Anglosphere

The Anglosphere is a group of English-speaking nations that share historical and cultural ties with England,[1][2][3] and which today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with anglophone, though the nations that are commonly included were all once part of the British Empire.[4]

Variable geometry of the Anglosphere, according to James Bennett (The Anglosphere Challenge)
  Core Anglosphere (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and the English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean)
  Middle Anglosphere (states where English is one of several official languages, but where the primary connections to the outside world are in English)
  Outer sphere (English-using states of other civilisations)
  Periphery (states where English is widely used but is not an official governmental language, i.e. Northern Latin America, Northern Europe, and Arab states formerly under British control)

The definition is usually taken to include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] in a grouping of developed countries called the core Anglosphere. This term can also encompass Ireland[8][13][14] and less frequently Malta and the Commonwealth Caribbean countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.[15]

Public opinion research has found that people in the five core Anglosphere countries consistently rank each other's countries as their country's most important allies in the world.[16][17][18][19] Relations have traditionally been warm between Anglosphere countries, with bilateral partnerships such as those between Australia and New Zealand, the United States and Canada and the United States and the United Kingdom constituting the most successful partnerships in the world.[20][21][22]

Definitions and variable geometry

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 English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and the British West Indies.[15] The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Anglosphere as "the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate".[23][lower-alpha 1]

Core Anglosphere

The five main ("core") countries in the Anglosphere (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) are all developed countries and maintain a close affinity of cultural, diplomatic and military links with one another. All are aligned under such programmes as:[24][15][25][26]

  • ABCANZ Armies
  • Air and Space Interoperability Council (air forces)
  • AUSCANNZUKUS (navies)
  • Border Five
  • Combined Communications Electronics Board (communications electronics)
  • Five Country Conference (immigration)
  • Five Eyes (intelligence)
  • Five Nations Passport Group
  • The Technical Cooperation Program (technology and science)
  • The UKUSA Agreement (signals intelligence).

In terms of political systems, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have Charles III as head of state, form part of the Commonwealth of Nations and use the Westminster parliamentary system of government. Most of the core countries have first-past-the-post electoral systems, though Australia and New Zealand have reformed their systems and there are other systems used in some elections in the UK. As a consequence, most core Anglosphere countries have politics dominated by two major parties.

Below are two tables comparing the five core countries of the Anglosphere (data for 2021/2022):

Country (name in full style) Capital city Largest city Head of state Head of government Governing party (with international affiliation) Legislature System of government
Commonwealth of Australia Canberra Sydney King Charles III
(Governor-General
David Hurley)		 Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese		 Australian Labor Party (PA) Parliament:
Senate
(upper house),
House of Representatives (lower house)		 Federal
parliamentary
constitutional monarchy
Canada Ottawa Toronto King Charles III
(Governor General
Mary Simon)		 Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau		 Liberal Party (LI) Parliament:
Senate (upper house),
House of Commons (lower house)		 Federal
parliamentary
constitutional monarchy
Realm of New Zealand Wellington Auckland King Charles III
(Governor-General
Cindy Kiro)		 Prime Minister
Jacinda Ardern		 Labour Party (PA) Parliament
House of Representatives		 Unitary
parliamentary
constitutional monarchy
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland London King Charles III Prime Minister
Liz Truss		 Conservative Party (IDU) Parliament:
House of Lords (upper house),
House of Commons (lower house)		 Unitary
parliamentary
constitutional monarchy
United States of America Washington, D.C. New York City President
Joe Biden		 Democratic Party (PA) Congress:
Senate (upper house),
House of Representatives (lower house)		 Federal
presidential
constitutional
republic
Country Population Land area
(km2)[27]		 GDP PPP
(USD bn)[28]		 GDP PPP per capita
(USD)[28]		 National wealth PPP (USD bn)[29][28][30] Military spending PPP
(USD bn)[31]
 Australia 26,009,249[32] 7,692,020 1,346 52,675 7,661 22.0
 Canada 38,708,793[33] 9,984,670 1,932 51,477 9,971 23.3
 New Zealand 5,130,623[34] 262,443 218 43,686 1,229 3.1
 United Kingdom 67,081,234[35] 241,930 3,246 48,599 16,208 70.2
 United States 332,718,707[36] 9,833,520 21,373 65,052 114,932 734.3
Core Anglosphere 469,648,606 27,329,350 28,115 60,668 150,001 852.9
... as % of World 5.9% 18.4% 20.8% 3.4× 24.9% 32.9%

