History, archeology, and espionage as improvised legibility

How do states develop the capacity to understand new geographic domains and issue areas? This article introduces a theory of “improvised legibility” to explain how states make sense of the new and unfamiliar, extending James Scott’s concept of legibility to include clandestine intelligence collection of foreign areas. Improvised legibility occurs in two phases: first, improvised connections, involving ad hoc relationships with non-state experts, and second, improvised institutionalization, through experimental organizations fitted to the new domains. We emphasize the role played by emerging epistemic communities of professional experts in these new areas, which states leverage as “off-the-shelf” experts. This theory is illustrated by British efforts to make legible the Middle East from the 1840s to World War I, particularly highlighting the part played by the emerging field of archeology in British intelligence. Archeology gained prominence in the 19th century amid European status competition, producing experts with local knowledge, technical skills, and scientific cover. Britain’s use of improvised legibility is shown through the development of ad hoc relationships with archeologists (improvised connections) and the later creation of the Arab Bureau in World War I (improvised institutionalization). In the process, we underscore the role that key archeologists played in British intelligence, including figures such as Austen Henry Layard, the Palestine Exploration Fund, D.G. Hogarth, Gertrude Bell, and T.E. Lawrence. This article denaturalizes the modern surveillance state and shows how experts like archeologists contributed to the emergence of the modern intelligence state, contributing to literatures on state formation and epistemic communities.