Cloak and Dagger

Abstract

Book Review| November 01 2020 Cloak and Dagger Venice’s Secret Service: Organising Intelligence in the Renaissance, by Iordanou, Ioanna, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, 288 pages, £29.99 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0198791317 Joseph Darlington Joseph Darlington Joseph Darlington is head of animation at Futureworks Media School. His most recent monograph is British Terrorist Novels of the 1970s (2018), and he has published widely in journals including the Journal of Modern Literature, Textual Practice, and Cambridge Quarterly. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Cultural Politics (2020) 16 (3): 408–411. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8593595 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Joseph Darlington; Cloak and Dagger. Cultural Politics 1 November 2020; 16 (3): 408–411. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8593595 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsCultural Politics Search Advanced Search The history of the modern state is the history of intelligence gathering. Feudal allegiances are supplanted by organized bureaucracies. Individual authority figures are replaced by complex systems. Individual codes of honor are subsumed under nationwide laws. Turning governance into “the state”—a unified organization—requires the circulation and control of information. As Ioanna Iordanou argues in her new history, Venice’s Secret Service, the creation of a secret service is therefore not secondary to the emergence of the state but, in fact, fundamental to it. At times, Iordanou goes even further, telling us that the state itself, as an early modern creation, is founded on intelligence and the secret services that gather and transmit it.At first glance, Venice’s Secret Service is a history book. It is packed with fascinating historical color, tales of espionage, ciphers, and underhand plots. The author has plumbed the extensive Venetian... © 2020 Duke University Press2020 Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.