsof cul-
tural knowledge on which those storieswere based, and the "storeyed"levels
REPRESENTATIONS 37 * Winter1992? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 151

throughwhichthoseaccountswerewrittenand should be read.5These narratives
trace a compressed time during which Valck'sgenealogy of violence shiftedas
East Sumatra's subject population exploited European confusions about what
theirexpressionsof violence meant.As importantly, Valck'slettersallow us to see
beyond an omniscient colonial apparatus to one peopled by agents whose imag-
inings propelled theiractions, a perspectivein which factwithfantasytogether
constitutedthe realizing of violence and what were deemed appropriate mea-
sures to counterit.
Withina period of several monthsin 1876, Valck and other Dutch civilser-
vants,militarypersonnel,and European plantersexchanged hundredsof reports
expressingtheirown versionsof what was causing arson, rampage, and murder
on Sumatra's East Coast. There are strikingdiscrepancies in these accounts,
despite theiroftencommon sources. Was the Luhmann murderan isolated inci-
dent or, as Valck contended, part of a patternedresponse by Asian workersto
European abuse? Were ethnicGayo woodcuttersamong the assailants;were they
individual workersbent on revenge against Luhmann or guerrilla supporters
assaulting a generic European in a continuationof the Acehnese resistanceto
Dutch rule? Should theconsistencyin thesestories,a certaindensityof agreement
among versions,serve to discountalternativeversions?Or does such agreement
merelyindicate shared culturalassumptionsthat provided a common standard
of reliability?Did Valckand othercolonial agentsreallyknowwhatwas going on?
With Valck'simpassioned and contrarylettersin hand, I sought to findout
how much his reconstructionswere at odds with other officialversions, how
deeply theywent against the grain.6But reading Valck'snarrativealongside the
otherswas more difficult than I had imagined. Genealogies of the murdervaried
as did the physical settingsand psychologicalmotivationsthat were assumed;
some related the event to the Aceh war (hundreds of miles to the north),while
others personalized its origins in a planter'sabusive character.The narratives
displayed differentrhetoricalstrategies,slippingbetween visual and verbal evi-
dence and appealing to rumorto buttressone versionor dismissa counterclaim.
Paradoxically,what theyheld in common-a loosely conceived colonial logic-
only underscored what set themapart as individualplantersand officialsappro-
priated thatlogic differently to interpretwhat some had never seen but thought
theyknew.Reference to a common set of dichotomiesordered theirplots: they
distinguished between personal acts of revenge and collective political acts,
betweencriminality and subversion,betweentheorder of the plantationsand the
disorder of the hinterland,between"war" proper (as in Aceh) and labor "distur-
bances" (as in East Sumatra),betweenloyalsubjectsand enemies of the state.But
theirstoriescontestedeach otherin theiruneven adherence to (and suspicionof)
the very dichotomies on which they drew. More pointedly,these dichotomies
rarelyseemed adequately to explain the formsof dissensiontheyconfrontedon
152 REPRESENTATIONS

the ground. These formswere both personal and political,cuttingthroughthe
ethnicdivisionsand animositieson whichDutch authorityrested.
The task then is clearlynotto identifya "fixed"and singular social context
and then to plot a constellationof biased and intentionallydesigned storiestold
to obscure it.7Nor would I argue thatwe, unlike contemporaryactors,are hand-
icapped by not being privyto the "crucial facts."Both these rejected premises
assume a subtlemetanarrativethatwould subsumetheapparent incompatibilities
of differenttextsand contextsin a coherentand unifiedframe-which I am con-
vinced it would not. These conflictingtextsmay ratherrepresentwhat Michael
Taussig has called an "epistemicmurk,"an "unstableinterplayof truthand illu-
sion" where narrativesmediated fearsof violence and fashionedcolonial imagi-
nations.8I suggestthatthismurkmay have dimensionsthatare part of, but not
reducibleto,thedistinctionbetweenfictionand fact.These storiesindicatea frac-
tured social reality,one derivedfromfragmentedknowledgeas wellas fromcom-
peting hierarchies of credibilitythrough which violence was read. Thus, for
example, both Valck'sand the militarycommander'scontraryreadings drew on
a common colonial logic thatwas filteredthroughand limitedby differentlocal
channels through which theycould learn about what was transpiringon Deli's
estates.
But, as importantly, Valck'sknowledgewas limitedand shaped by different
membersof Sumatra'sindigenousand immigrantpopulationswho played Euro-
pean fearsand rumorsof revengeback on theirauthors. In the highlyfractious
social and political environmentthat characterized Deli's "pioneering" years,
rumor occupied a charged cultural space for planters,militarypersonnel, and
civilservants.Workers,in turn,furtherdisruptedEuropean storiesof nativevio-
lence, interruptingofficialeffortsto identifythe sourcesof violenceand its"real"
perpetrators.9 More directly, European knowledgewas shaped byGayo,Javanese,
Malay, and Chinese assailantswho, in writing theirown acts of violence in such
ambiguous ways, assured that they could rarelybe easilyand neatlyread.While
subalternsare silenced European accounts,the conflictingmeanings of their
in
seeminglystraightforward deeds of theftand arson cut throughthe officialtexts,
suggesting kinds of subversion thatjoined speakingabout violence and realizing
it in more disruptivewaysthan we mighthave imagined.'
Valckand his agentsfilledthe gaps in theirknowledgewithculturallyreason-
able conjectures,therebymakingtheirstoriesboth persuasive and relevantto a
class-,gender-,and race-specificaudience. Plantationunrestwas easilysubsumed
by a culturallogic thatexplained "coolie outbursts"as "instinctualresponses" of
revenge or alternatelyas actionsorchestratedby "outside agitators"on an other-
wise passive population. Not least importantto the credibilityof these accounts
were shared conceptionsabout the psychologicalvulnerability of whitesin a trop-
ical milieu,theirsusceptibility to culturaland moral contaminationbythose they
The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 153

were thereto rule.11Thus, forexample, the Directorof the CivilServicecriticizes
the inept performanceof Valck'ssuperior,S. Locker de Bruine, but forgiveshis
transgressionsbecause "in his associationsolelywithnative heads he has taken
over some of theirinertia."12
This essay deals at one level with the relationshipbetween the rhetorical
strategywe bringto such textsand the rhetoricalstrategiesof our sources. How
do we ethnographicallyread these storiesand writea kind of historythatretains
the allusive,incompletenatureof colonial knowledge?How do we representthat
incoherenceratherthan writeover it witha neater storywe wishto tell?How do
the individualpsychesof agentssuch as Valckinteractwithcollectivestrategiesof
dominationon the ground? Here I attemptnot only to sortout the multiplicity
of motivesand intentionsbut to capture the gossamered climatesof violence in
whichthese storiesare told.13These storiesare not incoherentbecause of rumor.
Rumor is a key form of cultural knowledge that,in Deli, shaped what people
thought they knew,blurring the boundaries between events "witnessed"and
those envisioned,betweenperformedbrutalityand the potentialityforit.
Valck's Reading
and Reading Valck
When Assistant
I wasappointed ofDeli,I knew
Resident wellthatI wouldnot
very
suchanAugeanstable
butthatI wouldfind
landina "bedofroses"; as I didhere,
I
couldneverhaveimagined.'4
In opening his letterto Levyssohnwiththe above observation,Valck

prepares his reader forthe Herculean taskwithwhichhe is faced and the heroic
stance he as an individual must assume to confrontit. Valck'sletteris striking
because it may be one of the earliest personal statementsthat directlycharges
Deli's planters with severe maltreatment,outrightmurder, and mutilationof
Asian workers.Stylistically, it is a highlyself-conscioustext,both tentativeand
bold, with carefullychosen examples and a cautious effortto avoid the sensa-
tional. It is a narrativeof inversions:colonizers ratherthan the colonized are
condemned for theirviolence; "delinquents"are not recalcitrantworkersas for
the planters,but Europeans instead. Standards of "barbarism"are turned on
theirhead. In Valck'shands, rumorrepresentsreasonableconjecture,a legitimate
(if stilldubious) measure of the publiclydenied and unspeakable "facts"of life
and labor on Sumatra'sEast Coast.
Explaining the serious shortageof labor on the estateshe writes:
It wouldbe a miracleindeed,ifrespectableChinesecoolieswouldbe attracted to a place
wherecooliesare beatento deathor at leastso mistreatedthatthethrashingsleaveper-
manentscars,wheremanhunts I hearda rumor
are theorderoftheday..... Justrecently
abouta certainEuropeanwhopridedhimself on havinghunga Chinese,onlyhavingcut
154 REPRESENTATIONS

him down afterthe coolie had turnedentirelyblue (people saythatitwas probablya bluff,
but thissortof bluffis same as committingthe act). The brave one who is thoughtto have
done thiswas Heer Luhmann: I mentionedthissample of humanitarianismto a planter
who answered me, "No, I heard thisabout someone else." Who thisother one is I don't
know,but I do know thatsuch unheard-ofthingsoccur or at least have occurred. I won't
even mentionthe case of the cut-offear kept in alcohol as a curiosityby a down-and-out
tannerfromBatavia ... but I mean inhumanenessthatbringsthe greatestdisgraceupon
humankind.l5
Valck charges the planters with barbaric brutalities toward their workers but
more pointedly accuses them of participation in a conspiracy of silence, deceit,
and terror in which their reports "contain some truth but more often are filled
with unashamed lies." His challenges are aimed at both subordinate European
"no goods" and the "gentlemen" of the largest plantation companies with their
"blood-stained hands." Commenting on his investigation of the fatal beating of a
Chinese coolie by the planter Nederveen Pieterse, he writes:
[The Pieterseaffair]has taughtus a noteworthylesson. The gentlemenof the Deli Com-

pany and the most importantplantershave gone so low as to hold back witnessesand to
assure theydisappear. One of themadmittedthisto me personally,and anothersaid, "All
of us have been guiltyof thingssuch as those thatoccurred at Rudolphsburg [Pieterse's
estate]."All of these men have been accomplicesin the offensescommittedbyPieterse;by
assistinghim theyhave shownthemselvesto be a tightlygrouped gang of Cartouche. It is
anythingbut an enviable task to have to fightagainst them. If only you knew all thathas
happened here; ifonlyyou could hear whattheplantersthemselveshave to tell,eventhough
thatofcoursecan neverbeproved;you would be deeply saddened. Heaven knowshow many
Chinese have been killedand torturedbythe so-calledpioneersof civilization!Be assured,
myfriend,thatthereare severalamong themwho would not consider ita heinous wrong
to do away witha governmentofficialwho would dare to reveal theircrimes!But I better
leave itat this,foryou mightstartto accuse me of exaggeration,and thatI don'twant."To
go beyond the point is to missit,"as the song so rightfully
says.(Emphasis added)16
Valck'spersonal and privateaccountconfirmsmuch of whatsome historianshave

surmised from other sources: that a climate of violence and a complicity of silence
marked colonial capitalismin one of the most lucrativeand lauded plantation
regions of the Netherlands Indies from its formative period through its later
expansion.7 As Valck so aptly put it: "People make such a great to-do over the
enormous developmentof thisregion,but [it]is as thinas cat-ice."
Explanations of the silence permeatingthisclimateof violence,however,are
more problematic.Jan Breman contendsthatgovernmentofficialssystematically
covered up what theyknew about the Deli situation.'8I have argued somewhat
differentlythat the planters saw themselves pitted against state authorities,
secretingwhattheyconstruedas their"private"affairsfrompublic scrutinyin an
effortto keep disciplinarymeasures in theirown hands.'9Valck'sletteralludes to
a more ominous scenario still:that planter violence could turn on government
agents themselves. However, neither account captures what colonial agents knew

and how theyknew it, what theytalked about and to whom,whichstorieswere
discreditedas rumor and suppressed, whichrumorswere inscribedas evidence
and "fact."Neither addresses a particularcolonial realityin which violence was
experienced as both ordinaryand outrageous, silenced and ever presentin the
stories people listened to-what theychose to repeat, what theyrefused to say
about what theyknew.Nor did colonial bureaucratsand plantersnot speak the
unspeakable. Valck'sletterto Levyssohnand even his officialreportsreferto the
rumorspassed on by"reliable"sources,to "whatplantersthemselveshave to tell,"
to the storiesplanterstold to one anotheror selectivelyfashionedforValck.
What was happening on Sumatra'sEast Coast in 1876? Is therea baseline set
of conditions to retrieve from the convergence of these stories about the
Luhmann familymurderand otherassaultson European personsand property?
What would be appropriate to establishas "context"-what Valck was cognizant
of during his short sojourn in Deli's plantation belt, what militaryofficials
reported followingtheir reconnoitersin the villages and forestsabutting the
estates, or what Maj. H. Demmemi, the militarycommander for the region,
feared in his fixationon the Aceh war?
Deli's plantationbelt had been "opened" forjust over ten yearson Sumatra's
easterncoastal plain when Valcktookoveras Assistant-Resident. While the Dutch
Indies state in the colonial heartlandof Java was firmlyentrenchedin the nine-
:?~..
?? A _ ^ . ,...
FIGURE 1. "Laboean-the capital of Deli in the year

1876"; thisis the townwhere Valckresided.
Photos: Royal Tropical Institute,Amsterdam.
156 REPRESENTATIONS

