Anglophile
An Anglophile is a person who admires or loves England, its people, its culture, its language or its various accents.File:Anglophile German Inn.JPG|thumb|The James, an English-style pub in Münster, sporting the British flag and the sign of James II
In some cases Anglophilia refers to an individual's appreciation of English history and traditional English cultural figures such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson and Gilbert and Sullivan. Anglophilia may also be characterised by a fondness for the British monarchy, its system of government, and other institutions such as Royal Mail, as well as nostalgia for the former British Empire and the English class system. Anglophiles may enjoy English actors, actresses, sport, authors, cars, comedians, fashion, films, magazines, motorcycles, musicians, radio, subcultures, television series and traditions.
Anglophiles may use British English instead of American English, for example writing "colour" instead of "color", "centre" instead of "center" and "traveller" instead of "traveler". In 2012 BBC News Online and The New York Times reported that the United States had recently experienced a notable increase in the use of British English expressions in casual conversation and news reports. The trend, misunderstanding and misuse of these expressions by Americans has become a topic of media interest in the US and the UK. Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, stated that the use of British English has "established itself as this linguistic phenomenon that shows no sign of abating". Lynne Murphy, a linguist at the University of Sussex, noted that the trend is more pronounced in the Northeastern United States.
Etymology
The word is derived from the Latin word Anglii and Ancient Greek word φίλος philos, meaning "friend". Its antonym is Anglophobe.One of the earliest instances of the word "Anglophile" was recorded in December 1864 when Charles Dickens wrote in an edition of his weekly magazine All the Year Round that he viewed the French monthly magazine Revue des deux Mondes as "an advanced and somewhat 'Anglophile' publication".
History
''Anglomanie''
Around 1722, the French philosopher Voltaire became an Anglophile, having lived in Britain between 1726 and 1728. He learnt English and expressed admiration for Britain as a land where, unlike his homeland, censorship was loose, one could freely express one's views, and business was considered a respectable occupation. Voltaire expressed his Anglophilia in his Letters Concerning the English Nation, a book first written in English and published in London in 1733, where he lavished much praise on British empiricism as a better way of thinking. The French version, Lettres philosophiques, was banned in 1734 for being anti-clerical, after complaints from the Roman Catholic Church; the book was publicly burned in Paris, and the only bookseller willing to sell it was sent to the Bastille. However, underground copies of the Lettres philosophiques were printed by an illegal print-shop in Rouen and the book was a huge bestseller in France, sparking a wave of what the French soon called Anglomanie.The Lettres philosophiques first introduced the French to British writers and thinkers such as Jonathan Swift, Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare, who before then had been barely known in France. The success of Lettres philosophiques and the resulting wave of Anglomanie made all things English the rage in France, with English food, English styles and English gardens being especially popular. Ultimately, the popularity of Anglomanie led to a backlash, with H. L. Fougeret de Monbron publishing Préservatif contre l'anglomanie in 1757, in which he argued for the superiority of French culture and attacked British democracy as mere "mobocracy".
''Shakespearomanie''
Anglophilia became popular in the German states in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the German public being especially attracted to the work of Shakespeare, a phenomenon known in Germany as Shakespearomanie. In 1807 August Wilhelm Schlegel translated all of Shakespeare's plays into German, and such was the popularity of Schlegel's translation that German nationalists were soon starting to claim that Shakespeare was actually a German playwright who wrote his plays in English. English actors had been visiting the Holy Roman Empire since the late 16th century to work as "fiddlers, singers and jugglers", and through them the work of Shakespeare had first become known in the Reich. The writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called the plays of Shakespeare "a huge, animated fair", which he attributed to his Englishness, writing: "Everywhere in England – surrounded by the seas, enveloped in fog and clouds, active in all parts of the world".In the 18th century Reich, the Francophile German critics preferred the rules of French classical theatre which rigidly set precise rules of unities of time and place, and saw Shakespeare's work as a "jumble". In a speech delivered in Frankfurt on 14 October 1771 Goethe praised Shakespeare for liberating his mind from the rigid French rules, saying: "I jumped into the free air, and suddenly felt I had hands and feet...Shakespeare, my friend, if you were with us today, I could only live with you". In 1995, The New York Times observed: "Shakespeare is an all-but-guaranteed success in Germany, where his work has enjoyed immense popularity for more than 200 years. By some estimates, Shakespeare's plays are performed more frequently in Germany than anywhere else in the world, not excluding his native England. The market for his work, both in English and in German translation, seems inexhaustible."
