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ABSTRACT
It is usually taken for granted that intelligence organisations provide information for decision-making and that the knowledge produced in the process is therefore deeply utilitarian. Drawing on organisational sociology, this article draws on a case study of English intelligence efforts during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) to reflect critically on the assumed direct relationship between intelligence-gathering and political decision-making. In eighteenth-century England, intelligence frequently fulfilled other, often more symbolic functions, for example when access to intelligence was employed to legitimise individual actors. In this sense, intelligence was doubtlessly useful, albeit in other ways than generally postulated by intelligence theory. These observations strongly suggest a ‘missing dimension’ in the history of intelligence in other periods as well as intelligence theory more generally.
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The definition by F. Reese Brown, “From the Editor ….,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 1 (1986): 1–2 quoted above has been influential among historians. See Daniel Szechi, “Introduction: The “Dangerous Trade” in Early Modern Europe,’ in The Dangerous Trade: Spies, Spymasters and the Making of Europe, ed. Szechi (Dundee: University Press, 2010), 1–21, at 16; Wolfgang Krieger, Geschichte der Geheimdienste von den Pharaonen bis zur NSA, 3rd ed. (München: Beck, 2014), 15. Similarly axiomatic assumptions concerning the actual use of information are found in much of the semi-popular historiography. For example, Michael Smith, The Spying Game: The Secret History of British Espionage (London: Politico, 2003); Terry Crowdy, The Enemy within: A History of Espionage (Oxford: Osprey, 2006); Richard Bennett, Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets (London: Virgin, 2002).
2 See Matthias Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis: Strukturen und Funktionen der Informationsgewinnung im Spanischen Erbfolgekrieg (Köln: Böhlau, 2016).
3 See Matthias Pohlig and Michael Schaich, eds., The War of the Spanish Succession: New Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
4 G.F. Warner, “An Unpublished Political Paper by Daniel De Foe,” English Historical Review 22 (1907): 130–43, at 137.
5 François Jaupain to John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, 6 January 1707, British Library, London, Additional Manuscripts (hereafter: BL Add.) 61,264, fol. 129 r: ‘mieux donner un avis superflux que d’en negliger un necessaire’. Note that, until 1752, England adhered to the Julian calendar (known as Old Style) while the Gregorian calendar was in use in most other parts of Europe, resulting in a discrepancy of 11 days at the time. As a result, letters sent from the continent to England occasionally bore two dates. Moreover, in England the new year began on 25 March so that the period from 1 January to 24 March was counted as part of the previous year. For the sake of simplicity, Old Style dates are here given with the year beginning on 1 January.
6 Etienne Caillaud to William Blathwayt, 8 January 1704, BL Add. 38,711, fols. 3 v–4 r: ‘des nouvelles qu’on regarde comme romanesque, et a quoy on ne fait pas d’atention’, ‘en bonne Politique, on ne doit rien negliger, et qu’il faut faire usage de tout’.
7 H.P. to Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland, 22 February 1710, BL Add. 61,596, fol. 68 r; Blathwayt to William Lowndes, 9 June 1697, in Joseph Dedieu, Le Rôle politique des protestants français, 1685–1715 (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1920), 336.
8 For additional methodological and empirical notes on this point, see Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 314–6.
9 See, for example, Sunderland to William Cadogan, 22 November 1709, BL Add. 61,651, fol. 195 v which orders Cadogan to employ the same spy to monitor the potential arms build-up by the French at Dunkirk who had been employed for this purpose the previous year and ‘whose Intelligence [had] prov’d very usefull’.
10 Michael Kempe, “Burn after Reading: Verschlüsseltes Wissen und Spionagenetzwerke im elisabethanischen England,” Historische Zeitschrift 296 (2013): 354–79, at 363–5. The literature on the intelligence cycle, as a stock model of both the profession and its academic study, is extensive. For a useful introduction, see Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, 5th ed. (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2012), 57–70.
