Category File
British Empire
8 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The "Hidden Hand" (The Milner Group)This theory argues that Lord Alfred Milner’s circle, often identified with the Round Table movement or the so-called Milner Group, acted as a secret imperial network that pushed Britain into the First World War in order to consolidate the British Empire and redesign global politics. The theory draws on a real and documented set of relationships among imperial thinkers, administrators, editors, and policy advocates associated with Milner and Round Table circles. In conspiratorial form, those networks are treated not merely as influential but as covert architects of the war itself.
- The "Theosophical" World OrderThis theory alleged that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky used Theosophy as a spiritual front for political influence, and in some versions as a Russian espionage or infiltration project aimed at the British elite and imperial society. It developed from Blavatsky’s Russian origin, her extraordinary public claims, the transnational reach of the Theosophical Society, and repeated accusations of fraud and hidden patronage. The theory was amplified after the 1885 Hodgson Report, which also included the allegation that she was acting as a Russian agent.
- The British "Opium Engineering"This theory held that the British Empire did not traffic opium into China simply for profit and balance-of-trade reasons, but as part of a wider strategy to weaken, disorient, and mentally enslave the Chinese population. In its strongest form, the theory portrayed opium as imperial neuro-politics: a drug weapon deployed to dissolve social resistance and make a civilization governable. The documented record clearly shows that Britain smuggled Indian opium into China on a vast scale, that addiction became socially destructive, and that Britain fought wars to preserve the trade. What remains interpretive is the stronger claim that the primary purpose was conscious mass psychological enslavement rather than profit, coercive commerce, and imperial advantage more broadly.
- The "New World Order" of the 1890sThis theory holds that Cecil Rhodes’s educational philanthropy, imperial politics, and private writings formed part of a long-range plan to weld the English-speaking world back into one political system under British direction. In its strongest form, the theory claims that the Rhodes Scholarships were not merely elite educational gifts, but talent-selection instruments for a secret society designed to recover Britain’s lost connection to the United States and create a new Anglo-imperial order. The documented record clearly shows that Rhodes’s 1877 “Confession of Faith” explicitly proposed a secret society for the extension of British rule and imagined an eventual Anglo-American reunion of world-historic significance. It also shows that his will later created scholarships for the colonies, the United States, and Germany. What remains more interpretive is how directly the scholarship program functioned as the operational successor to the original secret-society dream.
- The Sepoy Mutiny "Greased Cartridges"This theory holds that the controversial Enfield cartridges in 1857 were not merely a blunder of military supply, but a deliberate British attempt to defile Hindu and Muslim soldiers, break caste and religious discipline, and accelerate mass conversion to Christianity. The documented record clearly shows that the cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat, that biting them offended both Hindu and Muslim religious practice, and that the rumor of deliberate defilement spread explosively among sepoys. Contemporary observers and later historians also note that there was already widespread suspicion that British rule aimed to undermine caste, custom, and religion. What remains disputed is whether British authorities intentionally designed the cartridge issue as a direct conversion strategy rather than as a catastrophic act of arrogance and insensitivity.
- The 1812 "Russian Fire" PlotThis theory held that the burning of Moscow in 1812 was not chiefly the work of Russian scorched-earth policy, local arson, or chaotic looting, but part of a deeper anti-Napoleonic design linked to British money and British strategic interests. In this view, Britain—already the great financier of continental resistance—had helped underwrite or encourage the destruction of Moscow in order to trap Napoleon in a ruined city and ensure the destruction of the Grande Armée. The historical record clearly shows that British subsidies and anti-Napoleonic coalition-building were central to the wider war, and that there is real evidence linking Governor Rostopchin and Russian authorities to the city’s burning. What remains unproven is the claim of British funding or direction in the Moscow fire itself.
- The Thuggee CultThis theory held that India was covered by an immense, hidden network of “Thugs” bound together by ritual, hereditary criminality, and devotion to secret murder. British officials and popular writers portrayed this world as a single invisible system, often implying that it reached far beyond ordinary banditry into a civilization-scale underground order threatening travel, governance, and imperial authority. The historical record clearly shows that thuggee existed in some form and that British administrators suppressed real gangs of robbers and stranglers. What is far less secure is the sweeping colonial theory that all of India was webbed by one coordinated, quasi-religious anti-state network. Modern historians argue that the British substantially enlarged, standardized, and mythologized thuggee for administrative and ideological purposes.
- The "Gold Standard" as British SlaveryThis theory argues that the American gold standard was not merely a domestic monetary policy but a foreign-imposed system that tied the United States back to British financial power. In its strongest form, the theory claims that demonetizing silver and fixing the dollar to gold made the United States a de facto financial colony of London, empowering bondholders, creditors, and Atlantic banking interests at the expense of farmers, workers, miners, and debtors. The theory grew out of the real late-nineteenth-century free silver struggle, when many American speakers and pamphleteers openly described the gold standard as a system of financial servitude engineered for foreign and creditor benefit.