Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956
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over the role of Commonwealth representation in the occupation of
Japan. From 1945 to 1950, when it was committed to the war in Korea, No.
77 RAAF Squadron was stationed in Japan.
54
When the Malayan insur-
gency heated up, the RAAF committed its No. 1 Squadron of Lincoln
bombers and the Dakota transports of No. 38 Squadron to serve in that
colony under RAF command.
55
From 1952 to 1954, the jet fighters of Aus-
tralia’s No. 78 Squadron were deployed to Malta, where they defended
Britain’s primary Mediterranean base.
56
Other Commonwealth nations and
dominions also contributed to imperial operations. In the later stages of
the Malayan campaign, the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF)
deployed some aircraft to support counterinsurgency operations.
57
The
small, but very capable, Rhodesian Air Force deployed two squadrons of
Vampire fighters to Aden in 1958 to help suppress the insurgency there.
From 1959 to 1963, Rhodesian Canberra bombers were stationed on
Cyprus, and Rhodesian Air Force transports augmented the RAF’s trans-
port command during the deployment of British forces to Kuwait during
the 1961 crisis.
58
As noted, most of the Commonwealth air force deployments in support
of post-war imperial operations were on a small scale, usually amounting
to a couple of squadrons. However, the support provided by Common-
wealth air forces had more than a symbolic or political value. Taken
cumulatively, the participation of commonwealth contingents in many
peripheral operations allowed the RAF to deploy more of its limited tacti-
cal forces in the 1950s and 1960s to the higher priority mission of NATO
support. Furthermore, the deployment of Commonwealth air forces on
active operations provided those air forces with useful experience that
enhanced their value in the context of broader Western security cap-
abilities.
Strategic transitions
The RAF operations in the Suez campaign of 1956 were the last major
operations carried out in an imperial context. Although the RAF per-
formed well in supporting the Suez operation, the whole campaign can
best be characterized as a strategic fiasco.
59
With Britain helping establish
NATO in 1949 and joining SEATO in 1954, the decade after the Second
World War saw a dramatic strategic shift from an imperial strategy to a
strategy within the context of collective defence.
This shift did not, however, signal an end to the RAF’s imperial air
operations. From 1963 to 1965, RAF squadrons supported Britain’s desul-
tory campaign against rebels in Aden until the government decided that
holding the old base there was no longer worth the trouble. From the late
1950s through the 1970s, the RAF was engaged in several small campaigns
in Asia and the Middle East. RAF units successfully supported operations
to defend Brunei against Indonesian aggression in the 1960s and in
172 J.S. Corum
supporting the government of Oman against insurgents in the 1970s.
60
These later campaigns, with the exception of the fighting in Aden, were
not carried out to defend colonial possessions but rather to support pro-
British regimes against primarily external threats. Even as the RAF’s
commitment to imperial defence declined, its ability to conduct very
effective small-scale interventions and to support friendly governments
threatened by insurgency improved. The RAF operations in Brunei from
1962 to 1966, which drew heavily upon the RAF’s recent experience in
Malaya, provide another model of the effective use of airpower in low-
intensity conflict. Largely because of the effective RAF operations in
support of Brunei’s government, the Indonesians dropped their claim to
Brunei in 1966.
61
Notes
1 Malcolm Smith, British Air Strategy Between the Wars (Oxford, 1984), 23.
2 Ibid., 21–22.
3 Charles Miller, Khyber: British India’s North West Frontier (New York, 1977),
311–332.
4 Mark Jacobsen, ‘Only by the Sword: British Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, 1920’,
Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2 (1991): 351–352, 358. For an interesting account
of RAF operations in Iraq in 1920, see Squadron leader G.C. Pirie, ‘Some
Experiences of No 6 Squadron in the Iraq Insurrection, 1920’, RAF Air Power
Review, 7 (2004): 1–12.
5 James S. Corum, ‘Air Control: Reassessing the History’, RAF Air Power Review,
4 (2001): 15–36; Jacobsen, ‘Only by the Sword: British Counter-Insurgency in
Iraq, 1920’, 356–357.
6 Jacobsen, ‘Only by the Sword: British Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, 1920’, 357.
7 Flight-Lieutenant F.A. Skoulding, ‘With “Z” Unit in Somaliland’, The RAF Quar-
terly, 2 (1931): 387–396.