11 For a more extensive discussion of this topic, see Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis.
12 See e.g. Daniel Szechi, “Jacobite Politics in the Age of Anne,” Parliamentary History 28 (2009): 41–58, at 43; Gregg, “Monarchs without a Crown,” in Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton, ed. Roberto Oresko, G.C. Gibbs, and Hamish M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 382–422, at 399.
13 Quotation from G.V. Bennett, ‘English Jacobitism, 1710–1715: Myth and Reality,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 32 (1982): 137–51, at 137. See also Edward Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986); Gregg, “Monarchs without a Crown”; Szechi, “Jacobite Politics in the Age of Anne”; Daniel Szechi, “The Jacobite Movement,” in A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. H.T. Dickinson (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 81–96.
14 Compare Christopher Storrs, “The Union of 1707 and the War of the Spanish Succession,” in The Union of 1707: New Dimensions, ed. Stewart J. Brown and Christopher A. Whatley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 31–44.
15 Daniel Szechi, Britain’s Lost Revolution? Jacobite Scotland and French Grand Strategy, 1701–8 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).
16 See also Matthias Pohlig, ‘Englische Spionage im Spanischen Erbfolgekrieg und der jakobitische Invasionsversuch von 1708ʹ, in Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg (1701–1714) und seine Auswirkungen: In Memoriam Teodora Toleva, ed. Katharina Arnegger et al. (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2018), 119–34.
17 See, for example, BL Add. 61,557, fol. 102 v.
18 Caillaud to Sunderland, 28 February 1708, BL Add. 61,551, fol. 17 v–18 r. On the planned Jacobite invasion of 1708, see Szechi, Britain’s Lost Revolution.
19 Caillaud to Sunderland, 23 July 1709, BL Add. 61,564, fol. 164 r.
20 See marginal notes such as ‘sent to admiralty’ left by the Under-Secretary or a clerk in BL Add. 61,548, fols. 117 v, 120 r and passim; BL Add. 61,549, passim; BL Add. 61,551, passim. For a brief discussion of information-gathering by the admiralty, see John B. Hattendorf, England in the War of the Spanish Succession: A Study of the English View and Conduct of Grand Strategy, 1702–1712 (New York: Garland, 1987), 36.
21 See Henry Boyle to Marlborough, 25 August 1710, BL Add. 61,130, fol. 169 r; Josiah Burchett, Secretary of the Admiralty, to Sunderland, 5/16 February 1708, BL Add. 61,582, fol. 56 r.
22 Compare William James Roosen, The Age of Louis XIV: The Rise of Modern Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1976), 157.
23 See also Szechi, “Introduction,” 17–8.
24 See the introduction to Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Chapters 10–13 in Christopher Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence (London: Penguin, 2018).
25 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 4.
26 Alan Marshall, “Sir Joseph Williamson and the Conduct of Administration in Restoration England,” Historical Research 69 (1996): 19–41.
27 For an extensive discussion of the empirical details on which the following analysis is based, see Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 320–9. The footnotes provided below point to exemplary sources which support my interpretation.
28 See, for example, Marlborough to Anthonie Heinsius, 3 September 1704, in The Correspondence 1701–1711 of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough and Anthonie Heinsius, ed. Bert Van ’t Hoff (Utrecht: Kemink, 1951), 129; Sunderland to John Lawes, 17 May 1709, BL Add. 61,651, fol. 165 v.
29 Marlborough to Godolphin, 3/14 October 1706, in The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols., ed. Henry L. Snyder (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 2: 700.
30 See Synder, Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 1: 123.
31 Ibid., 2: 671.
32 See ibid., 2: 1298.
33 See under 23 December 1708 in Journal of the House of Lords 18 (1705–1709): 595–8, in British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol18/pp595-598 (accessed 1 November 2020).
34 Under 12 January 1709 in Journal of the House of Lords 18 (1705–1709): 602–3, in British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=29690 (accessed 1 November 2020).
35 See Sunderland’s minutes in BL Add. 61,499, fol. 101 r. The papers of the secretaries of state also contain a text in which one of Henry Boyle’s under-secretaries had compiled all information gathered by the diplomats in Den Haag and Brussels, presumably in preparation of the inquiry. See The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, State Papers (hereafter: TNA SP) 84/574, fols. 220 r–240 r.
