Informare. Lo sguardo (in)discreto delle autorità tra Otto e Novecento

Alessandro Breccia; Laura Di Fiore

doi:10.6093/978-88-6887-448-3

To Inform. The (In)discreet gaze of the Authorities Between the 19th and 20th Centuries

Authors

Alessandro Breccia

University of Pisa

Laura Di Fiore

University of Naples Federico II

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6887-448-3

Keywords:

information, political control, police history, political institutions, 19th and 20th-century Europe

Synopsis

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press

Series: Clio. Essays in History, Archaeology and Art History

Pages: 329

Language: Italian

Abstract: From the birth of statistics to the development of modern espionage, including the registration and identification of individuals, the history of European institutions is marked by the state’s commitment to the collection and organization of data. As part of the debate on the origins of modern systems of government, this volume examines the many forms of “information” employed by authorities between the 19th and 20th centuries: intelligence operations, forms of political control, and surveys of social and economic realities. Spanning from the Italian peninsula to Spain, from the German context to the Ottoman world, the essays bring to light a multifaceted picture, shaped by a common interpretive framework: the constant need for state authority to decipher society and territories in order to respond in an increasingly systematic manner to the challenges and problems that characterize them.

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Author Biographies

Alessandro Breccia, University of Pisa

Alessandro Breccia is an associate professor of the History of Political Institutions at the University of Pisa. He has published political-institutional studies on pre-unification Tuscany (Fedeli servitori, 2006), on liberal Italy (Bettino Ricasoli. Discorsi parlamentari, 2013), and on the “long ’68” (Le istituzioni universitarie e il Sessantotto, 2013; I prefetti nel lungo Sessantotto, a research project currently in progress).

Laura Di Fiore, University of Naples Federico II

Laura Di Fiore is an associate professor of the History of Political Institutions at the University of Naples Federico II. She has published studies on southern Italy before unification (Gli Invisibili, 2018; Alla frontiera, 2013), on British imperial history in the early postwar period (L’Islam e l’Impero, 2015), and, with Marco Meriggi, on global history (World History, 2011)

References

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Published

September 9, 2026

Series

FedOAPress - Clio: Essays in History, Archaeology and Art History

Online ISSN

2532-4608

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about this monograph

ISBN-13 (15)

978-88-6887-448-3

Data di pubblicazione (01)

2026-09-09

How to Cite

Breccia, Alessandro, and Laura Di Fiore, eds. 2026. To Inform. The (In)discreet Gaze of the Authorities Between the 19th and 20th Centuries. Vol. 69. FedOAPress - Clio: Essays in History, Archaeology and Art History. SHARE Books. https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6887-448-3.