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Venice's Secret Service

thomas-huehn.com

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The author published an 17-page article on this subject in 2022, entitled "The secret service of renaissance Venice: Intelligence organisation in the sixteenth century", which seems to have been the basis of this book. It can be found here:

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/3d669bd8-c10c-4436-9...

(A link to the PDF can be found under "Attached files".)

I found this through the list of publications on her web page: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/profiles/staff/ioanna-iordanou

She also has another related paper:

"The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth Century Venice"

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/d6c33ee2-34c8-4994-b...

The article was pretty much a preview of one chapter while writing the book. So it might be a good appetizer indeed.

She has also co-written two books on heads of intelligence services: https://press.georgetown.edu/Book/Spy-Chiefs-Volume-1

What a cool field! Early cryptology, cloak and dagger stuff, renaissance Venice... it's got it all.

Those are some cool topics, they should use them in a videogame story, built around a secret underground resistance movement in renaissance Venice, fighting against the establishment in power, maybe even get the church involved in the story. Has potential to sell well, maybe even spawn a franchise, who knows.

You'd need some way to rapidly get around Venice to prevent it just being a walking-and-gondola simulator. Perhaps some sort of parkour-esque mechanic? ;)

Secret underground caves and tunnels, pre-steam age subway using hydraulic power to move the carriages...

> Secret underground caves and tunnels, pre-steam age subway

In Venice, your subway would have to involve actual submarines.

Vaporetto!

For some reason I get the tingle that makes me go play the elder scrolls reading this

She was also on an episode of SpyCast last summer, a really interesting story!

https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast/592/notes

I recently returned from a trip to Venice. I highly recommend visiting in late November/December as the atmosphere is very different from the more crowded times of year. Locals will tell you it's busy all year round now, but low season still has a lot of appeal.

Before visiting I ready City of Fortune [1] for a high level overview of Venetian history and it is a truly enthralling read that covers most of Venice's timeline. I also came across several articles by Ioanna Iordanou.

I would be interested in better understanding what life was like in Venice from 1800 to the present day, but I haven't found much contemporary research on the Venetian economy and society in that time, including the run up to the Fall of the Republic of Venice.

1: https://www.amazon.com/City-Fortune-Venice-Ruled-Seas/dp/081...

"organized intelligence is not – as commonly thought – an invention of the modern industrial state"

Venice was a prototype of the modern state - another example is the Arsenale where ships were built in insane numbers using conveyor-like process and standardised part numbers.

"At the peak of its efficiency in the early 16th century, the Arsenal employed some 16,000 people who apparently were able to produce nearly one ship each day, and could fit out, arm, and provision a newly built galley with standardized parts on a production-line basis not seen again until the Industrial Revolution."

Spy craft goes way back. You can read about it in Herodotus and the Old Testament.

George Washington was a spy master and much of what we think we know about his operations is dot connecting. This is true of most historical accounts of spying.

A good fictional account of true to life spy craft in the 19th century is Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Some of the characters are based on historical persons in the business.

The OG does well to point out the misconception this is somehow a modern invention. It's interesting to read well-researched accounts of spy craft in different historical eras. Its secrecy at the time makes it hard to find source material. They knew how to keep secrets in olden days and there were not many whistle blowers. A lot of what you come across is just speculation. From the article it appears there is quite a lot of source material for Venice.

"Venice never developed a professional spy force, like the professional cryptologers. Instead it relied mostly on amateurs, criminals and other people paid for with sometimes huge, sometimes only meagre amounts of money, and sometimes with favors, especially the release or un-banishment of criminals."

So they used a lot of spying and as a merchant empire, did traded and guarded a lot of information about everything, but they did not really had a secret service - they had professional cryptologers which was usually a family buisness:

"Venice’s cryptology department was usually centered upon a foremost cryptologer, who was also responsible for educating new recruits. He got special affordances, like being allowed to choose new recruits himself. This contributed to the department of cryptology being a nepotic affair. Younger family members were often selected and preferred. "

Sounds like a plotline for Gibson's Neuromancer. I do wonder how much corporate "cloak & dagger" stuff actually happens, and how. You really never hear about it in terms of actually espionage of research, winning over lead scientists through nefarious means, etc.

how do freemasons fit in all of this ? i heard that a lot of salor crew were made freemason aboard ships travelling to the East Indies, so that family received a pension in case of shipwreck/death/injury. Also, they are known for secrecy and like networking all over world.