FIGURE 2. A group of Deli tobacco "planters"in 1872.
teenthcentury,on its peripherythe stateapparatus was minimallymanned and

for all intents and purposes absent from most of the daily workingsof the
emerging plantation economy. In the 1870s governmentagents such as Valck
were assigned multipleadministrative roles (overprisons,police,courts,and land
lease contracts) and were largely dependent (for lodging, comradeship, and
information)on theveryplanterstheywerecharged to control.Valck'slocal inex-
perience and marginalityfromthe planters'inner circle may partlyaccount for
his frequentappeal to the reliabilityof rumorabout whathe could not know.
The European planters,fortheirpart,were confrontedin the 1870s witha
thinlypopulated region where Malay fishermenand farmersunder local sultan-
ates and shiftingcultivatorsof ethnicBatak origincould neitherbe coerced nor
cajoled to workforthe estates.Recruitment,retention,and confinementof labor
remained theirmostpressingproblemthroughthe earlytwentiethcentury.The
earliest tobacco estatesin the 1870s were workedby Chinese procured through
"coolie brokers"in Penang,Singapore,and China. RecruitmentfromJava started
more slowly,but with the opening of the rubber estates after the turn of the
centuryit became the principalsource of labor.
In 1876, recruitmentpracticeswere so problematicthatBritishand Chinese
authoritiesfrom both China and Penang threatenedto prohibitshipmentsof
workersto Deli's estates.20That same year a major inquiryon the labor situation
targeteda centralissue: theconditionsunder whicha workercould be compelled
The Politics
ofColonialNarratives 157

to remain at her/hisplace of work.When Valckcame into officethe punishment
fora worker'sbreach of contractwas under continueddebate, culminatingin the
landmark 1880 coolie ordinance, the firstin a long series of governmentpenal
regulations for indentured "contractcoolies" on the East Coast. Valck's prede-
cessor,Hallewijn,had sided withthe plantersin arguingthatDeli's estateindustry
was unique in the Indies, thatitsviabilitywould be jeopardized ifstricterpunish-
ments for recalcitrantworkerswere not enforced. But high officialsin Batavia
were unconvinced. Contraryto planter pressure, an 1876 ruling forbade the
forcedreturnof workersto those estateswheretheyhad breached theircontracts.
Valck not only supported the new ruling(therebypittinghimselfopenly against
the major company heads) but interpretedit to read that trangressorswere no
longer legallybound to returnto theirestatesat all, therebyreleasingthemfrom
repayingthe three-monthadvances bywhichtheywere initiallyrecruited.
As subsequent governmentreports made clear, Valck's interpretationwas
seen as far too "generous."That workerscould not be forcedback to theirestates
was never meant to suggestthattheyshould not be brought back to theirestates
by other means.21 According to Valck'sseverest G.
critic, S. H. Henny,the Director
of the Civil Service,Valck had actuallyencouraged vagabondage in the region by
allowingexcoolies to choose twelvedays in prisonin lieu of eitherrepayingtheir
advances or workingthroughthe duration of theircontracts.But Valck'smisin-
terpretationdoes not reallyexplain whyDeli was overrunwithclandestineforest
encampmentsand who was in them.Whatwas the relationshipbetweentheestate
enclaves and the rural hinterland?Or is it anachronisticto speak of such a clear
distinctionat all? Whywas theresuch a large roamingpopulation of unemployed
men?
Valck was caught in the line of fire; the planter constituencywas bent on
mobilizinglabor in increasingnumbersbut controllingitsmobilitythroughever
more coercive and state-endorsedmeasures. On the other side was a growing
population of migrantworkerswhose tiesto the estateswere minimaland whose
refusal to submitto penal sanctionsremained strong.More importantly, those
sharp political divisions between ethnic groups described for the late-colonial
Indies-Batak pitted against Javanese, Gayo against Malay, Chinese against
Javanese-were more fluid in late-nineteenth-century Deli than most histories
lead us to imagine. When militaryagents "discovered"jungle encampmentson
the plantationperipheries,theyfound thatthese refugeswere not limitedto ex-
Chinese coolies in one place and Gayo resistancefightersin anotherbut consisted
of hundreds of Gayos, Malays, Chinese, and Javanese hiding out togetherin
makeshiftshelters.This "vagabond" population refused to workforthe estates
but instead lived offthem,carryingout nightraids in search of food, weapons,
clothing,and cash.22"Vagabondage" thus characterizeda Sumatran underclass
whose memberseitherwere rejected fromthe estatesor maintainedonly equiv-
ocal ties to them.
158 REPRESENTATIONS

The Deli "labor problem" is, however,only one contextfor these stories.In
1876, the Acehnese resistanceto Dutch rule, in which Islamic religiousleaders
took an importantpart, was still going strong three years after it had begun.
SouthernAceh abuttedthe Langkatdistrictin the northernplantationbeltwhere
Luhmann's plantation lay, and an increasing number of men from Aceh had
moved down to these estatesto seek workas more tradingactivitieswere cut off
by Dutch blockades.23Among these were many Gayo, a highland tribalgroup
that,despite its long subjectionto Acehnese influence,had remained neutral in
the war.By the mid 1870s, however,as Dutch troopsmoved closer to theirhome-
lands, more Gayo faced the choice of submissionto Acehnese authority,of sur-
render to Dutch rule,or of flightintothe forestsfromboth.24Whetherthe Gayos
who worked for Luhmann were partisans of the war or pacifistrefugees is
unclear. Valck and his contemporariesappear to have had only the vaguest
notions of where these Gayos came from and withwhom theywere allied. In
officialmissives,the termsGayoand Acehneseare distinguishedin some accounts
and used interchangeablyin others.How did Valckand his fellowreportersknow
how to tella Gayo thiefin the nightfroman Acehnese dissident?As we shall see,
thesetermsoftenserved to marknot ethnicidentitybut thosewhose actionswere
to be classifiedas "common criminal"or "insurgentrebel."
Valck's Audience
In his letterto Levyssohn,Valck is angry,anguished, frustrated,and

despairing. But he is also curiouslyambivalentabout how much he wants the
"facts"about European atrocitiescommunicatedand to whom. Aware that his
observationsand actionswillleave him open to serious criticismand opposition,
he seems more concerned thathe willnot be believed. Valckmay have been con-
vinced that his storywas suspect because it so boldly contradictedat least one
versionof the dominantofficialscript:thatDeli was flourishingand profitswere
secure because both plantersand coolies were "in hand." As he wroteLevyssohn:
If youthinkI painta darkerpictureofthesituation, thatI exaggerate,I repeatthatthe
is as bad as itcanbe and thisis theresultofa policyofleniency
situation pursuedforyears
towardtheplanters.... Believeme Levyssohn! blackerthanitis.
I don'tsee thesituation
And again:
I am totally
Don'tthinkthatI writein a momentofagitation. calmbututterly
indignant.
EverydayI see moremuckthatneedstobe cleanedup.25
For a student of the colonial Indies, Valck's letterechoes another compelling

account, thatof Eduard Douwes Dekker,who, under the pseudonym Multatuli,
publishedMax Havelaar twodecades earlier,among the boldestand mostfamous
attackson Dutch colonial policy.Both men were Assistant-Residents. Both con-

demned European corruption and policy based on their experience in their
postsl Both were destined for shortIndies careers. Douwes Dekker resigned as
Assistant-Residentthree monthsafterhe was appointed, while Valck was trans-
ferredout of Deli in less than a year.
Despite these similarities,the contrastsare more telling:Max Havelaar was, in
D. H. Lawrence's words, a successful"tract-novel"considered a "Dutch classic"
outside of Holland, with major impact on public opinion and government
reform.26 Douwes Dekker attackedthe corruptcollusionbetweenDutch officials
and nativerulerswho togetherabused privilegeand abettedthe impoverishment
of the ruralJavanese. Valck'saccusations,on the other hand, targetedthe "cold-
blooded" barbarism of Europeans themselves.Douwes Dekker resigned and
remained indignant;Valckwas indignantand was thendismissed.Valck'scharges
against European conduct never received a public airing,nor were theyreally
designed for it. His accusationswere so thoroughlyexpunged fromthe official
record that even his limitedreadership (his superior officerand advisors to the
Governor-General)refused to pass on his observationsor even to repeat his
words. Valck was erased fromcolonial historiography, while Dekker became a
posthumouslywidely known and revered antihero.Valck was intenton tellinghis
(in)crediblestorybut seemed to want the "real situation"made accessibleonlyto
selective ears. Unlike Douwes Dekker, whose denunciation of Dutch rule was
writtenfor and received an immediate popular response, Valck was more cir-
cumspect on the issue of public consumption:"It is hoped that such factsas I
mentiondo not become public because ournamemightthenbe mentionedin the
same breathwiththatof the Spanish in America [emphasisadded]." In his ambiv-
alent but continued identificationwithDutch authority,Valck desired only "his
excellence the Governor-Generaland Van Rees [chair of the Indies Council] to
know the real situationhere." He criticizeshis predecessor Hallewijn for com-
plicityin the planters'silence,as wellas "governmentpeople in Batavia [who]have
painted the situationentirelythe color of roses, howeverincorrectly." Convinced
that he willbe opposed for his actionsby plantersand governmentagents alike,
he places faithin the Governor-General,who he believes will not share in this
condemnation:
is untenable.Changemustcomeand hasstartedtocome.It willtakea great

The situation
deal of myeffort to bringthisabout.I willbe thwarted,duped,and slanderedfromall
sides.ButI willnotmovefromthehonorablepostgivenmebytheGovernor-General....
It maybe necessary, I considerit verynecessary,
thatthereal situationbecomesbetter
knownbythehighestplacedpeoplein theNetherlands Indies.
What happened to Valck and his letter?He was not destined for long in the
civilservice.Less than a year afterhis appointmentas Assistant-Resident,
he was
transferred(in February 1877) to Ambarawa on Java while an extensiveinvesti-
gation of his "serious misconduct"in Deli continuedafterhe had gone. The fol-
160 REPRESENTATIONS

lowingyear he was honorablydismissedfromthe civilserviceand placed on the
retiredlistat the relativelyyoungage of forty-three.7 At the same time,his supe-
rior Locker de Bruine, reprimanded for allocating too much responsibilityto
Valckand blamingthe latterforhis own mistakes,emerged fromthe inquirywith
his character intact.28What was wrong with Valck? Was he merelya bungling
bureaucrat, as some investigatorslater suggested, or the right person in the
wrong place at the wrong time? Were the increased disturbancesduring his
tenure of his own making,as the head of the civil servicelater argued, or the
resultof a situationinheritedfromhis successor,as Levyssohnwas to assert on
Valck'sbehalf? Or was it, as Valck in his own defense continuallyclaimed, "the
resultof a longstandinggovernmentpolicyof leniencytowardthe planters"?
What did Levyssohn do with Valck's letter?None of the communications
dealing withValck'sreprimandsuggeststhathis concernswere passed on to the
Governor-General,nor that Levyssohn alerted his fellow council members to
Valck'swarning about European excesses and crimes. Instead, Levyssohndrew
on Valck'spersonal letterextensivelybut selectivelyto defend his friend.When
the Director of the Civil Service advised Valck'simmediatedismissal,Levyssohn
refusedto endorse it. Rather,he appended a separate defenseof Valck'sconduct,
outliningthe "mitigatingcircumstances."29 He argued thatValck'sloyaltieswere
never in question; thathe was unfairlyoverburdened,had inheriteda neglected
administrativesituation,had receivedno guidance fromhis immediatesuperior,
and that "his shortcomings"had to be "seen in lightof a course of events that
apparentlymade his mood oversensitive"(an "agitation"that,we already noted,
Valck denied). On 13 August 1877, the Governor-Generalaccorded Valck "a
second chance," on an argument borrowed word for word from Levyssohn's
addendum. Neither Levyssohnnor the Governor-Generalrefer to what Valck
deemed inhumane about the conduct of Deli's Europeans.30
Anatomyof a Murder:
Narratives of Revenge
and Logics of Blame
On the nightof 17 October 1876, several membersof the Luhmann

familywere murdered. Valckimmediatelytelegrammedthe SecretaryGeneral in
Java about the event,statingonlythe following:
Offenders in
4 Gayosthoughmostlykampongpeople.Appearsto be privateretaliation
theaffair,
Malayankicked byLuhmann.
Alsoissueabout forest.
clearing As forpolitical
motive,thereseemstobe none.
Valck'sbriefreportfivedays later to the East Coast Resident,then stillposted in