36 See under 3 February 1709 in Journal of the House of Lords 18 (1705–1709): 626–7, in British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol18/pp626-627#h3-0009, as well as under 2 March 1710 (pp. 652–4, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=29724); under 8 March 1710 in The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons: Volume 4, 1706–1713, (London: Chandler, 1742), 98–135, in British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/commons-hist-proceedings/vol4/pp98-135#h3-0056 (all resources were accessed on 1 November 2020).
37 See Robert McJimsey, “Crisis Management: Parliament and Political Stability, 1692–1715,” Albion 31 (1999): 559–88.
38 Compare Peter Jupp, The Governing of Britain, 1688–1848: The Executive, Parliament, and the People (London: Routledge, 2006), 38 and 42.
39 Compare John B. Hattendorf, “English Grand Strategy and the Blenheim Campaign of 1704,” International History Review 5 (1983): 3–19; David Francis, “Marlborough’s March to the Danube,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 50 (1972): 78–100; Franz Mathis, “Marlborough und Wratislaw: Eine politische Freundschaft als Grundlage des Sieges von Höchstädt (1704),” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 83 (1975): 114–43; Henry Delfiner, “Saving an Empire: The Contribution of John Wenzel Count Wratislaw to the Turnaround in 1704,” East European Quarterly 33 (2000): 443–52.
40 See Henry L. Snyder, “The Formulation of Foreign and Domestic Policy in the Reign of Queen Anne: Memoranda by Lord Chancellor Cowper of Conversations with Lord Treasurer Godolphin,” Historical Journal 11 (1968): 144–60; Hattendorf, England, 54 notes that the principles guiding the English government’s foreign policy can only be reconstructed in hindsight, since the government hardly ever formulated an explicit programme.
41 Compare Hattendorf, England, 22–5; Jupp, The Governing of Britain, 42. See also John B. Hattendorf, “English Governmental Machinery and the Conduct of War, 1702–1713,” War and Society 3 (1985): 1–22.
42 For further details of the following structural overview, see Jupp, Governing of Britain; Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1987). On the court see also R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). On the decades after 1714, see Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 193–242.
43 Jupp, The Governing of Britain, 18–19.
44 Henry L. Snyder, “Godolphin and Harley: A Study of Their Partnership in Politics,” Huntington Library Quarterly 30 (1967): 241–71, at 254.
45 Jupp, The Governing of Britain, 23.
46 J. H. Plumb, “The Organization of the Cabinet in the Reign of Queen Anne,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 7 (1957): 137–57, at 147–50.
47 See ibid., 137.
48 BL Add. 61,498–61,500.
49 BL Add. 70,334–70,338. Because Harley’s minutes are unfoliated, they are cited by their date.
50 For instance, BL Add. 70,334, 28 May 1704; BL Add. 70,335, 9 July 1705, 21 September 1705 (This letter additionally notes ‘from Rotterdam’, which indicates Caillaud as the source.), 9 October 1705; BL Add. 70,336, 20 November 1705, 22 November 1705, 2 December 1705, 23 December 1705, 10 February 1706, 24 February 1706; BL Add. 70,338, 30 January 1708. See also Matthias Pohlig, “Staatlicher Geheimdienst oder private Spionagefirma? Pierre Jurieu, Etienne Caillaud und die englische Regierung um 1700,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 43 (2016): 255–92.
51 See, in particular, BL Add. 70,336; BL Add. 70,335, 13 February 1705. See also BL Add. 70,335, 30 October 1705, as well as BL Add. 70,336, 13 November 1705.
52 Compare Szechi, Britain’s Lost Revolution.
53 See, for example, TNA SP 77/57.
54 A. E. Stamp, ‘The Meeting of the Duke of Marlborough and Charles XII. at Altranstadt, April 1707ʹ, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series, vol. 12 (1898): 103–16; June Milne, ‘The Diplomacy of Dr. John Robinson at the Court of Charles XII. of Sweden, 1697–1709: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, vol. 30 (1948): 75–93.
