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Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Thursday, November 24, 2005

Austria-Hungary and the Anglosphere
E-quaintance Xavier Basora of Buscaraons has sent me a most interesting interview with historian Robert J.W. Evans, a professor of history at Oxford: The legacy of the Habsburg Empire through a historian's eyes. Professor Evans started his academic career as a linguist, and focuses on the role of language and nationalism in the history of Central Europe.

Also from Xavier have come links to posts from a blog that should be of interest to Anglophones the world over who take an interest in their mother tongue: Albion's Seedlings. Especially interesting are the posts under the title of "Anglosphere Historical Narrative."

I'm bit of an Anglophile, but as a Catholic, I cannot but help to be wary of the idea of Anglospherism, both historically and politically. The Brazilian traditionalist philosopher Olavo de Carvalho wrote a brilliant critique of the concept of the Anglosphere addressed to his British and American friends. I'm afraid the essay is no longer available on line, or I am unable to find it. His basic argument was that as Catholicism was essentially analogous with traditional Western thought, mainstream post-Reformation Anglo-Saxon thought, was a deviation from, not the culmination of, that tradition.