"Gendarmerie and Police Times"

In the almost two decades following the summer of 1849, during the political offensive of the imperial government in Vienna, the people of the time felt in Hungary that the state power was watching and had its citizens watched with ardent eyes, and private and public spaces were covered with an army of police officers and secret confidants. The belief that the political power could keep an eye on and control the population in their everyday lives, even in the most intimate moments of their private lives, took root in broad layers of society. And this belief was shared by the urban artisan, the rural landowner, or the aristocrat who gave an evening party in his palace in Pest. The book presents the organizational characteristics, customers, and operating principles of state police surveillance, while outlining the bright and dark sides of the colorful world of police informants, as well as society's defensive reactions to the oppressive experience of being watched.