8 Smith, British Air Strategy Between the Wars, 28.
9 For a good example of a typical nineteenth/early twentieth century punitive
operation in the British Empire, see Winston Churchill, The Story of the
Malakand Field Force (New York, 1989), originally published 1898. The book is
Churchill’s personal account of an expedition he participated in.
10 David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The RAF 1919–1939 (Manchester,
1990), 25–27.
11 Ibid., 31.
12 Ibid.
13 Major General H. Rowan-Robinson, ‘Iraq’, RUSI Journal, 78 (1932): 384.
14 See Philip Towle, Pilots and Rebels (London, 1989), 9–55, for a good overview of
the RAF and air control doctrine in the interwar era.
15 On the myths promulgated about RAF air control, see Corum, ‘Air Control:
Reassessing the History’, 22–23.
16 Ibid., 20–21. Later drafts of the RAF’s notes on air control stressed the humani-
tarian aspects of air control. Rebellious villages would be first warned that they
would be bombed if they did not accede to government demands. Given time to
evacuate the village, the aircraft would demolish the houses with bombs, not with
the intention of destroying the village, but with the aim of disrupting daily life.
17 See Basil Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare (London, 1932), 139–161.
Liddell Hart accepted all of the RAF’s positions on air control and was an
The RAF in imperial defence 173
enthusiastic supporter. As military correspondent for the Daily Telegraph,
Liddell Hart was in a good position to influence the public and politicians.
18 The draft of the RAF’s Notes on the Method of Employment of the Air Arm in Iraq
proudly pointed out that ‘within 45 minutes a full-sized village . . . can be
practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or
five planes which offer them no real target and no opportunity for glory or
avarice’. Cited in Towle, Pilots and Rebels, 20.
19 James Corum and Wray Johnson, Airpower and Small Wars (Lawrence, 2003),
66–73, 80–81.
20 Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The RAF 1919–1939, 119–121.
21 Max Arthur, There Shall be Wings: The RAF: 1918 to the Present (London, 1984), 4.
22 In March 1921, the Admiralty drew up a memorandum that outlined the possi-
bility of a conflict with Japan and the British Empire. In case of such a war, the
RN would require a major regional fleet base, and Admiral Jellicoe and the RN
staff identified Singapore to be ‘the key to the British Naval position in the
Pacific’ and urged that it be made impregnable. David Stevens (ed.), The Royal
Australian Navy, Vol. 3 (Melbourne, 2001), 62.
23 Corelli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1986),
280–281.
24 Sebastian Ritchie, Industry and Air Power: The Expansion of British Aircraft Produc-
tion, 1935–1941 (London, 1997), 42–43.
25 Major General I.S.O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Vol. 1
(London, 1954), 29–31.
26 On the RAF in the defence of Singapore and Malaya, see Henry Probert, The
Forgotten Air Force: The RAF in the War Against Japan 1941–1945 (London, 1995),
37–52, 311.
27 Neville Jones, The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power (London, 1987), 111–113.
28 Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, 174–177.
29 In 1938, the South African Air Force consisted of a training school depot, one
active squadron and a small reserve. The Royal Australian Air Force had 227
permanent officers, 1,853 airmen, 52 reserve officers and 346 reserve airmen, a
training school, two depots and eight active squadrons. The RNZAF in 1938
had 36 officers, 160 enlisted men, 68 reserve officers, a training school and a
small depot. See A.G. Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence (London, 1939),
193–197, 204, 216–217.
30 Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory (Toronto, 1994), 24–33.
31 Air Commodore Henry Probert, The Forgotten Air War: The RAF in the War
Against Japan 1941–1945 (London, 1995), 9.
32 Alan Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, Vol. 2 (Melbourne, 2001), 50–51.
33 Ibid., 54.
34 Corelli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities 1945–1950 (New
York, 1995), 76–77.
35 Air Chief Marshal David Lee, Eastward: A History of the RAF in the Far East
1945–1972 (London, 1984), 38–51.
36 Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities 1945–1950, 65–67.
37 R.N. Rosecrance, Defense of the Realm: British Strategy in the Nuclear Epoch (New
York, 1968), 37.
38 Martin Navias, ‘Strengthening the Deterrent? The British Medium Bomber
Force Debate, 1955–56’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 11 (1988): 203–219.
