Who was Spying on Whom in the Eighteenth Century?
One of the difficulties in studying espionage in the early eighteenth century is determining who was fighting whom in an era of constantly shifting alliances and therefore who would be spying on whom. A military historian told me the first modern war was the American Civil War and the first large scale wars were the Napoleonic Wars. Prior to that, wars were local and often disputes between nobles. The Great Northern War, although it involved a lot of countries, was in fact a series of disputes between the nobility of Northern and Eastern Europe and Russia. In the same few decades, the War of Spanish Succession in Southern Europe and the War of the Polish Succession in Eastern Europe, both disputes over who would assume the throne.
Origins of Espionage
Daniel Szechi argues that spying is the second oldest profession, with evidence back to Sparta’s Crypteia, who operated with stealth and violence (Szechi, p. 1). Spies, however, usually didn’t leave a paper trail behind, so it is difficult to find sources. Most sources cover distribution of information between countries rather than covert spying.
Trumpeting Diplomatic Missives
When peace was negotiated at the conclusion of the Kalmar War in 1613 between the Danes and the future Lion of the North, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Anstruther sent an agent into Sweden with a trumpeter, which indicated the man was on a diplomatic mission and should not be bothered (Murdoch, p. 3).
In fact, information between nations and trading companies had to be carried in person since there wasn’t a regular postal service between European nations until the mid-1600s. For example, Sweden set up its first postal agent in Hamburg in 1619 (Koopmans, p. 2).
Sweden’s Spies in the Jacobite Uprisings
The relationship between Sweden and Scotland goes back to the Kalmar War between Sweden and Denmark-Norway from 1611-1613. Scottish soldiers were sent to reinforce the Swedish armed forces, and British soldiers augmented the Danish forces. Britain was concerned about brothers from the British Isles fighting on opposite sides yet passing information between them. In fact, two British ambassadors represented the opposing sides: Sir Robert Anstruther represent Denmark-Norway and Sir James Spens represented Sweden. Denmark-Norway was closely allied with the House of Stuart, particularly when James VI married Anne of Denmark in 1589, an alliance which continued more than 50 years. (Murdoch, p. 2). Spens and Anstruther passed diplomatic information, but in modern terms would be called double agents.
SOURCE: Murdoch, Steve. “Seventeenth Century Scandinavia: The Evidence in the State Papers’ in State Papers Online, 1509-1714,” n.d. [read via paid subscription to academia.edu]
SOURCE: Koopmans, J.W. “H. Cools, M. Keblusek, B. Noldus, Your Humble Servant. Agents in Early Modern Europe.” BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 2007. doi:10.18352/BMGN-LCHR.6727.
SOURCE: Szechi, Daniel, “Nathaniel Hooke and the Dynamics of Covert Operations in Eighteenth-century France,” in The Dangerous Trade: Spies, Spymaster, and the Making of Europe, edited by Daniel Szechi, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2011 and 2021. [read as a printed paperback]