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Anglosphere
Grouping of English-speaking nations

The Anglosphere, also known as the Anglo-American world, is a Western-led sphere of influence among the Anglophone countries. The core group of this sphere of influence comprises five developed countries that maintain close social, cultural, political, economic, and military ties with each other: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although extended definitions do include non-Western and developing countries that were once part of the British Empire and retained English influence and common law upon independence, such as those in the Indian subcontinent, the Anglosphere is a distinct grouping that is not simply synonymous with countries in which the English language has official status.

Anglosphere countries are generally aligned with each other on global issues and collaborate extensively in matters of security, as exemplified by alliances like Five Eyes. The core countries of the Anglosphere were collectively the leading powers of the Western Bloc during the Cold War, and are either NATO members or designated by the United States as major non-NATO allies.

Definitions

The Anglosphere is the Anglo-American sphere of influence.2 The term was first coined 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.3 James C. Bennett defines anglosphere as "the English-speaking Common Law-based nations of the world",4 arguing that former British colonies that retained English common law and the English language have done significantly better than counterparts colonised by other European powers.5 The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Anglosphere as "the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate".67 However the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with anglophone.8[better source needed]

Core Anglosphere

The definition is usually taken to include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States9 in a grouping of developed countries called the core Anglosphere. The term Anglosphere can also include but frequently omits Ireland and the Commonwealth Caribbean countries despite their similar domestic primacy of the English language and common law.101112131415[excessive citations]

The five core countries in the Anglosphere are developed countries that maintain close cultural and diplomatic links with one another. They are aligned under such military and security programmes as:16171819

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 (the Special Relationship) constituting the most successful partnerships in the world.202122

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. The United States is a presidential republic. 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 is a table comparing the five core countries of the Anglosphere (data for 2022/2023):

CountryPopulationLand area(km2)23GDP Nominal(USD bn)24GDP PPP(USD bn)25GDP PPP per capita(USD)26National wealth PPP (USD bn)272829Military spending PPP(USD bn)30
 Australia26,009,249317,692,0201,7071,71865,3667,66122.0
 Canada38,708,793329,984,6702,0892,38560,1779,97123.3
 New Zealand5,130,62333262,44325127854,0461,2293.1
 United Kingdom67,081,23434241,9303,1583,84656,47116,20870.2
 United States332,718,707359,833,52026,85426,85480,035114,932734.3
Core Anglosphere469,648,60627,329,35034,05928,11565,700150,001852.9
... as % of World5.9%18.4%32.3%20%3.3×24.9%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 rather than civil law, and favour democracy with legislative chambers above other political systems.36 Private property is protected by law or constitution.37[better source needed]

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.38 The shared sense of globalisation led cities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Toronto to have considerable impacts on the international markets and the global economy.39 Global popular culture has been highly influenced by the United States and the United Kingdom.40[better source needed]

See also: International yard and pound

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

Further information: 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism

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.43

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.44

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.45

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'".4647

CANZUK

Main article: 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),[according to whom?] 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.484950

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".51

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'."5253 He repeated this criticism in another article for The Guardian in 2018.54 Similar criticism was presented by other critics such as Canadian academic Srđan Vučetić.5556

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:57

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:58

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.

See also

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Look up Anglosphere in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. Baylis, John; Smith, Steve; Owens, Patricia (2014). The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations. OUP Oxford. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-965617-2. 978-0-19-965617-2

  2. "The Anglosphere – shorthand for the Anglo-American sphere of influence – established the concept and structure of the modern transnational community.... The Anglosphere (in the narrow sense of the former British Empire, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the US) has been the architect and a staunch proponent of international norms."[3]

  3. Lloyd 2000. - Lloyd, John (2000). "The Anglosphere Project". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 13 December 2015. Retrieved 30 November 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213070342/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/193400

  4. Bennett, 2004b, pp. 3, 67. - Bennett, James C. (2004). The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0742533325. https://books.google.com/books?id=_SaenLfzEAUC&pg=PA80

