RELATED TERMS:
The term Anglosphere has been used as part of an endeavour to redefine British identity in a post-Brexit world by some right-wing Eurosceptics. Although the word was introduced fairly recently by Neal Stephenson in his 1995 science fiction novel The Diamond Age, it plays upon older 19th century notions of Anglo-Saxon racial greatness.
The connection between the older Anglo-Saxonism and contemporary Anglospherism is that Englishness is seen in both as a unique culture that invented freedom. Ironically, as Kenan Malik (2021) points out, in drawing together ideas about language, culture and history, this view draws heavily upon German Romantic philosophy, for example, Johann Gottfried Herder’s Volksgeist or ahistorical spirit of the people.
It is only in a reductionist conception, in which the free market, small government and common law predominate, that the Anglosphere can be imagined as the primary fount of of liberty. Continental European thinkers such as Spinoza and Diderot, Malik comments, offered a more expansive conception of liberty than that of the English philosopher Locke, often seen as a founder of liberalism and tolerance, who, while arguing in Two Treatises of Government, first published in 1690, that all men are by nature equal, at the same time made the case for the legitimacy of slavery.
References
Malik, K. (2021) We should not allow the Anglosphere to distort the history of liberty. The Observer, 26 September 2021, p.47. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/25/the-anglosphere-is-just-a-cover-for-the-old-idea-of-white-superiority [Accessed 26 September 2021]
Locke, J. (2003, 1690) Two treatises of government and A Letter concerning toleration. Edited by I. Shapiro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Links
Article on Daniel Hannan, proselytiser for the Anglosphere: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/29/daniel-hannan-the-man-who-brought-you-brexit
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