39 Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities 1945–1950, 97.
40 Simon Ball, ‘Bomber Bases and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1945–1949’,
Journal of Strategic Studies, 14 (1991): 515–533.
41 Ibid., 519–520, 526.
42 Corum and Johnson, Airpower and Small Wars, 99–102.
174 J.S. Corum
43 Robin Higham, Bases of Air Strategy (UK, 1998), 235–236.
44 Air Chief Marshal David Lee, Wings in the Sun: A History of the RAF in the Mediter-
ranean 1945–1986 (London, 1989), 45–47.
45 Ibid., 47–51.
46 Ibid., 16–231.
47 Ibid., 108–122.
48 Bruce Hoffman, British Air Power in Peripheral Conflict, 1919–1976 (Santa
Monica, CA, 1989), 68–71.
49 Ibid., 72–75.
50 Ibid., 57–68.
51 Corum and Johnson, Airpower and Small Wars, 190–199.
52 Hoffman, British Air Power in Peripheral Conflict, 1919–1976, 54–57.
53 For example, the RAAF was a force of 5,620 aircraft and 173,622 men in
August 1945. See Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, 173.
54 Ibid., 216.
55 Ibid., 246–250.
56 Ibid., 222–223.
57 Corum and Johnson, Airpower and Small Wars, 193.
58 Ibid., 296.
59 For a detailed account of RAF operations in the Suez Campaign, see Lee,
Wings in the Sun: A History of the RAF in the Mediterranean 1945–1986, 74–107.
60 On the campaign in Brunei, see Hoffman, British Air Power in Peripheral Conflict,
1919–1976, 82–86. On the RAF operations in Aden and Oman, see Corum and
Johnson, Airpower and Small Wars, 199–218.
61 Hoffman, British Air Power in Peripheral Conflict, 1919–1976, 83–86.
The RAF in imperial defence 175
9 Tradition and system
British intelligence and the old
world order, 1715–1956
John Robert Ferris
This chapter assesses British intelligence between 1715 and 1956, with a
focus on structure and evolution. It emphasises the relationship between
power, strategy and intelligence, and systems and traditions – means by
which people gather and assess data for specific purposes, against loose
combinations of ideas and practices about how to do so if one must. British
intelligence, responding to changes in supply and demand, began with
systems, turned to traditions, and returned to systems. Progress was not
linear. Technical failures or successes affected policy, in complex ways.
Between 1715 and 1793, Britain was unique as a power, as was its need
for news, but not its intelligence system. It was a European power, sepa-
rated from the continent by water, with overseas possessions next to many
strong peoples. Only internal subversion or a navy superior off its coasts,
convoying a large army, or the two in tandem, could threaten its security,
yet it had major and vulnerable interests in Hanover, the Low Countries
and the world. Any squabble in Europe might concern Britain, though so
too it could ignore major changes in power. Several countries could chal-
lenge it, but any great danger must involve France. The British state
needed to exert power on the continent and the world and to block two
great threats: first, a dynastic rival, the Jacobites, supported by enemies
within and without, and second, the large fleets of two loose allies, France
and Spain. These threats could be unleashed by the secret decision of a
few men. That happened regularly. British authorities made intelligence
their first line of defence against these threats. It fit the bill.
Until 1745, contra-espionage against Jacobites was the great task of
British intelligence. It guided the collection of diplomatic material,
spurred the development of code-breaking and forced close coordination
between sources. Spies monitored Jacobites abroad, as mail intercepts did
the literate and political elite at home, routinely gathered through general
warrants which allowed the opening of all letters containing ‘suspected
treasonable correspondence’.
