Many believe the world is run by a secret organization like the Illuminati, and the people we think are in power are nothing but stooges. It sounds implausible, but is it really a crazy idea?
Yes. Yes, it is. And yet there have been secret organizations that created the world as we know it.
10 The Carbonari
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the European powers had to decide what to do with the territory that he’d ruled as part of the First French Empire. The borders of Europe were redrawn at the Congress of Vienna, mainly decided by Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Napoleon had conquered Italy in 1805, and when the Congress signed their Final Act in June 1815, Italy had been nicely carved up. Austria got a chunk of the north, while the rest was splintered into a number of small states.
The Carbonari formed during the decade of turmoil, but their exact origins are unclear—the society took the “secret” part quite seriously. They may have been imported from France. They could have been a homegrown offshoot of freemasonry; they had initiation ceremonies, symbols, and hierarchies similar to that famous secret group. The Carbonari, with as many as 60,000 members, was by far the largest of several secret societies on the Italian peninsula at the time. Though they didn’t form with the goal of unifying Italy, they were responsible for setting everything in motion.
The largest pre-unification state was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which comprised Sicily and Naples. It was ruled by King Ferdinand, who operated mainly as an Austrian pawn. In 1820, the Carbonari led a revolution that forced Ferdinand to give up power and create a constitution for the country. Austria ultimately marched into Naples and tore the constitution up because they wanted their man in charge. However, this act of rebellion created the widespread movement for Italians to rise up an unify, a movement that succeeded in 1861.
9 La Trinitaria
The Dominican Republic owes its existence as a country to a secret society known as La Trinitaria, or The Trinity, founded in July 1838. The island of Hispaniola had been under Haitian rule since 1822. The Spanish-speaking westerners weren’t entirely keen on being ruled by the French-speaking Haitians on the east of the island. The desire for independence found its leader in Juan Pablo Duarte, sometimes called the father of the Dominican Republic.
Duarte, along with eight comrades, founded La Trinitaria at age 25. The organization aimed to educate people and spread nationalist sentiment. Duarte wrote an oath for members of the group, under which members declared they would “swear and promise, by my honor and my conscience, in the hands of our President, Juan Pablo Duarte, to cooperate with my person, life and goods in the definitive separation from the Haitian government and to plant a free, sovereign and independent republic, free from all foreign domination, that will be called the Dominican Republic.”
The group did all they could to hide their existence from authorities. Duarte created a cryptic alphabet for secret communication. Members used pseudonyms and operated in small cells of just three people. The group also worked with rebels in the east who hoped to overthrow the government for their own reasons.
In 1843, they attempted a revolution—and it failed. Several Trinitarians were jailed, and Duarte fled to Venezuela. Yet the group had done their work well, and a second uprising the following year led to Dominican independence being declared on February 27, 1844. Duarte returned to become president, but he faced a military coup before he could take office.
Duarte was exiled from the country he’d created. He died overseas in 1864
8 Afrikaner Broederbond
The Afrikaner Broderbond, founded in 1918 and open only to white men over the age of 25, sought complete control of South Africa—culturally, economically, and politically.
The group kept their secrets well, and we don’t know a lot about them. During the 1930s, they promoted Afrikaner nationalism. They gained so much influence over the Reunited National Party that the prime minister called the party “nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public.” By 1947, they were in control of the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs. It was there that members devised apartheid, probably the most infamous example of segregation of the last 60 years.
Their rise to power was so dramatic that it led one writer in 1978 to say, “The South African government today is the Broederbond and the Broederbond is the government.” The membership roster included 143 military officers and every prime minster and president of the country from 1948 until Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994.
Since the 1990s, the group has been forced to rebrand and now calls itself the Afrikanerbond. They even have a website. They now officially accept any adult regardless of color, gender, or religion, and they claim to seek only a better life for all African citizens.
