Colonial intelligence agencies*: James Scott reviews Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914. Scott seems unimpressed by Martin Thomas’ well-researched, but ultimately narrow focus in the study.
I also second Scott’s recommendation of Sven Lindqvist, especially A History of Bombing, which is one of the most unconventional histories you will ever read. Scott notes this about Lindqvist’s work:
Beginning with an Italian aviator dropping a hand grenade from a light plane over Tripoli, [Sven] Lindqvist shows that almost all the torments Europeans inflicted on one another were first tested and refined in the colonies and on people whose rights and sufferings were not considered to have risen to the level of white Europeans.
*Thanks to gess for this title. I thought the same when reading the review in my copy of LRB, but since he put it down into 1s and 0s first the credit need to go the right person.
