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[edit] Definitions
According to a post on Word Spy, a blog on unusual words, the term Anglosphere was first used by author Neal Stephenson in his 1995 novel The Diamond Age. Stephenson did not use the term in any specific geopolitical sense but rather to describe a fictional race called the Atlantans who, when immigrating to London, were drawn from across the English speaking world. The blog defines the term as meaning "the collection of English-speaking nations that support the principles of common law and civil rights".[1] Other, more specific meanings of the term have been fleshed out. The US 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 on his blog "Albion's Seedlings" that "the Anglosphere is not a club that a person or nation can join or be excluded from".[2] The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines the word to mean "the group of countries where English is the main native language".[3] Bennett also writes about this on "The Anglosphere Institute", another website he runs to promote the notion of an Anglosphere. "Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and the United Kingdom, while Anglophone regions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa are powerful and populous outliers. The educated English-speaking populations of the Caribbean, Oceania, Africa and India pertain to the Anglosphere to various degrees."[4] Bennett says the concept is not "racialist" (although it is mostly Caucasian, in spite of the extensive African-American contributions to United States culture), and that "Anglospherism is based on the intellectual understanding of the roots of both successful market economies and constitutional democracies in strong civil society."[4] Bennett's 2004 book, The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century, argues 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.[5] 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.[6] 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'".[7] [edit] CriticismsLeft-leaning civil rights activist Tom Hayden, writing for Zmag, an online publication, defines proponents of the Anglosphere as wanting a United States where the dominant culture remains firmly rooted in an English tradition, and he writes that they reject multiculturalism. Hayden predicts that in the US, their project will fail. The "Anglosphere is dying, if only through demographics. It is a matter of time – of when, not whether. The newcomers have neither the need nor the capacity to assimilate into a declining Anglosphere." [8] 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 drawn closer together. 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."[9] The notion of Anglospheric exceptionalism (as propagated by Bennett) comes under heavy criticism from various sources which deem it an inherently far-right theory.[10][11][12] [edit] See also
[edit] Notes
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