How did Great Britain and France, the largest imperial powers of the early twentieth century, cope with mounting anticolonial nationalism in the Arab world? What linked domestic opponents and foreign challengers in the Middle East and North Africa—Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt—as inhabitants attempted to overthrow the European colonial order? What strategies did the British and French adopt in the face of these threats? Empires of Intelligence, the first study of colonial intelligence services to use recently declassified reports, argues that colonial control in the British and French empires depended on an elaborate security apparatus. Martin Thomas shows for the first time the crucial role of intelligence gathering in maintaining imperial control in the years before decolonization.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Exploring Intelligence and Empire
1. The Development of Intelligence Services and Security Policing
in North Africa and the Middle East
2. Past Precedents and Colonial Rule
3. Constructing the Enemy: Intelligence, Islam, and Communism
4. Intelligence and Revolt I:
British Security Services and Communal Unrest in Egypt, Iraq, and Sudan
5. Intelligence and Revolt II:
French Security Services and Communal Unrest in Morocco and Syria
6. Policing the Desert Frontier:
Intelligence, Environment, and Bedouin Communities
7. Intelligence and Urban Opposition in French Territories
8. Disorder in the Palestine Mandate: Intelligence
and the Descent to War in the British Middle East
9. Domestic Politics, International Threats, and
Colonial Security in French Territories, 1936–1939
Conclusion: Intelligence, Security, and the Colonial State

Glossary
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Martin Thomas is Reader in Colonial History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The French Empire at War (1998), The French North African Crisis (2000), and The French Empire between the Wars. Imperialism, Politics, and Society (2005).

"Uses new and previously unexploited archival sources to craft an original and conceptually sophisticated discussion of the dynamics of colonial power."—Peter Jackson, author of France and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy-Making, 1933-39