Bengkalis far to the south, again stressedLuhmann's actions: "It appeared that
by his own confessionMr. Luhmann had once kicked a Malay and was told the

next day that this could have serious consequences for him." Here, too, Valck
notes thatthe attackerswere mostly"fromtheneighboringvillagesand thatthere
were onlyfourGayos and a fewBataks among them."In all, Valckarrestedthirty
suspects"who were in possessionof bloody weapons and clothing.Many of them
were recognized by the daughter of Mr. Luhmann and a fewby [his brother-in-
law] Mr. Revening."
With these synopticstatementsValck conveys several points: 1) that Luh-
mann was responsible for what happened to him; 2) that more Malays were
involvedin the attack,althoughGayos were among the assailants;and 3) thatthe
assault was an act of "privaterevenge"and not "political,"therebysignalingto his
superiorsthatit was neitherinstigatedbyAcehnese supportersnor part of a col-
lectiveassault on Europeans.
His telegramalready disruptstwo clearlydemarcated categoriesof colonial
logic on the East Coast in 1876. To say thatan assault was a privatematterwas,
in planterparlance, to discountitsimport.For example, the 1925 Deli Plantation
Company memorial volume, summarizingassaults fifty years earlier,notes that
"people were constantlyuncertainas to whetheran assault should be considered
as 'hostile'or indeed onlyas 'rapacious' and 'cutthroat,'thoughin factpeople lost
goods and lives in both cases."31But Valck was unwillingto dismissthe violence
of personal revenge so lightly.He saw a patterning to it and, in his subsequent
report,told a storythatdescribesa climateof violenceand retaliation,extending
beyond the specificitiesof the Luhmann familymurderalone.
Valck'saccount of the murder,writtena week later,takeson a different cast.32
Here he providesa carefuldescriptionof the attack,withthe firstblow inflicted
by "a Gayo, thick-set,dark and witha mustachewho was employed at the estate
as a woodcutter";he also gives detailed attentionto the specificmutilationsof
each of the Luhmann familymembers.I provide his narrativehere not to turn
violence into voyeurismbut because his descriptionand tone contrastso sharply
withhis own commentaryupon it:
Mr.Browne[Mrs.Luhmann'sbrother] walkedaroundthehouseand foundhissisterlying
on theground.She wasslashedin herneck,head,chest,stomach, and bothlegs.Having
gatheredsomemenhe broughtherhomewiththem.It wasa terrible sight.In therather
widepassagethatformedsomesortof indoorverandalaythebodyof theeldestchild,
Johny, aboutnineyearsofage. Withone cuttheheadhad beenseveredoffthebody.Next
to himlaythecorpseof littleMarthe,aboutfiveyearsof age. The rightarmhad been
severedalmostcompletely fromthebodybya slashthathad openedthechest.All kinds
ofobjectsand clotheswerealsospreadon thefloor,
and inbothfrontroomsofthehouse.
In theone Mr.and Mrs.Luhmannuse as a bedrooma woodenchestin whichthemoney
was kepthad been cutopen and themoney,approximately 800 dollars,was gone. The
fifteen-month-oldyoungestchildwhoslepttherewasleftunharmed.The roomnexttoit
had also been ransacked,but theotherbackroom,whereMr.Brownelived,remained
untouched,althougha watchwason thetable.This gentleman, afterhelpingtobringhis
sisterinside,wentto getMr.Revening,whowas lyingon thefrontindoorverandaand
162 REPRESENTATIONS

whose wounds he bound up as well as possible.There were no less than fourteenof them,
withone above bothbrows,one over thechest,and one overthe stomachseemingthe most
serious. The righthand was severed at the wrist.This gentlemanwas a complete blood-
bath. Later, littleClara said thatthe criminalsput her in a crate and hit her several times
on her neck withthe flatside of a weapon and threatenedto killher ifshe did nottellthem
immediatelywhere the moneywas kept.As soon as she told themthe criminalsforcedthe
strongboxopen and she ran away.
This gruesomely vivid description (taken from Luhmann's brother-in-law's

observations) juxtaposes with what follows:
One peculiaritywas thata couple of littleManila dogs, whichusuallybegan barkingat the
slightestsound, had remained completely silent; and another thing, without anyone
noticing,all around the Chinese barracksthere had been traps set to injure the feet of
those who wentoutside when theyheard the noise.
Why is this interjection here? Is Valck implying that the assault was carefully
planned but that the bulk of the coolie population was uninvolved? Or do these
"peculiarities" invoke the mystical powers of the Asian assailants? Was this a care-
fully arranged theft or an ad hominem attack on Luhmann? Valck continues:
According to Mr. Luhmann and Mr. Browne, the attackersonly injured the formerin
order to scare him and his familyoffso theywould leave the house to allow [theassailants]
free play in ransackingthe house, whichseemstomeratherunlikely.Accordingto them,Mr.
Reveninghad been injured so terriblybecause he defended himself,whileMrs. Luhmann
and Johnywere killed because theyknewmanyof the attackers,and they[the assailants]
feared thatlatertheywould point themout as the offenders.(Emphasis added)
Valck rejects this analysis outright and offers a more damning hypothesis, which
he also alludes to in correspondence with Levyssohn:
However,the question thenariseswhylittleMarthe,who was onlyfiveyearsold, was killed

and her three-year-oldsister,who, as later became evident,knew almost all of the crimi-
nals, had been spared? I feel that once blood had flowed,the tigernature [tigernatuur],
characteristicof the Malay, came out and blood thirst[bloeddorst]should be seen as the
cause of the crime,which,bythe way,was committedin a stateof excitement,so itis easier
to excuse than the horrors[gruwelen] thatare said to be done in cold blood by so-called
civilized Europeans on their plantations to the helpless Chinese coolies, horrors that
cannot be unknownto the Malay because theywere committedover such a long period of
time.
Valck's account here is both ambiguous and contradictory. He constructs a

scenario of premeditated action and sensible revenge but explains the "cause" of
the crime and its viciousness by appeal to the atavistic "tiger nature" of uncivilized
Malays. But it is unclear why the "bloodthirsty" Malays are bent on revenge when
it is the Chinese coolies who have been victimized by the planters but here are
"helpless" and barred from leaving their houses with "traps" set by the assailants.
Racial psychologizing shapes his argument; hot-blooded native rage contrasts
The Politicsof Colonial Narratives 163

withcold-blooded and calculated murder by Europeans. The excesses of native
violence are explicable withina logic thatexpects
nativesto expressshortburstsof
passion, contrasting the sustained long-rangereasoningon whichEuropean vio-
lence rests.33But Valckdeploys thisracistlogic to turnthe prevailingexplanation
of violence on its head. He argues thatthe killing"in cold blood" done by Euro-
peans was "the horror" (gruwel)that preceded all other violence and allowed
forit.
Valck's grislyreport on the murders was not an end in itself.His graphic
narrative directlyprepares the reader for his claim that Luhmann and his
brother-in-law's interpretationsare incorrect.The assault could not be reduced
to a bungled theftbecause "a watch on the table was untouched." The assault
musthave been directedat Luhmann because such excessiveviolencecould only
be reactiveto the planters'violence itself-or, put more pointedly,as Valck did,
"crueltybreeds cruelty."In the marginof the text,the Ministerof the Colonies in
the Hague, to whom the reportwas addressed, inserted:"What is meant bythis?
This has to be clarified."
Anticipatingthe query,Valck sets out to clarifythe situation.Abruptlycur-
tailingthe discussion of Luhmann, he shiftsto a diarylikechronicleof his own
activitieson the day in question, providinganother contextfor the storyhe is
intentto tell:
The 17th,thedayoftheattackon theSoengeiDiskiestate,I had leftforPadangBoelan,

in ordertogo to SoengeiSipoetthefollowingmorning toinvestigate
thematterofretired
in the IndiesArmy,Mr.NederveenPieterse,who,amongother
captainof theartillery
wasaccusedofflogging
things, severalChinesetodeath,beatingotherswitha rottanwhip,
and usinga copypressto findoutthetruthwhenhisestatehad beenburglarized.
Copy presses were a preferredweapon of torture.By crankingthe two metal

surfacesof the press together,thevictim'sfingerswere initiallycrushed and even-
tuallybroken. From Valck'sletterto Levyssohnwe alreadyknowthatthiswas the
same Pieterse whose harsh treatmentof workershad been covered up by Deli's
European elite-and the same individualto whom the Indies armyhad awarded
a distinguishedmilitarymedal six yearsearlier.34 It is also the same Pietersewhose
presence as a jury member in the European court had made Valck feel, as he
wrote Levyssohn, that he could not convene a session withoutit being a "slap in
the face of the court'sdignity."There is no officialcorrespondencethatdefends
Pieterse or thatventuresto describe his crimes.Only Valck'sletterspecifiesPie-
terse'sactions: if not seen as a substantiationof his larger story,the referenceto
this poorly regarded planter would seem inappropriate if not gratuitous.Pie-
terse'sbehavior was condemned as exceptionalby some officials, but it was Valck
who was later admonished for having "lost perspective. . . [having]judged all
planters alike and considered all equally as cruel as Mr. Nederveen Pieterse."35
164 REPRESENTATIONS

Pieterse's placement here underscores Valck's central theme that "cruelty
breeds cruelty."It also resituatesthe contextof the assault,contrastingthe mili-
taryreportsthatemphasized the Gayos' role in the attack.While workingon the
Pieterse case, Valck reports that he received two communications,a telegram
fromthe directorof the powerfulDeli Company about the Luhmann assault and
a letterfrom Maj. Demmeni citingGayos as the perpetrators.He says that he
immediatelyleftforthe Soengei Diski estatebut was preventedfromgettingany
furtherthan the neighboringKloempang estatebecause roads were flooded and
bridges were down. He presents this as a fortunatemishap that gave him the
opportunityto learn from"Count van BenthemTecklenburgRheda severalfacts
thatlater appeared to be of importancein trackingdown the criminals."
Valck'sreferenceto the planter'stitledand fullfamilyname mayhave served
to give these "facts"additional authority.But it is the reliabilityof his ownjudg-
ment he seeks to affirm, justifyinghis prudent decision not to go directlyto the
scene of the crimebut to stayat Van Benthem'sforan extra day.36The reader is
leftin suspense, since Valck does not say what he learned. Instead, he describes
his arrival at Soengei Diski the followingmorning where, armed with these
"facts,"he confrontsLuhmann. Interruptinghis account withLuhmann's nar-
rative, Valck enhances his own credibilityby showing the implausibilityof
Luhmann's explanation:
In connectionwithwhatI had alreadybeen toldat Kloempang,I askedMr.Luhmann
whatcouldhavebeenthereasonfortheattackon hisplantation and forthemurdersof
his family.He answeredthattherecould nothavebeen anyreasonbecausehe and his
subordinatesalwaystreatedhis Chinese,Battaks,Gayo,and Malayswiththe utmost
humanity [demeeste The previousdayhe had evengivensomeofthem
menschlievendheid].
money on the occasionoftheend oftheMohammedan fast.Then I saidtohimthatso far
all theplanterswhoseplantations had been attackedhad givenme thesameassurance,
exceptforMr.Droop who admittedhavinginsulteda Gayoheadman;thattherewere
rumors[geruchten],however,aboutthingsthathad happenedon eachofthoseplantations
thatintheeyesofuncivilized peoplewouldmotivate thatI had torelyon those
retaliation;
statements and had totakemeasuresaccordingly;
[verklaringen] thatthosemeasuresmight
havebeenwrongbecauseoffalseinformation, and thatthemisery thatstruckthemmight
have been preventedif theotherplanterswouldhavetoldthetruth;thatI also heard
somethingabout him,Mr. Luhmann,thatcould have caused the attackat his estate,
becausepeople had toldme thathe had kickeda Malayor hithimwitha slipper,a fact
thatI had heardfroma reliableperson,whoin turncouldpointoutthepeoplethathad
toldhim.
Rumors here are transformedinto actionableevidence bya slightof hand. Valck

underscores his argument by quoting his own words in conversation with
Luhmann. He recountshow he reprimandsLuhmann forwithholdinginforma-
tion,and withhim all the planters.He blames themforforcinghim to take these
reportare clearlylies. And,
rumorsas quotable statementsbecause the "facts"they

whiledirectinghis accusationsat Europeans, he invokesthe"uncivilized"instincts
motivatingnative retaliation-affirmingthe veryculturaldistinctionsand racial
principlesthatgirded Dutch (and his own) authority.
In self-defenseLuhmann recountsthe following:
thata certainDjamal fromthe Kloempangvillagewhowas laborcrewleaderof seven
Battaks[sic]cameto himon September11thto talkaboutthejob ofcuttingsomewood.
Djamalhad alreadyreceivedan advancetohirewoodcutters. Whenhe cametotalkabout
thematterthereweremorepeoplewithhimin additionto theBattaks.Theytoowanted
a similarcontract.
Luhmannwaswillingto pay30 dollarspersquare,butDjamalwanted
35 dollars,althoughthewoodwassmalland easytohandle.Mr.Luhmannrefusedto pay
theextrasumbutfinally gavein; thenthey towork
refused at all. Havingpaid theadvance
Mr.Luhmanngotmad and said: "Youthinkyoucan foolme? If yourefuseto workI'll
sendyoutojail."Then one oftheMalayslaughedat Mr.Luhmann,whothenkickedhim,
butas he states,withouthitting
him[sic].By a Malayversion. . . theMalaywas kicked
downthestairs.Mad,themanranoff,and Djamalsaidto Mr.Luhmann:"Kenapatoean
bikinbegitoeiniboekantoeanpoenjaorang,kalaudia bikinsalahsajajangbolehpoekoel"
[Whydidyoudo that,sir,he isnotyourman,ifhe didsomething wrongit'smethatshould
hithim].The nextdayDjamalreturnedto saythatthemanhad complainedto Mr.van
Benthemunderwhoseprotection he puthimself,
and thatMr.Luhmannshouldexpect
trouble[soesah].
At one level, Luhmann's actions seem motivatedby a similarimpulse to that of

