Ahh, the anglosphere, a word I have thrown around a couple times, but have never really talked about at length. Here is a map of it:

There is some debate as to whether the Philippines or India should be added as well, but these are the main players, though definitions vary as to how to catagorize them. I will sum it up like this: The United Kingdom and the United States form the core, Canada, Ireland, South Africa. Australia, and New Zealand the outliers, and the Philippines, India, and other English speaking nations/regions as the periphary (for now).

While the anglosphere maintains no formal relations within themselves, there are many ties. The Wikipedia article does a fair job of summing up the characteristics of the anglosphere:

• Democratic, British-inspired political institutions (legislative houses, regular elections, strong executive branch, respect for the rule of law)
• Common Law legal system (trial by judge and/or jury, etc)
• Capitalist, free market economies
• predominantly Protestant Christian religious traditions, although there are also large Catholic populations and other significant religious minorities.
• the entire English-language corpus of literature, philosophy, poetry, and theatre, though this complements native cultural counterparts and innovations (e.g. Hollywood, Bollywood, Celtic culture) rather than supplanting them.

Some exceptions obviously apply, for example the United States has a republican system of government while the others have constitutional monarchies, Scotland, Quebec, and Louisiana do not use Common Law, and so on.

The Anglosphere nations also share many other similarities, including high economic prosperity, firmly established civil rights and personal freedoms, and high levels of global cultural influence.

Winston Churchill believed that such an innate connection existed, and he viewed the English speaking people of the world as their own society. However, this idea does not really come into play until the passing of naval dominance from England to the United States. This has recently been labelled World War Zero:

The rapid transition from antagonism to co-operation with America from 1895-1910, without the upheaval of either Trafalgar or the Somme, obscured a sombre reality. A great confrontation (a world war of sorts) did take place and we live in a world powerfully altered by the fact that America became an assertive then dominant world power 100 years ago, without fighting a war with Great Britain.

That marked the begining of the true anglosphere, one that could come to exist sans formal colonial ties. However, the anglosphere lay dormant from a big picture point of view until Margaret Thatcher. From World War I on, England had mostly viewed itself as being tied to Continental Europe, and acted as such with its government. It was not until Thatcher's revolution and partnership with Ronald Reagan can the anglosphere begin to coalesce as a seperate identity from Europe (though the roots of the intellectial break are with Edmund Burke's reaction to the French Revolution).

Tony Blair has an excellent relationship with President Bush, and as I have noted previously, the Iraq war is an anglosphere venture. The prospect of Iraq someday becoming part of the anglosphere would be very interesting, as it was a British mandate in the 1920s, a nation carved from the Sykes-Picot agreement.

I feel that the anglosphere will be come more and more prominent in the next decade and beyond, especially if Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister of Canada. The anglosphere is already the dominant force on Earth, and I think the nations in it will soon realize the importance of these bonds and how to best utilize them.

Further Reading: An Anglosphere Primer, Albion's Seedlings

Posted by Ryan S. on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 at 3:30 PM | Permalink |