The Origins of Transnational Political Policing in Europe, 1830-1870

Abstract

This dissertation examines the origins of transnational political policing in mid-nineteenth century Europe based on the norms, personnel and interstate political policing activities of Prussia and of the Habsburg Empire. Focusing on the timeframe between the post-Napoleonic era and the German unification (1871)/the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), this treatise analyzes the reactions of the Prussian and Austrian state apparatuses against political unrest from a transnational perspective. The fact that Prussia and Austria were most heavily affected by the revolutions of 1848-49, along with their wider parallel historical trajectories and proportionally similar size, justify their common examination. Putting Prussia and Austria at the center of this study also serves to relativize conventional teleological views of struggle for mastery in Germany, and place their administrative and policing development in a broader European context. The dissertation is above all thematically concerned with questions of state formation and statehood using Prussia and Austria as core case studies. It argues that the decades after 1815 saw the birth of transnational practices of political policing encompassing most of Europe in response to growingly internationalized radical and revolutionary movements. My dissertation follows closely the Prussian and Austrian official and unofficial policing personnel as well as informal surveillance operations on the spot, usually carried out by non-strictly policing personnel such as diplomats and consuls. The Prussian and Austrian interstate security measures are examined as a whole at a European scale and according to thematic and spatial lines. After the introduction, chapter one offers a general overview of political and police history of Prussia and Austria in the given period alongside a literature review. Afterwards, the second chapter uses microhistorical and biographical methods to trace the careers and personal agency of selected spies, secret agents and police officials abroad. Chapters three, four and five then discuss the larger-scale Prussian and Austrian interstate policing and surveillance measures across three territorial zones respectively: i) Western and Southern Europe, covering broadly Britain, France, Belgium, and the Italian states; ii) the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the Ottoman Empire and Greece; iii) the German states, which in this case also includes the western and eastern German borderlands. The exact topics touched within these regional frameworks concern: transnational police collaboration; information and know-how exchange; interstate legal assistance; and joint border controls and policing.