What Archives Reveal — and What They Never Say
Archives are often imagined as vaults of truth. Silent rooms filled with documents that, once opened, finally tell the whole story.
The reality is more complicated.
Archives do not preserve events. They preserve decisions: what was recorded, by whom, for what purpose, and under which institutional constraints. Every file reflects not only what happened, but what an administration believed was worth documenting at a given moment.
The Seznec case, like many early twentieth-century investigations, survives today through a mosaic of judicial records, police reports, and administrative documents. These files are invaluable. But they are also partial.
Judicial archives tend to focus on what supports a prosecution or a defense. Surveillance archives record suspicion, not guilt. Administrative records often reflect bureaucratic priorities rather than factual completeness. When these different types of archives are consulted separately, they can give the impression of coherence. When compared, they sometimes reveal gaps.
One of the most persistent myths about historical cases is that “everything is in the file.” In reality, many things never enter the file at all. Leads deemed irrelevant at the time may be abandoned. Parallel investigations conducted by different branches of the state may never intersect. Context considered peripheral can be excluded entirely.
This does not imply concealment. More often, it reflects compartmentalization.
In the early 1920s, Europe was a continent in transition. Borders, institutions, and alliances were being redefined. Intelligence services, judicial authorities, and administrative bodies operated with different mandates and rarely shared information freely. Their archives followed the same logic.
When modern researchers return to cases from that period, they often encounter not a missing document, but a missing connection. The archive tells one story very clearly. What it does not say is whether another story was unfolding elsewhere, documented under a different logic, in a different place.
Understanding a historical case, then, is not only about reading what is preserved. It is also about recognizing the limits of preservation itself.
2. When Files Don’t Talk to Each Other
Modern readers often assume that the state speaks with one voice. In reality, it rarely does.
Archives reflect this fragmentation.
Judicial investigations generate their own records. Intelligence services produce another kind of documentation entirely. Administrative oversight, diplomatic correspondence, and commercial monitoring follow still other paths. Each produces files. Few are designed to intersect.
In the Seznec case, the judicial record appears extensive. Testimonies were collected. Documents were examined. Experts were consulted. From the perspective of the court, the investigation was thorough.
But thoroughness within one framework does not guarantee completeness across all frameworks.
In the early twentieth century, information did not circulate easily between institutions. Legal secrecy, bureaucratic rivalries, and differing priorities often prevented cross-referencing. What mattered to one service might seem irrelevant—or even invisible—to another.
This structural separation has long-term consequences.
When historians revisit such cases decades later, they tend to work within the same archival silos. Judicial historians read court files. Political historians consult state archives. Intelligence historians examine surveillance records. Each field reconstructs a coherent narrative within its own boundaries.
What is more difficult—and rarer—is to ask whether these narratives ever overlapped.
The absence of such overlap does not imply that something was deliberately hidden. It may simply indicate that no mechanism existed to bring disparate pieces together. Once a judicial narrative solidified, parallel lines of information may have continued elsewhere without ever influencing the outcome.
Archives, in this sense, are not mirrors of reality. They are maps of institutional attention.
Some paths are drawn clearly. Others remain blank—not because nothing was there, but because no one was tasked with drawing them.