The uses and utility of intelligence: the case of the British Government during the War of the Spanish Succession

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is usually taken for granted that intelligence organisations provide information for decision-making and that the knowledge produced in the process is therefore deeply utilitarian. Drawing on organisational sociology, this article draws on a case study of English intelligence efforts during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) to reflect critically on the assumed direct relationship between intelligence-gathering and political decision-making. In eighteenth-century England, intelligence frequently fulfilled other, often more symbolic functions, for example when access to intelligence was employed to legitimise individual actors. In this sense, intelligence was doubtlessly useful, albeit in other ways than generally postulated by intelligence theory. These observations strongly suggest a ‘missing dimension’ in the history of intelligence in other periods as well as intelligence theory more generally.