The recent rise of nationalism, as reflected by the vitriolic nature of national politics in many countries had inspired me to seek answers in Benjamin Anderson’s seminal work. ‘The Imagined Communities’ was originally published in 1983, and the current revised edition was released in 2006. This is the definitive text on the nationalism. Anderson postulates that nations are a complex, socio-political, and cultural constructs that emerge in the imagining of groups of people. He traces three main, interrelated themes of influence in the imagining of nations.
Firstly, he explores the influence of language, script and mass literacy, with the fall of the old ‘sacred’ languages like Latin and the spread of vernacular language through the advent of ‘print capitalism’ (a happy merger between print technology and capitalism). Secondly, the de-authorization of centripetal power structures, like monarchies and dynasties with divinely vested rule is examined. Finally, the very notion of time are reimagined is flat and continuous.
Benedict Anderson makes his concepts relevant to global citizens by drawing examples from Europe and the former colonies in the Americas and Asia. The independence achieved by the colonies in the Americas were in a different time and had different influences, compared to the fairly recent colonial independence of the South East Asian countries. Being a South East Asian scholar, Anderson lovingly contrasts the colonies of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, detailing the influences that caused Indochina to fragment into three separate states (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), while the vast and varied island populations of Dutch East Indies to meld with relative harmony into Indonesia. Also explored are the shaping of a nation’s borders and consciousness by its conquerors by means of economic and military defined maps, national census that require categorisation of people and the propaganda of antiquities in museums.
This is a compelling read, albeit a fairly difficult one. Anderson writes mainly in English, but scattered in are words, sentences and paragraphs in innumerable other languages, thus the narration is stunted. Also, the author writes for a more educated audience, as a layperson in the fields of sociology, political science, and history, I struggled with the sometimes unhelpful footnotes and references. Nevertheless, this is a compelling read, and I am happy to note translated to many languages to reach a wider audience.
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