Manuscript Gatekeepers Rewrite History

Premodern accounts often reached us only after clerical editors cut 'unseemly' material or political criticism. Manucci’s Mughal memoir was first mutilated by a Jesuit, then partially restored only because the Jesuit library was seized decades later. Our picture of entire civilizations may depend less on what was written than on who controlled the copies. — It cautions that institutional custody and editorial power systematically bias historical memory, implying modern archives and scholarship need redundancy, provenance audits, and transparency to prevent quiet rewrites.