In its turn, the German obsession with Shakespeare made Anglophilia very popular, with the English being praised for their "spontaneous" nature, which allowed people to be themselves. The Osnabrück historian Justus Möser wrote that England was everything that a unified Germany should be, as Britain was a land of "organic" natural order where the aristocracy respected the liberties of the people and had a sense of duty to the nation.
"The Perfect Gentlemen"
In 19th-century France, Anglophilia was popular in certain elements but not with the French people in general. The reactionary Catholic royalist intellectual Charles Maurras took a virulently-Anglophobic viewpoint of Britain being the "cancer" of the world that made everything good rot, especially in his beloved France. However, the conservative French art historian and critic Hippolyte Taine was an Anglophile who greatly admired Britain as the land of "civilised" aristocratic order that at the same time embraced freedom and "self-government". In his youth, Taine had felt oppressed by the Catholic Church in which he had been brought up by his teachers at his lycée. He complained that they had treated him as "a horse between the shafts of a cart".However, Taine distrusted the masses, saw the French Revolution as the sort of disaster caused when the mindless masses were given power and stated that giving everyone the right to vote would be like making every sailor the captain on a ship. For Taine, Britain embodied his ideal political system and combined the best features of both order and freedom. The state had limited powers, but the people instinctively deferred to the elite. For Taine, the essence of la grande idée anglaise was "the persuasion that man was above all a free and moral person". Taine attributed that to the "Hebraic" spirit of the British people, which he saw as reflecting the influence of Protestantism, especially the Church of England, which Taine greatly admired. Taine argued that because the Protestant British had to justify themselves before God, they had to create moral rules that applied not only to others but also to themselves, which created a culture of self-restraint. Taine had a low opinion of ordinary British people, but he very much respected the gentlemen he met on his British trips, whom he praised for their moral qualities.
Taine noted with some jealousy that in France the term gentilhomme referred only to a man known for his sense of style and elegance and did not refer to the man's moral qualities. In France, there was no equivalent to the idea of a British gentleman. Taine noted that the difference between the French gentilhomme and the British gentleman was that the latter not only possessed the refinement and elegance expected of the gentilhomme but also more importantly had a sense of fundamental decency and honour that prevented him from doing anything dishonourable. Taine believed that the reason that the British but not the French could produce gentlemen to rule their nation was that the British nobility was meritocratic and always open to those whose talents had been allowed to rise up, but the French nobility was exclusive and very reactionary. Taine further admired the public schools like Harrow, Eton and Rugby for their ability to mould young men into gentlemen, but he found aspects of the public schools like flogging and fagging to be barbaric.
A Frenchman who was very much influenced by Taine's Anglophilia was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who, after reading Taine's Notes on England, wanted to establish schools to produce gentlemen in France. Coubertin was convinced that the stress laid on sports in English public schools was the key to producing gentlemen and that young Frenchmen needed to play sports more often to learn how to be gentlemen. Coubertin was especially fascinated by the emphasis given to sports at Rugby School, which he keenly studied. Coubertin believed that Britain was the most successful nation in the world, as reflected by its worldwide empire, and that if only the French had been more like the British, the French would never have been defeated by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War. Like Taine, Coubertin admired the inequality of the British educational system by noting with approval that only well-off families could afford to send their sons to the public schools: "Let us renounce that dangerous pipedream of an equal education for all and follow the example of the people who understand so well the difference between democracy and equality!"
After reading Tom Brown's School Days, a novel that Coubertin loved, and Thomas Arnold's essays, Coubertin believed that a regime of regular boxing, rowing, cricket and football as practised at the British public schools would create gentlemen and "muscular Christians" in France in what Coubertin admiringly called the régime Arnoldien. Coubertin wrote that based on reading Tom Brown's School Days, boxing was the "natural and English way for English boys to settle their quarrels". He also stated, "Putting a solid pair of fists in the service of God is a condition for serving Him well".
After meeting William Ewart Gladstone in 1888, Coubertin asked him whether he agreed with the statement that the renaissance britannique was caused by Arnold's educational reforms. The thesis astonished Gladstone, who told Coubertin: "Your point of view is quite new, but...it is right".
In 1890 Coubertin attended the Wenlock Olympian Games organised by Dr William Penny Brookes, whom Coubertin called "an English doctor from an earlier age, romantic and practical at the same time". Coubertin was enchanted by the games held in the village of Much Wenlock, in rural Shropshire, and said that was possible only in England. Coubertin loved the English countryside and was impressed by the way in which the villagers were proud to be both from Shropshire and from Britain: "The Anglo-Saxon race alone has succeeded in keeping up the two feelings and in strengthening the one through the other".
The Much Wenlock games, held in conscious imitation of the Olympics in ancient Greece, inspired Coubertin to organise the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.