History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900

by Andrew Roberts

Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, in four volumes, ended in 1900. Andrew Roberts, Wolfson History prizewinner and superb narrative historian, has been inspired by Churchill's example to write the story of the 20th century. In his preface Churchill 'Every nation or group of nations has its own tale to tell. Knowledge of the trials and struggles is necessary to all who would comprehend the problems, perils, challenges, and opportunities which confront us today ...It is in the hope that contemplation of the trials and tribulations of our forefathers may not only fortify the English-speaking peoples of today, but also play some small part in uniting the whole world, that I present this account.' As the greatest of all the trials and tribulations of the English-speaking peoples took place in the twentieth century, Roberts' book covers the four world-historical struggles in which the English-speaking peoples have been engaged - the wars against German Nationalism, Axis Fascism, Soviet Communism and now the War against Terror. But just as Churchill did in his four volumes, Roberts also deals with the cultural, social and political history of the English global diaspora - comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies. Keeping to Churchill's definition it does not cover India, where there are 180 languages of which English is only that of the elite. But India's story overlaps with that of Britain and is fully dealt with in that context.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Historical, United States, World History, Politics

Hardcover

First published February 6, 2007

About the author

Dr Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). He has written or edited twelve books, and appears regularly on radio and television around the world. Based in New York, he is an accomplished public speaker, and is represented by HarperCollins Speakers’ Bureau (See Speaking Engagements and Speaking Testimonials). He has recently lectured at Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities and at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Factually wrong, poorly edited, written in a way that ignores half his own thesis, and just a weak argument overall, the only redeeming part is that I got it really cheap years ago (I was swayed by the title, which reflects on Churchill's famous series, of which Roberts meant to have a sort-of sequel).

The main point in the book is that the English-speaking peoples (UK, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, West Indies, but not Ireland and the rest) faced four major threats since 1900 (Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Communism, Islamic Fundamentalism), and worked together to ensure they defeated them all as "the last best hope for Mankind." However Roberts pays next to no attention to the minor parties here and effectively could have, and should have, just written about the UK and US, as in the 650 pages of this book Canada, Australia, and New Zealand probably get less than 20 pages (and Canada isn't mentioned once after the Second World War).

He's got numerous facts wrong, from claiming Canada had no policy restricting Chinese Immigration at the start of the century (the various Chinese Immigration Acts, which created the head tax, would argue otherwise), notes that the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was dropped at 8.15pm (it was in the morning), Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1994 (it was 1990; he was elected president in 1994), and perhaps most egregiously, a photo of the aftermath of 9/11 claims "11 September 2003." Poor editing also says in successive paragraphs that Operation Barbarossa happened along a 1000, then 2000, mile front, and notes that the UK's entry into the EEC had a negative effect on trade with the Commonwealth, notably Australia, but fails to expand on that in any way.

Roberts is also not afraid to attack nearly every public figure, especially the British prime ministers Clement Atlee and Edward Heath. Heath especially doesn't seem to have been able to do anything right, and Roberts spends pages going on tirades against his various policies and perceived failures as prime minister. Similarly he criticizes US President Jimmy Carter for being one of the worst to hold that office, though fails to really establish a point. The exceptions to this are Thatcher and Reagan, the two of which sound like demigods to Roberts (who is an ardent Thatcherite).

He also constantly accuses "the Left" of ruining everything throughout the century, without expanding on who this group is, and it sounds conspiratorial often. This is especially apparent after the section on Watergate, where he outright accuses Hollywood of creating the idea of fear and distrust in the government amongst the populace, leading to all sorts of issues, or so he claims.

Roberts also reduces his own thesis by going on his personal crusades against issues: for instance on the Suez Crisis, rather than noting the contribution of Canada to helping end it (and giving Canada a mention, which would advance his idea that it was all the English-speaking peoples working together, not just the US and UK), he attacks Anthony Eden and his failings to preserve the British Empire, spending pages arguing that the Empire should have remained, and attacking the weakness of the UN as a body. This lack of representation of non-US and UK figures is really apparent throughout the second half, when as noted Canada is not mentioned once, despite having some major events occur (the last prime minister mentioned by name was Mackenzie King, who retired in 1948); Australia gains a few mentions but only because of its involvement in Vietnam and Iraq, while New Zealand faces a similar fate as Canada.

Roberts also downplays the major atrocities that the US and UK committed throughout, arguing that colonisation of the Philippines, for example, was good for the locals, as it civilised them. He argues that anything bad was not really that bad, often invoking the Holocaust or the Gulag as a comparable, but when one has to use the worst excesses to defend the policy, it is likely not a good policy. He also argues that the Iraq War was justified, and even insists the US and UK should have invaded faster, while trying to justify a connection between 9/11 and Iraq (something even Bush and Blair have moved away from).

The quality of work is also apparent in the sources used throughout. Often Roberts will cite unnamed historians and quote them, neglecting to cite them; he will rarely give a name to a quote from a historian, though a few do occur throughout. The bulk of his sources, however come from the *Times Literary Supplement* and other newspaper-based sources, which while a respected source of news and opinion, is hardy something to base a serious history off of.

Overall, it reads like a poorly-written, hastily-done work, and should not be considered a reputable book on anything related to its perceived topic. As Roberts himself notes in the introduction, "this book is emphatically not intended to be a comprehensive history of the English-speaking peoples, which would be impossible to write in one volume and anyhow probably rather dull to read;" he should have taken his own advice and avoided the topic altogether, for this sorry excuse of a book desecrates the idea of such a subject and is an insult to the works of Churchill.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

What was I thinking when I picked up this bloated book, almost absent-mindedly, along with several other lighter fictions this past winter? This "history" is more an imperial neocon fantasy than a serious examination of the complex forces that empowered and challenged the English-speaking world in the last century. I was really hoping for a comparative study of the histories of the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. (One will not find here many kind words for the Irish, those unruly, Catholic louts.) I found it most interesting that Roberts feels that the English-speaking world of the 20th Century will look to future generations not as separate nations with a common tongue, but more like an empire, like the Roman Empire looks to us now in hindsight. So in love with the English is he.