1
External intelligence was divided. Colonial
authorities and naval and military ones on campaign gathered whatever
information they needed, through their own means. Strategic and diplo-
matic intelligence in Europe was collected with more centralisation,
backed by a specialist agency, the Deciphering Branch, about five-men
strong. The eighteenth century was the first great age for communications
intelligence, and Britain a great practitioner. Everywhere, able code-break-
ers had easy access to foreign traffic, popped in the post or carried in
despatch bags which could be opened easily and surreptitiously. For every-
one, diplomatic dispatches were key to strategy or survival, in an integ-
rated, opportunistic and multilateral system, where minor shifts in position
by many states might reshape one’s position, and renversements des alliances
overturn it. Because capabilities were clear and powerful, the intentions of
foreign statesmen were unusually central to strategy and equally difficult to
determine. Statesmen avidly sought to penetrate the uncertainty or security
around these matters, especially in France, by combining code-breaking
with human sources. Regularly, foreign ministers read all the traffic of
ambassadors while negotiating with them. This advantage was doubled by
Britain’s tendency to negotiate not in foreign capitals but London: thus, it
read ambassador’s reports and their master’s retorts, while minimising the
exposure of its own secrets. Statesmen routinely circulated and assessed
solutions. They had ambassadors gather detailed intelligence by all sources,
on specific matters such as the views of individual people or military prepa-
rations. Diplomats did such work as a matter of course. Thus, in 1737, the
Foreign Secretary told the ambassador in Paris, he
cannot be too alert in this critical conjuncture, and you will therefore
have persons in the several ports of France to send you conattnad-
vices; and it might not be amiss if you employ’d proper persons all
along the coast to be viewing and observing the motions of the Irish
regiments, that upon the least appearance of anything that might give
a jealousy, Your Excellency might send His Majesty notice of it. We
shall have a considerable squadron at home, which if there should be
any design of making any attempt either from France or Spain, will be
able upon the least hint from Your Excellency, to dispose itself so as to
defeat any enterprise of that kind.
2
Officials working against their hosts produced most human intelli-
gence, but all sorts of Britons abroad watched the Jacobites and thus
foreign states. From 1760, Britain created a second system of espionage
through the non-official means best able to acquire it, commercial
sources. Richard Wolters, ‘His Majesty’s Agent at Rotterdam’, exploited its
connections to mercantile ports abroad to gain broad coverage of polit-
ical, financial and naval matters. By 1798, after France conquered the
Netherlands, the Foreign Secretary noted the need to develop intelligence
‘through the means of some mercantile house at Hamburgh, whose corre-
spondence with Holland might be constant and unsuspected’. Forms of
political warfare, like propaganda, were normal tools of policy at home
and abroad. Bribes to statesmen (frequently between £1,000 and £10,000)
Tradition and system 177
stood second only to the subsidy of states as a diplomatic weapon in
Central Europe.
3
Between 1715 and 1793, espionage served Britain well, perhaps better
than any other power in Europe, save in one area. Intelligence on mar-
itime capabilities in peacetime, like the location of warships, was easy to
find but not on operational matters in war. Limits to signals made war-
ships at sea hard to contact or locate. Fleets were desperately ignorant of
anything beyond visual range of their furthest frigates, fifteen miles by day
and four at night.
4
The difficulty in finding enemies or forcing them to
battle made the Royal Navy (RN) play for safety at sea, keeping most of its
warships in home waters, to block the gravest danger, that a strong enemy
fleet might suddenly dominate those seas. This weakened its sea power
elsewhere, at some cost between 1742 and 1763 and a high one in 1783.
Intelligence mattered even more to Britain during the French Revolu-
tionary and Napoleonic wars, though its enemy was able. Political warfare
aided France in the Low Countries, Italy and Germany, while Napoleon
Bonaparte processed operational and strategic information with unprece-
dented skill. Intelligence multiplied French power in Central Europe, just
as it did British to the west, despite some failures. The value of code-break-
ing declined because diplomacy did. Between 1793 and 1812, Britain had
increasingly few foreign ambassadors at home or for negotiations abroad. It
offered greater bribes and subsidies than before to less effect. During 1797,
William Pitt was willing to pay French ministers £450,000 to buy an accept-
able peace, drawn from Indian revenues and secret service, ‘without the
necessity of ever disclosing the transaction’. In 1803, Britain offered Jerome
Bonaparte even more, to make his brother tolerate British control of Malta,
so to salvage peace.
5
British aid for French resistance to the revolution had
some success, more than France had with revolutionaries in the UK. Spies
provided accurate and trusted coverage on political and military matters.
Authorities in Whitehall ran some agents in French-occupied territory, but
most were controlled by officials stationed nearby, such as Richard Lamb,
the consul in Frankfort, or Richard Wellesley in Spain.
6
Four messengers
were ‘constantly engaged at the hazard of their lives if discovered in convey-
ing the correspondence to & from our Secret Agents abroad’.
7
Between
1804 and 1812, Britain had more spies than diplomats in Europe. This
material aided strategy and diplomacy less than it generally had done
between 1715 and 1793, while British operational intelligence reached new
peaks in absolute quality and relative superiority over its foe. In the penin-
sula, the Duke of Wellington ably and aggressively used a great system of
military intelligence, combining cartography and cryptography and overlap-
ping human sources for tactical, operational and strategic matters.
8
This
material was fundamental to his defensive success in 1810, his offensive one
of 1812 and his triumph of 1813. Knowledge aided the RN even more as a
force multiplier. It found a special solution to the general problems with
communication and intelligence. Close blockade pinned enemy warships in
178 J.R. Ferris
port, which let the RN determine the location of almost all of them on the
Atlantic coast of Europe and most in the Mediterranean Sea. Without close
blockade, Britain might have lost the war. Its value lay no more in opera-
tions than intelligence, where it was almost the functional equivalent of
Room 40 during the First World War. Whenever the enemy broke from
blockade, intelligence became as difficult as ever, forcing even Horatio
Nelson into bizarre evolutions during 1798 and 1804. Then, his best source
of intelligence was his sea log, built up over thirty years of service, which let
him predict meteorological and nautical conditions with unusual accuracy.
9
The generation after 1815 was the Indian summer of eighteenth-
century British espionage. It focused above all on France, where the
ambassador between 1815 and 1830, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, gathered
news by all means, including spies. From 1824 to 1839, Britain also sub-
sidised two Englishmen to report on opposition groups, whom officials
could not routinely meet in this divided state. Statesmen read these
reports, though most comments are unfriendly. The Foreign Secretary,
Lord Palmerston, called them ‘worse than Trash’.
10
Meanwhile, between
1793 and 1825, governments feared political threats from the lower
orders at home, against which they relied on spies and the interception
of mail.
11
Between 1830 and 1846, Britain increasingly abandoned espionage
against European states and its own citizens, including the only cen-
tralised part of its older system. It ceased the use of spies and general war-
rants at home. In the tumultuous years after 1815, postmasters regularly
intercepted the mail of specific people and sometimes were told to ‘detain
and open any letters’ to and from specific towns thought ‘to be of a suspi-
cious nature, and likely to convey seditious or treasonable information, or
to contain money likely to be applied for the purpose of promoting sedi-
tious or other Disturbances’. From 1830, far fewer intercepts were
ordered, and these were more specific and less political.
12
Meanwhile,
political espionage stopped in Paris, because France lacked the will and
means to threaten Britain and old agents provided little material, while
new ambassadors disliked spying on their hosts and easily gathered
information from liberal, bureaucratic and constitutional regimes,
whether named monarchies or republics. Demand declined and supply
failed. Britain abandoned its code-breaking agency, as did most European
countries, partly for technical reasons. Diplomatic dispatches, moved by
rapid and reliable couriers, were harder to purloin, while telegraph
carried messages of lesser moment, covered by codes which could be
broken only through new forms of technical expertise. That scarcely
seemed worth the bother; therefore, neither did black chambers. The
British one was of mediocre value after 1815. Though one authority
regards changes in cryptanalysis as the difference between Palmerston’s
successes of the 1830s and his failures of later years, that statesman may
have gained more by sending letters which he wanted foreign leaders to
Tradition and system 179
open than by reading their mail. Nor did Palmerston press to improve the
system – his correspondence about code-breaking focused on pensions
not directions. In this context, the embarrassment ministers felt at reading
other gentlemen’s mail, and even more, being caught at it, killed the
black chamber dead. Internal threats, independent princes or revolution-
aries, however, made Indian authorities intercept mail for a decade longer
and revive that practice a decade earlier than at home.
13
These changes demand explanation. One has been found in attitudes.
Throughout the Victorian era, Christopher Andrew suggests, British intel-
ligence was hampered by a belief that gentlemen could not be spies.
