Official texts reveal intentions but not whether reality matched them.

Evidence

This example is useful because it shows that relying only on laws, manuals and official pronouncements to approach the reality of a certain historical period is useful insofar as it portrays what the officials had in mind and what their tools in shaping society might have been. Whether reality was shaped by these tools in the neat and exact manner that they envisaged is another point altogether, not only because there was bound to be a discrepancy between the textual plan and its implementation, but also because this differentiation between tool and reality, between the text and its context is an arbitrary one. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 956

Categorization

• SEED: A methodological point for writing history from bureaucratic records: the archival text itself is a social artifact, not a transparent window on the past.