Historians should be truth seekers. Historians should apply rational forensics to documented events. I do believe that the West has made many great contributions to human civilization, but please don't just say that some of the greatest injustices of the 20th Century were just unavoidable or necessary evils. Roberts strikes me as the sort of elitist historian that writes what ever he feels will cheer up the home team. These little vignettes of his should have been serialized in "Parade" magazine...or printed on the back of sugar packets!

I did try my best to look past the rosy-tint of his jingo-narrative. I found myself jumping forth to the index more than usual. I was indeed interested in some of the snapshots of New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, but they were too few. As for the United States, Roberts makes some astonishing claims. If I am to believe my own eyes, FDR was an early neocon. There's not as much on Hoover as I might expect, either. Hmmm. After 300 pages of very tenuous historic comparisons, I skipped to the sections on Vietnam and Iraq where the real doublespeak begins right where it left off. Shame on leftists and liberals and the Clintons? Check. The Invasion of Iraq was based on "bad intelligence" but worth it? Imperialism is a necessary evil to spread civilization? Check.

I would only recommend this to the Bush White House Book Club -- expiration date January 19th, 2009. Because if you are looking for a good explanation as to how the Bush Administration could have possibly justified the war in Iraq, this is the polemic for you.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a strange book. It purports to be a continuation of Winston Churchill's work of the same title, which ended at the end of the 19th century. I haven't read Churchill's work, so I can't compare it with that, but the point of view of the author seems to be set at the end of the 19th century; I can only describe it as "neojingoism". It's the kind of outlook I could imagine my grandfather having, if he'd been alive today, and not experienced any of the intervening period since the beginning of the First World War. Perhaps one could also call it neo-Edwardian. It reminds me of the song, I think by Flanders and Swan:

The English, the English, the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest.

And that is the viewpoint that permeates the whole book.

In spite of this quaint anachronistic approach, however, the book is quite well written, and for the most part, not boring, and at times entertaining. At least, since the author makes his own point of view obvious, one is forewarned about some of the biases. There are quite frequent asides for sermonettes on the virtues of capitalism or the English-speaking peoples, or pointing out the vices of lesser breeds who don't share the virtues of the English.

Roberts rightly deplores the use of hyperbole in describing atrocities committed by English-speaking peoples. I must say I agree with him about the too-easy flinging about of terms like "Holocaust" and "genocide" for events that are nothing of the kind, and that the over-use of such terms diminishes the seriousness of the events that such terms were coined to describe. But Roberts spoils his argument by his own exculpatory descriptions, when he says (on page 312f), "However bad the late-Victorians might have been it is a gross error of judgment to compare anything they might have inadvertently done to the deliberate Holocaust against European Jewry in the 1940s." It's the "might... inadvertently" that gives the game away. The message is clear: they couldn't have done it, because they were English, of course, and even if they did do it, they did it in a fit of absence of mind.

Roberts describes in considerable detail the horrific injuries caused by the poison gas Saddam Hussein used against Kurdish insurgents, but glosses over the injuries caused by the atomic bombs dropped by the English-speaking people on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (justified, of course, since they were English-speaking). And not a word about the response of the English-speaking peoples to insurgents in Fallujah.

Towards the end of the book (p. 636) he posts a disclaimer: "It is emphatically not that the English-speaking people are inherently better or superior people that accounts for their success, therefore, but that they have perfected better systems of government, ones that have tended to increase representation and accountability, while minimising jobbery, nepotism and corruption." Unfortunately, however, in the other 647 pages he seems to be trying to create the impression that it is precisely because of their innate superiority that the English-speaking peoples have done what they have done.

One of the other curious things about the book is that when dealing with Commonwealth participation in the two world wars, South Africa has been almost entirely written out of the story. There is mention of Australia, and New Zealand, and the place Gallipoli in WW I holds for them. There is mention of Canada and Vimy Ridge. There is mention of the West Indies and Eire. But not a word about South African troops, of Delville Wood or the sinking of the Mendi. This omission is so consistent that it sticks out like a sore thumb.

All history is selective, and historians select and emphasise the points that seem most important to them, and give less emphasis to other points. But this is not merely a matter of less emphasis; it seems to be a conscious and deliberate exclusion, and one wonders why.

The book is hardly a history, in the sense of a coherent narrative. There are occasional illuminating stories about particular historical incidents, but little to connect these with others. Huge chunks of history are skipped over, and anyone reading this to get a view of an era is likely to get a very distorted picture.

Throughout the book the author seems to be wanting to have his cake and eat it. He argues that realpolitik is more important than occupying the moral high ground, but then says that realpolitik IS the high moral ground, if its practitioners are English-speaking, of course. So, for example, he says of the detente policies in the Cold War in the 1970s:

Detente had anyhow meant very different things in the East and the West. The West saw it as a way of lowering tension, 'in the hope that it might disengage from the dreadful and even apocalyptic tests of strength it was inflicting on the rest of the world'. By contrast, in 1976 Leonid Brezhnev stated, 'Detente does not in any way rescind, nor can it rescind or alter, the laws of class struggle. We do not conceal the fact that we see in detente a path towards the creation of more favourable conditions for the peaceful construction of socialism and communism.'

