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A Financial Times Best Book of the Year The untold story of how Russian espionage in imperial China shaped the emergence of the Russian Empire as a global power. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire made concerted efforts to collect information about China. It bribed Chinese porcelain-makers to give up trade secrets, sent Buddhist monks to Mongolia on intelligence-gathering missions, and trained students at its Orthodox mission in Beijing to spy on their hosts. From diplomatic offices to guard posts on the Chinese frontier, Russians were producing knowledge everywhere, not only at elite institutions like the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. But that information was secret, not destined for wide circulation. Gregory Afinogenov distinguishes between the kinds of knowledge Russia sought over the years and argues that they changed with the shifting aims of the state and its perceived place in the world. In the seventeenth century, Russian bureaucrats were focused on China and the forbidding Siberian frontier. They relied more on spies, including Jesuit scholars stationed in China. In the early nineteenth century, the geopolitical challenge shifted to Europe: rivalry with Britain drove the Russians to stake their prestige on public-facing intellectual work, and knowledge of the East was embedded in the academy. None of these institutional configurations was especially effective in delivering strategic or commercial advantages. But various knowledge regimes did have their consequences. Knowledge filtered through Russian espionage and publication found its way to Europe, informing the encounter between China and Western empires. Based on extensive archival research in Russia and beyond, Spies and Scholars breaks down long-accepted assumptions about the connection between knowledge regimes and imperial power and excavates an intellectual legacy largely neglected by historians.
The only premodern contemplation of spies ever written apart from Sunzi's brief but incisive Art of War chapter, Jian Shu (Book of Spies) was completed in the last century of the severely weakened Qing dynasty to address pressing defensive needs. The first third of the book ponders the nature of clandestine intelligence gathering, including estrangement and disinformation, two crucial elements in the activist orientation that characterized China's theory and practice from the outset; agent categories and their missions; aspects of historical evolution; and the critical need for their skills despite the misgiving, even condemnation, of Confucian oriented officials. The remainder of the book consists of fifty-three historical exemplifications that show the techniques and their effects in practice. Interspersed with theoretical analysis and drawn from over 2500 years of strife and intrigue, they represent a veritable window on the practice of Chinese spycraft that remains of contemporary interest in the PRC. Ralph D. Sawyer, the translator, is a noted specialist in Chinese strategic and intelligence issues. His books on intelligence include The Tao of Spycraft: Intelligence Theory and Practice in Traditional China; The Tao of Deception: Unorthodox Warfare in Historic and Modern China; and Lever of Power: Military Deception in China and the West. His translation of important military works from China's voluminous tradition include The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China; Sun-tzu Art of War; Sun Pin Military Methods; Strategies for the Human Realm: Crux of the T'ai-pai Yin-ching; Zhuge Liang: Strategy, Achievements, and Writings; Ruminations in a Grass Hut; and One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies: Battle and Tactics of Chinese Warfare.
“The Book of Power” (权书Quan Shu) is a famous military book on ancient Chinese politics. It was written by Su Xun, a famous political commentator and writer in the Northern Song Dynasty. It covers many aspects of politics, economy, military affairs and legal system. It is not only a power book, but also a military book. Each article has annotations and translations. This book is among the series of Ancient Chinese Political Science.
