Book Reviews 109

industrialisation are then given, but the reader would have been grateful for an attempt at a more systematic specification of the vague ‘bound up with’. Maybe this is asking too much of an essay which is the first of its kind. But the author’s obvious expertise and his ambitious intention to transcend Turner by shifting from the signifi- cance of the frontier to the significance of population growth and ‘opportunity’ invite us to ask for more. Turner’s environmentalism was seductively obvious; the effects of population growth rates are less so and require more elaboration than this fascinating and on the whole highly recommendable survey is always able to provide.

Freie Universitiit Berlin Willi Paul Adams

NOTES

1. M~nchen: C. H. Beck, 1981.

Die These von der Verschwarung 1776-1945: Philosophen, Freimaurer, Juden, Liber- ale und Sozialisten als Versehw6rer gegen die Sozialordnung, Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein. 2. verb. u. verm. Aufl. (Frankfurt a.M., Bern and Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1978), 294 pp.

Amongst various theories of history, the conspiracy theory (or ‘theory’) has a very special place. All the differences in the degree of plausibility apart, other views of history are in principle accorded the status of a theory. That the true explanation of all the more important events in modern history, or even in the whole of world history, is to be found in behind-the-scenes activities of a secret but omnipotent international organisation, which seeks to transform the very foundations of the social order, to destroy the whole religious and cultural tradition, and to take over the world, and which has been carrying a thoroughly worked-out scheme to this effect for centuries, manipulating individual and collective agents on the historical scene - this thesis has been denied any intellectual respectability whatsoever by philosophers, sociologists and historians. With good reason. Nevertheless, there is no theory of history which could compete with the conspiracy view when it comes to popularity among laymen. Or when it comes to baleful practical consequences: in its most influential version, which speaks of an ‘international Jewish conspiracy’, this theory, in the words of N. Cohn, has proved a very efficient ‘warrant for genocide’.

However, until very recently no attempt has been made at a comprehensive study of the conspiracy theory. We have had the book by Cohn on the ‘world Jewish con- spiracy’ thesis, and considerable literature on the most in~uential presentation of this thesis, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; but there have been other versions of the conspiracy theory - the theory as such is a much wider subject. Lack of interest on the part of historians of ideas might be explained by lack of respectability of the theory; but this, of course, is not a justification. Von Bieberstein’s book is the first attempt at an almost comprehensive treatment of the subject.

The conspiracy theory emerged at the time of one of the turning points in world history - the French revolution. In the first part of the book the author follows the genesis of the theory in German and French counter-revolutionary literature of the last decade of the eighteenth century - from the idea of a ‘great philosophical conjuration’ against the throne and the altar, and its coalescence with the thesis about

110 Book Reviews

subversive activities of secret societies, especially the freemasons? till the famous Mkoirs pour servir Li I’histoire du jacobinisme by Abbe Barruel (1797/8), which gave the theory its classic systematisation and international publicity. Barruel discovered and made it known to the world that behind the Jacobins was a plot by philosophers (including ‘the infamous doctor Kant’), freemasons and Illuminati; that was but a continuation of the old conspiracy of the Templars, and they, for their part, merely developed further the old Manichean heresy. The immediate aim of the revolution in France - in which ‘all was foreseen, premeditated, plotted, resolved, planned . , prepared and managed by men who alone held the threads of long-settled conspiracies’-was the overturn of the Bourbon throne; but in the long run the great plot was aimed ‘not only against the kings, but against every form of government, every civil society, even against every form of property’. About the same time there appeared another classic of the conspiracy theory, Proof of a Conspiracy against ull Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Zlluminati and Reading Societies by J. Robinson, which provided a Protestant version of the theory. Thus the thesis about the great plot almost from the very beginning attained to an ecumenical status, and became one of the main instruments of the counter-revolutionary propaganda in general.

The second part of the book deals with evolution of the theory from Napoleonic times till 1945. During this period enter the dram&s personae from the second part of the subtitle: the Jew, the liberal, the socialist. The figure of the Jew underwent a characteristic metamorphosis: at first a beneficiary of the revolution, then its instru- ment, and finallv the real though hidden culprit. The Dominican Greinemann was the first to establish a connection between Jews and freemasons: in 1778 he attacked the latter from the pulpit, asserting that ‘the Jews who crucified the Savior were free- masons; Pilate and Herod were masters of lodges; Judas, before betraying Jesus, went into a synagogue and became a mason . . .’ (p. 158). Thus the slogan about an international Jewish-masonic plot was launched already by the end of the eighteenth century. From the middle of the nineteenth century on it has been one of the essential components of anti-Semitism, and at the same time has expressed the dominant form of modern conspiracy theory - for the latter primarily depicts a Jewishmasonic world plot, and liberalism (‘plutocracy’, or even capitalism as such) and/or socialism (communism, anarchism) come in as developments of the basic theme. The final synthesis of the theory was presented in declarations and publications by Nazi leaders and propagandists.

