To some, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to demur from the new euro rescue plan has made the U.K. irrelevant on the world scene. Yet by moving away from the euro zone, Cameron did something more than reaffirm Britain’s opposition to a German-led Europe: He asserted Britain’s greater, historically grounded legacy as the center of the Anglophone world.
This obstinacy could end up maintaining the U.K.’s global importance by shifting its focus away from “the declining and irritable nations of the old world” and toward its legacy as the center of the English-speaking world.
Over time cultural ties generally prove more enduring than ideological or geographic ones. The 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun once observed, “Only tribes held together by a group feeling can survive in a desert.” Throughout history, the most powerful, far-reaching cultures — namely the Greek, Roman, Arab, Chinese, Mongol and British empires — shared this intense kinship.
Like the world’s two other primary global tribes, the Chinese and Indians, Anglo share ancient and deep-seated affiliations. In contrast to the profoundly insular Japanese or the Germans, global tribes are transnational and transcend mere geography. They share not only economic ties but “group feelings” shaped by commonalities of food, language, history, spiritual and political ideals.
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