Augustin Barruel's Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, published in English translation in 1798, is a primary polemical text, not independent scholarship. Its strength is that it is the original source of the claim, still repeated today, that the French Revolution was engineered by Freemasons and Illuminati, so it is the right citation for what that claim actually said and where it came from. Its limit is that it is itself the conspiracy theory's founding document, written to persuade rather than to establish historical fact, and should never be cited as evidence for its own claims.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier3
Reliability tier 3: a primary polemical text, the founding document of its own conspiracy narrative, cited for what it claims and where the claim originated, never as evidence for it. NotesAugustin Barruel's own conspiratorial history attributing the French Revolution to Freemasons and Illuminati, 1798; a primary polemical text, not independent scholarly analysis.
Citation
AuthorAugustin Barruel
PublisherT. Burton
Publication Year1798
Source Typebook
Claims Backed By This Source (8 claims)
This source backs 8 claims across the atlas. As facts: 7 well-attested. Plus 1 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 7 claims: 7 well-attested.
- Secret Societies, 1 claims: 1 general references.
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