But where is the contrast? It is clear that both sides saw it as a breathing space that might create the possibility of getting what they wanted relatively peacefully without Mutually Assured Destruction. Brezhnev's words could be paraphrased to precisely express the attitude of the West: 'Detente does not in any way rescind, nor can it rescind or alter, the laws of the free market. We do not conceal the fact that we see in detente a path towards the creation of more favourable conditions for the peaceful construction of capitalism and the market.'

And in the 1980s it was the West, under Reagan and Thatcher, that resumed the arms race -- something that Roberts clearly approves of, since they were English-speaking and Brezhnev was not.

Towards the end, the "history" label wears very thin indeed. It is an undisguised political rant. The author says very little about what happened, and a great deal about why it was right that it should have happened the way it did (if the English-speaking people were responsible). The contradictions multiply. It is a good and noble thing to speak the truth to power, unless that power happens to be American, Then it becomes anti-Americanism, which is, in the author's view, a Bad Thing.

So reading the book gives me the queer anachronistic feeling that a contemporary of my grandfather (who served on the British side in the Anglo-Boer War in an irregular unit called Loxton's Horse) had fallen asleep on 31 December 1900 and, like Rip van Winkle, woken up a century later with his Victorian-Edwardian jingoism intact, and decided to write about the previous century from that point of view.

It's like a parody of a parody. There are several books that parody the simplistic history of school history trextbooks. There was an English one called 1066 and all that and a South African one called Blame it on van Riebeeck. The latter noted that in the 19th century in the Eastern Cape there were nine Kaffir Wars, and that tyhese wars had Causes and Results. And it tabulated the wars with their causes and results:

1st Kaffir War - Cause: the Kaffirs
2nd Kaffir War - Cause: the Kaffirs
and so on for all nine.

And yes, there were school history books in the 1940s and 1950s that took that approach.

But Roberts is writing a book for adults, yet adopts the same kind of simplistic approach. In any war that the English-speaking peoples were involved in, there are no nuances, there is no ambiguity, there are Causes -- the non-English-speaking people (the Boers, the Germans etc), and there are Results: the English-speaking people won, and saved the world for democracy, capitalism, and realpolitik.

[Rudyard L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I praise I'd like to say that this book is not for everyone. If you are not already a history buff, this book will not give you a balanced image. He might spend 5 pages on Hollywood's portrayal of British people in 1990s and dedicate a sentence to the North Africa campaign. On the other hand, I don't think the author intended this book to be an authorative history of the English Speaking Peoples in the 20th century, but more a side history to give a new perspective.

What this author does really well is facts and a new perspective. As a history buff I've learned more facts and anecdotes from this book than any other I read this year/ He is the master of writing interesting stuff that wills tick in your head. The author has a very conservative slant, but he backs up every point he makes with valid and unwarped facts and his arguments are convincing. With this genre of books being normally so overwhelmingly liberal, this is a breath of new perspective. He says a lot of politically incorrect stuff, but the majority of it is actually true, but awful. The book is very well written and I couldn't see myself forcing myself to read through any parts. In conclusion, if you are a history buff, i highly recommend reading this. If you are not a history buff, don't read this book, you won't know half the things he are talking about.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok I admit I am a big fan of Andrew Roberts .. I just enjoy the tone of his writing , his voice. He is resolutely anti lefty and injects a continuous flow of irony into his work which shows that he is at least conscious whilst churning out these vast scholarly works .

This one was written 16 years ago and one’s eyebrows rise - for example - when he praises Tony Blair for this forthright response to Bush’s policy of waging war in Iraq. Wow. You think. Would be say the same today ?

I also thoroughly enjoyed his ranking of our British PMs . He has no time for Heath , or Major both of whom he regards as having been cavalier with our special USA relationship. He also dismisses Wilson with similar disdain

Strangely enthusiastic for Eden and positively drooling over Margaret Thatcher .

His rallying call is for us English speakers to be proud of our culture our democracy our achievements and to be resolutely pro American ! His watchword simply is that without English speaking hegemony , it would be Chinese or say Russian , and we would soon realises how lucky we had been

[Margaret Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. The compilation of stories in the continuity of events that dominated twentieth-century world history is extraordinary in its thoroughness. Andrew Roberts must surely be the greatest living historian. The bibliography alone, including a list of 85 manuscript collections and archives visited, uses 24 pages of small print. His perspective is substantiated by citations from letters and personal journals, official minutes and telegrams, speeches given by both friends and enemies, quotations from news media, and books by journalists and “intellectuals” who were later proven to be either right or (often) wrong.

Is he biased? If so, it’s overdue. As he notes, English speakers appear to be unique in their zealousness to criticize their own governments of Constitutional liberty. But Mr. Roberts does not leave out the warts. There were always conflicts among English-speaking friends, sometimes upon how best to counteract their common enemies, and too often about and by enemies within. But the “secrets” revealed here, and sometimes re-assessments of popular blaming of political decision-makers—during either war or peace—are worth the careful reading of this monumentally important story. As well, it is refreshing to see politics set aside as often as possible to be reminded of the relentless creative invention of people who have been blessed (or blessed themselves) to live with liberty.

What an eventful century it was, with tyrants to spare! But the author makes the emphatic point that the English-speaking nations were those who confronted the would-be conquerors—again and again. Depending upon happenstance of leadership for any given challenge, they sometimes stumbled and bumbled. But, within the limits of human fallibility, they have mostly done a pretty good job of upholding laws to protect their people’s freedoms to think and speak and work without government interference—a model worth mimicking in any language.

Coverage of the First World War is the clearest I have ever read, its cause infinitely more complex than the assassination of some Archduke named Franz Ferdinand. But the bloodbath was real, and the author argues that the 1918 Versailles Treaty ending it was so forgiving to the German Kaiser as the would-be conqueror of Europe that it simply served as a pause until a re-do with even greater horror only two decades later.