14
This
point has force and limits. From 1830, British statesmen, never pure cynics
even in the ancien regime, became increasingly high minded. Even so, few
practices save cannibalism were beyond the pale for them, so long as they
were not caught publicly in the act. Statesmen had differing appetites for
the fruits of espionage. Some found the taste repugnant; others deemed it
a delicacy beyond compare; most sampled the dish pragmatically, accord-
ing to hunger or need. Changes in attitude explain part of the turn in
British espionage but not all. Equally, its existing spy and code-breaking
services failed, while Britain was secure. Given the break with Hanover, the
constraints on French expansion, especially in the Low Countries, the fact
other powers paid to maintain the status quo while Whitehall tolerated
the greatest challenges to it, Italian and German nationalism, few squab-
bles on the continent seemed to endanger Britain while Europe survived
its absence. Britain turned from being a European power with an overseas
empire, to a world power based off Europe, but not of it. Overwhelming at
sea, and on most imperial frontiers, it confronted no external threat, and
even more, no internal one.
No major state aimed to damage vital British interests or could – the
greatest dangers between 1820 and 1890, French naval construction or a
Russian threat to India, were small. So to threaten Britain, other countries
must develop great capabilities, in time-consuming and obvious ways. The
eighteenth-century problem of intelligence at sea remained, but was irrele-
vant, because no one cared or dared to challenge the RN. The rise of radio
solved the threat which emerged around 1900, more through its impact on
communication than intelligence, strengthening the strongest sea power,
by letting it find its enemies and contain them. Even considering the events
of 1854–71, the centre of world power, Europe, was stable. Capabilities
were known. Most power in the system backed the status quo. Compared
with the eighteenth century, major states had little at risk, less need for
secret intelligence and more inhibitions about its collection. Most states
moved from the practice, Britain slightly further than usual. Across
Europe, statesmen were more open with each other and lied less: secrets
were fewer and easier to uncover. One Prime Minister, Johnny Russell, told
his Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, ‘Your very interesting letters
confirm what I always thought – that a hundred spies cannot ascertain so
180 J.R. Ferris
much as an English gentleman in whom Princes and Ministers believe that
they can safely trust’.
15
Personal friendships and the Coburg connection
informed Britain of continental politics at the highest of levels. Uniquely in
modern history, British statesmen did not fear an internal threat – not sur-
prisingly, given the ease with which they weathered the Chartists or
widened the franchise. They relied on detectives, despite doubts of their
competence, to penetrate Irish political crime, but elsewhere in Britain
abandoned the accoutrements of a political police. Only a bad regime
required them, and they were good.
16
Victorians had and felt less need for secret intelligence than British
regimes in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Open sources illumin-
ated most of their problems, but not all, including intelligence in wartime
and on strategic dangers. Victorian governments collected information on
these issues as a matter of course, but in odd ways, which shaped British
intelligence until 1914. Basic information for strategic purposes was gath-
ered through open sources and processed through permanent agencies,
ultimately specialised ones. Secret intelligence was handled through a per-
sonalised system. Victorians often created bureaux to handle clandestine
tasks for a few years or decades, but these vanished when that problem
did. Prime ministers, foreign secretaries, viceroys of India, other colonial
authorities and generals abroad, senior officials within the Admiralty, the
FO, the Home Office, the War Office and the Government of India either
ran these networks or gathered the information themselves. They directed
collection in a loose and decentralised fashion, often leaving sources to
guide themselves. Intelligence was assessed by the statesmen who acted on
it. This organisation was more useful for imperial security than European
diplomacy, a pattern which persisted to some extent until 1939, because it
reflected British concerns. The system was haphazard, and its effect vari-
able: sometimes, it provided material of extraordinary quality, being well
suited to Lords Salisbury and Rosebery between 1885 and 1900, but
usually its quality and influence were below the level normal between 1715
and 1793 or after 1914.
Between 1840 and 1914, Britain abandoned political warfare in
western countries, where ministers did not spy on their hosts. They did so
in Russia and also in non-western states, where secret service funds rou-
tinely were used to bribe officials, though diplomats purported to dislike
such actions.
17
During the Russo-Turkish war in 1877, the minister in
Istanbul, Henry Layard, reported that he had received useful information
through ‘a little s.s. which I hope you will not grudge.... I have a great
dislike for the employment of such men, but one is obliged to have
recourse to them at such a time as the present’.
18
All ministers knew how
to conduct espionage, but many had scruples, and none had to do any-
thing distasteful. In 1879–81, the minister in Washington worked with the
Home Office in espionage against Fenian subversion, while the ambas-
sador in Paris held that:
Tradition and system 181