The case for the defence | 4 November 2006

Hubris is followed by nemesis, and the idea that the English-speaking peoples (that is, those who speak English as their native language) exert an economic, political, moral and cultural hegemony in the world strikes me as distinctly hubristic. Whether it is true, or if true desirable, is another question.

Andrew Roberts’ history is rather old-fashioned, and none the worse for that, in that it is mainly a narrative of political and military events: a tale of kings (or presidents and prime ministers) and wars. Social, intellectual, cultural and economic history are included only insofar as they impact upon high politics and the balance of power. It is Roberts’ thesis that the English-speaking peoples are united, despite occasional differences and betrayals, by a unique devotion to freedom and a unique scrupulosity in the exercise of power.

The strengths of the book are a fluent writing style, with very few infelicities considering its length, and the employment of telling and frequently funny anecdote. While it is hardly to be expected that a book of this length contains no errors — Virginia Woolf, for example, could hardly have contributed to the magazine Encounter, at least of her own volition, more than a decade after her death — a thesis as broad as Roberts’ is hardly to be refuted by the odd mistake.

The weakness of the book is a tendency to special pleading that will annoy all those not convinced of its underlying soundness. The government of Wilhelmine Germany, for example, is taken to task for the secrecy of its deliberations only a few pages before the secrecy of the deliberations of Edwardian Britain’s government is excused as being inevitable in the circumstances.

The British are said to have been uniquely self-critical where their empire was concerned, but de Tocqueville criticised French policy in Algeria very early on, the great journalist Albert Londres was unsparing in his criticism of French behaviour abroad, and André Gide’s book on Equatorial Africa actually effected changes in colonial conduct.