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The article presents the discussion on Pierre Du Ryer being one of the most prolific authors of the first half of the seventeenth century. Topics include favored political themes such as dynastic crises, conspiracies, tyranny, and the corrupt atmosphere of courts; and power-hungry royal family members and favorites, loyal friends of virtuous heroes, petty hypocrites, and double agents.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of Luc Boltanski’s account of the multifaceted relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries in modern societies. It is striking that, although this important aspect of Boltanski’s oeuvre has been commented on by several scholars, his principal contributions to this area of investigation have been largely overlooked and received hardly any serious attention by researchers in the humanities and social sciences. This paper is an attempt to fill this noticeable gap in the literature. Thus, rather than covering the entire breadth and depth of Boltanski’s writings, the paper will focus on the valuable insights his work offers into the relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries. To this end, the analysis is divided into two parts. The first part comprises an overview of Boltanski’s central theoretical contributions to our understanding of mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries. The second part offers some critical reflections on important issues arising from Boltanski’s examination of the relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries – especially with regard to its limitations and shortcomings.

This paper revaluates key moments in the court politics of Alexander the Great’s reign through the introduction of philia-networks governed by gift-exchange as a template for explaining the relationships between key participants. This approach makes it clear that Alexander initially held a passive role in the political life of his own court and was dependant on others for his succession. These dynamics shifted in the opening years of the Asian expedition as Alexander sought to break these philia-networks, building his own and surrounding his person with philoi of his own choosing.

In this text from a lecture made in 2006, Serge Moscovici (1925–2014) seeks to update his earlier work on the ‘conspiracy mentality’ (Moscovici, 1987) by considering the relationships between social representations and conspiracy mentality. Innovation in this field, Moscovici argues, will require a thorough description and understanding of what conspiracy theories are, what rhetoric they use and what functions they fulfill. Specifically, Moscovici considers conspiracies as a form of counterfactual history implying a more desirable world (in which the conspiracy did not take place) and suggests that social representations theory should tackle this phenomenon. He explicitly links conspiracy theories to works of fiction and suggests that common principles might explain their popularity. Historically, he argues, conspiracism was born twice: first, in the middle ages, when their primary function was to exclude and destroy what was considered as heresy; and second, after the French Revolution, to delegitimize the Enlightenment, which was attributed to a small coterie of reactionaries rather than to the will of the people. Moscovici then considers four aspects (‘thematas’) of conspiracy mentality: 1) the prohibition of knowledge; 2) the duality between the majority (the masses, prohibited to know) and ‘enlightened’ minorities; 3) the search for a common origin, an ‘Ur-phenomenon’ that connects historical events and provides a continuity to history (he notes that such a tendency is also present in social psychological theorizing); and 4) the valorization of tradition as a bulwark against modernity. Some of Moscovici’s insights in this talk have since been borne out by contemporary research on the psychology of conspiracy theories, but many others still remain fascinating potential avenues for future research.

This article explores the political meanings of the cultural practices among the mulattos of the Mexican archbishopric during half a century. Our reflections about the spreading of rumors, lampoons and menaces of conspiracy from 1608 to 1665 tries to explain why the mulattos in Mexico City threatened to rise up in the cabalistic year of 1666. The answer is strongly connected with the presence of eschatological hopes among the mulatto people in the city, which reveal at the same time their concern for the local political life. The announced 1666 conspiracy was probably related to the diffusion of other prophetical expressions which mobilized different groups of people in Europe, in the Middle East and in the Portuguese America. From this point of view an event that until now has been considered as anecdotic by the current historiography could become a relevant historical one from the political-cultural perspective. The sources used to realize this article are mostly from the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City and from 17th century bibliographical resources.

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Between 1923 and 1930, the FAI and the CNT were involved in tactical alliances with the republicans to topple the regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera. In 1931, three FAI militants were sanctioned and the National Committee of the CNT was severely accused. From the unpublished memoirs of Manuel Sirvent Romero (1889-1968), one of the sanctioned members, the 1929-1930 conspiracies and the 1931 congressional debates are presented, with a focus on the collective responsibility of both organizations and the ambiguity of their positions which arose from internal tension.