George Orwell's districtofficerin his story"Shootingan Elephant": both feared
to look the fool and responded with brutalityto defend their own tenuous
standing and that of their European compatriots.In Orwell's storythat fear
prompted the pointlessshootingof an elephant; in Luhmann's case, his family
were the victimsof his violentdeeds. However,it is difficult
to tellwhere Valck's
storybegins and Luhmann's ends. Valck never grantsLuhmann a first-person
voice but tellshis storyforhim,referringthroughoutto "Mr.Luhmann" and "this
gentleman."In contrastDjamal, the Malay foreman,speaks in his own-albeit
carefullyexcerpted-words. This is one of the few Malay language entries in
Valck'snarrative(or forthatmatterin any otherof the reports).37
Why does Luhmann report Djamal's words in Malay, and why does Valck
choose to repeat them?Perhaps because thisbracketedMalay testimonyunder-
writesand authenticatestheir separate claims: 1) according to Luhmann, that
physicalbeatings of coolies were accepted and carried out by Asian overseers,
therebyjustifyinghis own nonexceptionalbehavior; and 2) according to Valck,
that Luhmann transgresseda basic prescriptionfor labor control: namely,that
estate managers should neither reprimand nor directlygive orders to native
workers-the moral being thatiftheydid so theywould surelypay.
Valck'snarrativecontinueswithhis day of inquiry,takingup firstvan Ben-
them'sstoryand then returningto Luhmann's account:
LaterMr.vanBenthemtoldme thatindeedsomeMalaysdid comecomplaining thatMr.
Luhmannhad kickedone ofthemandthatheadvisedthemtogo toLaboeantothedistrict
166 REPRESENTATIONS

officerand thathe could be sure thatifthatgentlemanwas wronghe would be punished,
even if he [the Malay] would not be aware of it. A fewdays later,he [van Benthem] met
one of the complainers and inquired whetherthe abused person had gone to Laboean,
and was told that he firstwanted to complain to the village head of Hamperan Perak.
Among those who attacked the Luhmann plantationwere only four Gayos. Those men
were employed withhim since August 22, and there was no faultto be found withtheir
behavior,except that theyworked slowly.Together withtwelveBataks and three Malays
they belonged to the crew controlled by the foremen Deli and Saman, both from
Kloempang.
Finally Mr. Luhmann told me that a certain Datoe Gembang,38head of the nearby
village of Sala Moeda, mighthave had a share in the attackon his plantation.
Van Benthem's advice seems at the least naive and even ludicrous within the
prevailing judicial system in the plantation belt. How feasible could it have been
for a laborer to leave work and travel at least two days round trip to complain to
a Dutch officer about a "kick"? Or perhaps this exchange suggests that a "kick,"
common fare for immigrant estate workers with nowhere to vent their grievances,
was not common for those Malays with sustained ties in the surrounding villages
and with more tenuous affiliationsto the estates.
The names of the foremen Saman and Deli do not surface again for another
month. Luhmann's story refocuses the causes of the murder around the disgrun-
tled Datoe Gembang, to whom Luhmann twice refused to extend a cash loan for
harvesting tobacco, planted at his own expense. By Luhmann's account, after
Datoe Gembang made unsuccessful efforts to sell his tobacco at several other
estates, he disappeared to Langkat for some time, and within a few days of his
return the attack took place. Whether Valck is quoting Luhmann is again difficult
to tell. The only indication that he might be is a temporal shift as the narrative
returns to the day of his inquiry and his own story:
In the late afternoon [of 18 October 1876], the Radja Moeda of Deli arrived witha few
Chinese policemen fromthe sultan. Datoe Gembang was sent forimmediatelyand came,
withseven followersarmed withswords. He declared thathe knew nothingof the affair
(as he told Maj. Demmeni the previous day) and verymuch regrettedthatit happened.
He had nothing whatsoeverto say in answer to our interrogations.While we were still
questioninghim,one of mymen noticed a small bloodstainon the sword scabbard of one
of Datoe Gembang's followersand tookit fromhim.Afterclose inspectionall the weapons
or clothesof Datoe Gembang's seven followersappeared to have tracesof blood, and they
were thus arrested.
Having a clue it was easier to trackdown other persons,especiallyafterthe arrivalof
Deli's sheriffLucas and a fewpolicemen. From Kloempang he broughta certainDjamal,
whom he stronglysuspected of having taken part in the attack.All those who had been
employed by Mr. Luhmann and who lived nearbywere arrested,and on most of them
tracesof blood were found on theirweapons and clothing.It wascuriousthatnobody seemed
tohavebothered tocoverup thetracesofthemurder.(Emphasis added)
This "curiosity" could be read as the punchline in Valck's story. No one covered
up the murder because they did not want to; they intended for some people to

know (other workers,other villagers,other planters?)who did it and why.Or it
could be read to frame another plot. They did not cover up the crime because
theyhad no needto; the assailantswere so strongin numberand so firmly backed
by a broader antiplanter sentiment thatthey had no fear of recrimination.
Valck
reads their bloodstained weapons one way; other districtofficers,militaryper-
sonnel, and some planterswere to read it another.
We began reading Valck's account convinced that his storycaptured some
underlyingtruth,that Luhmann deserved what he got, thatrevenge not "polit-
ical" motivationwas at issue, and that Luhmann was hiding the "facts."But as
Valck's narrativedevelops, the introductionof new actors makes the castingof
blame more difficult.What connects the Chinese coolies workingon the estate
(who are said to play no part in thisassault),Datoe Gembang fromSala [Sialang]
Moeda village, those alleged assailants from Kloempang, and the four Gayos?
Were there nineteen assailants from Kloempang, as van Benthem's informant
counted, only seven fromSialang Moeda, or more than thirty, the number that
Valckarrested?How did so manymen of such diverseorigin,domicile,and estate
engagement come togetherand under whom, and then dare notto hide their
crime?
Valck ends his reportwiththe "well-foundedremark"of a Malay withwhom
he spoke,
to rob,becausein thatcase it would
thatit could nothavebeen theassailantsintention
havebeenmucheasierforthemtoattackand overpower one oftheconvoystransporting
moneyfortheestatesand travelingundersmallescortthantofirstdo hardlaborforsome
timeand onlythenattacktheestate.Therefore,I stillfeelthatrevenge[wraak] was the
causeofeveryone ofthecommitted crimes.
Several categories begin to collide. Unlike the planters' view, Valck's schema
makes robberyretributionforjustifiedgrievance,and his effortto fleshout the
contextof retaliationstructuresboth the chronologyand logic of his argument.
Still,his adherence to the officialunderstandingof "political"-actions of direct
threatto governmentauthority-remainslargelyintact.However,his beliefin a
collectivethreat to European security,based on patternedrevenge, falls some-
where between the personal and political,anticipatinghis failed challenge to
those categoriesthemselves.
The Genealogy of the Murder:

Patternsof Protest
Valck'sinterpretationof the Luhmann familymurderwas in keeping

withhis more general contentionthatplanterswere attributingestateassaultsto
external Aceh influenceto deflectattentionfromthe internaltensionsin their
own affairs.He firstarticulatedthispositiona monthearlierin September,when
168 REPRESENTATIONS

othergovernment,military, and estatepersonnelwere blaminga seriesof attacks
on the Droop, Peyer,and Baay estateson Gayo gangs in league withAceh resis-
tance fighters.
On 6 September 1876 Valck reported that Droop, administratorof the van
Sluijs estateon the Babalan River,was assaulted byGayos,and much of the estate
propertywas destroyed.Droop had recentlyhireda certainPanglimaLaoet who,
withhis twenty-seven men, had come to him lookingforwork.39Droop engaged
them and paid an advance to build a road. Several days later another fourteen
Gayosled bya certainRadjah Petambiangwere also engaged under similarterms.
"The trouble began" when Panglima Laoet asked for a personal loan of several
dollars. Hearing about this,Radjah Petambiangdemanded that Droop give the
same to every Gayo. Droop explained that it was a personal loan and refused.
Then Droop went back in his house, and when Radja Petambiangattemptedto
followDroop turnedaround, callinghima "radja mawas"(monkeyprince). Valck
suggeststhatthe insultwas not taken lightly.Droop was warned byan Acehnese
livingon the estate to beware of the Gayos and not to go out unarmed because
Petambiang was intent on murdering him. The following day Petambiang
returned to tell Droop the work had been completed and demanded his pay.
Droop did not agree but "decided to consider the workfinished"as long as they
returnedhis tools. Droop was again warned thatthe Gayos were out to attackhis
estate and murder him that night.Droop only prepared his weapons and, not
trustinghis subordinateswithhis fourguns, kept the weapons in the house:
The Gayosappeared thatnightand began cuttingthroughthe plaitedroofingwhen
Droop firedhispistolat themfourtimes.SeveralGayowerewoundedand he wascutby
a saberacrossthehand.Whentheassailantswithdrew to geta torchto setthehouseon
fire,Droop escaped. Accordingto Droop the Gayosattackedhimwhilecalling"Labil-
loellah,"thecommonMuslimwarcry,and itwasclearfromthisthattheywerein contact
withtheAcehneseand had comewiththeintentofmurdering him,a European.Thislast
partseemedstrangetomerightaway,becauseifthiswastheirintentitcertainly
wouldnothavebeen
to work
necessary first formanydaysin a row; theycouldhavejust killedhim.(Emphasis added)
This final sentence offersthe same reasoning expressed in the "well-founded

remark"by the Malay informant,quoted by Valck in the Luhmann murder. In
both cases, Valck uses it to confirmthe sound reasoning of his own claims. But
the question remains,Whydid these Gayos call out a "Muslimwar cry"?Was this
play on the planters'fears of an Acehnese assault drawn fromthe cultural tool
kitin whichprotestwas expressed,or was somethingelse transpiringin Deli that
Valck'sfixationon the planters'abuses could not allow? Perhaps Valck thought
that to entertainthe possibilitythat a more diffuseimpulse against Dutch rule
was underfootwould weaken his case that the planters,and not the assailants,
were responsibleforendangeringDutch authority.
In the meantime Locker de Bruine, without Valck'sreportin hand, sent the
following briefcommunique to the Governor-General:

Fromprivateinformation, butfroma veryreliablesource,I wasinformedthaton one of
theLangkatplantations tookplaceduringwhicha Europeanadministrator
disturbances
was woundedand somedamagewasdone to personalproperty. Accordingto myinfor-
mant,theoffenders weresomeoftheGayosworking on theestateswho,becauseofinju-
dicious actionby the administrator,took bitterrevengeon him and who afterward
disappeared to theirown land withoutcreatingfurtherdisturbances.
It seemsto me,
therefore,that thisfacthas no politicalsignificance
whatsoever.... I have not yetreceived a
ofDeli [Valck]40
reportfromtheAssistant-Resident
De Bruine pretendsto a knowledgethatbarelymasks his unfamiliarity withthe

circumstancesof the assault. He blames Valck for not filinga report sooner,
although Valck's preliminaryreport is actually writtenfour days before de
Bruine's. Valck'ssecond lengthyreporton the Droop assault a monthlater-only
fivedays before he reportsthe Luhmann story,and four days before he writes
Levyssohn-makes his case againstthe plantersagain. He categoricallydismisses
the reportbythe militarycommander,Vogel,who both"suspectsinstigationfrom
Acehnese quarters"and who argues thatthe assaultson the Baay estateincluded
"four Atjehnese [who] took employ withthe purpose of sedition."41Vogel notes
that he has heard from "various quarters" that Heer Peyer badly treated his
workers,whereas Heer Baay did not, providingfurther"proof" that political
instigationand not revenge was the common denominator that explained the
events.42Demmeni's report makes a similarif somewhat more equivocal case.
Writing to his commander-in-chiefon 28 October-eleven days after the
Luhmann murder-Demmeni states that he will only present "the facts and
rumorsbecause thereare such discrepantinterpretations of the events."43
In both Demmeni's and Valck'saccounts thereis a curious and unremarked
omission.Both failto note thatthe planters'fearare notfueled bythe assaultsper
se but bythe numerous "friendlynatives"who repeatedlywarn themof possible
dangers. Demmeni reportsthat the planterJ. Cramer is "warned twicethat he
should not leave his estatebecause of the danger outside"; the planterAugust is
"advised by a Batak not to go out at nightwithouta bayonet"; and Droop "is
warned by an Acehnese livingon the estateto beware of the Gayos."44Demmeni
attributesthese fears to "exaggerationin all thisnews" and calls a meetingwith
local Malay authorities,who tell him pointedlythatthe villagesof Salah Moeda
and Kloempang "are not to be trusted."But in answer to his question as to who
was leading the "unruliness,"theyanswer,"No one fromDeli, theinfluencecomes
fromoutside."45These elaborationsof fear are multilocal,but who is playingoff
whose violence and fears of it is unaddressed. Demmeni questions whetherthe
assaults should be seen as part of a largerconspiratorialeffortor as perpetrated
by"common thievesas occurs elsewhere."Nevertheless,based on rumorsof pos-
sible insurgence, he requests 128 reinforcementsfor the 90 armed soldiers
already stationedin Deli to protectthe planters.
Valck stillresistscastingthe assaultsas expressionsof subversion.Instead he
argues formore obvious and plausible parallels to draw betweenthem:
170 REPRESENTATIONS

