By Michaela Gregoriou
Art by Olivia Gresham
In considering the racial dynamics within international politics, both in practice and in scholarship, it would be negligent to deny the domination of majority-white, English-speaking countries, referred to in this article as the Anglosphere.[1] The Anglosphere, consisting of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, has consolidated distinct national identities to form a single racial identity, founded on the common language of English and the implicit moral superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon” race. In effect, there is an implied political, cultural, and military alliance between these countries. As Vucetic explains, “The Anglosphere as a hierarchy [is] made up of the core and mostly white Self on the one hand and on the other the peripheral and overwhelmingly nonwhite Other.”[2] The promotion of an “Us vs. Them” racial hierarchy has afforded the Anglosphere political, linguistic, and academic privileges in international relations that are widely unacknowledged.
One indicator of the Anglosphere’s domination on the international stage is the rise of English as a global language. Currently, 20% of the world’s population speaks English, and the world’s most influential international institutions, like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, have declared English one of their official languages.[3] English has become a lingua franca largely due to the colonial legacy of the British empire, which, at its height, spanned a quarter of the world.[4] Historically used as a tool for racial subjugation, English was a signifier in separating the “colonized” from the “colonizer” and a mechanism of undermining local languages as being rudimentary.[5] In the postcolonial world, political entities like the Commonwealth of Nations, mostly composed of former British colonies, advance Anglo-Saxon values of democracy, civil society, and human rights. Additionally, the proliferation of multinational corporations, the majority of which are headquartered in English-speaking countries, has been a major driving force in the spread of English.[6] In an increasingly globalized world, the international institutions and multinational corporations which comprise global linkages structurally favor the Anglosphere. The rise of English as a global language directly feeds into the narrative of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism and affords English speakers undeniable political and economic privileges; from English-speaking politicians being able to speak without interpreters to English-speaking employees wielding a strategic, marketable commodity, there are many advantages to speaking English in today’s world.[7] Thus, the rise of English expands the Anglosphere’s “soft power” in its ability to influence global preferences and advance its interests.
On the metalevel, discourse in international relations has been largely shaped by and catered to the Anglosphere, or the white, male identity. While the majority of international relations scholars are white men, the issues they study disproportionately affect women and people of color. In effect, the academic scholarship tends to be self-justifying and narrow-minded in its approach, imposing Western concepts like “sovereignty” and “the state” onto non-Western circumstances.[8] In fact, common terms of “developed” and “underdeveloped” bear racist origins of a colonial past.[9] A practical example of this is the mapping of Africa during decolonization, wherein European powers drew national borders irrespective of ethnic variation and geographic features.[10] Aside from causing local conflicts, the remapping of Africa falsely validates an Anglo-Saxon perspective of the world, one of nation-states and liberal democracy. Another example includes the recent rise in conditional aid, wherein powerful, economically affluent countries (like those of the Anglosphere) provide aid to foreign countries on the condition that they will undertake democratic political reforms, such as free and fair elections.[11] Such interventions have actually caused a rise in fake elections, defeating their initial purpose and demonstrating how Anglo-Saxon liberalism is often imposed onto non-Anglo-Saxon countries, regardless of its relevance or likelihood of success.
The political effects of the Anglosphere have also shaped the emergence and discourse of postcolonial literature. A common preoccupation of postcolonial writers concerns the subversion of imperial, English literary convention in favor of more culturally authentic literary forms. In order for postcolonial writers to rewrite and reclaim language, they must intimately engage with the oppressive, colonial forces of English. As Edward Kamau Braithwaite, a prominent Caribbean poet and scholar, explains, there is a distinction between English as an imperial language, the language brought in by colonizers, and English as a nation language, or the language brought in by slaves and labourers, an “underground” English.[12] While the nation language was considered inferior, it nevertheless influenced the imperial language, transforming the local English into a hybrid of cultural influences.[13] Braithwaite explains how the educational system of most decolonized nations sustained the imperial language and celebrated English literary texts which held little relevance to the local communities receiving this education. In effect, the collective knowledge and memory of local history was diminished and replaced by colonial, English history. The imported literary conventions of English, which are inherently alien to communities of postcolonial settlement, became the most familiar, ultimately meshing with the local culture. As Chinua Achebe writes in his article “English and the African Writer,” there is an ambiguity in defining African literature, in part because of the patchwork of languages embedded throughout the continent: “Should [African literature] be in indigenous African languages or should it include Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, and so on?”[14] Achebe discusses how the choice of African writers to use an imperial language is not unpatriotic but rather a byproduct of colonial influence, which has transformed imported language into a useful tool for mass communication. Such complexities of postcolonial literature reveal the power of the Anglosphere in suppressing local language and literary form and imposing a foreign understanding of human experience.
Though the Anglosphere primarily exists as an intangible, elusive identity, as something which is sensed but hard to place, it manifests itself in tangible, material ways, undoubtedly altering political and literary space. By acknowledging the Anglosphere’s power and illuminating its origins, we come one step closer to dismantling it.
Works Cited
[1]Srdjan Vucetic, The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
[2]Srdjan Vucetic, The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations.
[3]Rosemary C. Salomone, The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language, Oxford Scholarship Online (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
[4]Salomone, The Rise of English.
[5]Salomone, The Rise of English.
[6]Salomone, The Rise of English.
[7]Salomone, The Rise of English.
[8]Kelebogile Zvobgo and Meredith Loken, “Why Race Matters in International Relations,” Foreign Policy, accessed May 19, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/why-race-matters-international-relations-ir/.
[9]Zvobgo and Loken, “Why Race Matters.”
[10]Tim Hyde, “Are Colonial-Era Borders Drawn by Europeans Holding Africa Back?” accessed May 19, 2022, https://www.aeaweb.org/research/are-colonial-era-borders-holding-africa-back.
[11]Susan Hyde, “International Dimensions of Elections,” in The Dynamics of Democratization : Dictatorship, Development, and Diffusion, ed. Nathan Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).
[12]Kamau Brathwaite, History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, A New Beacon Book. (London: New Beacon Books, 1984).
[13]Brathwaite, History of the Voice.
[14]Chinua Achebe, “English and the African Writer,” Transition, no. 75/76 (1997): 342–49, https://doi.org/10.2307/2935429.