After a respite of prosperity during the 1920s, then flummoxed by a Great Depression in the 1930s, English speakers remained generally preoccupied while new Fascisms in both the Communist and the Nazi forms pushed themselves ahead in Europe. Mr. Roberts gives us a description of Stalin’s Soviet Union that in a handful of pages clarifies a more vivid truth of its evil than Timothy Snyder did in 400+ pages of Bloodlands. The English-speaking part of the story here is that of the sad record of so many academics, journalists, and other professional philosophers who became propagandists for Communism. He names names, some of which are not surprising—but some of which are.

The years of World War II are masterfully covered. He does not shy from showing the difficulties the Allies had to coordinate plans to first build an arsenal of ships, planes, tanks, guns, and ammunition, and to train literally millions of men—and not a few women—to combat the unspeakable threat of Nazi Germany. But actual fighting experiences are described as vividly as any I have ever read. In Mr. Roberts’ prose, even statistics are gut-punching. Generals disagreed. Politicians decided. General de Gaulle’s unhelpfulness is ably documented.

Then there was the long Cold War, revealing some surprises not generally taught even today about how sequential crises were resolved (or not). As the Cold warmed up again and again, not just in the proxy wars of Korea and Vietnam, but also over the Berlin Airlift and later building of the Wall, uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal, the Cuban missile crisis, and assassinations of leaders, there was much dissension among the English speakers themselves over how best to confront the ever encroaching menaces of Stalin and Mao.

All the while, industrious individuals used their freedoms to create and invent, adding to their own and others’ prosperity with mass production of television sets, electric household appliances, central heating, automobiles, a vaccine for polio. Civilian employment reached record levels. In 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay ascended to the peak of Mount Everest with the aid of an oxygen-breathing apparatus developed for high-altitude flying. In the 1960s Martin Luther King Jr. led a pacific civil rights campaign in America that resulted in two new Constitutional Amendments forbidding segregation of races and guaranteeing all adults the right to vote. In 1969 Americans walked upon the surface of the moon. Political leadership demonstrated varying quality over the decades, but in 1989, thanks to the dexterous team of Reagan and Thatcher, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, and the USSR reverted to “just Russia” again. The book closes in 2005, as Islamist terrorists introduce the latest “ism” of tyranny.

The one fault I find with Mr. Roberts’ story is his consistent denigration of English-speaking Ireland (which he calls Eire). Perhaps chastisement is fair enough over Ireland’s lack of contribution to fighting Nazis and its toleration of IRA terrorism between 1969 and 1998. But a more honest assessment would have at least mentioned the centuries-long oppression of Eire’s people by its British neighbors, as just possibly a mitigating reason for some reluctance to join Britain in its own fight for survival.

On balance, the story told here is a welcome antidote to the poison of so much currently popular noise to disparage the same history for its errors, while ignoring both the errors corrected and so many achievements fulfilled.

[Paul Mamani · Rating 5 out of 5]

If the title appears grandiloquent, it is meant to be. This is not so much a history as a call to arms. Andrew Roberts has clothed himself in the mantle of Winston Churchill and picks up where Churchill left off. The united phalanx of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, he declaims, has saved the world in 'one overall, century-long struggle between the English-speaking people's democratic pluralism and fascist intolerance of different varieties': Prussian imperialism, Nazism, Soviet communism and now the 'feudal, theocratic, tribal, obscurantist' challenge of Islamic fundamentalism.




The English-speaking peoples are invoked against the unreliability of everybody else. This is the sort of history that makes Arthur Bryant read like an academic monograph. Roberts's message is simple: when the English-speaking peoples stand side by side, history has a happy ending; when they do not, civilisation is threatened. The greatest threat has always been the rot within - liberals, churchmen, intellectuals, whose introspection tempts right-minded people to doubt their own moral worth.

This is an exasperating book. Roberts writes with all the popular verve of the best narrative historian. His account is peppered with arresting might-have-beens; if the Treaty of Versailles had dismembered Germany in 1919, would Nazism have taken root? If the Ottoman Empire had not been similarly dismembered, would the Middle East be the mess it is today?


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Roberts is eloquent on the great moments of courage and defiance by Presidents and Prime Ministers and by many other now forgotten men - except for Margaret Thatcher, there is scarcely a woman mentioned - in the desperate circumstances of his grand narrative.

He has gathered a wealth of surprising detail: Winston Churchill never visited Australia; in 1945, a B25 bomber flew into the Empire State Building, but it did not collapse. This could have been a fascinating history analysing the strengths, tensions and ambiguities in the relationships between the cultures of the English-speaking world. However, Roberts has overlaid his narrative with a relentless, coarse polemic that diminishes the argument he seeks to make.

In his pantheon, the only English virtues that count are those that march to the colours of the full-blooded, neoconservative global nationalism of Donald Rumsfeld and George W Bush. Liberal and social democratic values, and much of the US democratic tradition, are swept up into a mocking condemnation of all that has weakened the virility of the Anglosphere's destiny. Hence the Beveridge Report, published as El Alamein turned the tide of war, introduced the bacillus of the welfare state and Clement Attlee, in victory, destroyed Britain's hopes of recovery by implementing it.

Roberts rightly lampoons those who claim a moral equivalence between the terrors of Mao and Stalin and the abuses of the West. He then uses this argument perversely to shrug off Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. He remains blind to the damage they have caused to the moral credibility of the very values he espouses. At no point does he consider whether the Bush presidency may in itself be an aberration threatening a political culture that has secured the links between liberal democracies across the Atlantic and Pacific.