I feel I should mentionthe connection I notice between the eventsat the Droop, Peyer,
and Baay plantations.As I informedYour Honour in myletterof September 6, no. 520,
Mr. Droop had insulted the head of the Gayos who worked for him.... His plantation
was ransacked; the emptystrongboxwas removed fromthe house by the Gayos; and he
was attackedand injured whilethe house was set afire.... As faras I am informedat this
moment,the Gayos employed at the Perseveranceestatewere dissatisfiedwiththe wages
Mr. Peyerhad given them,and theywere all allegedlybeaten by Mr. Buck. Those Gayos
as well as those workingforMr. Droop, not knowingwhereto claimjustice, probablytook
the law into theirown hands and took revengeby killingMr. Buck.... Mr. Sijthoffalleg-
edly had beaten the Gayos too. They also took revengeon him. It is curious thattheydid
not attackthe estates of [. . .] and Shaw situatedon the road in frontof the Baay estate,
nor the Ayer Ham estateor thatof Mr. Menzies in whose vicinitytheyremained forabout
a day. They also dwelled for days near the plantationsof the gentlemenO'Flaherty,de
Munnick,and Hirschmanwithoutdoing themany harm. Their attacksoccurred so unex-
pectedlythatiftheyhad intended to attack,no one would have been safe.46
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]latertold me repeatedlythata native[inlander],
not belonging on his estate,had told him thatsame day thathe had nothingto fear since
nobody had anythingagainsthim.
Again Valck underlines that the attacks were strategically directed and planned.
He does not comment on the perhaps more unsettling implication that many
more inlanders (natives) knew in advance about the assaults than those who par-
ticipated in them.
Exasperated with the invocation of Aceh influence, Valck states his conclusion
in no uncertain terms:
I feel that no one witha trace of common sense, afterbeing informedof the above, will
believe thatAtjeh influenceis behind those attacksand thateveryonemustagree thatthey
have resultedfrompersonal feuds. Only the interestedpartiesat the attackedplantations
unpleasant as it mustbe to findthe blame put back on themselvesor their
feel differently,
subordinates.The truthof the matterwillbecome evidentlater.
Here, Valck's reference to "personal feuds" serves not to placate fears of unrest
but to warn of the jeopardies to Deli's European community at large:
Afterall the above, it need not be said thatwhen itcomes to retaliationno one is safe,even
ifone were surrounded bya completebattalion.... We onlyagreed to leave a detachment
withplantersin the Langkat lowlandswho were mostafraid.This was merelydone to calm
the feelingsof these gentlemen.
No government,no matterhow well organized, no police force,no matterhow dili-
gent,no troops,no matterhow numerousare capable of securingthe plantersfromattacks
like those which have taken place. Fairness and justice toward their subordinates will
alwaysbe the best weapons againstthem.
The Luhmann family murder stood out from other similar attacks because the
victims were "innocents," a woman and children, but this is not Valck's primary

concern. He is focused on Luhmann's guiltand thereforeinvokesthe exigencies
of a situationthatgo beyondwhathe learned fromthe "facts"of thatcase alone.47
From accountsof the assaultsthatpreceded itand thosethatfollowed,we can see
thatstoriesabout the murderof whiteswere shaped byone of twoplots.We have
noted that attackswere considered "personal" or "political,""criminal"or "sub-
versive,"with these conceived as mutuallyexclusive categories. Based on these
priordistinctions,the assaultswere classifiedeitheras retaliationsagainstan indi-
vidual who happenedto be European or expressionsof an orchestratedassault on
generic Europeans toutcourt.These narratives,however,allow for another sce-
nario, the possibilitynot only thatthe personal was highlypoliticalbut thatout-
rage at planterabuses-be theyphysical,financial,moral,or psychological-were
shared bydifferentmembersof Deli's subjectpopulation who metthe affrontsof
the estateeconomyand itsviolencebyunderminingitsorder in various ways.
This is not to suggest that a metanarrativereducing these events to "resis-
tance" captures the complexitiesof thisviolencebut to understandthatthe cate-
gories available to mostcolonial officialsconstrainedwhattheycould envisionas
a possible plot. By bracketingthese dichotomies,we can explore the possibility
thatrumor,arson, murder,and theftmade up a range of responses,subverting
the assumptionson which planter autonomyand authoritywere based. This is
not to argue that theyalwaysdid so, nor thatthiswas their"real" intent.Nor is
thisa circuitouswayof constructinga coherent,unifiedalternativestory.On the
contrary,I thinkitallowsthe multipleinterfacesof plantationcultureto reemerge
as I thinktheywere more likelylived; not in a dualisticallydivided worldof plan-
tation versus hinterland,personal versus political acts, criminalversus revolu-
tionaryintent,but in a varied set of arrangementsand negotiations.Individual
Gayos,Javanese,Malays,and Batak were alternatelyattractedand repelled bythe
plantations'demands forlabor,land, and services.Drawn bythissphere of power
(and possible empowerment),theyenlistedin the plantationeconomyby varied
means and exited withvariabledegrees of success.
these assaults ill fitthe European caricatureof plantationvio-
Significantly,
lence carried out bysuppliant,dog-headed coolies who, in response to whatthey
considered verbalor physicalabuse, would venttheirimpotencebygoing amok.48
On the contrary,in each case European planterswere pittedagainsthard-nosed
Batak, Malay,and Gayo negotiatorswho were assured whattheirproper payment
should be and self-confident enough to make reasonable demands and even to
press extravagant claims. As we have seen, Gayo and Batak woodcuttersnot only
defended theirdue on agreed-upon pieceworkbut redefinedwhattheirdue was
in mid process,when the workwas already in progress.Deli plantersin the late
1870s confronted a population with disparate investmentsin the colonial
economy,but those disparitiesdid not divide clearlyalong ethniclines.
European estate personnel never seemed sure whetherthe assaults were by
Gayos employed by them or by Gayos withno connectionsto the estates.While
172 REPRESENTATIONS

manyof the Malay aristocracybuttressedand profitedfromthe estateindustry's
expansion, there were many othersof local or foreignoriginwho continued to
contestthe servicestheysold and thetermsof thosearrangements.They directed
theirviolence at Europeans but also at thoseJavanese,Malays, and Bataks who
succumbed to and supported the economicand politicalinequitiesof Dutch rule.
Even beforethe Luhmann murder,aJavanese informanttold Demmeni that"the
Gayos plan to kill the Europeans as well as theJavanese in league withthem."49
But Ga, his Gayo informantfromKampong Gala, confirmedthe veryopposite:
namely,thatthe Gayo "had nothingagainstthe Europeans, theywere good; the
Gayos onlywanted to returnto theirown lands withmoneyin hand."50
Rumors of Rampage,
Forest Fortresses,
and Robber Gangs
The Luhmann familymurderwas notoverwiththeburialof itsvictims

or with Valck'sreport. Over the next few weeks, officialcorrespondence about
the continuingnumber of assaults in Langkat invoked the name of Luhmann
and his suspectedassailantsat everyturn.But bymid November(onlya fewweeks
later),the name of Datoe Gembang and thoseof the otherthirtysuspectsinitially
arrested were no longer central to these stories.More militarypatrols coupled
withincreased recruitmentof nativespies in the villagessurroundingthe estates
turnedup new kindsof evidenceand thusa new causal constructionof theevents.
Native spies informedMaj. Demmeni that theyhad found armed fortifications
(benting)in the forest,occupied and led by a certain Panglima Selan, "a Gayo,
feared by the local Bataks." Resident Locker de Bruine's 25 November letterto
the Governor-Generalcites a "captured" coolie found in one of the foresthide-
outs who confirmedthatPanglima Selan had made raids on the Baay and Peyer
plantations,on Luhmann's estate,and on manyothers.5'
Valck's 11 November reporton the discoveryof the bentingis troubled and
bewildered. Foresthideouts do not fithis plot. He doubts thatthe bentings exist,
and goes witha militaryconvoy to see Panglima Selan's encampment for himself.
He learns that two lettershave been discovered there,addressed in German to
Luhmann. When he questions the local Malay heads about the encampmentshe
finds that they knew for at least six months about the existence of Panglima's
activitiesbut continued to reportrust(peace) in theirdistrictsnevertheless.
Valck's confidence in his own analysis is shaken. He wonders whetherthe
Malay chiefsare powerlessto controlthe Gayos or, as he thinksmore likely,that
the chiefswere in complicitywiththem.When a Dutch militaryenvoyis sent to
destroythe fortifications,he reportsthatvillagersprofessedgreatreliefto be rid
of Panglima and his gang, but Valck no longer knows what to believe. Spies

reportingto Valck confirmthe existenceof two encampmentsthatseem to have
been there foras long as a year,occupied not onlybyGayos (of whichtherewere
about fifty to sixtyin one) but by an equal numberof "runawayChinese coolies"
(weggeloopen Chinesche koelies)as well as Bataks and Malays,of which"therewere
four, under the foreman named Deli fromKloempang, who had played a major
role in the Luhmann assault."52Valckadvises thatthe Malay leaders be replaced,
to makeroomfora different thesoonerthebetter.If not,protection
organization, ofthe
Europeans is out ofthe The
question. investigation pointedtoPanglimaSelanas themain
leader,ifnottheleaderof thosewhoattackedtheplantations belongingto Peyer,Baay,
and Luhmann.Those eventswerecausedbyrapacitymixedwithrancorbecauseof the
insultssuffered.
AsI havealways there
maintained, werenopolitics
involved.Gangleaderslike
Panglima Selan willalwayseasilyfind intheLangkatarea.Malcontents
followers arequite
plentifulhereas longas thereare planters
whomistreat theircoolies.Therewillalwaysbe
enoughdeserterswho are willing, ifonlyout of desperation,tojoin a gangleader.To
securepeaceinthisdistrict,itmustbe madesurethatthecooliesare notbeingmaltreated
bytheirmasters.(Emphasisadded)
The Resident's report to the Governor-General,based in large on Valck's

report,tellsa differentstorybyomittingsome partsand underscoringothers.He
argues that the villagers'refusalto reportPanglima Selan's presence was due to
theirfear of retribution,as was the Malay heads' similarsilence. According to a
Javaneseinformant,an importantGayo had been killedbythepolice in theearlier
assault on the Peyerestate,and his followerswere set on avenginghis death, first
by attackingthose villagerswho had assistedthe police and second by mounting
a full-scalerampage against the European planters"in general." He notes that
"people say" as manyas fivehundred Gayos were planninga mass assault on the
estatesforthe beginningof December.53
Locker de Bruine'sreportof tendayslateris increasinglytroubledbyrumors,
by the "agitatedatmospherein Deli, caused and fed by exaggerated representa-
tionsof the situationgivenbysome inhabitants."54 However,assured in a meeting
withplanterswho "mentionednot one word about theirconcern for the safety
and securityof their estates,"he concludes that "the recent rumors about the
region's dangerous politicalsituationshould not be taken seriously."Locker de
Bruine makes no referenceto maltreatmentof workersor to complicityon the
part of the Malay heads. But ifhis storyof random theftand nativerapacitywas
so convincingto his audience, and if he actuallybelieved it,thereis the question
as to whyhe took the subsequent measures he did.
First,he rejects Valck'sadvice to dismissthe native districtheads but seeks
ways to enlist their furthersupport in eliminatingboth the robber bands and
vagabondage. He recommendsthattheincreasednumberof governmentofficials
in Langkat be charged with"thetask[of] drillingour ideas of rule intothe chiefs'
heads by means of gentlepersuasion."55Second, he rejectsthe planters'proposal
to establisha permanent militarygarrisonin Deli, fearingthat the local rulers
174 REPRESENTATIONS

will "feel dismissed of theirresponsibilityfor maintainingpeace and order and
will side withthe Gayos" against the Dutch. Third, he requests authorizationto
send coolies back to theirmasters(contrathe Procurer-General'sedict) to curtail
the presence of excoolies roaming away from the estates.56And finally,in the
interestsof "peace and order,"he requests that the plantersissue a curfewfor
workers,keep "reliable"guards in the coolie barracksthroughoutthe night,and
enforcea pass systemallowingonly those withlettersof permissionto enter the
plantationbelt.57
Some of these measures could be construedas reasonable strategiesto deal
with"vagabonds" and "robber bands" if this is what theywere. But the overall
plan suggests that Locker de Bruine took the rumors of popular revolt more
seriouslythan his reportadmits.Each one of the measureswould effectively con-
strainand contain the movementof estate workers;interceptthe lines of com-
munication between Gayos, Malays, and estate resident workers; and impose
more stringentdisciplinarymeasures. No inquirywas made to investigatethe
reasons forthe "unrest"as viewedbythe workersthemselves.Like the firstcoolie
ordinance three years later, Locker de Bruine's strategywas to keep workers
bound to their contractsbut, as importantly, to keep them isolated and out of
trouble.
In a somewhatmodifiedversion,thisaccount becomes Deli's officialhistory,
in the formof W. H. M. Schadee's classicnarrative,published in 1919. Partsof it
are derived verbatimand withoutquotation fromthe officialColonial Annual
Report of 1877 (KoloniaalVerslag).It describesthe surge of unrestas follows:
In September[1876]therewereassaultson theTandemestatebelonging to Mr.Peyerand
van Gulichin whicha Europeansupervisor was killedand severalcoolieswerelessseri-
ouslyinjured.The thieves[roovers]tookalltheavailablemoneywiththem.The samething
happeneda daylateron theKwalaBegoemitestateof Mr.Baud. In OctobertheSoengei
Diskiestatewasattacked, butthistimenotbyGayosalonebutalso byBataksand Malays
fromtheneighboring villageofSialangMoeda.The wifeoftheplanter, Mr.J.Luhmann,
and histwochildrenweremurdered, whilehe and anotherhousemember wereseriously
wounded.The latterdied fromthewounda monthlater.Here tootheywereplundered.
Measureswereimmediately takento protecttheestates.Thankstothepolice,several
perpetratorsof theseassaults were apprehended.FourBataksand twoMalaysweresen-
tencedto death;sixothersto forcedlabor;thevillagehead of SialangMoeda wasexiled
forthreemonths.The principalculprit, Radjal[sic],diedin prison.It appearedlaterthat
thethreeassaultsmentioned abovehadoccurredunderthedirection ofa certainPanglima
Selan,a GayoverymuchfearedbytheBatakpopulation, whohad oftenmadethesedis-
trictsunsafeand whonowhad gatheredtogether a numberofhiscompatriots afterthey
had been dismissedfromtheAjerTawarestate.In Novemberour military tookwithout
theyhad erectedat Si Oempih-Oempih.
strugglea fortification Selan seemsto havefled
butmanyofthegoodsstolenfromSoengiDiskiwerefoundin hisquarters.58
Schadee's storyreduces the Luhmann familyassailants to a gang of itinerant

