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Representation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 painted by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier that same year. His depiction includes the “eye of providence” and also the red Phrygian cap, two symbols associated with freemasonry.

At the beginning of 1797, John Robison was a man with a solid and long-established reputation in the British scientific establishment. He had been Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University for over twenty years, an authority on mathematics and optics; he had recently been appointed senior scientific contributor on the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he would contribute over a thousand pages of articles. Yet by the end of the year his professional reputation had been eclipsed by a sensational book that vastly outsold anything he had previously written, and whose shockwaves would continue to reverberate long after his scientific work had been forgotten. Its title was Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, and it launched on the English-speaking public the enduring theory that a vast conspiracy, masterminded by a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati, was in the process of subverting all the cherished institutions of the civilised world into instruments of its secret and godless plan: the tyranny of the masses under the invisible control of unknown superiors, and a new era of ‘darkness over all’.

The first edition of Proofs of a Conspiracy sold out within days, and within a year it had been republished many times, not only in Edinburgh but in London, Dublin and New York. Robison had hit a nerve by offering an answer to the great questions of the day: what had caused the French Revolution, and what had driven its bloody and tumultuous progress? From his vantage point in Edinburgh he had, along with millions of others, followed with horror the reports of France dismembering its monarchy, dispossessing its church and transforming its downtrodden and brutalised population into the most ruthless fighting force Europe had ever seen – and now, under the rising star of the young general Napoleon Bonaparte, attempting to export the carnage and destruction to its surrounding monarchies, not least Britain itself. But Robison believed that he alone had identified the hidden hand responsible for the apparently senseless eruption of terror and war that now appeared to be consuming the world…

Conspiracy theories of a secretive power elite seeking global domination have long held a place in the modern imagination. Mike Jay explores the idea’s beginnings in the writings of John Robison, a Scottish scientist who maintained that the French revolution was the work of a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati: “Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy.”

* Zbigniew Brzeziński

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As we agree with Alan Moore that “the truth is much more frightening, nobody is in control,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1795 that the The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, commonly known as the Jay Treaty, was signed; it was ratified the following year.  An entent between the United States and Great Britain, it averted war, resolved issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (which ended the American Revolutionary War), and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars.

The treaty was designed by Alexander Hamilton, supported by George Washington, and negotiated by John Jay.  Jefferson and his followers bitterly opposed the pact, believing closer economic or political ties with Great Britain would strengthen Hamilton’s Federalist Party, promote aristocracy, and undercut republicanism.  Hamilton prevailed, but the fight led to the emergence of two political parties in each state,  Federalist and Republicans–the “First Party System,” with the Federalists favoring the British and the Jeffersonian republicans favoring France.

The treaty had a duration of ten years.  Efforts failed to agree on a replacement treaty in 1806 when Jefferson rejected the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty, as tensions escalated toward the War of 1812.

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