Recently released US state department documents of 1971 present a detailed micro view of the events of a year which saw the creation of Bangladesh with the partition of Pakistan, India's emergence as a regional power and the US opening to China. Seeing the trees up close forms a useful counterpoint to structural analysis, but the state department evidence tends to overemphasise individual and personality factors. We need multiple sources of accounts of the events of 1971 which can help reconstruct the historical record of that crucial period. www.jstor.org/stable/4416863