In his 1859 essay
A Few Words on Non-Intervention,
John Stuart Mill notes that England "finds itself, in respect of its foreign policy, held up to obloquy as the type of egoism and selfishness; as a nation which thinks of nothing but of out-witting and out-generalling its neighbours" and urges his fellow countrymen against "the mania of professing to act from meaner motives than those by which we are really actuated".
Australia and New Zealand "
Pommy" or "Pom" (acronym for 'Prisoner of [his] Majesty) is a common
Australasian and
South African slang word for the English, often combined with "whing[e]ing" (complaining) to make the expression "whingeing Pom" – an English immigrant who
stereotypically complains about everything. Although the term is sometimes applied to British immigrants generally, it is usually applied specifically to the English, by both
Australians and
New Zealanders. From the 19th century, there were feelings among established Australians that many immigrants from England were poorly skilled, unwanted by their home country and unappreciative of the benefits of their new country. In recent years, complaints about two newspaper articles blaming English tourists for littering a local beach and calling the English "Filthy Poms" in the headlines and "Poms fill the summer of our discontent", were accepted as complaints and settled through conciliation by the
Australian Human Rights Commission when the newspapers published apologies. Letters and articles which referred to English people as "Poms" or "Pommies" did not meet the threshold for racial hatred. In 2007 a complaint to Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau about a
television commercial using the term "Pom" was upheld and the commercial was withdrawn.
France " (or "
rosbif") is a long-standing Anglophobe French slang term to designate the English or British people. Its origins lies in
William Hogarth's
francophobic painting
The Gate of Calais or O! The Roast Beef of Old England, in which the "roastbeef" allegory is used as a mockery. Its popular use includes films, television shows and sketch comedies. After the
Norman Conquest of 1066,
Anglo-Norman French replaced
Old English as the official language of England. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
Plantagenet kings of England lost most of their possessions in
France, began to consider England to be their primary domain and turned to the English language. King
Edward I, when issuing writs for summoning parliament in 1295, claimed that the
King of France planned to invade England and extinguish the English language, "a truly detestable plan which may God avert". In 1346,
Edward III exhibited in Parliament a
forged ordinance, in which
Philip VI of France would have called for the destruction of the English nation and country. The
Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) between England and France changed societies on both sides of the
Channel. The English and French were engaged in numerous wars in the following centuries. England's conflict with Scotland provided France with an opportunity to destabilise England and there was a firm friendship (known as the
Auld Alliance) between France and Scotland from the late-thirteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century. The alliance eventually foundered because of growing
Protestantism in Scotland. Opposition to Protestantism became a major feature of later French Anglophobia (and conversely, fear of
Catholicism was a hallmark of
Francophobia).
Antipathy and intermittent hostilities between France and Britain, as distinct from England, continued during later centuries.
Ireland There is a long tradition of Anglophobia within
Irish nationalism. Much of this was grounded in the hostility felt by the largely Catholic Irish for the
Anglo-Irish people, which was mainly
Anglican. In Ireland before the
Great Famine, anti-English hostility was deep-seated and was manifested in increased anti-English hostility organised by
United Irishmen. In post-famine Ireland, anti-English hostility was adopted into the philosophy and foundation of the Irish nationalist movement. At the turn of the 20th century, the
Celtic Revival movement associated the search for a cultural and national identity with an increasing anti-colonial and anti-English sentiment. Anti-English themes manifested in national organisations seen as promoting native Irish values, with the emergence of groups like
Sinn Féin. One popular nationalist slogan was "
England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" and the well-known anti-World-War-I song "
Who is Ireland's Enemy?" used past events to conclude that it was England, and furthermore that Irish people ought to "pay those devils back". The
Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was founded in 1884 as a counter-measure against the Anglo-Irish Athletic Association, which promoted and supervised British sports such as English
football in Ireland. The GAA was founded in the anti-English ideas of
Thomas Croke, Archbishop of
Cashel and Emly. From 1886 to 1971 the GAA focused national pride into distinctly non-English activities. Members were forbidden to belong to organisations that played "English" games and the organisation countered the Anglicisation in Irish society. With the development in Ireland of Irish games and the arts, the Celtic revivalists and nationalists identified characteristics of what they defined as the "Irish Race". A nationalistic identity developed, as the opposite of the Anglo-Saxons and untainted by the
Anglo-Irish. A sense of national identity and Irish distinctiveness as well as an anti-English assertiveness was reinforced to Catholics by teachers in
hedge schools. A feeling of anti-English sentiment intensified within Irish nationalism during the
Boer Wars, leading to xenophobia underlined by Anglophobia. Two units of
Irish commandos fought with the
Boer against British forces during the
Second Boer War (1899–1902). J. Donnolly, a member of the brigade, wrote to the editor of the
Irish News in 1901: It was not for the love of the Boer we were fighting; it was for the hatred of the English. (J. Donnolly letter to the
Irish News, 1901) The pro-Boer movement gained widespread support in Ireland, and over 20,000 supporters demonstrated in
Dublin in 1899 where Irish nationalism, anti-English and pro-Boer attitudes were one and the same. There was a pro-Boer movement in England as well but the English pro-Boer movement was not based on anti-English sentiments. These opposing views and animosity led the English and Irish pro-Boer groups to maintain a distance from one another. Despite this, far more Irishmen joined various Irish Regiments of the British Army during this time, more so than pro-Boer commandos. The
W. B. Yeats play
The Countess Cathleen, written in 1892, has anti-English overtones comparing the English gentry to demons who come for Irish souls. Films set during the
Irish War of Independence, such as
The Informer (1935) and the
Plough and the Stars (1936), were criticised by the
BBFC for the director
John Ford's anti-English content and in recent years,
Michael Collins and
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (despite being a joint British-Irish production) have led to accusations of Anglophobia in the British press. In 2006,
Antony Booth, the father-in-law of
Tony Blair, claimed he was the victim of anti-English vandalism and discrimination while living in
County Cavan, Ireland, with his wife. In August 2008 an English pipe fitter based in Dublin was awarded €20,000 for the racial abuse and discrimination he received at his workplace. In 2011, tensions and anti-English or anti-British feelings flared in relation to the proposed visit of
Queen Elizabeth II, the first
British monarch to visit Ireland in 100 years. The invitation by the
President of Ireland,
Mary McAleese, and the
Irish government, was hailed by the Irish press as a historic visit but was criticised by
Sinn Féin President
Gerry Adams. An anti-Queen demonstration was held at the GPO Dublin by a small group of Irish Republicans on 26 February 2011, and a mock
trial and
decapitation of an effigy of Queen Elizabeth II were carried out by socialist republican group
Éirígí. Other protests included one Dublin publican (the father of
Celtic player
Anthony Stokes) hanging a banner declaring "the Queen will never be welcome in this country". In 2018, the Irish author and journalist
Megan Nolan wrote an opinion piece for
The New York Times that detailed how she had come to hate
England and
English people.
Russia After the
Anglo-Russian War, during which Britain plundered Russian shipping and raided the coast, the alliance against Napoleon was renewed. Despite this,
the Great Game gave rise to a wave of widespread Anglophobia in Russia. During the
Russo-Japanese War, there was a sentiment in Russia that England was behind Japan's militarism against Russia in the Far East, leading to a strained relationship between Britain and Russia. The UK and Russia were allies in
World War I until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, after which the British
again attacked Russian soil and the capitalist West became the target of the new
Communist International ("Comintern"). In 1924, these tensions were briefly cooled when the Labour government of Prime Minister
Ramsay MacDonald formally recognized the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations between the two countries. The two were allies again starting in 1941. During the
Cold War, Britain firmly sided with the West against the Soviet Union and the relationship between the two continues to remain dubious even today. Before
