Spies in European Culture, 1815-1914

Representations, Networks, Practices

Laura Di Fiore, Elisabetta Abignente

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781350427310
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

This volume brings together academics from the USA and across Europe to examine the nature, representations and perceptions of the figure of the spy in Europe between 1815 and 1914. As such, it is the first scholarly investigation of the genesis both of contemporary espionage and of the cultural imagination associated with it. Spies in European Culture, 1815-1914 sheds light on the founding moment of espionage and the use of secrecy in politics in the contemporary age. It successfully argues that the 19th century saw the development of a cultural-historical process in which disruptive novelties like the disguise, the secret and the double identity simultaneously assailed the spheres of the state, the self and the imaginary, ushering in distinctive features of society in the modern era in the process. This global phenomenon, in which state and society, but also reality and fiction, were profoundly intertwined, is therefore investigated by means of a transdisciplinary analysis that considers both the politico-institutional and the cultural planes that existed at the time.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The circuit of the secret in reality and fiction
• Part One Key aspects
• Part Two Transnational networks
• Part Three Secret, power and geopolitics at Europe’s borders
• Part Four Double identities, dissimulation and disguise
• Index
• Copyright Page