Encouraging Developments From the Edges of the Anglosphere

Encouraging Developments From the Edges of the Anglosphere

In this tumultuous political year, the latest sharp surprises come from the far reaches of the Anglosphere -- Alaska and Australia.

These were lands to which Capt. James Cook voyaged even as the seaboard Atlantic colonists were rebelling against king and Parliament in London. Cook's charts of the southern coast of Australia are still in use, and he sailed from there to Hawaii and then through the Bering Strait to the ice-choked Arctic Sea. You can see splendid murals of his voyages in the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage.

Australia joined the Anglosphere when the British established a convict settlement there in 1788,...