At times, Roberts reads like 1066 and All That, without the jokes. People are either 'disgraceful' or 'noble'. Good things include Teddy Roosevelt, Kipling, Reagan, General Pinochet, Nixon, Blair, Thatcher, Eisenhower, Ulstermen generally and the inventiveness of the English-speaking people in creating penicillin and lethal weapons systems. Bad things are Lloyd George (good at war, bad at peace), Wilfred Owen, the French, the Irish (in the First World War, with justification), Keynes, Heath, Wilson, Carter, Clinton, the United Nations, the European Union, Hollywood, Gandhi, Princess Diana and Mountbatten.

This is a dreadful pity because, when Roberts seriously thinks through the dilemmas facing the last generation of British imperialists as they came to terms with their need for American support and the inevitable ceding of power that entailed, his history comes to life. His portrait of Lord Lansdowne, the great Whig grandee who, in 1917, decided that there should be a negotiated peace with Germany to stop the slaughter, captures the central dilemma of the war. Roberts accords Neville Chamberlain the seriousness he deserves. He picks open Churchill's private conflicting feelings about the United States.

Roberts's other great enemy is Europe. Britain, acting as 'an abusive parent' to the Commonwealth, entered the former European Economic Community in 1972, under the 'moral cowardice' of Heath, in 'the dour, drab defeatist Seventies'. His subtext seems to be that British foreign policy should return to a version of the 'splendid isolation' of 1900, but in partnership with American global isolationism.

In many ways, Roberts has written a most unEnglish book. Its rhetorical insistence - 'In the last century, the Union Jack has flown on Everest and the Stars and Stripes on the Moon' - drowns out the reasoned and discriminating judgments, the measured understanding of the other sides' perspective, that are the best of English virtues.




For those of us who believe that the Enlightenment values that have held Europe and America together for 400 years remain our best defence in the struggle with Islamic terrorist unreason, Roberts should not be permitted so crudely to limit the debate to either signing up to the Bush crusade or accepting the white feather.

The challenge ahead for the English-speaking peoples, and for many others, is too serious for that.

cheers

[Christopher Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author obviously has a point of view, but really all authors do and at least he is up front about it. My only complaint about the book is that he flatly states "the New Deal worked" (though I'll note he avoids peddling the counter-historical assertion that democracy was about to fail in the US before Roosevelt) while criticizing Attlee for wasting Marshall Plan moneys that could have been used on reconstruction on Taylorist plans that look to me substantially similar to the New Deal.

He also deserves the complaints that he doesn't like the Irish and that he is a fanatic anglophile, almost always believing the English are in the right. This certainly shows is his book, but he gives evidence to back up his positions and honestly you should have figured that out from the title.

[Robert Monk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got about twenty pages into this before I realized that it wasn't my kind of book. It's essentially a triumphalist account of how neato-keen the English and the Americans have been since 1900, and how they're behind everything good that's ever happened in the world. It includes detailed defenses of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and a joyful explication of how the 80s were the greatest decade in human history. So of I kept reading it, because it's important to read stuff that doesn't just reinforce one's existing prejudices. The last couple of chapters, about periods that I'd actually lived through, had me hoppin' mad, but that's okay.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

amazingly right wing, revisionist history. momumental bias. took my breath away at times. but you need to understand how others can interpret the same historical events so differently. when he started to excuse the Amritsar massacre i had serious temptation to burn the book, but then took it as a personal challenge to read every word.

you need to be of stern stuff to read this. you will get feed ip of reading how superhuman yet overly humble the english speaking are. try to glean insights around the propaganda.

[Sammy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Morally bankrupt and startlingly ignorant, most offensively when Roberts is putting forward the truthful elements of where Enlightenment reason bests Middle East irrational superstition but doing so with a philosophy at best alarming, at worst absurd!

Perhaps a more in-depth review once my soul calms; in the meantime, Professor Stephen Howe sums up my case: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent....

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to summarize this book. Covering the history of the English speaking peoples from 1900-2005 is a formidable task. Roberts tackles the task in a bold and unabashed style. He is polemical but particular with his arguments, and I am often - but not always - persuaded by them. As a Christian reader, my greatest unease with this book is Roberts’ labeling of the English speaking people as the last great hope for mankind. Since I regard that office as already held by Another (and better) hope, I think Roberts is blind to some key failures of his earthly hope.

[Paul Pellicci · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far I have read about a third of this book. and it is very much a history book. It goes in one direction without the back and fourth like other history "text book" types. One interesting bits of history was the fact that during WWI, America did not send Black soldiers to Europe to fignt, not wanting to offend the German army. The Black soldiers served in other areas during the war with Excellence.

[Will James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely vast and - unashamedly - biased account of the last 100 years of English-speaking history. Whether you agree with Roberts or not it can't be denied that he has chosen a narrative and just run with it. I can't say I'm entirely convinced that every single event in the 20th century can be explained through the prism of the 'English-speaking Peoples' but it sure is an interesting notion nonetheless.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting history of English-speaking countries, with special focus on foreign affairs. This book defends a conservative position, often defending Britain and America's intentions as good. He takes some very interesting perspectives (Treaty of Versailles was too generous towards Germany) which I had not encountered before. Very thought provoking.

[Khushal Badhan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book that justifies genocides, mass murders and crimes of British. Imagine if someone wrote a book reasoned why Holocaust was justified, a book that justified acts of Nazis. Go no further, because this is what it is, book that reasons why genocides were necessary. The author is clearly a white supermacist genocide justifier.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great history review... a bit lengthy in my opinion.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good history, but often times the overwhelmingly pro-American and pro-English slant (and anti-French bit) was a bit hard to swallow.

