The Cult of John Bull

“Anglomania” is a book about a truly remarkable--and now historic--phenomenon, which lasted for 200 years or more, and which was a deep-seated element in international relations. The accepted use of the term “international relations” is, alas, false: for it deals with the relations of states, rather than of nations. Yet the relations of nations have often become even more important than the relations of states. They are surely deep-seated because they involve the images--including the attractions and the enmities, the sympathies and the antipathies--that nations and peoples have for each other.

The historical study of such relations is relatively recent. And the greatest of such topics is Anglophilia: the extraordinary affection for England, for Englishmen (rather than for Englishwomen), for Englishness and English things--all of this adding up to England’s prestige that survived many of its retreats and mistakes and shortcomings--a grand inclination appearing across the globe, illusory as it often was, and having elements of an unrequited love, and yet manifest among diverse peoples and all kinds of classes (especially the upper-middle.) I am very loath to quote myself, but at least in two of my books, some of them written decades ago, there appear sentences such as “[t]he history of Anglomania is yet to be written.” I meant Anglomania in general, not in particular (there exist a few worthy studies about Anglomania in France in the 18th century, which was the first overall appearance of that phenomenon). And now here is “Anglomania,” a book not by a historian but by a fine writer whose understanding and erudition, meaning his knowledge of literature and of people and of a fair amount of history, are first-class.

Yet it is only an hors d’oeuvre, a kind of tasty introduction to a vast and profound topic. And the title given by its American publishers is deceiving. Ian Buruma’s book is a series of portraits, sometimes brilliant ones. That is why the proper title of his work should have been “Anglophiles.” (The bibliographical information on the back of the title page indicates that the original, and probably English, title of the book was “Anglophilia.” Even that would have been good enough; but Random House evidently chose to hype it.) This is not quibbling: In his first chapter, Buruma explains that he is writing about Anglophiles (and occasional Anglophobes) but not of Anglomania. And he does this very well, moving from Voltaire and Goethe and Schlegel and the Shakespeare cult in Germany to all kinds of paragons of Anglophilia, some of them unexpected. There is also Kaiser William II, who was a sorry mix of a love-hate relationship for England and the English, the only Anglophobe principal in the book. Much of the book, perhaps as many as four or five of its 15 chapters, is devoted to the 19th and 20th century affection that Jews in Europe had for England (in America the Anglophilia of, say, Ralph Lauren or of the New York Review of Books are later, more superficial phenomena), including portraits of--well, almost--entirely anglicized Jewish refugees or emigres in England.

All of this is very telling, and even illuminating. But a history, or even a summary sketch of Anglophilia it is not. Of course that is a very large topic, ranging from the Orleanists in France to Argentine polo clubs, from the anglicized Huguenots in England to the Spanish intellectual “Generation of ‘98,” from the Hungarian Count Szechenyi who undertook to reform and rebuild an entire nation about 170 years ago by adopting English institutions and practices to foreign masters of the English language such as Joseph Conrad and admirers of British standards such as the Indian writer Nirad Chaudhuri--and the adoption (too often mistaken) of a mass of English words and phrases into every European language. (One example: the Russian word for railroad--vokzal--was simply taken from Vauxhall Station in London in the 1840s.) Such examples are endless.

But, on many an occasion, Anglophilia had powerful and even dramatic consequences in the very movements of states--for the benefit of England and, yes, for the cause of liberty in the history of the world. During World War II, for example, Anglophilia (and Germanophobia) transcended Right and Left (it motivated millions, and often their governments) across the globe and inspired people during their darkest hours. (Conversely, in France, after its worst defeat, the common thread that tied all of Marshall Petain’s supporters together was not fascism or Germanophilia but Anglophobia.)

In any event, Anglophilia was not merely a political or ideological but a cultural preference. As Buruma understands, it was well-nigh inseparable from the ideal of the gentleman. Yes: More than 200 years ago the ideal of the gentleman began to replace the ideal of the nobleman. (Not so long ago I read the memoirs of an old-fashioned conservative diplomat, writing about the Emperor Franz Joseph, whom he had once met, enumerating the qualities of this monarch of the oldest imperial and royal family in Europe, and the best thing he could say about Franz Joseph was that he was a “gentleman.”)

And what will replace the gentleman? And what will be the relation of England to Europe? Buruma does not know. Neither do I.