Getting to Know the Enemy: Hospitaller Malta’s Intelligence Network in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

In 1530 the Knights Hospitallers were granted the Maltese islands by Charles V. The administration of an archipelago on the Mediterranean war frontier required constant knowledge on the enemy. This article reconstructs Hospitaller Malta’s principal intelligence collection and transmission channels during the seventeenth century, particularly during the magistracy of Alof de Wignacourt from 1601 to 1622, two important decades of infrastructural changes for the archipelago. These specialised communication channels allowed Malta to carve out a special place for itself within the Habsburg-Ottoman rivalry and, in a way, contributed to the gestation period which saw the island evolve from a medieval Spanish fief into an early modern state.