[Purple Wimple]

Quotes from this book that intrigued me (with page numbers):
Prestige is a tangible benefit in the calculus of international relations, its loss a concomitant danger. 12

In vigorously enforcing the Monroe Doctrine throughout the twentieth century, the United States deserves commendation for not allowing that continent to develop into a battlegrand between the Great Powers. 20

The United States saved several [Latin American] states from revolution, civil war, exproporiation, bloodshed and bankruptcy by her prompt willingness to act as a police power in her own backyard. 21
There can be no greater test of statesmanship than sticking to unpopular but correct policies in the face of a general election. 22

Language is an expression of power. 26

[The English language has been the item] that the English-speaking peoples have made their most valuable and longest-lasting export. 26

No-one in history has done more for the concept of human beings having certain inalienable rights than the English-speaking peoples, and it is often solely because of their belief in the rule of law that abuses ever come to light and are punished. 30

The appearance not to desire office had long been a standard part of the Victorian statesman’s repertoire, but it should seldom – if ever – be taken at face value. 34

The day that the English-speaking peoples fall behind in the contest to beuild the world’s best fighter and bomber aircraft will be the one when their primacy is doomed. 50

Like many a polemical academic, [Halford Makinder] tried to fit the facts into his theory rather than vice versa. 51

The first law of modern imperialism [is] that no good deed goes unpunished. 61

Why should a Maori New Zealander have died in Turkey and been buried in Greece because an Austrian had been shot by a Serb in Bosnia? 79

Stern and unchanging commandments must dictate the foreign policy of a small and island lying only twenty-two miles off the continental littoral. The foremost is that no power, least of all a great naval one, can be allowed to establish continental hegemony and control of the adjacent ports. It was as true for the Soviet Union during the Cold War as for Philip II at the time of the Spanish Armada. In the First World War no less than in the Second, Britons did not die for a vain cause. 83

Modern critics of the [British] High Command need to explain how they would have fought the Great War differently. 117

It is said that History goes to the victors; in fact it often tends to go the diarists. 302

The most important question of the twentieth century [is] how could a people as civilised as the Germans have perpetrated the most ghastly crime of human history? And would the English-speaking peoples, faced with their [Germany’s] choices, have behaved any differently? 312

The successful reintroduction of West Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan into the democratic world was one of the greatest contributions of the English-speaking peoples to twentieth-century civilization. 381.

In terms of Gross Domestic Product, Japan and West Germany have for decades occupied the second and third palces in the world ranking of economic powers, after the United States and before Great Britain and France. To have helped raise their former deadliest foes to such a place is a tribute to the magnanimity of the English-speaking peoples in not going down the path of mass despoliation that Stalin envisaged for both countries, and which he carried out against much of the industrial plant of East Germany. 382

At Nuremburg, the aristocratic former Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath despised the foamingly anti-Semitic rabble-rouser Julius Streicher as much for his low birth as for his generally foul personality. Human nature was such that even after a world war and despite Götterdämmerung, genocide and Year Zero, snobbery will always win out. 383

A glance at what Stalin was doing to various Soviet ethnic minorities at the time, or the way the Japanese were behaving in Manchuria and the Italians in Abyssinia, shows how important it was for Gandhi that he was faced by English-speaking peoples, who were governed by customs of law, decency and fair play. 439

Without a readiness to shed the blood of innocents, Zimbabwe would doubtless still be Rhodesia and South Vietnam would be an independent state. ‘Freedom fighters’ were simply terrorists who had won. 578

There has been no mass murderer in history – not Stalin, not Mao, not even Pol Pot - who has not found someone amongst the English-speaking intelligentsia to put in a good word for him. 578

Prestige is a tangible currency in the Middle East. 591

The world did not change on 11 September, but the English-speaking peoples’ understanding of it did. 601

Since 1900 there have always been those amongst the English-speaking peoples prepared to appease, apologise for and even on occasion to laud and aid their mortal enemies. 602

The unimaginative, bourgeois, earth-bound English-speaking poeples refuse to dream dreams, see visions and follow fanatics and demagogues, from whom they are protected by their liberal constitutions, free press, rationalist philosophy and representative institutions. They are temperamentally less inclined towards fanaticism, high-flown rhetoric and Bonapartism than many other peoples in History. They respect what is tangible and, in politics at least, suspect what is not. 605

The end of Great Power status is often signalled by a successful challenge from a much lesser adversity [adversary?], as Austria-Hungary found with Serbia, France at Dien-Bien-Phu in Indo-China, Britain at Suez and the USSR in Afghanistan. The United States could simply not afford to allow either the Taliban’s Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to continue to mock her after 9/11. The worst bloodshed in history tends to arise when nations nake an unwarranted bid for world-supremacy; no potential successor could be left in any doubt that the United States was still a potent superpower more than capable of swatting a self-appointeed irritant such as Saddam’s Iraq. 607

Just as generals tend always to be ready to fight the last war rather than the next one, so international law covers the exigencies of the Cold War, rather than the nihilistic, high-tech, stateless terrorism that characterises the present one. 617

The laws of Nature decree that all living entities alter, adapt, develop, mature, collapse and die over time, and relations between states are no different. 621

George Washington to Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress in November 1778, “I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree; but it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bounded by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.” 621

The English-speaking peoples have always produced individuals willing to propogandise for totalitarian dictatorships. 622

Presidents who genuinely admire the military – and none did so more than Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush – are the least likely to order soliders into mortal combat. Similarly, the more God-fearing the president, the more conscious he is likely to be of eventual judgment before a far more august tribunal than simply the US Congress or even the bar of History. 623

