invisible agents women and espionage in seventeenth century britain

An all-to-brief chapter on codes, ciphers, physical deceptions, and invisible inks. There's a tantalising glimpse into the tradecraft of spies.

In theory, this should be an exciting book - Spies! Sex! State Secrets! But it quickly becomes little more than a list of names, dates, and locations. It's rare that I abandon a book - but I gave up half way through this and skimmed to the end. This compelling and ground-breaking contribution to the history of espionage details a series of case studies in which women - from playwright to postmistress, from lady-in-waiting to laundry woman - acted as spies, sourcing and passing on confidential information on account of political and religious convictions or to obtain money or power. Nadine Akkerman's search for an answer to this question has led to the writing of Invisible Agents, the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies, demonstrating that the allegedly-male world of the spy was more than merely infiltrated by women. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer's gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives? It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history.

Invisible agents women and espionage in seventeenth century britain