Spycast : "Venice’s Secret Service" – with Ioanna Iordanou

see : https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast/592/notes

They don't. Freemasons as we know them grew established about a century later than the institutions described in this book, and their origins are in Northern Europe.

thanks ! i have been bull**** then. Sorry for the wrong info.

Why did you reference that spycast episode? The transcript never mentions any of the following words: mason, shipwreck, pension, east indies.

The widow's pension story was told to me by the guide while visiting the freemason lodge in The Hague.

It would be interesting to understand the threads that connect the Venice SS with the Whitehouse' SS .. was the precedent of the former used to establish the modern variant?

Venice was the precursory of modern Western states. It had invented many things that we take for granted now. Read "Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization" [1]

> Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta.

And Venetian Council of Ten and its spies had been known and feared by many visitors to Venice in XVIII century when Venice ceased being an empire and became a must visit place for guest from all over Europe.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084JMFGS9/?coliid=IAFJVQ9O6WTHR&c...

Don't forget glass. They moved all the glassmakers to a closed island next to the main island and viciously protected their intellectual property to maintain a monopoly on high quality glasses for a long time.

I really start to wonder about island nations/seafaring countries, shipping/maritime industry, and their extraordinary success.

Interesting, thanks for that -had been aware of it before, but now I've got some studying to do ..

Applying the name ‘secret service’ to Venice’s council of ten seems to be a choice by the author, not an actual contemporary naming. (By the way, I’d avoid using the acronym for ‘secret service’)

The US Secret Service has its origins as a federal anti counterfeiting police force which over time migrated into executive protection duties - it’s not the same role that in other countries and times has been given the name of a ‘secret service’ or ‘secret police’. The modern US Secret Service probably has more in common, in this era, with the role of the Swiss guards at the Vatican - a personal bodyguard unit attached to and loyal to an office not the officeholder.

The Venice example given is much more of a parallel to a total state security apparatus like the KGB, with combined internal security and foreign intelligence gathering roles.

> Venice was a Great Power, with colonies and occupations all over the Mediterranean, vying with states like France and England for supremacy.

The nostalgia of lost glory in Europe is touching. In today's world even France and England aren't major powers, much less Venice. The truth thing is, these cities will never become major powers again. In a world where education is disseminated fairly, the economy of any country will be directly proportional to its population (barring outlier natural resources like in Gulf countries). I would bet my money on a Tier 2 city in India like Surat over has-beens like Venice.

How to tell someone you have never been in Venice without telling them you never have been to Venice.

Just kidding, but I don't think venetians as I know them would even want to become a world power again, yet the capital of that former world power is truly amazing place. I may be spoiled because I grew up nearby, so I have been there often, but it is one of my favourite cities in the world, just because it forces you to think completely different about what a city is or could be.

Lots to unpack here. I agree that it's difficult for 'old powers' to rise again. Cities - and the ideologies bred in them - seem destined to have their heyday, use that wealth to build their culture, then sit back and bask in former glory. The drive and spark seems to give way to tradition and enjoyment.

It makes great cities of the 'old world' like Istanbul, London, Venice, and Cairo absolutely fascinating; living, breathing museums of the glories and failures of different approaches to life and power.

We'd be unwise to brush them aside lest we don't learn their lessons and tales. Venice is a tale of entrepreneurs who looked at a decaying Byzantine Empire, and who saw the value of the ancient texts wasting away within their walls. Venetians spread 'old ideas' far and wide and started to embrace reason, trade and order, over ideological dogma. While they too faded away, their ideas and impact gave birth to the European powers, who created America, who'll create ???