thieves.Valck'sconcern about Luhmann's behaviorand the more general uncer-

taintiesabout the relationshipbetweenvagabondage and assaultsare nowhereto
be found. Like manycolonial histories,Schadee's narrativecelebratesthe resto-
rationof order,withthe culpritsidentifiedand troublesovercome.
Anthony Reid has suggested that the aid provided by northernSumatra's
inland tribes"forAtjeh had nothingto do withthe beginningsof an 'Indonesian
consciousness,' but was simply an expression of their distrustof the foreign
invaders."59Reid's conclusionholds forsome of thesegroups,but itdoes not seem
to capture the nature of Gayo activities.Their assaults on the estatesexpressed
more than "distrustof the foreigninvaders"-they were directedat plantersand
their property,and at specificmembersamong them. The Gayo encampments
were not confinedto Aceh exiles but were peopled withMalays,Javanese, and
Chinese excoolies as well. While some workersmay have been taken by force,as
Locker de Bruine claimed, a larger numberseem to have lived in these encamp-
mentsby choice and for relativelylong periods of time.During those staysthey
seem to have raided the estatesfor food when theycould not get enough in the
villagesor could not gatherenough in the forest.
More discreditingstill to Locker de Bruine's storyof pure plunder and
rapacity by Gayo roving gangs-and thus to the version of it adopted by
Schadee-was thatthe attackswere not random. Valck argued thattheysystem-
aticallyoccurred on estates where workershad experienced serious maltreat-
ment, while neighboring planters in 'shooting distance' of the estate attacked
wentunharmed. Valck'spoint was thattherewere more than enough angryand
discontentedestate workersfor such typesas Panglima Selan to enlist.Whether
Panglima Selan was merelya cleverthiefwho dovetailedhis plunderingwiththe
desires of a coolie population eager for retaliationis difficultto assess. But the
sheer numberof independentmotivationsfortherecurrentassaultssuggeststhat
theycould not have reduced to theftalone.
Nor would the rumorshave made much sense. In November,Maj. Demmeni
reportedrumorsof Gayos and Bataks preparingfora rampage to wipe out Euro-
peans en masse. But no one knew if theywere eighty"Gayos" layingin wait or
eight hundred "Atjehnese" gatheringin the Batak highlands only four hours
fromthe densestconcentrationof Deli estates.60 Other reportscitedfivehundred
men in Gayoland making feasts in preparation for successive assaults on the
Langkat estates.Withinless than a week the rumorswere denied. Withobvious
pride, Demmeni reportedthathe had probablylocated its"source" in Laboehan
Deli itself.The rumorswere alleged by Demmeni to have been spread by family
members of the Malays fromKloempang and Sialang Moeda implicatedin the
Luhmann murder; Demmeni representedthe rumorsas an effortto impede the
investigationand to "win time."6'Or, he suggestsmore tentatively, the rumors
be
might true, with a assault
full-scale on Langkat being planned. In thisscenario,
rumors of Gayos in the southern plantationheartland of the Deli districtwere
merelya "distractingstrategy."In eithercase, "de paniek" was reigningin Deli,
176 REPRESENTATIONS

and Demmeni's officerswere deluged with planters' requests for protection,
although theydeemed it "unnecessary."62 Demmeni's daily reportsbetween 11
and 24 November waver: he maintainsthat"roofzucht"(rapacity)motivatedthe
assaults on Peyer and Luhmann,63but he then quotes a "verybelievable source"
who informshim that a full-scalerebellionis planned to take place in Deli two
monthshence.64
During the same week that Resident Locker de Bruine concluded that the
exaggerated representationof disorderon the East Coast was unjustified,Dem-
meni filedthe followingreport:
Afterthedisturbing newsconcerningDeli of the 16th[November],thefollowingnews
wascirculating
[bericht] amongtheplanters:
-the plantation Groben Nahrwasentirely plundered
-a fortificationwas erectedbyMalaysin SialangMoeda [thevillagefromwhich
someofLuhmann'sassailants came]
-Atjehnese and Gayosweregatheredat LaboeanDeli
-the estateofThompsonwasplunderedand he wasmurdered
-Malays, Javanese,and Bataksin the nexttwomonthsmaycome togetherand
revolt[oproer]and would murderall Europeansalong the wayfromSoengal to
LaboeanDeli
-Deli's Assistant-Resident
wasmurderedon histriptoSi OmpeyOmpey.
Assistant-ResidentValckwas,we know,notmurderedin Si Ompey Ompey,where

the Gayo encampment was located. In fact, he complained that he was so
exhausted fromthe trip that he never even participatedin the ambush. And a
full-scalecarnage of the Europeans never occurred. Maj. Demmeni was con-
vinced that Panglima Selan was a common thiefand in no way related to the
Acehnese troops who mightbe preparingan attackin Langkat. But then he was
no longer sure, nor were Locker de Bruine and Valck.
On Storytellingand the Hierarchies

of Colonial Credibility
What have we learned fromtheseaccounts?Whatquestionsarise from

a close reading of these narrativesthat mightotherwisenot have been asked?
Native assaults on European plantationpersonnel and propertycontinue to be
debated throughoutthe colonial period in similarterms:thedichotomiesof "per-
sonal" versus "political" and "criminals"versus "insurgents"remained right
throughthe national revolutionof 1945.65But in 1876 and 1877 the terrorof a
European slaughterwas neverrealized in Deli nor,as faras any sources indicate,
was it ever reallytried.
Was Valck merely a bungling bureaucrat or an antihero who never hap-
pened? How ordinarywere such challenges;how commonwere the Dekkers and
Valckswho dared to criticizetheirEuropean compatriotsin the Indies and then

were forcedto make rapid and unfeteddepartures?Dekker died in exile; Valck's
name disappears fromthestatearchivesin 1880 withouta trace,whileLuhmann's
name shows up in the Indies business gazeteer decades later as owner and oper-
ator of a good-sized rubberestate.66
The evidence of Valck'sbureaucraticcarelessnessis strong.When his suc-
cessor E. von Faber takes over as Assistant-Resident he reportsprison ledgers in
such disarraythat he can neitherfind records of the number of people in the
prison nor dossiers detailingthe lengthof theirsentencesnor even theircrimes.
Valck's predecessor, Hallewijn, may never have kept a register,but neitherdid
Valck take it upon himselfto startone. Faber reportedthatamong the fewdos-
siers he found was one for a prisoner who had been interned for over eleven
monthsfor a four-monthsentence. Levyssohn'sdefense of Valck on this point,
however,bore much weight.Valck was charged withfulfillingso manyjobs that
it was virtuallyimpossible,even for an efficientcivilservant,to handle manage-
ment of the court,prisons,concessions,and administrationall at one time.If we
considerthe sheer quantityof reportsthatValckfiledin a matterof days (remem-
bering that his letterto Levyssohnalone was thirtyhandwrittenpages), it is dif-
ficultto imagine how he had time to travel to the estates attacked, conduct
multipleinterviews,and completehis reportsbased on them.
The more serious charge against Valck by the Directorof the Civil Service,
however,was that he "totallymisjudged his relationshipto the Resident,either
keeping him completely in the dark about the most importantmattersthat
occurred in his districtor notifyinghim too late." But here too the case is not cut
and dry.Valck'sassessmentsof whatwas happening on theEast Coast were clearly
at odds withwhatthe Residentthoughtfitting to reportto the Governor-General.
Locker de Bruine's reputationrestedon his abilityto keep his residencyin "rust
en orde" (peace and order)-assaults caused by personal feuds or outside
Acehnese agitationwere disturbancesthatfitintothe categoriesalreadydefined.
Valck'scontentionwas more threatening:thattheviolencewas patternedand that
state complicityand leniencytoward the planterswas its cause. Valck may not
have "misjudged" his relationshipto the Residentat all. On the contrary,he may
have understood how deeply theywere at loggerheads,and how much evidence
he had to musterto back his unpopular claims.
There is some indicationthat Valck'sfamilyand personal historymay have
both prompted and discreditedthe kind of colonial storyhe chose to tell. His
fatherwas a high civil servantwhose career as Resident of Djogjakarta ended
withhis dismissalin 1837, almostthe same way as his son's fortyyearslater.67At
nineteen Valck enrolled in the prestigiousLeiden law school and was appointed
to the civil servicein 1861. While his career was withoutluster,Valck'spersonal
lifewas marked withan intensityof violence,incongruouswiththe social violence
and corruptionhe so condemned. In 1866 he became a controleur (districthead)
second class. Two yearslaterhe was reprimandedforchallengingan Indies army
178 REPRESENTATIONS

captain to a duel when theywere forbiddenbylaw.And in 1870 he "accidentally"
and fatallyshot his newlywed second wifewhen on holidayin Germany.68 When
his classmateLevyssohnwas already Directorof the Colonial Civil Service,Valck
was stillonlyin a middlingcolonial post as controleur firstclass.69
There are no referencesto Valck'spersonal lifeand earliercareer in evalua-
tionsof his conduct,thoughbothmaywellhave been takenintoaccount.70Rather
he is charged withbad bookkeeping,backloggedcases,delayed reports,and inept
management,but most seriouslywithindiscriminateand persistentharassment
of the planters.He is condemned forcarryingout his administrative and juridical
duties in ways that consistentlyfavored the coolies; "forill-advisedlytakingthe
Chinese coolies,the scum of Singapore and Penang,under his protection"instead
of supporting the disciplinaryactions of Europeans;71 for neglectingto curry
favor with local rulers whose cooperation and collaboration(in both annexing
and policing the plantationbelt) were seen as criticalto the industryand the
securityof the region; forinterpretingthe new rulingon breach of contractin a
waythatreleased thoseworkersof theobligationto returnto the plantationsfrom
which theyfled. In this regard, the Director of the Civil Service charged Valck
not onlywitha "misreading"of the Procurer-General'sedictbut withsinglehand-
edly abettingboth increased vagrancyamong excoolies and a proliferationof
rovingbands of vagrantworkerslivingoffplunder of the estates.
Valck'sabsence fromthe corpus of Deli historiescontrastssharplywiththe
profusionof officialand classifiedcorrespondenceabout him,byhim,and about
the alternatestatesof calm and hysteriathatseemed to reignwhilehe was there.
I have taken this disjunctureto question the sortsof storieswhich couldbe told
about violenceand itscauses, to explore both the politicallandscape of plantation
cultureand how we presume to knowabout it. I have suggestedthatwe suspend
whatwe usuallytake to be accepted hierarchiesof credibility-"rumors"(gerucht)
as opposed to news (bericht), hearsay as opposed to visuallyconfirmed"facts."
These narrativesattestto ways of knowingthat confounded such distinctions.
Rumor, more than firsthandobservation, shaped people's fears and armed
responses. But these fearsin turnprovided the milieuin whichstoriescaptured
people's imaginations,shaping which versionsspread across thousands of kilo-
metersof estatecomplex throughthebordervillages,to returntransformedback
to the estates.If gossip is based on rules of conduct,rumorsmusthave plausible
plots (even ifan exaggeratedrelationshipto whatpeople believe is trueabout the
world).72Rumors in Deli were cumulativelyand creativelymultivocal, the
medium throughwhichthe unspeakable was spoken,withno one partyon hand
to blame.
Ironically,this never stopped Dutch and other colonial officialsfromtrying
to assign blame.73In Deli in 1876, rumorsbore the culturalweightof social and
politicaltensions,notthecozinessof shared assumptionsand shared knowledge.74
When Deli's officialsattemptedto squash whattheycalled "disquietingor disrup-

FIGURE 3. A moneytransportbyChinese bearers,Indian
armed guards, and European plantation
supervisors,East Coast of Sumatra,c. 1880.
tive"rumorsof mass revoltor impendingassaults,theydid so bydelimitingdis-

crete domains of inquirywhile blockingothers. Thus, theywould seek out the
sourceof the rumor,as if to locate an individual and his or her willfulintentof
deceit would by itselfnegate the realityof the situationand thus what was "dis-
quieting"-namely the rumor,not the social and labor tensionson which these
feasible scenarios were based. Rumors seemed to have moved up and down the
East Coast of Sumatra withenormous speed-faster than officialreports-sug-
gestingthatthese kindsof knowledgetraveledmore deftlythan others.Rumors
voiced the possible. With the Aceh resistancestillstrong,and Gayos from the
Aceh area somehow involvedin the Luhmann murder,it was not inconceivable,
as several militarypersonnelwrote,thattherewere eightyGayos in waitingin the
hills above the Deli estates-or was it, as one commander (mis)reported,eight
hundred?
Rumors resonated not only in the confinesof local plantationculturebut in
officialcorrespondence that passed from Deli to Batavia, from Batavia to the
Hague, and back again to the Deli estates.Rumors,directlyand indirectly, placed
army units on plantations,curfewsin workers'barracks,watchguardsat estate
crossroads,stricterlabor contractsto be enforced,and concernsover "peace and
order" to translateinto militaryreconnoitersand judicial action. This is not to
180 REPRESENTATIONS

suggest that rumor permeated the officialdiscourse undigested and unchal-
lenged. On the contrary,officialreportsself-consciouslyengaged the doubts of a
readership thatmightsuspect thatthese statementswere based on hearsayalone.
Thus Levyssohnprefaces his defense of Valck withan approval of the Director
of the Civil Service'sstatement(repeated in the Governor-General'ssubsequent
decision), that"we are not dealing here withloose allegationsbut withcarefully
specifiedfacts."How oftenwere centralauthoritiesdealing with"loose" local talk
and how oftendid theyknowit?Or was thisa rhetoricalstrategyconfirmingthe
report'sreliability?Rumor was not so much a source of whathappened; it regis-
tered what people believed could have happened in the past and could happen
in the future.Rumor was a wild card thatplanters,sultans,coolies, and govern-
ment agents played carefullyin gauging one another'sfearsand perceptionsof
danger.75
Ferretingout thesecompetingrumorsand competingagendas challengesthe
notionthatcolonial capitalismwas a marriageof commoninterestsbetweenplan-
tation entrepreneursand the state,or that the state itselfcould coordinate its
effortfromtop to bottom.Understandingthe colonial logic in whichtheyoper-
Ii | i:
Kr ; S A s
'!'
f
FIGURE 4. Chinese plantationworkerssortingtobacco

leaves on a Deli estate.Note the Chinese
foremanin the rear,dressed in a sarong,and
European managers (one poised witha
"walkingstick")on an elevated platform,c.
1880-90.