55 Sunderland to Marlborough, 29 April 1707, BL Add. 61,126, fol. 39 r. Compare Ragnhild Hatton Charles XII of Sweden (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 224–5.
56 James R. Jones, Marlborough (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 139.
57 See Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 219–25.
58 On Robethon, see J. F. Chance, “John de Robethon and the Robethon Papers,” English Historical Review 13 (1898): 55–70; Andreas Flick, “’Der Celler Hof, so sagt man, ist ganz französisch.’ Hugenotten am Hof und beim Militär Herzog Georg Wilhelms von Braunschweig-Lüneburg,” Celler Chronik 12 (2005): 65–98, at 72–3.
59 See Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 314–32.
60 Martha S. Feldman and James G. March, “Information in Organisations as Signal and Symbol,” Administrative Science Quarterly 26 (1981): 171–86, at 172.
61 See ibid., 174–6.
62 Ibid., 177.
63 Cf. Joad Raymond, “Introduction: Networks, Communication, Practice,” in News networks in seventeenth century Britain and Europe, ed. Raymond (London: Routledge, 2006), 1–17, at 3.
64 See Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 337–40.
65 On this function of intelligence, also see Michael Warner, “Intelligence as Risk Shifting,” in Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates, ed. Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythian (London: Routledge, 2009), 16–32.
66 Marshall, “Sir Joseph Williamson,” 30.
67 Feldman and March, ‘Information in Organisations,” 177.
68 See Marshall, “Sir Joseph Williamson,” 25.
69 See Harley to John Holles, duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, 17 June 1708, in The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland Preserved at Welbeck Abbey, ed. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, vol. 2 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1893), 205.
70 See Plumb, “Organization,” 138.
71 Some of Harley’s spies in France had been uncovered as double agents. See Pohlig, Marlboroughs Geheimnis, 160–2.
72 Francis Hare to Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough, 1 December 1710, in: Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough: Illustrative of the Court and Times of Queen Anne; with Her Sketches and Opinions of Her Contemproraries, and the Select Correspondence of Her Husband, John, Duke of Marlborough, 2 vols. (London: C. Colburn, 1838), 2: 54.
73 See William Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England: From the Norman Conquest, in 1066, to the Year 1803, vol. 6 (London: R. Bagshaw, 1810), cols. 1050–1088.
74 Ibid., col. 1050.
75 Anonymous, The Case of his Grace the D – – – of M – – – – – – – – –. As design’d to be represented by him to the honourable House of Commons, in vindication of himself from the charge of the Commissioners of Accounts; in relation to the two and half per cent. bread and bread waggons (London, 1712), 8.
76 Ibid., 9.
77 As an example of a multitude of similarly worded letters, see the letter of the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm II, BL Add. 61,326, fol. 183 r: ‘la prudente et sage administration de ces deniers a principalement contribué, après la benediction de Dieu au gain de tant des Victoires glorieuses’.
78 Anonymous, A Speech without Doors, Concerning The Two and a Half per Cent … (London, 1712), 6–7.
79 Anonymous, The Case of his Grace, 12.
80 Anonymous, The Information Against the Duke of Marlborough and his Answer (London, 1712), 19.
81 Compare Warner, “Intelligence as Risk Shifting,” 29.
82 It is noteworthy that criticism of the intelligence cycle exhibits certain parallels to the neo-institutional theory developed by Feldman and March which underpins this article. See, for instance, Arthur S. Hulnick, “What’s Wrong with the Intelligence Cycle,” Intelligence and National Security 21 (2006): 959–79.
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Notes on contributors
Matthias Pohlig
Matthias Pohlig is Professor of Early Modern History at the Humboldt- Universitaet in Berlin. His publications include the monograph Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung: Lutherische Kirchen- und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546 –1617 (2007) and several volumes of collected essays on early modern historiography, religious history and on questions of historical theory. His book about information gathering during the War of the Spanish Succession, Marlboroughs Geheimnis: Strukturen und Funktionen der Informationsgewinnung im Spanischen Erbfolgekrieg, was published in 2016.