What is it about?
Malta under the Knights of St John (1530-1798) needed to remain updated on the military activity of it's enemy, the Ottoman Turks. This paper recreates the intelligence network and channels through which Malta in the early 1600s was kept informed on the Turks & shows how Malta, in turn, fed this information to Christendom.
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Why is it important?
These intelligence patterns show how Malta dealt with the constant Ottoman threat & how it formed an integral & enduring part of Christendom's early warning system within the context of the Habsburg-Ottoman rivalry. It also fills gaps in Malta's consular networks in the first half of the 1600s and delves into the Knights Hospitallers' efforts to verify, process, & transmit information/intelligence.
Perspectives
In this paper I expand further on the themes of Hospitaller Malta as an intelligence collector & early warning sentinel for military & epidemiological purposes which I worked on earlier in my career (publications of 2006, 2013, and my PhD (2016)). These are crucial themes in the wider framework of my academic interests which deal with Malta of the Knights' integration in Mediterranean, European, and global communication & financial networks. My aspiration is to provide an innovative outlook on Hospitaller Malta & the activities of the Knights of St John in the international framework of early modernity.
Dr Ivan Grech
American University of Malta
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Getting to Know the Enemy: Hospitaller Malta’s Intelligence Network in the Early Seventeenth Century, Turkish Historical Review, October 2018, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18775462-00902001.
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