Culture and economics

Due to their historic links, the Anglosphere countries share many cultural traits that still persist today. Most countries in the Anglosphere follow the rule of law through common law instead of civil law, and favour democracy with legislative chambers above other political systems.[37] Private property is protected by law or constitution.[38]

Market freedom is high in the five core Anglosphere countries, as all five share the Anglo-Saxon economic model – a capitalist model that emerged in the 1970s based on the Chicago school of economics with origins from the 18th century United Kingdom.[39] The shared sense of globalisation led cities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Toronto to have considerable impacts on the financial markets and the global economy.[40] Global popular culture has been highly influenced by United States and United Kingdom.[38]

Imperial and US customary measurement systems are often used in Anglosphere countries in addition to or instead of the International System of Units.

Proponents and critics

Proponents of the Anglosphere concept typically come from the political right (such as Andrew Roberts of the UK Conservative Party), and critics from the centre-left (for example Michael Ignatieff of the Liberal Party of Canada).

Proponents

As early as 1897, Albert Venn Dicey proposed an Anglo-Saxon "intercitizenship" during an address to the Fellows of All Souls at Oxford.[41]

The American businessman James C. Bennett,[42] a proponent of the idea that there is something special about the cultural and legal (common law) 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.

— James C. Bennett.[24]

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.[43]

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.[44]

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'".[45][46]

CANZUK

Favourability ratings tend to be overwhelmingly positive between countries within a subset of the core Anglosphere known as CANZUK (consisting of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom),[47][48][49][19] whose members form part of the Commonwealth of Nations and retain Charles III as head of state. In the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) 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 among the CANZUK countries.[50][51][52]

Criticisms

In 2000, 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 drew 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 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".[53]

In 2016, Nick Cohen wrote in an article titled "It's a Eurosceptic fantasy that the 'Anglosphere' wants Brexit" for The Spectator's Coffee House blog: "'Anglosphere' is just the right's PC replacement for what we used to call in blunter times 'the white Commonwealth'."[54][55] He repeated this criticism in another article for The Guardian in 2018.[56] Similar criticism was presented by other critics such as Canadian academic Srđan Vučetić.[57][58][59]

In 2018, amidst the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, two British professors of public policy Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce published a critical scholarly monograph titled Shadows of Empire: The Anglosphere in British Politics (ISBN 978-1509516612). In one of a series of accompanying opinion pieces, they questioned:[60]

The tragedy of the different national orientations that have emerged in British politics after empire—whether pro-European, Anglo-American, Anglospheric or some combination of these—is that none of them has yet been the compelling, coherent and popular answer to the country's most important question: How should Britain find its way in the wider, modern world?

They stated in another article:[5]

Meanwhile, the other core English-speaking countries to which the Anglosphere refers, show no serious inclination to join the UK in forging new political and economic alliances. They will, most likely, continue to work within existing regional and international institutions and remain indifferent to – or simply perplexed by – calls for some kind of formalised Anglosphere alliance.

Opinion polls

A 2020 poll by YouGov revealed that all four of the other core Anglosphere countries were among the top 10 most positively viewed countries by Americans, with Australia and Canada ranking behind only the United States itself in the poll.[61] Another 2020 poll by YouGov showed that New Zealand, Canada and Australia were the most positively viewed countries by the British.[62]

A 2018 poll by the Lowy Institute similarly indicated that New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom were the three most positively viewed countries by Australians.[63] Their 2020 version of the poll again put Canada and the United Kingdom at the top, but New Zealand was not included as an option.[64] A 2020 poll by the Macdonald–Laurier Institute suggested that Australia was the most positively viewed country by Canadians.[65] Australia and the U.S. were ranked as having the most favorable view of Canada's influence to the outside world, according to a 2012 GlobeScan survey of 22 countries.[66] In a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, a plurality of Canadians and Australians named the United States as their country's closest ally.[67]

See also
  • Anglo-Americans
  • AUKUS
  • British diaspora
  • English-speaking world
  • Eurosphere; Francosphere (French), Hispanosphere (Spanish), Lusosphere (Portuguese)
  • Five Power Defence Arrangements
  • History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Winston Churchill)
  • JUSCANZ
  • List of countries and territories where English is an official language
  • List of countries by English-speaking population
  • White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP)

Notes
  1. "The group of countries where English is the main native language." (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (6th ed.), Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-920687-2 ).

References

Citations
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Further reading
Look up anglosphere in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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