Black-boxes, flying packets, and espionage: the information trade and Scottish governance, 1689–1691

Abstract

ABSTRACT For the Williamite administration in Scotland, the outcome of the Revolution of 1688–1690 was of considerable uncertainty. The new regime’s experience highlights the profound force of information. This article argues that the Scottish Privy Council’s use of intelligence significantly propped up the fragile new Williamite regime and translated directly into strategic policy. Privy councillors could make use of a variety of different people throughout Scotland to obtain this information. There is a peculiar lack of scholarship describing governmental institutions’ forays into the information trade process and how this influenced the formulation of strategy and policy. William and his Scottish administrators certainly understood information’s importance and this article suggests that information and communication were key in the processes of espionage and government activity in undermining and destroying counter-revolutionary plots. This study of the privy council’s foray into state-sanctioned intelligence forces a reevaluation of the so-called road to modernity after the Revolution, it certainly was not a straight line.