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COMMENTARY
March 7, 2007
The Anglosphere
By the word “Anglosphere” we mean the countries whose primary language is English, and whose legal, political, cultural, and religious traditions are directly descended from Britain and Magna Charta. Specifically: the U.K., the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand -- and there was a time when we might have mentioned South Africa, and the English-speaking elites of India and other parts of the former Empire. United by a language, to begin, but through that language with a common-sense view of the world that is distinguishable from continental Europe’s; the “west of the West”, as it were.Andrew Roberts is a British historian in his mid-forties who writes consciously in the (somewhat Whiggish) Churchill Tory tradition. He is a very accessible writer, and I will recommend his new book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, as a good read, especially for intelligent people who were starved of history in e.g. Canadian schools and universities. (There are so many!) The book is authoritative, yet told to the sort of audience that used to read history, fine biographies, and good novels in the same spirit: that “elevated general reader”. Roberts has some mischief in him, of the kind I approve, and a mind always turning to the “What if?” questions. Indeed, of his previous books, several were devoted to such hypotheticals as: what would have happened had Hitler invaded England in May 1940? The new book also consciously plays off Churchill’s own History of the English-Speaking Peoples, daringly extending its horizons. It is making a splash. Even George Bush has been reading it. He invited Roberts to lunch at the White House last week; Cheney, I’m told, had the book by his bedside in hospital. Remember, I don’t review books in these short column spaces, I only glance at them as political phenomena. And this is a good one. English-speaking intellectuals should devote a lot more thought to the Anglosphere: to what it has been and could be. Canadians -- and I include those who think in French, but have been affiliated with this Anglosphere for several centuries now, and could be an important bridge across the “English Channel of the mind” -- have our own peculiar historical take. The movement of “Empire federationism” was a very lively force in our literature and politics a century ago, when that British Empire was very much alive. It was not a sell-out to England. Such men as Stephen Leacock played with sophisticated ideas for re-balancing the American fact against qualities they thought the American Revolutionary tradition had risked discarding. Our own “late Loyalists” wanted to replenish the hierarchical and cosmopolitan side of the balance against the homogenizing and provincializing forces of republicanism. Roberts touches on this only incidentally. His main point is that the Anglosphere determined the course of history through the twentieth century by standing united against Prussian militarism in the First World War, Fascism in the Second, and Communism in the Cold War. In each case, the Anglosphere stood nearly alone, with no reliable allies elsewhere in the world, only clients and dependents. As we pass into the 21st century, we face a fourth great test, against what has been called “Islamofascism”. Will the Anglosphere again stand united, in defence of the West? Roberts takes this as an open question. He is distressed by demographics, and by “multiculturalism”. Massive immigration of Muslims and others from dysfunctional Third-World states is transforming our societies, especially in leading urban centres, and meanwhile our educational systems have “progressed” to reflect a demented cultural relativism, in which our own English-speaking heritage is disowned, barbarous ideas are substituted piecemeal, and a void is created into which all kinds of horrors may be sucked. We are no longer assimilating immigrants, and winning them over to our language and outlook; we are instead surrendering everything we stand for. Yet the Anglosphere is still there, as evidence the British and Australian allies the Americans found when something had to be done about Iraq. Canadian troops in Afghanistan represent at least a tip of the hat to our own best national traditions, in which we were always rather proudly first in the trenches, and first up the hill. Nor, of course, is systematic unhelpfulness from our nominal allies in Continental Europe something new. We have a history of having to protect them from each other, or liberate them, again and again, while they mutter about the distastefulness of “Anglo-Americanism”. But someone has to play adult in the planetary kindergarten. You must know history, to see a way forward; you must ask the “What if?” questions. Without a strong, essentially united Anglosphere, the world would be a much nastier place, even than it is today. It is time we English-speakers got our act together. Again. And I think, time we started inviting India to the show, for it is emerging as another English-speaking centre on the scale of a new America. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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