ated bears directlyon how we represent that past-and resist the impulse to
smoothover and "fillin" itsincoherencies.We are not onlypiecingtogetherfrag-
mented storiesbut workingfroma culturallandscape in whichour "bestsources"
were dependent on a range of visual and verbal evidence thattapped different
kinds of knowledge. These storiessuggestanother pictureof a colonial state in
expansion than one of omniscienceby tracingthe tenuous filamentsof informa-
tion on whichitsknowledgewas based; the Governor-Generalwrotehis decision
in Levyssohn'swords,whose own opinion was based on a personal letterfromhis
friendValck,whose outrage derived in part fromwhatwas rumored about Gayo
rebels and planter abuses on Sumatra's East Coast. Rumor was a highlyambig-
uous discursivefield:itcontrolledsome people, terrorizedothers;itwas damning
and enabling,shoringup colonial rule and subvertingit at the same time.
These storiesfurthersuggesthow limitedcolonial authoritiesmayhave been
in puttingtheir policies into practice,how vulnerable and nonhegemonic that
authoritywas. The effortsto maintain controlled mobilityand sharp ethnic
divides between theircaptiveworkersand other subjectsonly had marginalsuc-
cess. The clandestinesettlementsof Gayos,Javanese,Bataks,Chinese,and Malays
suggest that large numbers of people subvertedthe enclave model for which
Deli's estateswere later so well known.The discursivereductionof these people
to "vengefulnatives,""Acehrebels,"or "robbergangs"placed violenceback where
it "belonged,"displacingit fromEuropeans. No wonder thatValck'sstorieswere
impossible to hear-they repeatedly repositioned violence in the hearts and
minds of Europeans themselves.
Reflectionson Storytelling
and the Historic Turn in
Anthropology
These are not the luxuriantpardon tales of Fictionin theArchives

from
which Natalie Zemon Davis so deftlydrew out the culturalnuances of sixteenth-
centuryFrance. They are relativelydry,formulaicdocuments-administrative
epistles,resolutions,and internalreports-of colonial bureaucrats eager to be
read in a favorablelightbytheirsuperiors,carefulto deflectattentionfromtheir
own inadequacies while affirmingtheir loyaltiesto continued rule. Unlike the
pardon tales, these stories categoricallydeny the voices of those they feared.
Thus, the Luhmann family'sGayo assailantscould onlybe spoken for,by "trust-
worthynatives"whose allegiance to Dutch authoritywas thoughtto be secure. It
is not the Gayos themselvesthatare privilegedin these accounts but a represen-
tationof themseen as geographicallyand cognitivelycaught betweenthe wars of
Aceh and the muggingsof Deli, economicallyattractedto the estatesbut inde-
pendent of them,politicallylabile and vaguelydangerous. Treatingthese docu-
182 REPRESENTATIONS

mentsas storiesis not to reduce themto fictionsmade up out of whole clothand
thereforefalse. They were fashioned cultural accounts withpoliticaleffects
that
precluded some conclusionsand encouraged others.I have triedto explore what
made these storiescredible,relevant,and reasonable to theirauthors and audi-
ence and how specificscenarioschallengedor conformedto certainculturallyand
politicallyplausible plots.
The orderingof these storiesand the reworkingof theircontextsraise some
basic questionsabout how we ethnographicallyread colonial textsand how deeply
we excavate the layers of our sources. The "historicturn"in anthropologyhas
been marked by a new contextualizingimpulse,one challengingthe naturalized
ideologies underwritingcolonial representationsof authorityby pinning their
inventionsand authenticitiesto specifictime and place. At the same time, we
ofteninvokethesetextsironically,assured of the imperial,racist,and sexistlogics
in whichtheirauthorsoperated. We are able to read themas collectiverepresen-
tationsbecause we expect a comfortablefitbetween a dominant discourse and
colonial agents. We presume to know the intimaterelationsof power on which
those representationsare based. However,I thinkthe Luhmann murder narra-
tivessuggesta more problematiccorrespondencebetweencolonial rhetoricand
its agents on the ground. Colonial lexicons were unevenlyappropriated, some-
timesconstrainingwhatagentsof empirethought,elsewheredelimitingthe polit-
ical idioms in which theytalked,indicatingnot what theythoughtbut onlywhat
theysaid.
While anthropologistsnow produce exemplaryreadings of ethnographyas
text,we can do stillmore nuanced readingsof the "storeyed"narrativesin historic
textsfor what theyreveal about colonial epistemologies.When I firstread and
wrote about this murder six years ago, I had assumed that a discourse of "per-
sonal revenge" ratherthan "politicalthreat"typifieda momentin the 1870s and
sought to contrastit to the murder of a Deli planter'swifein 1929, an eventthat
was politicizedas a "communistthreat"by plantersand Dutch authoritiesin the
colonies and abroad.76While I hold to some featuresof thatreading, now I am
less willingto accept thatthe inconsistentversionscan be "explained" bythe clear
and conflictingagendas of plantersand the state.While aware thatthese acts of
violencewere polysemic,I had notconsideredtheextentto whichthatpolyphony
complicated the ways in which violence could be read. Refocusing on these
shiftingplots,I see a farmore fragmentedsocial reality,a grapplingwithlimited
knowledge, a more complex hierarchyof credibilitythan in the neater storyI
chose to tell.
What privilegesthisrhetoricalstrategyover anyother?Certainlynot the par-
ticularfocus on Valck. A centeringon Luhmann or PanglimaSelan's forestcom-
patriots would alter the set, change the key characters,demand attentionto
subplotsthat here remain ancillaryto whatwe thinkwe need to know.Nor do I
take thisto be a Rashomontale, a multistrandedset of equally plausible claims. I
The PoliticsofColonialNarritives 183

have tried to negotiate a differentkind of coherence, not one that elevates this
text to master narrative,nor one in which only subalternvoices have truthsto
tell. Rather I have sought to recoup the inconsistenciesof these narratives,to
explore how subalterninflectionsenteredthesestoriesretoldin disquieted Euro-
pean voices,tangled bymultiplemeaningsthatcould not be easilyread.
Notes
This paper was originallypresentedat the Social Science Research Council conference
on "CapitalistPlantationsin Colonial Asia" in the fallof 1990. I owe veryspecial thanks
to Julia Adams, Val Daniels, Nicholas Dirks,Linda Gregerson,Lawrence Hirschfeld,
Tom Laqueur, Liisa Malkki, and SherryOrtner for theirartfuleffortsto make me
clarifythe nature of the incoherencies in these accounts of colonial Deli without
undoing the incoherenciesthemselves.I also thankMaria Speller fortranscribingand
translatingmanyof the originaldocumentsunder a Universityof Wisconsinresearch
grantand BarrettWattenforeditorialassistance.
1. An Assistant-Resident was a relativelyhigh-rankingpost in the Dutch Indies colonial
administrationthatentailedjurisdictionover a numberof subdistrictsin a residency.
In this case, the residencyof the East Coast of Sumatra comprised nearly 10,000
square kilometers.
Frans Carl Valck'sletterwas originallyfiledin the Verbeek Collection,given to
the Royal Instituteof Linguisticsand Anthropology(KITLV), Leiden, in the 1920s.
Verbeekwas a geologist,prominentforhis investigationof the eruptionof Krakatoa
in 1883. In theearly 1980s,an archivistcame acrossValck'sletter;findingthatVerbeek
had no experience or contactsin Deli, nor thattherewas any referenceto Verbeekby
Valck,it was refiledseparately(in fileH 1122). No othercorrespondencewith,or ref-
erence to, Valck has been found (GerritGenap, personal communication).In this
article,I referto thisletteras KITLV, H 1122/Valck, where it is now lodged.
2. Stamboeken Indische ambtenaren,part M-330, p. 523; Albumstudiosorum lugdunum
batavorum (Leiden, 1925), fols. 1362-63. For these referencesand most of the docu-
mentsI cite in thispaper, I owe special thanksto M. G. H. A. de Graff,archivistof the
second section of the Algemeen Rijksarchief,who gave me immeasurableassistance
in trackingdown Valck'spersonal and professionaltrajectoryand the correspondence
on the Luhmann familymurders.
All the materialsfor this paper, excluding Valck'sletterto Levyssohn,are from
the Algemeen Rijksarchief,Second Division,in the Hague. The mailrapport numbers
referto the bundle of documents(letters,telegrams)thatwere sentbythe Governor-
General of the Indies to the NetherlandsMinistryof Colonies. Since severalcommu-
nicationswere collected and sent in one dispatch,the same mailrapport number may
referto severalreportsand letters.
3. Although Valck is never referredto by name, the disruptivesituationin Deli in 1876
in whichhe found himselfoverburdenedand withoutsufficient police reinforcements
is referencedby R. Broersma, Oostkust van Sumatra(Batavia, 1919); and W. Schadee,
Geschiedenis van Sumatra'sOostkust, 2 vols. (Batavia, 1918-1919), among others. He is
the highestgovernmentofficialin Deli (the Resident'sseat was stilllocated in Beng-
184 REPRESENTATIONS

kalis, a week's travel to the south), so that all referencesto inept governmentand
backloggedjudicial cases are a directreferenceto him.That Valckis not named would
not be so surprising(Assistant-Residents being directlyresponsibleto theirResidents
in most regions) if it were not for the factthat the Resident of Deli was so far away
and it was Valck who was charged withpresidingover the European court,handling
land concessionsand settingthe tone of relationswiththe planters.It would also not
be so surprisingif there had not been such concern in Batavia and the colonial min-
istryin the Hague over what Valckbungled, misinterpreted, and did not do.
4. Anon., Deli-Batavia maatschappij,1875-1925 (Amsterdam, 1925), 12. Also see
Schadee, Geschiedenis, 2:16-17.
5. See Roland Barthes's discussion of Tzvetan Todorov's distinction between the
"unfoldingof a story"and its "storeyed"horizontalmovementsin Image-Music-Text,
trans.Stephen Heath (New York, 1977), 87.
6. As withany archive there is a "selectivity bias" here; cases thatcame to the attention
of the Governor-Generaland Ministryof Colonies were thosedeemed of some special
"political"attention.Attachedto themare lower-levelreportsbydistrictofficers,rec-
ommendationsand evaluations by local colonial agents on which these higher deci-
sions are based. I am interestedin this "cribbingprocess" by which certain cultural
readings of eventsbecome part of the "evidential"packet.
7. See Lloyd Kramer's particularlylucid discussionof Dominick LaCapra's rejectionof
"coherence" as the taskof the historianin "Literature,Criticism,and HistoricalImag-
ination,"in Lynn Hunt, ed., TheNewCulturalHistory (Berkeley,1989), 97-128.
8. See Michael Taussig,"Cultureof Terror,Space of Death: Roger Casement'sPutumayo
Report and the Explanation of Torture,"Comparative Studiesin Society
and History26,
no. 3 (July 1984): 467-97.
9. On the relationshipbetween rumor and colonial insurgence,see Ranajit Guha, Ele-
mentary AspectsofPeasantInsurgency in ColonialIndia (Delhi, 1983), esp. 220-77; and
Shadid Amin, "Gandhi as Mahatma," in SelectedSubalternStudies(New York, 1988),
288-350. Both subtlyaddress the place of rumor as both vehicle of politicalmobili-
zation and as a criticalelement in a peasant "folkloreof fear."I focus more on how
subalternrumors intersectwithEuropean narrativesto subvertthe latter'sexplana-
tionsof violence and to realize a climateof fear.
10. See James Scott,Dominationand theArtsofResistance(New Haven, 1990), fora careful
analysisof how subalternsuse the "officialtranscript"while maintaininghidden ones
forthemselves.Here, I am more concerned withthe multiplicity of officialscripts,and
withthe waysin whichsubalternstap the fears,inconsistencies,and fantasiesof Euro-
pean hiddenscriptsby playing them back to colonial agents for their own political
projects.
11. On the discourse of contaminationin colonial cultures, see Ann Stoler, "Making
Empire Respectable: The Politicsof Race and Sexual Moralityin Twentieth-Century
Colonial Cultures,"American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (November 1989): 634-60.
12. Directorof the Civil Service to the Governor-General,18 June 1877, mailrapport 6281
(urgent,secret).
13. See Taussig, "Culture of Terror,"273-76.
14. KITLV, H1122/Valck. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid.
17. See Jan Breman, TamingtheCoolieBeast:PlantationSociety and theColonialOrderin South-
eastAsia (Delhi, 1989); and Ann Stoler,Capitalismand Confrontation in Sumatra'sPlan-
tationBelt,1870-1979 (New Haven, 1985). Breman has establishedthatat least one-
fourthof the coolie population (then stillprimarilyChinese) musthave been killedor