“The duty of a politician is to educate the people, not to obey them.” - Bishop Mandell Creighton, 623

In the modern world only the English-speaking peoples have the necessary wealth – let alone the will – to rid countries of their tyrants. 626

The four distinct but successive attacks on the security of the English-speaking peoples, by Wilhelmine Germany, the Axis powers, Soviet communism and now Islamic fundamentalism ought to be seen as one overall century-long struggle between the English-speaking peoples’ democratic pluralism and fascist intolerance of different varieties. 635

The fact nonetheless remains that of all the peoples of the world who could have supplanted her, the British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, West Indian and Irish peoples were immensly fortunate that it was the Americans who did. 636

“Collaboration of the English-speaking peoples threatens no one,” wrote Churchill in 1938. “It might safeguard all.” He was quite wrong, of course, both then and now. The collaboration of the English-speaking peoples threatened plenty of people, and still does. Just as it threatened the Axis’ ambitions and subsequently the Soviets’, today in very different ways Middle Eastern tyrants, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, rogue states, world-government uniglobers, Chinese hegemonists and European federalists have every right to feel threatened by what that collaboration still might achieve in the future. 636

The English-speaking peoples did not invent the ideas that nonetheless made them great: the Romans invented the concept of Law, the Greeks one-freeman-one-vote democracy, the Dutch modern capitalism, the Germans Protestantism, and the French can lay some claim to the Enlightenment (albeit alongside the Scots). Added to these invaluable ideas, however, the English-speaking peoples have produced the fine practical theories behind constitutional monarchy, the Church-State divide, free speech and the separation of powers. They have managed to harness foreign modes of thought for the enormous benefit of their societies, whilst keepoing their native genius for scientific, technological, labour-saving and especially military inventions. 636

“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look ahead.” Churchill, March 1944, 637

International affairs cannot be conducted according to the Lord’s Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount. The truth of realpolitik is that if you turn the other cheek or forgive those who trespass against you, disaster often strikes. 637-38

It is the nature of human affairs that, in the words of the hymn, “Earth’s proud empires pass away,” and so too one day will the long hegemony of the English-speaking peoples. When they finally come to render up the report of their global stewardship to History, there will be much of which to boast. Only when another power – such as China – holds global sway, will the human race come to mourn the passing of this most decent, honest, generous, fair-minded and self-sacrificing imperium. 648

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review title: Fundamental decency
You may approach Roberts simultaneously vast and dense subject with some trepidation, as I did until I realized that my concern over such a potentially pejorative title reflected my unlettered ignorance, not Roberts' unprincipled linguistic imperialism. I was quickly shamed to realize that in fact Roberts book is intended to serve as a companion to and continuation of Winston Churchill's four-volume history of the English-speaking peoples up to 1900, and thus stands on firm historical ground.

At the turn of the 20th century, the English-speaking peoples are defined this way in a letter that Roberts quotes (p. 6):

Local freedom around a common center (British crown)
Common interests expressed as a common law
Common language expressed in a common literature
Shaped by common Christianity

While his argument is not primarily financial (these statistics make their appearance on p. 574), Roberts' reports a startling fact that cements his argument about the solidarity, ascendance, and beneficence of English-speaking people's very well: The gross economic worth of the world's population whose first or second language is English is almost four times that of the next language group (Japanese), and larger than that of the rest of the world combined.

In fact, Roberts posits two key drivers of the political, military, cultural, and financial ascencance of the 20th-century English-speaking peoples--open capital markets ruled by law, and technical superiority in aviation (beginning in the first half) and computer/information technology (in the second half). The motivator that projects these superiorities onto history: individual freedom, applied with moral and ethical moorings, to personal benefit.

Sure, there have been times when the English-speaking peoples have been stupid, self-seeking, isolationist, war-mongering, terroristic, fascistic, and evil, as Roberts points out along the way. But he also takes pains to point and and correct mistaken perceptions of anti-English historical, political, and nationalistic motivation: far more often the English-speaking peoples have been smart and ethical in their actions, defending peace, prosperity, and respect for peoples and law that benefits every nation and language group on earth. If you are inclined toward socialism, communism, or anti-British/-American feelings of any political or cultural stripe you should read and study Roberts closely to understand and hopefully agree with some if not most of his arguments, but you will most likely not--and most likely not like much of what you read if you do. Roberts' arguments may seem profoundly conservative and pro-British or pro-American at times, but they are so well-argued and validated that it is hard to admit other than that he is in the main correct. His Britishness comes through most clearly as he points with quiet pride to the high-water mark of British world domination (the moment the German fleet was scuttled at the end of The Great War), and a quiet sense of loss at the point of ascendancy of America in the "Special Relationship" (1943 planning for the European invasion).

Another simple but profound observation Roberts makes (which I have observed first hand on business trips into the UK) is a side effect of the disintegration and moving apart of the British Commonwealth nations and the movement of the UK into the European Union: while former European enemies who faced each other on battlefields in two great world wars go through the faster lines with less scrutiny set aside for the European union, allies from Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth nations who fought side-by-side on those same battlefields stand in the slower lines with greater scrutiny reserved for immigration from other countries. Yes, that may be a small thing, but it is a powerful reminder of lost solidarity and common purpose amongst the English-speaking people to the detriment of all the world's nations and people.

With such broad scope, Roberts narrative is not a day-by-day or even country-by-country history, and at times seems to resort to headline-scanning and quick-cut editing to move the narrative along to keep its mass down to a book that can be printed in one volume and still be held in the hand! Roberts constructs his main narrative around the four main threats to the English-speaking peoples: Prussian militarism in World War I, Fascist aggression in World War II, Soviet Communism in the Cold War, and Islamic Fundamentalism in the war against the West that began in the 1990s and reached its high-water mark with the September 11 attacks. While the English-speaking peoples lead the battle against all of these threats and defeated them, in this last battle Roberts says that "the English-speaking peoples' fundamental decency was allowed to compromise their safety."

