Diplomacy and Intelligence in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World - by Mika Suonpää & Owain Wright (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Diplomacy and Intelligence in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World examines the activities of diplomats in the expansion of their home country's informal imperial ambitions. Taking a comparative approach, the book combines a focus on the extension of the informal British Empire with an exploration of the imperial ambitions of other states, such as France, Austro-Hungary and Japan.

The authors combine approaches from diplomatic history, intelligence history and microhistory in order to give new insights into the Mediterranean as a 'contested space' between competing informal empires. This study will be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of the Mediterranean region during the 19th century.

Review Quotes

"In this remarkable sequence of essays, the nineteenth-century Mediterranean emerges as a space of infiltration and competition. By reading the different microhistories of diplomats, consuls, and their local agents, and by glancing at their dispatches, reports, and correspondence, we come to realize just how these people shaped not only the institutions of the states they worked for, but also the very area they were inspecting, the Mediterranean Sea. The volume brightly illuminates the impact of knowledge-accumulation and dissemination in perceiving, organizing and controlling a space which would be ever since marked by colonial claims and imperial competition." --Konstantina Zanou, Assistant Professor of Italian, Columbia University, USA

"The editors of this volume have made a valiant and most commendable effort to include the original research of the knowledgeable authors in a book that appeals not only to specialists but also to general readers seeking to expand their understanding beyond trade publications." --Diplomacy & Statecraft

"Consular relations provide a remarkable window into the Ottoman and North African Mediterranean in the 19th century, and its interaction with European states. Drawing on unpublished archives from across Europe, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the region." --Erik Goldstein, Professor of International Relations and History, Boston University, USA

"Mika Suonpää and Owain Wright take this subject and push it outside the usual comfort zone commonly associated with such topics." --European Review of History

"The essays brought together here offer useful and stimulating insights into the development of intelligence-gathering organisations, the interaction between consular, diplomatic and intelligence agents, and into the international politics of the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Their wider European, indeed global, focus makes this volume doubly welcome, and anyone interested in intelligence during this period will find in it much to discover and to reflect upon." --Intelligence and National Security

About the Author

Mika Suonpää is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Turku, Finland.

Owain Wright is Senior Lecturer in European History at Leeds Beckett University, UK.