New Explorations in Early Modern Intelligence-Gathering: Introduction

This introduction to ‘New Explorations in Early Modern Intelligence-Gathering’ provides a brief overview of some of the common currents and directions of scholarship on early modern espionage in order to provide a critical context for the essays comprising this special issue. It identifies the extent to which scholars have looked both at individual spies and the systems and secretariats within which they worked, and charts some of the significant emerging fields into which espionage studies is developing. The second part of the introduction then provides summaries of the essays by the seven contributing authors, drawing out how each, in different ways, explores questions concerning the motives, rewards, and occupational identity of those involved in espionage between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries.