Abstract
In the framework of global history, the nineteenth-century political Mediterranean has been
the focus of a recently renewed historiography. The essay aims to contribute to this new re
search thread from a peculiar perspective, that of the articulation of the state in a Mediter
ranean dimension, investigated though a specific case study: the intelligence activity for the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies carried out by the diplomatic mission in Constantinople. The latter
turned out to be a crucial node of the Bourbon network of the state abroad as well as of an
inter-state conservative network with the common aim of political surveillance. Moreover, the
analysis sheds light on the intersection of state apparatuses with the network of exiles moving
across the Mediterranean. Shifting the point of view from the national Italian movement to
the modernization of one of the conservative states in the peninsula, framed in a transnational
context, the article shows a more politically complex and plural nineteenth-century Mediter
ranean than usually outlined.