  5. Bennett 2007, pp. 42–43. - Bennett, James C. (2007). The Third Anglosphere Century: The English-Speaking World in an Era of Transition. The Heritage Foundation. ASIN 0891952772. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0891952772

  6. Merriam-Webster Staff (2010). "Anglosphere". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 7 March 2010. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anglosphere

  7. "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 ). 978-0-19-920687-2

  8. "The Anglosphere and its Others: The 'English-speaking Peoples' in a Changing World Order – British Academy". British Academy. Archived from the original on 22 April 2017. Retrieved 26 January 2018. https://www.britac.ac.uk/events/anglosphere-and-its-others-english-speaking-peoples-changing-world-order

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  10. Burn-Murdoch, John (17 March 2023). "The Anglosphere needs to learn to love apartment living". Financial Times. Forty years ago, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland had roughly 400 homes per 1,000 residents, level with developed continental European countries. Since then the two groups have diverged, the Anglosphere standing still while western Europe has pulled clear to 560 per 1,000. https://www.ft.com/content/dca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5

  11. Burn-Murdoch, John (25 April 2024). "The Anglosphere has an advantage on immigration". Financial Times. But a striking pattern emerges when you look at where these different impacts are clustered: almost everything looks better in Anglophone countries. Immigrants and their offspring in the UK, US and so on tend to be more skilled, have better jobs and often out-earn the native-born, while those in continental Europe fare worse. In terms of the fiscal impact, immigrants pay more in than they get out in the US, UK, Australia and Ireland, but are net recipients in Belgium, France, Sweden and the Netherlands. https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6112

  12. Shashi Parulekar and Joel Kotkin (2012). "The State of the Anglosphere". City Journal. Particularly citizens of what some call the Anglosphere: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-state-of-the-anglosphere

  13. Reed, Betsy (3 November 2017). "The Guardian view on languages and the British: Brexit and an Anglosphere prison". The Guardian. an Anglosphere of Britain, Ireland (sometimes), the British Commonwealth and above all the United States. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/03/the-guardian-view-on-languages-and-the-british-brexit-and-an-anglosphere-prison

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  15. Lloyd 2000. - Lloyd, John (2000). "The Anglosphere Project". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 13 December 2015. Retrieved 30 November 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213070342/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/193400

  16. Bennett, 2004b, p. 80. - Bennett, James C. (2004). The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0742533325. https://books.google.com/books?id=_SaenLfzEAUC&pg=PA80

  17. Lloyd 2000. - Lloyd, John (2000). "The Anglosphere Project". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 13 December 2015. Retrieved 30 November 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213070342/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/193400

  18. Legrand 2015. - Legrand, Tim (1 December 2015). "Transgovernmental Policy Networks in the Anglosphere". Public Administration. 93 (4): 973–991. doi:10.1111/padm.12198. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fpadm.12198

  19. Legrand 2016. - Legrand, Tim (22 June 2016). "Elite, exclusive and elusive: transgovernmental policy networks and iterative policy transfer in the Anglosphere". Policy Studies. 37 (5): 440–455. doi:10.1080/01442872.2016.1188912. S2CID 156577293. https://doi.org/10.1080%2F01442872.2016.1188912

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  29. Credit Suisse figures adjusted using IMF WEO Oct 2021 GDP-PPP exchange rates.

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  42. Reynolds 2004. - Reynolds, Glenn (28 October 2004). "Explaining the 'Anglosphere'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. Retrieved 31 July 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/28/uselections2004.usa4

  43. Bennett, 2004b, p. 80. - Bennett, James C. (2004). The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0742533325. https://books.google.com/books?id=_SaenLfzEAUC&pg=PA80

  44. Bennett, 2004b[page needed] - Bennett, James C. (2004). The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0742533325. https://books.google.com/books?id=_SaenLfzEAUC&pg=PA80

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