The Student Room Group

Let's Celebrate The Achievements of The English-Speaking Peoples!

I've been reading Andrew Roberts' "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900), and as of this moment am on p.400. I cannot find words in praise of the book so far. It is a testament to the follies, fortune and endurance of the English-speaking peoples in the twentieth century. It tabulates the highs and the lows, the greatest achievements and the greatest blunders, but the overall picture is clear: the English-speaking peoples have much to be proud of.

In our time it is common for us to flagellate ourselves about the supposed misdeeds of our past. There is slavery, for one. Then there is colonialism and imperialism. There are those on the far-left who are constantly sniping at America for its supposed evil acts during the Cold War, and those on the far-right who attempt to defame the English-speaking peoples in their heroic struggle against both Imperial Germany and then Axis Fascism by pointing to incidents such as Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki as evidence that the English-speaking peoples were not on the right side of history after all, and that there is some sort of moral equivalence between the monsters we have combated and ourselves.

I believe that Roberts has batted off these attacks from the spiteful and the jealous haters of our history with aplomb. At the beginning of the 20th century the British Empire was going strong and America was hurtling towards Great Power status. This turbulent century opened with the British fighting a heroic struggle against the Boers in South Africa, a people as admirably brave as they were fanatical and racist. Across the world there was massive sympathy for the Boers, seen as heroic freedom-fighters against the might of an evil, aggressive empire. Yet all great empires and nations have faced jealousy and resentment from others, and it is not at all surprising that out of anti-British spite so many chose to side with the selfish, insular and xenophobic Boers over the imperfect but progressive British. As Roberts points out, the Boers were far from angels. The descendants of largely Dutch and French Huguenot settlers, rights in the Boer republics were generally restricted to white Protestants. Catholics, Jews and the British Uitlanders were all subjected to a discriminatory system not dissimilar from apartheid. At the bottom were the blacks, who were little better than chattel, and who would continue to suffer under apartheid for many years after South Africa gained independence. The Second Boer War began as a result of the Boers' refusal to give voting rights to the Uitlanders, who were growing in number and contributed much to the Boer economy, yet were seen as a political threat by Kruger and his cabal. Instead of meeting British demands for fair treatment of the Uitlanders and the native blacks, Kruger chose confrontation, launching a suicidal invasion of Cape Colony, a move which should signal to all serious students of this war that it was the Boers, not the British, who started the war. Despite massive sympathy for the Boers among the American public, McKinley's and then Roosevelt's administration in the United States remained neutral, effectively tilting towards the British side. It was the first clear indication of solidarity between the English-speaking peoples, one which would have profound implications for the rest of the century. Yet this may never have happened had not the sagacious British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, (who is quite possibly one of the greatest Prime Ministers our country has ever had but whom few have ever heard of) chosen to remain neutral (but effectively pro-American) during the Spanish-American War of 1898, at a time when much of Europe was pro-Spanish. The seeds of the "Special Relationship" had been planted, from which would spring mighty and mawkish fruit in the future.

There are those who would condemn the British for their treatment of Boer civilians by interning them in "concentration" camps, yet conditions in these camps, as Roberts notes, were probably not as bad as they made out to be, indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the British did all they could to ensure that the Boers received the treatment they needed. In any case, it was probably safer for them in the camps than out on the veldt where they could quite possibly have become accidental casualties in an increasingly brutal guerrilla war. Those who would use this instance of the war as evidence that the British were just as bad, if not morally inferior to, the Boers should take a harder look at the evidence, and ensure that they are not misled by the lily-livered moralisers of our times and their outrageous pretences to historical scholarship. With the war won and the Boers subdued, a new, progressive administration could now take hold over South Africa.

Roberts then leads us into a discussion of that great bogeyman, that great millstone around the historical reputations of the English-speaking peoples, "imperialism". Compared to many of the other European colonisers, British imperialism was relatively benign. There was nothing to mirror the Herero and Namaqua genocides in Namibia, or France's bloody actions in Algeria or even Fascist Italy's actions in Abyssinia. British Sudan had the largest railway network in Africa, built at the start of the century by the British. Elderly Sudanese are quoted by Roberts as having fond memories of the British. In Egypt, British administrators fought for the rights of the oppressed, slaving fellahin, whose work went to enriching the Turco-Egyptian elite that surrounded the decadent court of the Egyptian khedive. In Uganda, there was only ONE recorded assassination of a British official, a junior one at that, named Galt, an event which remains shrouded in mystery and the perpetrators of which remain unknown. It cannot be that the Ugandans were frightened by the British into submission, as the garrison in the colony was miniscule and there were more Ugandan soldiers than British. It must have been that the Ugandan people generally saw the British as a force for good. In India, Lord Curzon oversaw benevolent British administration and law-giving.

We are then led into a prolonged discussion on the origins of Anglo-German rivalry and the carnage of the First World War. Contrary to the claims of the revisionists, it is clear that Germany was planning not just continental hegemony, but worldwide domination. In Latin America Imperial Germany fough a virtual cold war with the United States, and it was only the Monroe Doctrine and President Roosevelt's tough action that prevented German dominion over, perhaps even colonisation of, South America, the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-3 being a case in point. Wilhelmine Germany was not satisfied with merely being the most industrialised country in Europe with the most powerful military, but wanted territorial expansion, a "place in the sun". Wilhelmine Germany's fleet was clearly designed, not for self-defence or as a deterrent, but for bullying, brigandage and conquest. It is not unthinkable that once Imperial Germany had taken over the continent, she would have come for Great Britain as well. The First World War, then, was not something that could simply have been avoided, that Great Britain could have sat out of. It was necessary to punish German militarism and aggression, and to make it clear that bellicose nationalism was a losing way for any civilised country. The very idea of the unstable and idiotic figure of Wilhelm II ruling over a German-dominated Europe, receiving homage from the "subject races" of Eastern and Southern Europe, is too frightening to behold. We must not forget that this unpredictable and erratic individual was also a frightful anti-Semite, whose suggestion that the best way to get rid of the Jews was gas anticipated the crime of the century in Adolf Hitler's Holocaust. Anyone who doubts that this was not what Germany was in fact aiming at should read up on the concept of "Mitteleuropa", initially an innocent intellectual experiment which was hijacked by racist German nationalists such as von Tirpitz and the Kaiser himself. Such an entity would look a lot like the European Union today, dominated by Germany, as the European Union is today, with one difference: instead of letting in other races (i.e. Syrian refugees) and destabilising the continent, this version would seek to eradicate other races in order to make Lebensraum for German settlers. Adolf Hitler didn't get his zany ideas from thin air. There was also the necessity to defend Belgium, the neutrality of which we, as the architects of the Treaty of London, were obligated to protect, and which was violated by the Kaiser's legions traipsing through it in 1914 and proceeding to murder innocent civilians. Palmerston did not conceive of that treaty for nothing, and it had been long-standing British foreign policy that no hostile power could be allowed possession of the Channel ports, nor could any one nation be permitted domination over Europe, as was sought by Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon and later Hitler.

Anyone who believes that the First World War was not a war over clear-cut ideological aims, and that Imperial Germany and Great Britain could have remained in a state of peaceful co-existence, should read the speech that von Tirpitz gave at the height of the war in 1917, in which he asserted that the conflict was between two, competing world-views: Anglo-American liberalism and German nationalism. One would prevail, and the other would be vanquished. Von Tirpitz was determined that it should be German nationalism that triumphed, and the vast majority of Germans undoubtedly agreed with him.

The popular view of the war is one in which rich, upper-class officers without a clue about war sent the plebs over the trenches to die in a futile conflict. This is a lie. Many officers were killed in the war, most of whom were of fairly high social rank. The upper class was decimated as it had not been since the War of the Roses, and lost a sizeable proportion of its members. Far-right and far-left revisionists may like to ignore this, but it is a fact.

Sadly, America did not enter the war in 1915 when there was an opportunity and put an end to the bloodshed early, but its entry into the war in 1917 was a god-send, and a victory for the forces of light over the forces of darkness. Its failure to join the League of Nations marked the collapse of the post-war settlement that resulted in World War II, but it marked the first instance of the English-speaking peoples standing shoulder to shoulder in a great international crusade for the preservation of civilisation. Wilson and Lloyd-George would become Churchill and Roosevelt, Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush. The Special Relationship had been born.

With the defeat of the aggressive Wilhelmine Germany, the Treaty of Versailles was imposed to bring about a lasting peace. But it was to be no Congress of Vienna. The popular belief is that it was a harsh treaty, crippling to Germany which fanned the flames of nationalism and led to the rise of Hitler and then WWII. Roberts shows this view up as nonsense. Indeed, if Germany had been treated more harshly by the treaty, and even split up as it was after WWII and was before unification in 1870, another world war would have been avoided. A pity, then, that the likes of Keynes and others have distorted our views on this momentous historical event. One should be reminded that the Germans inflicted a far harsher treaty on Russia in 1917, and if that is a microcosm of what a German-dominated Europe would have been then it is a shame that the Treaty of Versailles is as mild as it was.

Atm I am reading about WWII and its aftermath, but I will kindly provide updates once I have finished the whole thing.

Scroll to see replies

Sounds more like a jingoist polemic than anything else - the kind of popular, narrative history impulsively bought but seldom read by bored holidaymakers browsing the WH Smiths at Terminal 5. Yawn.
Original post by Cato the Elder


Atm I am reading about WWII and its aftermath, but I will kindly provide updates once I have finished the whole thing.


Please don't. The uncritical paraphrasing of a polemic is worthless if not downright damaging.



Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by ageshallnot
Please don't. The uncritical paraphrasing of a polemic is worthless if not downright damaging.



Posted from TSR Mobile


Don't worry, I will :smile:
Original post by Captain Haddock
Sounds more like a jingoist polemic than anything else - the kind of popular, narrative history impulsively bought but seldom read by bored holidaymakers browsing the WH Smiths at Terminal 5. Yawn.


Far from it.

And you don't appear to have countered anything I wrote.
Well as expected Roberts launched into an excellent discussion of WWII, and the pivotal role of the United States, reaching over from across the ocean to liberate the continent, even in the face of much ingratitude from the likes of Charles de Gaulle. Thousands upon thousands of English-speaking soldiers gave their lives for the liberation of that thankless country, but it was still a worthy price to pay in the great fight against Nazism. Together, Roosevelt and Churchill contributed to the founding of a new, liberal world order that would encompass all of Western Europe. Unfortunately, their vision for the existence of free peoples worldwide was harshly compromised due to the realities of the situation, and the exigencies of appeasement of Stalin and his monstrous communist empire saw Red Fascism hold sway over millions and millions of the Earth's children, to be freed only after several, bruising decades, which came with high points and low points. In this third great world-historical conflict faced by the English-speaking peoples, the world came close to nuclear destruction. This moment in world history also saw the decline of the British Empire and the passing of the baton, and the duty for the defence of world freedom, onto the United States, with the Suez debacle highlighting the limits of the Special Relationship. When Anthony Eden launched the morally courageous decision to confront the Egyptian Mussolini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, he did so in the knowledge that millions of Britons were behind him. But perfidy in his Cabinet and betrayal by President Eisenhower, as well as a loss of nerve, doomed the operation, and the English-speaking peoples lost their chance to stamp to death the poisonous viper of pan-Arab fascism taking hold like fire to kerosene throughout the entire Middle East. The thug, Nasser, went on to gas civilians in Yemen, launch a disastrous war with Israel in his bid to kill all the Jews and establish the land of Palestine, encourage the overthrow of "reactionary" Arab regimes and bring about the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people region-wide through coups, civil wars and revolutionary turmoil. Vietnam saw hundreds of thousands of American troops fighting and dying for the freedom and independence of South Vietnam in the face of a rapacious communist enemy. Victory was in sight, but due to the treacherous, propagandising anti-war movement at home and backbiting, partisan politicians, who saw it fit to stab America in the back when she was fighting most earnestly against a world evil, she was forced to look on helplessly as all her gains were lost in that great tidal wave of communist perfidy that was the invasion and conquest of South Vietnam in 1975. It was a time of great humiliation for the English-speaking peoples, a time of retreat and dismay in the face of the communists. It took Richard Nixon and the policy of detente to buy time for the English-speaking peoples in the face of this indomitable foe. These years of drift and surrender were made worse by the arrival on the scene of the clueless farmer-turned President Carter, who time after time chose to give in to communism and anti-Americanism and did little or nothing in defence of freedom worldwide. It took the heroic figure of President Reagan to transform America's sense of anger and betrayal into a vigorous determination to prosecute the Cold War to final and glorious victory. Together with the heroic British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a great and determined frontal assault was launched on the empire of communism, with defence spending exceeding hitherto unknown limits in a bid to bankrupt and destroy the red tyranny, whilst the Afghan people were assisted in their noble and years-long struggle against Red Fascist aggression, which broke the myth of Soviet invulnerability and left the glorious Red Army in demoralised ruins. At long last, in those glorious years from 1988-1991, the world saw the collapse of red tyranny. It was a victory won thanks to the courage and determination of Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher. The Berlin Wall came down, Ceausescu was shot, Honecker left the scene, Solidarity took centre stage in Poland, Yeltsin rose to the fore, and it all came crumbling to pieces, leaving the ruins of ignominy and shame in place of the great monuments dedicated to the power of the proletariat. The great crusade for freedom had at long last reached a happy and hopeful conclusion.

But the English-speaking peoples now had to face the fourth great world-historical struggle - this time against fundamentalist Islam. The "peace dividend" was deceptive, the New World Order insecure. The world would never be the same again after the Beirut barracks bombings of 1983. The English-speaking world slept on, but they would not sleep forever. Again and again came the attacks - in Somalia, in Kenya, in Saudi Arabia. Still, the English-speaking peoples did nothing. Clinton cut and ran from Mogadishu, in a shameful display of cowardice and surrender in the face of Islamofascism. This emboldened the likes of Bin Laden, who saw the U.S. as a paper tiger that could be defeated. With the examples of Vietnam and Black Hawk Down fresh in their memories, they would be determined to repeat these shameful displays and humiliate the U.S. Meanwhile, in 1991 the English-speaking peoples went to war in defence of Kuwait against the fascist aggressor, Saddam Hussein, reducing in just a few days his glorious army, and inflicting on him a grievous humiliation. At this point the English-speaking peoples missed a glorious opportunity to march on Baghdad and rid the world of this miserable tyrant, but sadly the ultimate confrontation would be postponed until 2003. Shamefully enough, in Bosnia the English-speaking peoples were made to sit back and watch a fascist tyrant, as in the days of old, commit genocide in the heart of Europe. John Major, for whom the Special Relationship held no special attraction, did everything possible to prevent the United States from punishing this unforgivable evil in a continent that had twice threatened to destroy itself in this kind of genocidal, fratricidal manner. Finally, NATO intervened and in a few days reduced Milosevic's proud army into a shattered wreck. The butcher of Bosnia was thrown out of power by his own people in 2000, flung into a jail cell and died unlamented six years later, an internationally-renowned criminal and pariah.

In 2001, out of the clear, blue sky came the face of evil in the form of two planes, hijacked by agents of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. These two planes proceeded to crash into that great symbol of American power and freedom, the Twin Towers, killing over 3,000 people. This disgusting, wicked, depraved and criminal act spurred the people of America to vengeance. President Bush rose to the occasion, announcing to his people that justice would be done. Finally, Islamofascism had come home, and it had woken the English-speaking peoples up to the mortal threat it posed to all free peoples. This was an Islamist Pearl Harbour, a wake-up call, a call to action and the punishing of irredeemable evil. Prime Minister Tony Blair proclaimed that he and his country would stand shoulder to shoulder with our great English-speaking brothers in the fight ahead. And so we did in October 2001, marching into Afghanistan at the head of a great coalition to bring Bin Laden and the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. In this noble and animated crusade, the people of Afghanistan were liberated from the Taliban terror, and thousands upon thousands of jihadists executed. A new government was put into place, one that would have a nominal respect for freedom, and the Taliban terrorists ran into the hills, whilst Bin Laden proceeded to play a protracted game of hide and seek with his American enemies for the next several years. Meanwhile, the English-speaking peoples geared up to bring a mass-murdering gangster and long-standing state sponsor of terrorism to justice - none other than Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, the invader of Kuwait, the killer of Kurds, the slaughterer of Shias, that great and most excellent butcher in all the Middle East, self-proclaimed leader of the Arab and Muslim world. The only Muslim leader to celebrate 9/11. The supreme evil-doer of the Arab-Islamic milieu, hell-bent on pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Despite howls of protest from left-wingers and America-haters (particularly those in France and Germany whom Americans had died trying to liberate) and protests from a whole swathe of brainless, ignorant and ungrateful Europeans who had the gall to stand with the slaughterer Saddam at a time when the free world was fighting a great and most murderous evil akin to Nazism and Fascism, a "coalition of the willing" was assembled, and Britain would be part of it. Side by side, Britain and America ousted the tyrant and saved Iraq from a future under his mad sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein. Finally, at long last, the English-speaking peoples were serious about facing down the threat from Islamofascism.

The English-speaking peoples, it is clear, have much to be proud of, and should resist the demands on the part of left-wingers and freedom-haters that they should be ashamed or reluctant to discuss their immense achievements. It is clear that the world is a much better place because of men like Churchill and Roosevelt, Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush, and that they should forever be honoured as the greatest of the English-speaking peoples. Time then, to face down the one-word government uniglobers, the communist sympathisers and the dishonest intellectuals and stand up for the greatness of our legacy. I cannot recommend enough Dr. Andrew Roberts' book. It will amaze the ignorant, astound the clever and give one a handy tool to counter the lies and slanders of the left concerning our history.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Cato the Elder


Are there any adjectives or adverbs you don't like???

Posted from TSR Mobile
Nelson Mandela
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
Barack Obama

They all changed the world speaking English. If they were speaking Lithuanian they would have never had the impact that they did.
Original post by Cato the Elder
Adolf Hitler didn't get his zany ideas from thin air.


Zany's the word ain't it though. Madcap, knockabout, bonkers. Old Adolf, what a loon. It's something to treasure in English: the capacity always to find le mot juste, if that's the right expression.
Original post by Cato the Elder
Vietnam saw hundreds of thousands of American troops fighting and dying for the freedom and independence of South Vietnam in the face of a rapacious communist enemy. Victory was in sight, but due to the treacherous, propagandising anti-war movement at home and backbiting, partisan politicians, who saw it fit to stab America in the back when she was fighting most earnestly against a world evil, she was forced to look on helplessly as all her gains were lost in that great tidal wave of communist perfidy that was the invasion and conquest of South Vietnam in 1975.


:lol: You do understand that there was a significant overlap between the 'American troops fighting and dying for freedom' and the 'treacherous, propagandising anti-war movement'? I think you are heavily underestimating just now unpopular the war was both at home and on the front. By the end of the war incidents of 'fragging' - the attempted murder of a commanding officer by their own troops - had become endemic. The war had become so untenable the US couldn't even keep their own armed forces in line.

At any rate the book as summarised here appears to have been framed in such a moralistic, goodies-vs-baddies narrative as to be devoid of any meaningful historical insight. The study has been prosecuted with jingoistic bluster and the authors approach to the subject matter comes off as crass and unsympathetic. This idea of a homogeneous 'English-speaking peoples', the implication that Eisenhower owed allegiance to Eden because they spoke the same language, or that I, as an English-speaking person, should feel humiliated because of America's abortive war in Vietnam, is just ludicrous. Of course I don't know how much of this comes from the author and how much is your own interpretation, but I do know that it is terrible history.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by MagicNMedicine
Nelson Mandela
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
Barack Obama

They all changed the world speaking English. If they were speaking Lithuanian they would have never had the impact that they did.


I think you've got it the wrong way round. The book is about how the English-speaking peoples have impacted the world, not about the impact made by speaking English.
As much as Anglo culture has bossed the world for the past 200 years, it's not very Anglo to be overtly triumphant about it, everyone can be an Anglo if they fall into line.

Original post by MagicNMedicine
Nelson Mandela
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
Barack Obama

They all changed the world speaking English. If they were speaking Lithuanian they would have never had the impact that they did.


Barack Obama is the product of Anglo culture, it's never been about racial background. The archetypal Anglo has always been elitist, industrious, and imperialistic, but never a blood and soil nationalist.
(edited 7 years ago)
>the Boers were far from angels. The descendants of largely Dutch and French Huguenot settlers, rights in the Boer republics were generally restricted to white Protestants. Catholics, Jews and the British Uitlanders were all subjected to a discriminatory system not dissimilar from apartheid. At the bottom were the blacks, who were little better than chattel, and who would continue to suffer under apartheid for many years after South Africa gained independence. The Second Boer War began as a result of the Boers' refusal to give voting rights to the Uitlanders, who were growing in number and contributed much to the Boer economy, yet were seen as a political threat by Kruger and his cabal. Instead of meeting British demands for fair treatment of the Uitlanders and the native blacks, Kruger chose confrontation, launching a suicidal invasion of Cape Colony, a move which should signal to all serious students of this war that it was the Boers, not the British, who started the war.


It's the most quintessentially Anglo thing to send the troops in halfway across the world in pursuit of your own interests under a Brahminesque pretense of social justice.


''We did it for the Brown kids what what :cry2:''
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Captain Haddock
:lol: You do understand that there was a significant overlap between the 'American troops fighting and dying for freedom' and the 'treacherous, propagandising anti-war movement'? I think you are heavily underestimating just now unpopular the war was both at home and on the front. By the end of the war incidents of 'fragging' - the attempted murder of a commanding officer by their own troops - had become endemic. The war had become so untenable the US couldn't even keep their own armed forces in line.


But in a way, the war was won. Militarily speaking the North had been beaten, and South Vietnam could have been preserved as an independent state. Even the most minimal support from America would have averted the calamity of 1975, but the Democratic Congress lost America the war by refusing all aid to South Vietnam, allowing thousands and thousands of American lives to be lost in vain.

Original post by Captain Haddock
At any rate the book as summarised here appears to have been framed in such a moralistic, goodies-vs-baddies narrative as to be devoid of any meaningful historical insight. The study has been prosecuted with jingoistic bluster and the authors approach to the subject matter comes off as crass and unsympathetic. This idea of a homogeneous 'English-speaking peoples', the implication that Eisenhower owed allegiance to Eden because they spoke the same language, or that I, as an English-speaking person, should feel humiliated because of America's abortive war in Vietnam, is just ludicrous. Of course I don't know how much of this comes from the author and how much is your own interpretation, but I do know that it is terrible history.


I think you're not getting the point of the book. It's about much more than language, but a whole socio-politico-economic civilisation. You'd have to read it yourself.
A N G L O
N
G
L
O

Original post by AIDS Skrillex
A N G L O
N
G
L
O



>MFW Aryans



Beady eyes hide Anglo lies
Original post by l'etranger
>MFW Aryans



>Inbred anglo thinks he's superior to Aryans

Original post by AIDS Skrillex
>Inbred anglo thinks he's superior to Aryans



The Eternal Anglo also controls the media :sly:

The Achievement of English Speaking Peoples - they don't make any effort to learn other languages !!!! Gold star :smile:

Quick Reply

Latest