#SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE THEME FREE#

Later, it came alive again both in arguments over the future of the British Empire between the world wars, and in the soul-searching about BritainвЂ™s place in the world that accompanied decolonisation, the rise of the вЂNew CommonwealthвЂ™, and BritainвЂ™s entry to the European Economic Community (EEC).

#SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE THEME FREE#

The idea lived on, but also changed in character in the early twentieth century through debates in high politics about tariff reform versus free trade. Its origins lie in the late Victorian era, when historians and politicians debated what held the British Empire together, particularly those вЂkith and kinвЂ™ colonies where вЂAnglo-SaxonsвЂ™ had settled, and whether stronger forms of political, economic and military unity were needed to secure the empire against the threats posed by the rise of rival powers, the USA among them. The very notion of an Anglosphere belongs to a family of concepts вЂ“ including вЂGreater BritainвЂ™, вЂthe English-speaking peoplesвЂ™, вЂAnglo-AmericaвЂ™ and вЂthe Old CommonwealthвЂ™ вЂ“ which have played an integral role in British politics and political discourse since the late nineteenth century. Drawing boundaries around the Anglosphere has always been problematic. Wider still, and often controversially, the Anglosphere has in recent times been used to embrace a new set of potential members, including India, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as English-speaking countries of Africa and the West Indies, all of which were formerly part of the British Empire.Д¬loser to home, the Republic of Ireland is sometimes included as well. In many accounts of the Anglosphere, the net is cast more broadly to embrace the United States, once also home to settler colonies from Great Britain and a partner to the CANZUK nations in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence and security alliance.

It is most routinely applied to the United Kingdom and her former settler dominions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand., and this grouping has even come to acquire its own acronym вЂ“ CANZUK. But in the last two decades it has achieved much greater prominence in political discourse to denote a group of English-speaking nations that share a number of defining features: liberal market economies the common law parliamentary democracy and a history of Protestantism. The Anglosphere is a term of relatively recent coinage, first used by the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his novel The Diamond Age, published in 1995.

Shadows of the empire theme