died on Deli's estatesat the turn of the century.By Valck'saccount twenty-five years
earlier,workersdied in derelict and overcrowdedprisons,barracks,and hospitals,
where the sick were often dismissed and lefton the roadsides to die of disease and
hunger or to scavengein the forestson theirown. Valckgivesno figures,but afterfive
monthsin Deli he is outraged at "heaven knows how many Chinese are murdered"
(KITLV, H1122/Valck).
Contraryto some of Breman's criticswho have charged him with overplaying
the role of whiteplanters(as opposed to Asian overseers)in Deli's violence (see Vin-
cent Houben, "History and Morality: East Sumatran Incidents as Described by
Jan Breman," Itinerario12, no. 2 [1988]: 97-100), Valck'slettermore than corrobo-
rates Breman's interpretation;virtuallyall of the cases of maltreatmentreferredto
between 1876 and 1877 directlyimplicate European planters and their European
subordinates.
18. Breman, TamingtheCoolieBeast.
19. Ann Stoler,"Perceptionsof Protest:Definingthe Dangerous in Colonial Sumatra,"
American Ethnologist 12, no. 4 (1985): 642-58, 645.
20. See Schadee, Geschiedenis; and Roelof Broersma,Oostkust van Sumatra,2 vols. (Batavia,
1919-1922), 85.
21. Report of the Colonial Civil Service, G. Henny to the Governor-General,18 June
1877, mailrapport 6281.
22. That these encampmentsare absent fromthe public colonial record and contempo-
raryrereadingsof itmayreflecta historiography thathas followedthecolonial admin-
istrativemap demarcatingAceh fromDeli ratherthanthepoliticalexperienceof those
who lived betweenthese regions.Acceptingthismap made certainkinds of relations
logicallyinconsistentand inadmissible.Valck wrestledwiththese conceptual bound-
aries as he sought to piece togetherthe eventsleading up to, and subsequent to, the
Luhmann murders.
23. See John Bowen, SumatranPoliticsand Poetics:GayoHistory, 1900-1989 (New Haven,
1991), 61. On the Acehnese Rebellion,and the repercussionsof the blockade specifi-
cally,see AnthonyReid, TheContest forNorthSumatra(London, 1969), 71-118.
24. See Reid, Contest forNorth Sumatra, 153.
25. KITLV, H1122/Valck.
26. See D. H. Lawrence's introductionto the 1927 English-languagetranslationin Mul-
tatuli,Max Havelaar (Amherst,Mass., 1982), 11-13.
27. The discussion of Valck'squalificationsand the decision concerninghis misconduct,
transfer,and dismissalappear in the decision of the Governor-Generalof 13 August
1877, no. 2. The reportof 18 June 1877 (mailrapport 6281) mentionedin thisdecision
is located at the Arsip nasional inJakarta.Levyssohn'saddendum to the advice of the
Directorof the Colonial Civil Servicewas classifiedwiththe Governor-General'sdeci-
sion; Vice Presidentof the Raad (AdvisoryCouncil) O. Van Rees to the Indies Advi-
soryCouncil, 13 July1877, agenda 407/77 (secret).
28. Directorof the CivilServiceto the Governor-General,18June 1877, mailrapport 6281,
on "the capabilityof Resident Locker de Bruine and the other civil servantson the
East Coast." Locker de Bruine is dismissedforhis ineptitudein keepingtabson Valck,
thatis forhis actions not his beliefs.
29. O. van Rees and LevyssohnNorman to the Director of the Civil Service, 13 August
1877, agenda 404/77 (secret).
30. The issue was not totallyignored elsewhere. In an article in the most widely read
Dutch language newspaper in the Indies, theJavabodeof 18 November 1876, on the
186 REPRESENTATIONS

violence in Deli and the planters'part in it,an anonymousjournalist writes:"People
have indeed contended thatthe Europeans in Deli were on a verylow level of moral
development,but who would ever have thoughtthattheycould have sunk so low."
31. Anon., Deli-Bataviamaatschappij, 11, myemphasis.
32. Frans Carl Valck to Resident Locker de Bruine in Bengkalis,29 October 1876, mail-
rapport920.
33. I thankVal Daniel fordrawingmyattentionto thesedistinctions.
34. In 1877 George Samuel Nederveen Pieterse,then 44 years old, was already "noto-
rious" in the Hague (Communique, 24 May 1877). This appellation was strangelyat
odds withhis previous militarycareer,forwhichhe was awarded the WillemOrde in
1870 for distinguishedservicein the Ceram expeditionof 1865-66 (mailrapport 920/
1876).
35. Reportof Directorof the CivilServiceHenny to the Governor-General,18June 1876,
mailrapport 6281 (secret).
36. His concernsare well founded; a year laterhe is criticizedpreciselyforthatdelay.
37. One of the onlyotherMalay-languagequotes appears in the Directorof CivilService's
reporton Locker de Bruine, where he explains the latter'slack of initiativebyhis too
frequentassociationwithnativeheads who are alwayssaying,"Nanti,saja maoe pikir
lebih dhoeloe" (Later, I wantto thinkabout it fora whilefirst).Presumably,like Dja-
mal's quote, such an utterancereflectedsome essentialfeaturesof nativementalite.
38. Datoe is the termused fora Malay villagehead.
39. John Bowen has suggestedto me thatthe "Petambiang"cited in thisreportmay have
been the Raja Petiam[b]ang,one of the Gayo kejurun(domain lord), whichwould "fit"
withwhat Valck reports;see Bowen, SumatranPoliticsand Poetics,62.
40. Resident Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,10 September 1876, mailrapport
741.
41. ExpeditioncommanderVogel in Langkatto Chiefof StaffWillinkKetjan and General
Chief of Staffof the SeventhDivision Pfeiffer, 21 September 1876, mailrapport844.
42. Ibid.
43. Maj. Demmeni to the Commander of the Armyand the Chief of the Departmentof
War,28 October 1876, mailrapport 916 (secret).
44. Ibid. 45. Ibid.
46. Valck to Locker de Bruine, 24 October 1876, mailrapport 864.
47. It is strikingin thesenarrativesthatthe genderand familialdimensionsof the murder
go virtuallyunmarked,nor is any allusion to sexual assault ever made. For othercon-
textsin which the gendering of colonial violence was politicallycharged see Stoler,
"Perceptionsof Protest";and "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender,Race,
and Moralityin Colonial Asia," in Genderat theCrossroads: Feminist
Anthropology in the
Postmodern Era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo (Berkeley,1991), 51-101.
48. These tales of "coolie rows"pervade the planters'representationsof protestas well as
thatof the government'slabor inspectoratewell into the 1920s. See Stoler,Capitalism
and Confrontation, esp. chap. 3.
49. Demmeni to the Chief of Staffand the General Chief of Staff,8 October 1876,
mailrapport.
50. Journal extractfromDemmemi,6-19 October 1876, mailrapport 880.
51. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,25 November 1876, mailrapport 964.
52. Valck to Locker de Bruine, 2 December 1876, mailrapport 53.
53. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,25 November 1876, mailrapport 964.
54. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,5 December 1876, mailrapport 973.

55. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,30 December 1876, mailrapport 53.
56. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,27 February1877, mailrapport 170.
57. Locker de Bruine to the Governor-General,8 January1877, mailrapport 70.
58. Schadee, Geschiedenis, 2:16-17.
59. Reid, ContestforNorthSumatra,153.
60. Demmeni to the Chief of Staff,15 November 1876, mailrapport 1005.
61. Ibid.
62. ExtractsfromDemmeni'sjournal, 11-24 November 1876, mailrapport 1005.
63. Ibid.
64. Telegram fromDemmeni to the General Chief of Staff,11 November 1876, mailrap-
port929 (secret).
65. On the Dutch response to revolutionariesas "robberbands" as late as 1949, fouryears
into the independence struggle,see Ann Stoler,"Workingthe Revolution:Plantation
Laborers and the People's Militiain North Sumatra,"JournalofAsianStudies47, no. 2
(1988): 227-47.
66. Luhmann remained in Deli foranothertwenty-five yearsand maintainedhis tobacco
estate at Soengai Diski until the 1890s. In 1903 his name firstappears in the Indies
business directoryas the owner and administrationof the Soengei Bloetoe rubber
estate that he ran at least through 1918; Handboekvoor cultuuren handelsonderne-
mingenin Nederlands-Indie (1892-93; Amsterdam, 1918); Nieuw adresboek van Geheel
Nederlands-Indie (Batavia, 1903).
67. When I had firstread Levyssohn'splea forValck,I had taken theirlaw school ties to
be sufficientjustificationfor Levyssohn'sloyaltyto him. However, returningto the
archives this past year, I found a denser if stillconfused genealogy of power and
alliance than was firstapparent. Valck'sfatherarrivedin the Indies in 1806 at 8 years
of age with his father,also a civil servantin the Indies administration.At 24 Valck
seniorwas appointed secretaryto the Residentin Batavia,and fromthe 1823 to 1842
he held successiveprestigiousposts as Resident in differentparts of Java (Krawang,
Pasuruan, Kedoe) and finallyinJogjakartawhereFransCarl was born. While Resident
in Jogjakartahe was commissionedby Governor-GeneralDe Eerens to take over the
Surabaya residency,where the Residentand Assistant-Resident had recentlybeen dis-
missedon the recommendationof a commissioncharged withinvestigating theircon-
duct. Valck senior, by his own report, was outraged by the fashion in which the
dismissalshad occurred. He argued to the Governor-Generalthattheirremoval was
engineered and proceeded to reinvestigatethecommissionitself.He was quicklywith-
drawn, suspended fromthe civil servicefor three months,banished withoutsalary,
and "only the memoryof his good services"kept him frombeing dishonorablydis-
missed. Upon returningto Holland on a two-yearsick leave the followingyear,he
fileda complaintagainstthe Governor-Generaldirectlyto the Ministerof Colonies in
the Hague, therebybypassingthe local Indies chain of authorityaltogether.
Whetherthe Valck familyname was stillmarked when Frans Carl arrivedin the
civilservicethirtyyearslaterwould be difficult to establish,but it is plausible thatthe
youngerValck, whose father died (fromill health and perhaps ill fame?)when he was
only seven years old, was raised in an environment where Multatuli'ssense of outrage
at governmentcorruption(published when he was in law school) resonated withhis
mother'sand family'sown. But since the voices of women are so categoricallydenied
in these accounts,we know nothingmore of Valck'smotherthan her name and can
only speculate as to the sortsof Indies storiesshe mighthave told her son.
188 REPRESENTATIONS

68. The only referenceI have found to thisincidentis in the StamboekenIndische amb-
tenaren,part deel 0, fol. 153.
69. Ibid., part M-330, p. 523; Albumstudiosorum lugdunumbatavorum, fols. 1362-63.
70. The cold reception Valck received for accusations against Deli's planters may have
more to do withhis own pastentanglementsthanthoseof his father.Valckhad already
been involved in an administrativescandal in northBali just four years prior to the
Luhmann murder.Then a lowlydistrictofficer, he had sided againstthe currentRes-
ident and Assistant-Resident, who had allegedly discovered a wide range of abuses
perpetratedbythe local Balinese regent.An investigationin 1873 concluded thatthe
regenthad been setup bythe Dutch Residentand Assistant-Resident, who were them-
selves guiltyof corruption.Althoughbothwere dismissedand Valckwas promotedto
Assistant-Resident,the report was denounced by many Europeans in Batavia.
According to the Dutch sociologistHenk Schulte-Nordholt,Valck'scorrespondence
from1873 already suggeststhathe feared the gossip among certainfactionsin "white
Batavia" about his promotion.Whether he was sent to Deli as a routine transferis
unclear, since the inspectorof the Bali report that Valck supported was the father-
in-lawof the same LevyssohnNorman who was to defend him fiveyears later; see
Henk Schulte-Nordholt,"Dekker,Havelaar en Bali," Indischeletteren 2, no. 4 (1987):
149-60.
I thankHenk Schulte-Nordholtforpointingout thisBali connectionto me when
I firstpresented this paper in Amsterdam.Valck'sdouble-edged persona, as honor-
able whistleblowerbut self-promoter, may have made the Bali affairtoo confused to
be usefullyinvoked for his prosecutionor defense. In any case, no mentionis made
of his Bali yearsin the filesI read.
71. Directorof the CivilServiceto the Governor-General,18June 1877, mailrapport 6281,
(secret).
72. See John Haviland, Gossip,Reputation,and Knowledgein Zinacantan(Chicago, 1977),
where he argues thatparticipationin gossip entailsa knowledgeof culturalrules and
thereforea culturalcompetence.
73. See Guha, Elementary AspectsofPeasantInsurgency, 251-74.
74. I owe thiscontrastbetween the "coziness"of gossip and the tensionof rumor to dis-
cussions withVal Daniel.
75. On the contrastingdefinitionsof danger byplantersand stateofficialsin Deli between
the 1870s and 1930s, see Stoler,"Perceptionsof Protest."
76. See ibid., 642.


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"In Cold Blood": Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives

Author(s): Ann Laura Stoler

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"In Cold Blood": Hierarchies

IN 1985 I CAME ACROSS a thirty-page handwritten letter dated 28

REPRESENTATIONS 37 * Winter1992? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 151

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The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 153

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In opening his letterto Levyssohnwiththe above observation,Valck

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[The Pieterseaffair]has taughtus a noteworthylesson. The gentlemenof the Deli Com-

Valck'spersonal and privateaccountconfirmsmuch of whatsome historianshave

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 155

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FIGURE 1. "Laboean-the capital of Deli in the year

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teenthcentury,on its peripherythe stateapparatus was minimallymanned and

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In his letterto Levyssohn,Valck is angry,anguished, frustrated,and

For a student of the colonial Indies, Valck's letterechoes another compelling

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 159

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is untenable.Changemustcomeand hasstartedtocome.It willtakea great

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On the nightof 17 October 1876, several membersof the Luhmann

Valck'sbriefreportfivedays later to the East Coast Resident,then stillposted in

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 161

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This gruesomely vivid description (taken from Luhmann's brother-in-law's

However,the question thenariseswhylittleMarthe,who was onlyfiveyearsold, was killed

Valck's account here is both ambiguous and contradictory. He constructs a

The Politicsof Colonial Narratives 163

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The 17th,thedayoftheattackon theSoengeiDiskiestate,I had leftforPadangBoelan,

Copy presses were a preferredweapon of torture.By crankingthe two metal

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Rumors here are transformedinto actionableevidence bya slightof hand. Valck

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 165

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At one level, Luhmann's actions seem motivatedby a similarimpulse to that of

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The Politicsof Colonial Narratives 167

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The Genealogy of the Murder:

Valck'sinterpretationof the Luhmann familymurderwas in keeping

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This final sentence offersthe same reasoning expressed in the "well-founded

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 169

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De Bruine pretendsto a knowledgethatbarelymasks his unfamiliarity withthe

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The Luhmann familymurderwas notoverwiththeburialof itsvictims

The PoliticsofColonialNarratives 173

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The Resident's report to the Governor-General,based in large on Valck's

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