Noel Malcolm. Agents of Empire

In the preface to this book, which acts as a sort of intellectual and methodological biography of what follows, Noel Malcolm apologetically writes: “Each time that I turn aside from a biographical narrative to discuss one of these issues, this is not a digression; it is part of the substance of the book” (xvii). He should not have worried. Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits, and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World is excellent, and its great merit is exactly in successfully embedding a rich prosopographical narrative within a deep analysis of some of the central issues of sixteenth-century Mediterranean history. The book emerged from a classic mix of factors familiar to all scholars engaged in archival research: serendipity and dogged detective work. Malcolm effectively conveys this to the reader in many instances, such as when, on having read a doctoral thesis and recognized a missing piece of the documentary puzzle, he states: “Within ten minutes I had booked a flight to Rome” (xvi), a statement that elicits immediate recognition in scholars dedicated to archival research, who cannot but share the enthusiasm bubbling up from his measured prose

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Aside · Empire · Enthusiasm · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Serendipity · Vernacular · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies