The Austrian Political Police Abroad in the Age of Revolutions, 1830–1867: A Microhistorical Approach

This article investigates the formation of a transnational secret police corps in the Habsburg Empire in post-Napoleonic Europe. It shows that widespread anxieties in imperigal Austria following several nineteenth-century revolutions (1830, 1848) led to the recruitment of secret police agents, who operated across Europe. These agents were used to keep track of revolutionaries and radical organizations beyond the empire’s borders, who – in the authorities’ perception – might be detrimental for state security. The article uses a microhistorical approach to analyse this state institution and follows closely the lives and careers of several such agents. It thus delivers a transnational and ‘from below’ perspective on nineteenth-century Austrian state formation. This perspective, the paper argues, underlines the blurred and complex relations between state and society, and highlights the personal agency of obscure figures such as secret agents and police informers.11 I would like to thank Alexander Maxwell, Christopher Clark, Brendan Simms, Frank Lorenz Mueller, and the two anonymous reviewrs for their insightful comments during the preparation of this article.