The New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Camp 14 returns with the untold story of one of the most powerful spies in American history, shedding new light on the U.S. role in the Korean War, and its legacy In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, then considered a backwater and beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific Command. Though he lacked the pedigree of most U.S. spies—Nichols was a 7th grade dropout—he quickly metamorphosed from army mechanic to black ops phenomenon. He insinuated himself into the affections of America’s chosen puppet in South Korea, President Syngman Rhee, and became a pivotal player in the Korean War, warning months in advance about the North Korean invasion, breaking enemy codes, and identifying most of the targets destroyed by American bombs in North Korea. But Nichols's triumphs had a dark side. Immersed in a world of torture and beheadings, he became a spymaster with his own secret base, his own covert army, and his own rules. He recruited agents from refugee camps and prisons, sending many to their deaths on reckless missions. His closeness to Rhee meant that he witnessed—and did nothing to stop or even report—the slaughter of tens of thousands of South Korean civilians in anticommunist purges. Nichols’s clandestine reign lasted for an astounding eleven years. In this riveting book, Blaine Harden traces Nichols's unlikely rise and tragic ruin, from his birth in an operatically dysfunctional family in New Jersey to his sordid postwar decline, which began when the U.S. military sacked him in Korea, sent him to an air force psych ward in Florida, and subjected him—against his will—to months of electroshock therapy. But King of Spies is not just the story of one American spy. It is a groundbreaking work of narrative history that—at a time when North Korea is threatening the United States with long-range nuclear missiles—explains the origins of an intractable foreign policy mess.
King James II was the Catholic king of a Protestant nation, but he had inherited a secure crown and was able to put down the rebellion by his nephew the Duke of Monmouth. In just over three years James had been deserted by those he loved and trusted and had to flee to France in exile. His throne was seized by his son-in-law and daughter, and when they died, his younger daughter succeeded. For James it was a personal tragedy of King Lear proportions; for most of his subjects it was a ‘Glorious Revolution’ that saved his kingdoms from Popery. Over the next hundred years James or his descendants would attempt to win back the crown with French support and conspiring with British Jacobites and Tories. In Espionage in the Divided Stuart Dynasty, Julian Whitehead charts the inner workings of government intelligence during this unstable period, where it was by no means a forgone conclusion that James or his heirs would never regain the throne. It throws light on the murky world of spies and double agents at a time of intensive intrigue and betrayal, with many politicians and peers trying to keep a foot in both camps. It was especially important in such circumstances for a monarch to receive good intelligence about the many intrigues, but could those providing the intelligence be trusted?
The crux of this absorbing and timely memoir of Cold War espionage is the swap of KGB agent Rudolph Abel for American pilot Frank Powers, back to their superpower homes in 1962. Abel had been caught spying in New York in the late 1950s; Powers shot down on a reconnaissance mission over Sverdlovsk in 1960. Yet astonishingly in 1983, it transpired that the man tried and convicted as Rudolph Abel was in fact Willie Fisher from Newcastle. The narrative traces Willie's story from Newcastle to Moscow to New York, tracing the birth of his father Heinrich to German parents in Russia. Despite marriage and a daughter and life in the northeast of England, Willie was dedicated to his Communist Party work, and an expertise with radio operation and his facility for languages. When Willie's spying activities were exposed in New York, cautious to the end he claimed to be Rudolph Abel, the name of an old comrade, and the Soviet authorities colluded in his deceit.
Are the Chinese secret services now the most powerful in the world?
Translated into English for the first time, this is a fascinating history of intelligence practices and their impact on great power rivalries in the early modern era In the sixteenth century, an intense rivalry between the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Habsburg Empire and its allies spurred the creation of early modern intelligence. Translated into English for the first time, Emrah Safa Gürkan's Spies for the Sultan reconstructs this history of Ottoman espionage, sabotage, and bribery practices in the Mediterranean world. Then as now, collecting political, naval, military, and economic information was essential to staying one step ahead of your rivals. Porous and shifting borders, the ability to assume multiple identities, and variable allegiances made conditions in this era ripe for espionage around the Mediterranean. The Ottomans used networks of merchants, corsairs, soldiers, and other travelers to move among their enemies and report intelligence from points far and wide. The Ottoman sultans invested in the novel technologies of cryptography and stenography. Ottoman intelligence operatives not only collected information but also used disinformation, bribery, and sabotage to subvert their enemies. This history of early modern intelligence is based on extraordinary archival research in Turkey, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Croatia, and it provides important insights into the origins of modern intelligence.