British Conservatism, the Illuminati, and the Conspiracy Theory of the French Revolution, 1797–1802

The reception and acceptance by British conservatives of the conspiracy theory of the French Revolution, as propounded by the Abbé Augustin de Barruel and Professor John Robison, has often been underplayed. This article seeks to correct that historiographical oversight by demonstrating the remarkable and unremarked extent to which the conspiracy theory of the Illuminati and the philosophes took root in the 1790s, then to explain that popularity, and finally to examine how acceptance of the conspiracy theory encouraged the development of an intellectual exceptionalism which had significant consequences for British attitudes towards continental philosophy, particularly that of Immanuel Kant.