Andrew Roberts: In praise of the 'Anglosphere'
Toward the end of the 19th century, Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck remarked that the most important thing to know about the 20th century was that Americans spoke English.
His point was obvious: an alliance between the British Empire and the United States, the world's largest English-speaking states, would create the most powerful political entity on the planet.
Bismarck's remarks proved prescient, for which we can be thankful. If not for the willingness of the English-speaking nations -- Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- to sacrifice their blood and treasure, much of the world would be ruled by dictators.
Such is the conclusion you reach after reading historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900. Moreover, it dawns on you that the source of much of the world's disorder in the last century has been, and still is, non-English-speaking countries.
"It is emphatically not that the English-speaking peoples are inherently better or superior that accounts for their success, therefore, but that they have perfected better systems of government," Roberts writes in suggesting that a key reason for the success of the English-speaking people is widely shared cultural mindset.
Thanks to traditions of law, a common language, a shared cultural background and an abiding sense of individual freedom, the English-speaking peoples have been less susceptible than others to the lures of fanaticism. And this, he says, allowed them "to achieve their full potential, while some other peoples on the planet have remained mired in authoritarianism, totalitarianism and institutionalised larceny."
Despite Roberts' caveats, some reviewers had damned him with cries of cultural chauvinism and charges of "racism." For example, Johann Hari, a columnist for the left-wing Independent newspaper, dismisses Roberts' book as "an ahistorical catalogue of apologies and justifications for mass murder ... " But rather than offer sufficient evidence to rebut Roberts' thesis, Hari, writing in a recent edition of The New Republic, sneers at Roberts for having a father who "owned a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises."
Such elitist rhetoric is standard fare for those who seek to silence anyone who dares challenge the propaganda of multicultural equanimity. But while you can quarrel with Roberts' interpretation of events, he marshals too much empirical evidence to be dismissed with a sneer.
As a more insightful reviewer observes, Roberts places the accomplishments of the English-speaking people over the last century in proper perspective. "Instead of emulating other historians who have portrayed the 20th century as a cesspit of almost uninterrupted warfare, slaughter, and misery, Roberts snubs reproach and defeatism," historian Keith Windshuttle said in the February edition of The New Criterion. "His tale is of the triumph of light over the forces of darkness."...
His point was obvious: an alliance between the British Empire and the United States, the world's largest English-speaking states, would create the most powerful political entity on the planet.
Bismarck's remarks proved prescient, for which we can be thankful. If not for the willingness of the English-speaking nations -- Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- to sacrifice their blood and treasure, much of the world would be ruled by dictators.
Such is the conclusion you reach after reading historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900. Moreover, it dawns on you that the source of much of the world's disorder in the last century has been, and still is, non-English-speaking countries.
"It is emphatically not that the English-speaking peoples are inherently better or superior that accounts for their success, therefore, but that they have perfected better systems of government," Roberts writes in suggesting that a key reason for the success of the English-speaking people is widely shared cultural mindset.
Thanks to traditions of law, a common language, a shared cultural background and an abiding sense of individual freedom, the English-speaking peoples have been less susceptible than others to the lures of fanaticism. And this, he says, allowed them "to achieve their full potential, while some other peoples on the planet have remained mired in authoritarianism, totalitarianism and institutionalised larceny."
Despite Roberts' caveats, some reviewers had damned him with cries of cultural chauvinism and charges of "racism." For example, Johann Hari, a columnist for the left-wing Independent newspaper, dismisses Roberts' book as "an ahistorical catalogue of apologies and justifications for mass murder ... " But rather than offer sufficient evidence to rebut Roberts' thesis, Hari, writing in a recent edition of The New Republic, sneers at Roberts for having a father who "owned a string of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises."
Such elitist rhetoric is standard fare for those who seek to silence anyone who dares challenge the propaganda of multicultural equanimity. But while you can quarrel with Roberts' interpretation of events, he marshals too much empirical evidence to be dismissed with a sneer.
As a more insightful reviewer observes, Roberts places the accomplishments of the English-speaking people over the last century in proper perspective. "Instead of emulating other historians who have portrayed the 20th century as a cesspit of almost uninterrupted warfare, slaughter, and misery, Roberts snubs reproach and defeatism," historian Keith Windshuttle said in the February edition of The New Criterion. "His tale is of the triumph of light over the forces of darkness."...