2018 FIFA World Cup, there had been controversies regarding Anglophobia in Russia.
Spain Relations between England and Spain were not significantly hostile until the
Age of Discovery and the
rise of European colonialism in the 16th century, in which both countries' interests came into conflict following the European discovery of the Americas. Spain was the first European power to secure control over vast areas of the New World, and an outright rivalry soon developed with England as the latter pursued its own colonial enterprises in the Americas once the economic benefits became apparent. Additional factors such as the
English Reformation and the Catholic
Counter-Reformation heightened tensions substantially, and contributed in prompting both countries to seek leadership of opposing sides during major geopolitical conflicts in Europe and the Americas which led to
multiple wars between England and Spain until the 19th century. In the Americas, one of the main driving forces behind the
Golden Age of Piracy was a deliberate attempt by England to undermine Spain's control over its possessions in the Caribbean, as well as to sabotage lucrative Spanish trade routes passing through the region. Spain intervened in favour of the United States during the
American Revolutionary War, while Britain provided varying degrees of financial and logistical support to insurgents in the
Spanish American wars of independence. Historians have employed the term "
Black legend" to describe an anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic historiographical tendency advanced by past enemies of Spain, such as England. Despite a warming in relations from the 20th century onwards, issues such as disputes over the
status of Gibraltar (which was annexed by Britain after the
War of the Spanish Succession) still cause tensions between the two countries. A 2013 poll revealed that, regardless of the dispute over Gibraltar, 25% of Spanish respondents rated the relations between Spain and the UK as "bad", with 3.4% rating them as "very bad". In recent times, anti-English and
anti-tourist sentiments have overlapped to some degree in places within
Spain's mediterranean coast.
United States from
Joseph Pulitzer's Democratic newspaper
New York World, 15 March 1896. In the early years of the Republic, Anglophobia was particularly associated with the
Jeffersonian Republicans in the 1790s, who warned that close ties with Great Britain were especially dangerous because that nation was an enemy of American Republicanism. By contrast, the opposing
Federalist Party warned that the Jeffersonians were too sympathetic to the radicalism of the French Revolution. The
Origins of the War of 1812 involved claimed violations against American neutrality by the United Kingdom during the Napoleonic Wars. The
Treaty of Ghent, ratified in 1815 and ending the War of 1812, established peaceful relations for the two countries that has lasted more than two centuries, though this was stressed at times in the years following the treaty by events such as the
Trent Affair of 1861 and the
Fenian Raids in 1866–1871. In the final days of the 1888 presidential campaign, a Republican operative claiming to be a British immigrant in America named Charles F. Murchison
tricked the British ambassador
Lord Sackville-West into indicating Britain's support for the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland. The deliberatly fabricated act forced Sackville-west to return to Britain.
The Great Rapprochement was the convergence of social and political objectives between the United Kingdom and the United States from 1895 until World War I began in 1914. The most notable sign of improving relations during the Great Rapprochement was Britain's actions during the
Spanish–American War (started 1898). Initially Britain supported the
Spanish Empire and its
colonial rule over
Cuba, since the perceived threat of American occupation and a territorial acquisition of Cuba by the United States might harm British trade and commercial interests within its own imperial possessions in the
West Indies. However, after the United States made genuine assurances that it would grant Cuba's independence (which eventually occurred in 1902 under the terms dictated in the
Platt Amendment), the British abandoned this policy and ultimately sided with the United States, unlike most other European powers who supported Spain. In return the US government supported Britain during the
Boer War, although many Americans favoured the Boers. embracing
John Bull, while
Columbia and
Britannia sit together and hold hands. In 2002, academic John Moser said that, although Anglophobia is now "almost completely absent" from American society, this was not always the case. He stated that "there were strains of Anglophobia present in virtually every
populist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries," with the
Populist Party, for example, "referring to England as a 'monster' that had 'seized upon the fresh energy of America and is steadily fixing its fangs into our social life.'" Reasons suggested for the faltering of Anglophobia included the impact of the
Second World War, and reduced political support for Irish nationalist movements compared with that in earlier periods. Moser also said: The
film industry is widely perceived to give a British nationality to a disproportionate number of villains.