Roberts thesis, and whether you agree with it, can be neatly summed up in his use of the argument without quotes of irony or sarcasm around it.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an attempt to further the work that Churchill did in his four volume History of the English Speaking Peoples, 60 years ago. The thesis of the two is similar – to show how the various nations arising from the common descendants of the British Empire are uniquely qualified to meet world challenges together. Churchill put the emphasis on a common language, history, government, particular type of Christianity, civic liberty. Roberts is far more polemical than Churchill, as he is aiming his work at contemporary detractors of his thesis.

Roberts, an popular English historian, divides his work into four challenges that the English speaking peoples faced largely together: Prussian militarism, Fascism oppression, the communist threat and the modern crisis dealing with Islamic radicalism. I am largely sympathetic to not only how he laid his book out, but his effort to point out how the unique qualities that the English speaking peoples have in common has aided them to arise and fight these adversaries. So in his sense, Roberts is telling a history by common culture, framed against various conflicts, in the midst of contemporary intellectual battles in the Western world against the unique qualities of Anglo civilization.

Yet, Roberts makes his case too hard, and goes too far in his attempt to write the wrong ways history has been understood, and to shine light on where credit is due. He is personally, almost in an ad hominen way, opposed to just about everything Irish. He gives little credit to the influence of Canada in mediating British vs. American disputes. He defends harsh military action, particularly in British India, far beyond what they can be defended. The inaccuracy of some his facts can be irritating to the reader as well.

This is a book worth reading, because Roberts attempts a very hard job, in showing the wide scope of all the major ways that the English speaking peoples literally turned the tide against real evil in the 20th century, and advanced civilization. There are some glaring weaknesses, and the polemical, rather than pure historical slant of this book makes this less than a classic work.

Also, you have to wonder if you can put the post September 11th events on the same category as the world wars and the Cold War conflicts, as Roberts attempts to do, especially considering the great lengths that he goes to show how serious a threat those three prior conflicts were to civilization. There is little that Roberts will not defend, and at times his writing is rambling, and lacks coherence.

[Geoffrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This books is filled with the most insignificant details that inexorably weigh down its significance. As a progressive, I was hoping to find a history book that would serve as a good balance to my own views, fill me with salient anecdotes, insights, and viewpoint from the right of center, but I was sadly let down.
This book is studded with historical information of little use to a proper understanding of 2oth century events. After a 130 pages, I gave up, notwithstanding a promise to myself that I would endure the worst to complete it. It simply is not worth my time, energy, or even need for self-flagellation in the face of the author`s mighty intellect, to finish this book.

I could care less what the rates of population loss due to World War I conscriptions among the various British Commonwealth nations. Nor am I particularly interested in reading who wagered a bet on Churchill`s rise in the British political system, nor the so many other hundreds of other insignificant details of this boring book.

Perhaps if the writer had a better sense of proportion as to what is important in laying out the history of the so called English peoples, and didn`t indulge himself in the impertinent anecdotes culled from the back pages of 100 year old London newspapers, this book would have some saving graces. But he`s more interested in displaying some weird perception of the importance of insignificant events than in explaining any of the causes for the great wars, conflicts, issues of the 20th century. And mostly he just doesn`t get it.

Take women`s rights for example. He just doesn`t get the suffrage movement, nor its validity. All he sees is that with the woman in the workforce, wages can be manipulated low. He`s so misogynistic, he doesn`t see the need for feminine pride, a woman`s right to her place in society that would be fulfilling for those women who have more to give than just breastfeeding the tots. And these comments are from a man, and I find him offensive. He doesn`t get it, never will, the book is a pile of crap.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a supplement to Churchill's series on the History of the English Speaking Peoples. It was apparent that Roberts made a great effort to continue where Churchill left off with the same zeal for the culture and government of the English Speaking People.

I had a hard time getting into this book in the beginning and had to take several breaks to get used to Robert's voice (rather than Churchill's) and process the highly detailed descriptions of events leading up to the World Wars. After the first half, it became easier to digest, but seemed to become more biased and defensive than strictly informative.

Overall, I gave this book three stars because the authors bias in defending the English Speaking People as a world power was heavy throughout the latter half of the book. I can appreciate his views and arguments, but as a historical source, it seemed excessive. Other than that I found it to be very detailed and provided needed context for events taking place over the last century. This is no easy task as these cultures have evolved greatly in the years described. I would recommend reading Churchill's history prior to this book to gain a clearer picture of how the events of the 20th century came to be.

[Graham Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hugely entertaining. The English speaking peoples save the world. Well the English speaking peoples with some exceptions - the Irish, Attlee, Jimmy Carter, Mountbatten, John Major... Factually unreliable, Colin Powell was not born in Jamaica for example. But the author rolls through the Twentieth Century weaving his tenuous thread. Yes, entertaining. But more opinion than history.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for the next instalment of Winston churchill's epic A History of the English Speaking Peoples, look elsewhere. While its a fascinating journey of the 20th century as viewed by a right wing conservative, it's biased and hideously unbalanced in its commentary.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally pedantic, but a good come-to-life read of recent historical events.

[Jennifer]

General

[Garry Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right wing, jingoistic, controversial and on occasion flat wrong but thought provoking, refreshing and highly recommended.

[Iain Parkes]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14475421

[Jason Harper · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book failed to live up to its title. The author attempted to present a poorly constructed argument in favor of his worldview with poorly sourced history serving as the backdrop.