Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe - Softcover

Midura, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501779923 ISBN 13: 9781501779923

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2025

Synopsis

Postal Intelligence connects and situates histories of the post and government intelligence alongside print technology and state power in the wider context of the early modern communications revolution. In the sixteenth century, postal services became central to domestic governance and foreign policy enterprises, extended government reach and surveillance, and offered new control over the public sphere.

Rachel Midura focuses on the Tassis family, members of which served as official postmasters to the dukes of Milan, the pope, Spanish kings, and Holy Roman emperors. Using administrative records and family correspondence, she follows the Tassis family, their agents, and their rivals as their influence expanded from northern Italy across Europe. Postal Intelligence shows how postmasters and postmistresses were key players in early modern diplomacy, commerce, and journalism, whose ultimate success depended on both administrative ingenuity and strategic ambiguity.

About this title

About the Author

Rachel Midura is Assistant Professor of Early Modern European and Digital History at Virginia Tech. She researches the history of intelligence, travel, and statecraft in the information age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501779923
• ISBN 13: 9781501779923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336