Closed archives create historical bias favoring the closed society

Evidence

To some extent the result is predetermined by the accessibility of evidence—a fact of course known to the historian. Take for example the history of a conflict between two countries, one a closed society with sealed archives, the other an open society with open debate and open archives. Inevitably the historian will study the subject on the basis of what is available and accessible, and even without any intention to distort, he may well arrive at a rather slanted, onesided picture, usually to the advantage of those whose archives are closed and who permit no adverse point of view to be expressed. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1842

Categorization

• XREF: Directly qualifies how Western historiography of the Middle East became lopsided — connects to Said’s knowledge-production critique and the reader’s existing Islam-West representation cluster. — connects to: Oral-history bias demands triangulation against others and records. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 127
• SEED: Angle: the epistemological privilege of silence — how closed regimes win the historical record precisely by refusing to document, invertible as a counterintuitive mechanism piece.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1842