Ioanna Iordanou

Although there are times when the author verges on the over-enthusiastic about her topic, this is an intriguing monograph on how the Venetian Republic came to represent a precocious example of what a state intelligence apparatus could look like. The foundations of this mentality Iordanou places in the pre-existing tendencies of the Republic's government, in terms of organization and regularization needed to run its empire, and the commitment to secrecy and preemptive action built into the brief of the executive Council of Ten. These preexisting tendencies being built upon when Venice found itself faced with forces built on throwing down its empire, in the course of the great Ottoman offensive, or the Italian Wars. From there, Iordanou contemplates a wide variety of topics that illustrate the prototypical nature of the Venetian security apparatus; the bureaucratization, the professionalization, the processes of information management, and the indoctrination into a culture of secrecy. The most salient point to me being that the "Ten" were subject to their own regulations. Recommended if you can handle the prose, which occasionally sounds like "management speak," and which tip-toes up to the condition of being prolix.… (meer)