The Anglosphere is a set of English-speaking nations with British cultural roots centered upon the United States which today maintain close cultural, political, diplomatic and military cooperation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, although the nations that are commonly included were all once part of the British Empire.
The term covers Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, countries which in the post-British Empire era maintain a close affinity of cultural, familial, and political links with one another, including the retention of Elizabeth II as head of state and the use of the Westminster parliamentary system of government. In the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union as a result of a referendum held in 2016, there has been mounting political and popular support for a loose free travel and common market area to be formed between the nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom known as CANZUK.
Additionally, the term also usually covers the United States and sometimes the Republic of Ireland.
All of these countries (except Ireland) are aligned under such programs as the UKUSA Agreement (signals intelligence), Five Eyes (intelligence), Combined Communications Electronics Board (communications electronics), [The Technical Cooperation Program]] (technology and science), Air and Space Interoperability Council (air forces), AUSCANNZUKUS (navies), and ABCA Armies.
The term may also encompass a number of Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean where English is widely spoken, including Jamaica, Barbados and The Bahamas.
Video Anglosphere
Overview
Below is a table comparing the countries of the Anglosphere. Data are for 2017.
Maps Anglosphere
Definitions
The term Anglosphere was first coined, but not explicitly defined, by the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age, published in 1995. John Lloyd adopted the term in 2000 and defined it as including the United States and the United Kingdom along with English-speaking Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and the British West Indies. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Anglosphere as "the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate".
Public relations
Public opinion research has found that people in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand consistently rank each other's countries as their country's most important allies in the world. Relations have traditionally been warm between Anglosphere countries, with bilateral partnerships such as those between Australia and New Zealand, the USA and Canada and the USA and UK constituting among the most successful partnerships in the world.
Favourability ratings tend to be overwhelmingly positive between countries within a subset of the Anglosphere known as CANZUK (consisting of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom), whose members form part of the Commonwealth of Nations and retain Elizabeth II as head of state. While the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union in 2016 has had little impact on its favourability ratings with other members of the Anglosphere, there has been a marked drop in the United States favourability ratings with other Anglosphere nations since the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States in 2016. In 2017, the United States had negative favourability ratings with the CANZUK countries.
Proponents
The American businessman James C. Bennett, a proponent of the idea that there is something special about the cultural and legal traditions of English-speaking nations, writes in his 2004 book The Anglosphere Challenge:
The Anglosphere, as a network civilization without a corresponding political form, has necessarily imprecise boundaries. Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and the United Kingdom. English-speaking Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and English-speaking South Africa (who constitute a very small minority in that country) are also significant populations. The English-speaking Caribbean, English-speaking Oceania and the English-speaking educated populations in Africa and India constitute other important nodes.
Bennett argues that there are two challenges confronting his concept of the Anglosphere. The first is finding ways to cope with rapid technological advancement and the second is the geopolitical challenges created by what he assumes will be an increasing gap between anglophone prosperity and economic struggles elsewhere.
British historian Andrew Roberts claims that the Anglosphere has been central in the First World War, Second World War and Cold War. He goes on to contend that anglophone unity is necessary for the defeat of Islamism.
According to a 2003 profile in The Guardian, historian Robert Conquest favoured a British withdrawal from the European Union in favour of creating "a much looser association of English-speaking nations, known as the 'Anglosphere'".
New Zealand historian James Belich connected patterns of growth in the industrialisation of the United States and the United Kingdom with former Dominions of the British Empire New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa, and more loosely to growth in former UK constituent country Ireland, as well as British-allied Argentina, during the 19th and early to mid-20th century, in his book Replenishing the Earth. He used the term "Anglo-World" to refer to the US, UK and former Dominions, arguing that the experience and present reality of former British colonies like India, Kenya, and Jamaica differ in substantial and important ways from this core group of countries.
Criticisms
Michael Ignatieff wrote in an exchange with Robert Conquest, published by the New York Review of Books, that the term neglects the evolution of fundamental legal and cultural differences between the US and the UK, and the ways in which UK and European norms have been drawn closer together during Britain's membership in the EU through regulatory harmonisation. Of Conquest's view of the Anglosphere, Ignatieff writes: "He seems to believe that Britain should either withdraw from Europe [Brexit] or refuse all further measures of cooperation, which would jeopardize Europe's real achievements. He wants Britain to throw in its lot with a union of English-speaking peoples, and I believe this to be a romantic illusion".
See also
Notes
References
- Bennett, James C. (2004). The anglosphere challenge: why the English-speaking nations will lead the way in the twenty-first century. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 80. ISBN 0742533328.
- Brown, Andrew (15 February 2003). "Scourge and poet". The Guardian.
- Conquest, Robert; Reply by Ignatieff, Michael (23 March 2000). "The 'Anglosphere'". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
- Lloyd, John (2000). "The Anglosphere Project". New Statesman. Retrieved 30 November 2012.
- Merriam-Webster Staff (2010). "Anglosphere". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- Roberts, Andrew (2006). A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0297850768.
Further reading
- Evans, Gareth (2016). "Opinion: The Anglosphere illusion". Japan Times.
- Hannan, Daniel (2 March 2014). "The Anglosphere is alive and well, but I wonder whether it needs a better name". Daily Telegraph.
- Kenny, Michael; Pearce, Nick (10 February 2015). "The rise of the Anglosphere: how the right dreamed up a new conservative world order". New Statesman.
- Parulekar, Shashi; Kotkin, Joel (Winter 2012). "The State of the Anglosphere:The decline of the English-speaking world has been greatly exaggerated". City Journal. New York.
- Vucetic, Srdjan (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7224-2.
- Wellings, Ben; Baxendale, Helen (10 December 2015). "BrexitVote: The power of the Anglosphere in Eurosceptical thought". London School of Economics.
- Luca Bellocchio, Anglosfera. Forma e forza del nuovo Pan-Anglismo, Genova, Il Melangolo, 2006 ISBN 978-88-7018-601-7
External links
- James C. Bennett (2002) An Anglosphere Primer, presented to the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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