July 18, 2007
The Roberts Book Is Actually Kind of Lame Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 04:45 PM EST A few months ago the contributors to this blog weighed in with their opinions on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, by Andrew Roberts. While the discussion was vigorous, it was handicapped somewhat by the fact that none of us had actually read the book. With the superhuman perseverance for which I am so justly famed, I have finally managed to finish it, and I can report that while it does have its virtues, the book ultimately amounts to more of an argument than a history, and not always an effective one. Roberts’s main points are that (1) the English-speaking peoples—the U.S.A., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the West Indies, to which the author grudgingly adds Ireland and South Africa—had a better twentieth century than any other major linguistic group, and (2) the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain has been, and continues to be, of immense value to both nations and to the world as a whole. Domestically, he says, the Anglophones’ commitment to personal liberty and free markets has made them world leaders in culture and technology, while globally, their commitment to supporting and spreading democracy has been and remains the world’s greatest force for good. At first glance, neither proposition sounds all that controversial. Regarding (1), who had a better century? Surely not the German-, Japanese-, Russian-, Chinese-, or Arabic-speaking peoples. Not the Spanish, French, or Italians either. Looking down the list of world languages in the almanac, even if you could somehow turn “Indian-speaking” into a qualifying group, the subcontinent has had only a so-so record since the 1940s; the Portuguese-speaking peoples can claim few major achievements outside the soccer field; and while the Korean-speaking peoples have accomplished much in the face of great adversity, there’s no overlooking Kim Jong Il. As for (2), while Roberts’s chapter about the War on Terror is open to debate, the Anglos were unquestionably on the right side in both world wars and the many Cold War proxy conflicts, even if their methods and allies were not always impeccable. From this standpoint, Roberts is making an argument that only a crazy person or a college professor would disagree with. To be sure, the book has its flaws. Factual errors are quite common; I noticed a dozen or so in areas I happened to be familiar with, and a comprehensive list would probably number in the hundreds. Some of these are minor, some less so, and while none are big enough to invalidate the author’s argument, they do combine to undercut his authority. (Roberts’s comment on a recent article by William Boyd, with which Roberts disagrees strongly, is applicable here: “Boyd’s article was replete with factual errors, but that did not detract from the passion of [his] thesis.”) In the later chapters especially, the writing becomes scattershot, as Roberts free-associates like a modern-day blogger on whatever topic springs to mind: Three paragraphs on America’s oversupply of lawyers followed by two paragraphs on the Channel tunnel; a page on aboriginal rights in Australia, then a page defending American-style fast food, then a single paragraph summing up the 1968 Presidential election. There’s also a peculiar digression on how the Watergate affair would not have been a problem if the United States were a constitutional monarchy. And he makes bizarrely frequent mention of bets on various world events that are recorded in the archives of a London gentlemen’s club, apparently expecting us to be interested. But the biggest problem is that the book is so proudly, massively, aggressively one-sided. Roberts makes some good big-picture points that tend to get overlooked—reminding us, for example, of what a long and destructive struggle of attrition the Cold War was (in which context the Vietnam War was not a total defeat, because it prevented Communism from spreading across all of Southeast Asia); how consistent, if sometimes unrealistic, the Anglophones’ global commitment to freedom has been; how benign American and British colonial practices were in comparison with those of other nations; and how noble and brave the citizens, armed forces, and military and civilian leaders of the Anglosphere were during both World Wars. Points like these can easily get lost in the tight focus of much historical writing, and Roberts deserves praise for reminding us of them. Unfortunately, though, the book reads like a lawyer’s closing argument, with every scrap of positive evidence overemphasized and anything that’s negative either belittled or ignored. In this book, virtually every action taken by British Conservatives and American Republicans is good, the only exceptions coming when they fail to be interventionist enough abroad or laissez-faire enough at home. Labourites and Democrats are cut less slack but still given credit, in most cases, for good intentions, as well as for upholding the rule of law and fighting totalitarianism. But when it comes to certain unquestionably ugly features of history, instead of confronting them squarely, Roberts spares no effort to come up with creative excuses for why they really weren’t all that bad. In his discussion of America’s civil-rights movement, he asserts that “the English-speaking peoples’ tradition of protest,” as exemplified by Gandhi and his followers, “goes some way towards counterbalancing” America’s centuries of slavery and racism, since Martin Luther King and his allies were big Gandhi fans. Oh, and non-English-speaking countries treated their minority groups worse than we did—even worse than South Africa (where, by the way, “it was the English-speaking community that tended to oppose apartheid”). Moreover, “In the so-called McCarthyite ‘terror’, no-one was sent to any gulags or forced to till the permafrosted soil of Alaska, and there were no deportations, tortures, internments or attempts to revoke the US citizenship . . . even of the pro-Stalinist [Bertolt] Brecht.” So that’s all right then. You get the idea. All of what Roberts says is important and much of it is accurate, but the book is written to persuade, not to inform. This makes it no different from much modern historical writing, whether it’s “A People’s History of Such-and-such” or “A Politically Incorrect Guide to So-and-so,” whether a compendium of France’s historical sins against America or the latest fulmination from a tenured Marxist (and these days there are very few non-tenured ones). Roberts’s evident purpose is to counteract the constant stream of anti-Western books and articles that, in his view, tend to dominate public discussions of history. There’s certainly something in that. In the end, though, a book of history must be more than a collection of mostly reliable facts. To buy an author’s argument, you have to trust him to give both sides, and in this book Roberts brings up opposing views only for the purpose of dismissing them. That won’t do. Roberts is a man of impressively broad knowledge who writes clearly and with vigor, but readers will put down his book wondering how much he left out. If he would apply his many talents to writing an even-handed history, one that acknowledged the English-speaking peoples’ flaws and missteps while balancing them against their strengths and accomplishments, he could make most of the same points much more convincingly. As it stands, though, wherever you dip into the book, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that Roberts is trying to pull a fast one.
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