A few respectable authors-Burke, de Maistre, von Haller. F. Schlegelaid show some inclination towards the theory of the great conspiracy; but its authors and popularisers have been writers who cannot be taken at all seriously from the intellec- tual point of view. This was already clear to its first critics, who warned that attempts to reduce revolutions to puppet theatre shows were but indications of intellectual deficiency. It is easy to adduce a long series of historical facts which give lie to the contentions of the theory. How, then, is its wide appeal to be accounted for? Von Bieberstein does not only describe the inner development of the conspiracy view of history, but attempts to place it in its social and political context as well. When it comes to the causes of its wide acceptance, his explanations are in terms of sociology and social psychology: he refers above all to the feelings of insecurity and anxiety caused by the breakdown of the traditional order, that had been sanctioned by religion and morality, and by the ensuing processes of political and social modernisation (pp. 16%88). It would have been worthwhile to consider the theory on the epistemological level as well; a comparative analysis of the conspiracy view and other, more conven- tional theories of history would have exhibited other important causes of its popularity

Book Reviews 112

among the uneducated and credulous. It would have suggested an interpretation of the theory as a political myth-for it has all the essential features of such a myth.’ Actually, the story of the great conspiracy has been one of the most influential-and the deadliest-among political myths in the history of modern Europe.

On many a page, though, one important epistemological feature of the conspiracy theory is apparent-its truly impressive scope. The great plot has included all kinds of religious, political and social groups, some of them prima facie hardly compatible: Protestants, Jesuits, atheists; socialists, communists, anarchists, liberals, ‘plutocrats’. The time-span of the conspiracy is no less imposing: from the freemasons of the New Testament period (Greinemann), through the Manicheans, assassins, Templars, masons, Illuminati (Barruel), till such comparatively recent phenomena as political Zionism (numerous Nazi authors) or anthroposophy and occultism (K. Heise). Finally, the theory has a truly remarkable explanatory grasp: the great conspiracy was responsible not only for the French revolution, Napoleon’s order in Europe and the uprisings of the European nations against it (pp. 129, 1321, World Wars I and II, the treaty of Versailles, nationalism and cosmopolitism of the twentieth century, and such like, but also for such remote and-in terms of world history-rather unimportant events, as the civil war in China by the beginning of the last century (p. 137).

Die These von der Verschwijrung follows the evolution of the conspiracy view up till 1945. The author touches upon the post-war period in a few places, but most readers will probably close the book with the impression that the theory of the great plot is a thing of the past-which, regrettably, is not the case. The theory, most often in its anti-Semitic version, still has wide publicity and many adherents-not only in the countries in which the Protocols have been reprinted in recent decades, but also in those where the infamous forgery does not reappear in its original form, but its main contentions are being rehashed and disseminated under various novel titles.’ There- fore the book would have been more complete, and pro tanio better, if the author had not, rather arbitrarily, set 1945 as the limit of his account.

One cannot help being impressed by the width of von Bieberstein’s research (the list of sources and literature comes to more than 50 pages). The theses he cares most to establish are documented very thoroughly-on the influence of German counter revolutionary writers upon Barruel’s opus magnum (pp. 98-109, 112-13); on the continuity between the early, clerical and monarchist version of the conspiracy theory and its various formulations used in more recent times by the extreme right, including the Nazis (pp. 189-232). Die These von der VerschwBrung is a truly pioneering study of a neglected. but important and topical subject in the intellectual history of modern Europe.

University of Belgrade

Igor Primorac

NOTES

1. Cf. H Tudor, Political Myth (London: Macmillan, 1972), esp. pp. 14-17, 122-5, 137-40.

2. Cf. e.g. Soviet Antisemitic Propaganda: Evidence from Books, Press and Radio (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1978), pp. 45-53, or W. Korey, ‘The Soviet “Protocots of the Elders of Zion”‘, in J. M. Kelman, ed., Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, Vol. II (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1980).