Anglophobia in the Irish-American community The
Irish-American community in the United States has historically shown antipathy towards Britain for its role in controlling Ireland. The large Irish Catholic element provided a major base for demands for Irish independence, and occasioned anti-British rhetoric, especially at election time. Anglophobia thus has been a defining feature of the Irish-American experience. Bolstered by their support of Irish nationalism, Irish-American communities have been staunchly anti-English since the 1850s, and this sentiment is fostered within the Irish-American identity. Irish immigrants arrived poor and within a generation or two prospered. Many subscribed cash from their weekly wage to keep up the anti-English agitation. Anglophobia was a common theme in Democratic Party politics. Irish-American newspapers, like the pro-Catholic
Truth Teller which was founded in 1825 by an anti-English priest, were influential in the identity of the community. Anti-English feelings among Irish-Americans spread to American culture through Irish-American performers in popular
blackface minstrel shows. These imparted both elements of the Irish-American performers' own national bias, and the popular stereotypical image that the English people were bourgeois, aloof, or upper class. Sentiments quickly turned into direct and violent action when in the 1860s the
Fenian Brotherhood Society invaded
Canada to provoke a United States-British war in hope it would lead to Irish independence. Violence is said to have included direct action by Fenian sympathisers, with the assassination of
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, himself an
Irish Canadian and Irish nationalist who was against the invasion, although he was very critical of the
Orange Order, and it has long been suspected they were his true killers.
Goldwin Smith, professor at
Cornell University, wrote in the
North American Review that "hatred of England" was used as a tool to win the Irish-American vote. A similar observation was made in 1900 by U.S. Secretary of State
John Hay, who criticised the
Prairie Populist and his own
Democratic party's political pandering to attract the support of the Irish diaspora: Well into the early 20th century anti-English sentiment was increasing with famine memorials in the Irish-American communities, which "served as a wellspring for their obsessive and often corrosive antipathy," as noted in the British Parliament in 1915: Some newspapers, including the
San Francisco Leader and the
New York Irish World, first published in 1823, were renowned for their anti-English articles. The
Irish World blamed the mainland United Kingdom for the depopulation and desolate state of Ireland's industries. One newspaper, the
Gaelic American, called a student performance of the
British national anthem by some girls of Irish heritage from a convent school an act of disloyalty, where they were taught to reverence the traditions of the hereditary enemy of their race and religion. Anglophobia in Argentina has been studied by the historian Ema Cibotti in
Dear Enemies. From Beresford to Maradona, the true story of relations between the English and Argentines. In its prologue, entitled "Against the English it is better", the social historian states That feeling has not been constant or unanimous. Characters such as
Manuel Belgrano, who had faced the
English invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807 or Mariano Moreno, among the independence leaders, supported policies similar to those of the British and the dispute over the
Falkland Islands did not sour relations. The 1929 crisis and the coup that overthrew
Hipólito Yrigoyen in
1930, with the fall in export prices, will be the determining factors in the appearance of an Anglophobic sentiment linked to the rejection of neo-colonialism or British imperialism. This is what the Spanish pedagogue
Lorenzo Luzuriaga observed upon arriving in Argentina in 1940, who in a letter to
Américo Castro analysed the different attitudes towards the outbreak of the World War Philosopher
Mario Bunge, in an interview granted to Jorge Fontevecchia on May 4, 2008, collected in
Reportajes 2, alluded to the spread of Anglophobic sentiment in the years of the conflict, explainable "because many of the companies had been owned by the English" and attributed to this feeling the approach to Nazism of
Carlos Astrada, introducer of existentialist philosophy in Argentina. But it will be with the
Falklands War in 1982 when Anglophobic sentiment spread to a good part of society.
India Anglophobic sentiment in India is rooted in the colonial legacy of British rule, starting with the
rule of the British East India Company and continuing under the
British Raj. Oppressive and exploitative practices, the imposition of British culture, language, and education, along with economic policies that favoured British interests at the expense of Indian welfare, fuelled a sense of injustice and subjugation among Indians. Key events such as the
Indian Rebellion of 1857, the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, and the economic hardships imposed by British policies during events like the
Bengal famine of 1943 intensified this animosity. Post-independence, Anglophobia has persisted in various forms, often manifesting as resistance to Western cultural dominance and the lingering impact of colonial attitudes in modern Indian society. This historical context has fostered a complex relationship with the English language and British cultural elements, where they are both integrated into Indian society and simultaneously viewed with suspicion or disdain by some. The legacy of colonial exploitation has left a deep imprint on India's collective memory, contributing to a continued wariness of British influence in both political and cultural spheres. ==See also==