Go Spy the Land: Military Intelligence In History

by Keith Neilson (Editor), Brian J.C. McKercher (Editor)

For too long military history has ignored the role of intelligence. As a result, many people do not realize that military intelligence has played a significant role in history. However, intelligence gathering, evaluation, and analysis has always been part of war. Lack of knowledge of how intelligence has been utilized in wars makes for an incomplete and inaccurate picture of historical events. While many are aware of such things as the Allied code-breaking efforts in World War II, few know that similar activities were undertaken as early as the beginning of recorded history. By examining a number of case studies from Roman times to the present, Go Spy the Land reveals the essential continuity in military intelligence, the fact that many of the problems involved in military intelligence have remained constant, and the nature of the problems themselves.

According to the authors, military intelligence has always been an important aspect of military planning and campaigns. Furthermore, military intelligence in its essentials has not changed over time: while technology and society have affected the ways in which this essential activity has been carried out, the problems inherent in the task have remained constant. The latter conclusion is something not generally appreciated in the intelligence field, which has been dominated by historians studying the twentieth century. This collection not only provides important case studies, but also shows that much of what is claimed as exclusively a product of the twentieth century has its roots as far back in time as the Roman Empire.

Genres: History

222 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

Reviews

[catechism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a strange selection of chapters and topics; mostly they're about some period of western European history -- eg Roman military intelligence or intel during the 100 Years' War -- and then there's a totally weird chapter about modern Canadian intel. Obviously I was into it, I'm just saying, it was weird. Anyway, most of the chapters were very readable, up to and including the notes & bibliographies, except the one on cryptography, for which I blame cryptography, not the author. It's difficult to make a riveting narrative out of "then they used math and reasons to transform this nonsense Latin into this more-nonsense series of triangles." My Latin, my math, and my reason is all fairly suspect at this point, so there's only so much I'm ever going to get out of these treatises. One day I might even stop reading them!