Popular conspiracism in Britain, c.1880-1914
This thesis explores ‘popular conspiracism’ as an identifiable cultural current in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, evident in Parliament, politics, the press and popular literature. It contends that popular conspiracism was visible throughout the public sphere in the period 1880-1914, and was structured by three key discursive motifs. Firstly, popular conspiracism described secretive, often transnational systems of agency and connectivity operating beneath the surface of everyday life, and attributed pseudo-divine characteristics of potency and perception to the hidden actors that peoples these systems. Secondly, popular conspiracist discourses were deeply bound up in the interplay between the sometimes contradictory practices of secrecy, transparency and accountability encoded within contemporary liberal governance. These allowed for the emergence of conspiratorial speculations regarding individuals and behaviours which were ambiguously situated within the public sphere: i.e. whose existence was known, but whose activities nevertheless remained obscure. Thirdly, popular conspiracism blossomed within an increasingly rich, complicated and at times confusing media environment, and mobilised a wide range of suspicious and speculative narratives, which ranged from the mundane to the fantastic. These conspiracist narratives were most visible in three principal areas of popular discourse, which form the evidential core of this thesis: I) foreign espionage and structures of preparation for invasions of the British Isles; II) international systems of insurrection and terrorism; and III) Jewish plutocracy and the uncertain position of resident aliens. Each of these elements has its own pre-history, and might be studied separately. By contrast, this thesis suggests that they should be studied together as part of a broader, if variously expressed, culture of ‘popular conspiracism’.
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