Regarding your comments on education. While the internet is an insanely powerful equaliser in education. It too, seems to be going the way of the Byzantines. Walls and moats, ideological purity, and a lack of drive for curiosity and greatness seem the flavour of the day. Maybe the 'Venice of the future' will need to also be a lean power who values curiosity, spark, drive, grit and greatness, as opposed to a huge population centre which can only realistically be controlled by mass-produced, packaged information?

Great comment. Welcome to HN!

Venice was thalassocracy and never focused on real colonies - only military/trading bases. And it dominated Europe by the strength of ducat being both Venetian and global currency. Venice was skilled at setting gold to silver exchange rates - and maintained its monetary policy consistent for decades.

Venetian navy dominated Mediterranean due to high military budget but also first modern assembly line in Arsenal (Venetian shipyard) able of mass production of ships.

In other words Venice is very interesting and worth studying. Some of Venice's achievements still echo in XXI century.

> A thalassocracy or thalattocracy,[1] sometimes also maritime empire, is a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire.[2] Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories. Examples of this were the Phoenician states of Tyre, Sidon and Carthage; the Italian maritime republics of Venice and Genoa of the Mediterranean; the Chola dynasty of Tamil Nadu in India; the Omani Empire of Arabia; and the Austronesian empires of Srivijaya and Majapahit in Maritime Southeast Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocracy

> The Venetian Arsenal's ability to mass-produce galleys on an almost assembly-line process was unique for its time and resulted in possibly the single largest industrial complex in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal

The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500 - https://www.amazon.com/Venetian-Money-Market-1200-1500-Renai...

Education, wealth and access to resources will never be divided fairly or be equally accessible to all. So there will always be a massive discrepancy between various countries and the way to look at those former powers is to see them has having a head start over the rest of the world. If they turn themselves into tourist attractions (Amsterdam, Venice, Paris and many others) that's a better outcome than that they become entrenched military powers or maintain their colonial ambitions. For Surat to rival any of those you'd have to transport it in time back to the 15th century and to make India a colonial power. That will never happen, because you don't get to be a player at that level by being nice: it takes having an unfair advantage and the willingness to exploit that advantage (military, trade, something else?).

Amsterdam wouldn't be what it is without the 'golden age' (which for the countries that were plundered probably wasn't a golden age at all, but one of oppression and massive looting), Venice wouldn't be where it is today without a sizeable fraction of the monetary movement of the age flowing through its banks, not unlike Switzerland, NYC or London in more recent times. I don't think there will be any cities becoming 'major powers' ever again except maybe for SV and some in China if they manage to avoid financial collapse.

> I don't think there will be any cities becoming 'major powers' ever again except maybe for SV and some in China if they manage to avoid financial collapse.

There are more opportunities than that. Technical change that doesn't accrue existing regions can shift the balance - for example maybe souther Texas during a potential "gold rush" phase of private space exploitation. Or maybe, finally a big earthquake hits the west coast and the resulting resettlement in other cities breaks the current positive feedback loop of tech in bay area resulting in new powerhouse regions. Or some of the developing countriesin Africa finally get their act together and become an economic and later technical and military powerhouse. Or some currently minor country has a research lab discover a major technology, or makes a smart investment (like Taiwan and semiconductors) that makes it a new power, if harnessed locally and not just distributed back to existing tech centers. Plenty of opportunities - though it is indeed true is more likely for existing power centers to continue to centralize their benefits of existing human capital including access to resources like funding or transport hubs of physical goods, proximity to customers or whatever.

Hinduism did spread via the maritime route to Cambodia and Indonesia but there’s this little thing called kala pani that was probably prohibitive to direct colonization

I don’t see any nostalgia. Venice was indeed a Great Power [0] centuries ago. It doesn’t even call France and England great powers , just that Venice was in their league long time ago.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power

Venice hasn't been an empire since Napoleon; https://historywalksvenice.com/article/the-fall-of-venice/

> In a world where education is disseminated fairly,

That's a huge assumption.

> The truth thing is, these cities will never become major powers again

Nobody claimed the opposite? Who exactly are you arguing with on this?

But I will argue that France and England are still major powers. France is core to the EU and pretty much controls it together with Germany. England is a power politically, but perhaps not economically. Its cultural exports are huge too. Power changed, but the power holders remain the same.

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