1. This is the first broad systematic study of colonial data-mining and knowledge-production in colonial Southeast Asia that has been written. 2. This work will show how data-mining and knowledge-production in colonial Southeast Asia was intimately linked to the broader enterprise of Orientalist scholarship, and how data-collection went hand-in-hand with the construction of negative stereotypes of the native Other. I hope that this may compel scholars of/on Southeast Asia to reflect upon their own work, and the question of violence in epistemology and knowledge-building. 3. This work will be critical of the workings of colonial power in Southeast Asia, and aims to show how the conquest and colonization of Southeast Asia was not only achieved by the use of arms, but crucially also depended on the accumulation and development of a body of Orientalist/imperialist data; that is data that was instrumentalised and weaponized for the sake of rationalizing and justifying the colonial project.