Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson

According to Benedict Anderson, nations are “imagined communities”. First, we must understand what a nation actually is. Anderson defines a nation as “an imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. It is imagined because members of a particular community will never meet or know other members in the same community. However, each member of that community understands and believes in their community’s unique image or communion. A nation is limited because it only reaches beyond the borders of another nation. It is sovereign because it came to maturity at a stage of human history when freedom was a rare and came at a costly price.
Anderson suggests that there are three basic paradoxes to the idea of a nation: 1) that nations are objectively new, but nationalists claim antiquity; 2) that there is a universality to the idea of nationality in that everyone has a nationality, just as everyone has a gender; and 3) nationalism has great political power even though it has philosophical paucity. Nationalism arose at a time when three cultural factors started to decline and fade: religion, sovereignty, and time. The changes in the religious communities started to decline after the Middle Ages. After this time, explorations discovered a new world outside of Europe. The existence of land over European borders led to the development of new communities, which were much different. For example, different languages came about, which made older communities back in Europe lose confidence in the unique sacredness of their language. Older communities also lost confidence in their ideas about what a membership to a religious community entitles. Now that there was new land, different languages, and different religions forming, people became skeptical about the validity of their religion. Sovereignty is the second factor that led to the rise of nationalism. After the Middle Ages, there were changes in the dynastic realm. In the older communities, states were defined by centers and borders. The main town or center is where the king resided. He then distributed the nations land amongst nobles, which were distinguished by borders. However, after the 17th century, the accuracy and legitimacy of the sacred monarchy began its decline and people began to doubt the belief that society was naturally organized around the king’s center. The final factor causing the rise of nationalism was time. In the Middle Ages, time was thought to be simultaneous and never ending. There was no calendar or way of keeping track of days and time. Time is a key factor to nationalism today because each nation wants to make their mark on history.
After the birth of nationalism, print-capitalism and print-languages led to the consciousness of a nation. Anderson argues that without print-languages, nationalism would not have developed as it did. Print-languages created a language of exchange that existed between Latin and vernaculars. In older communities, Latin was the official language of the church and state. Another major effect caused by print-languages was that it privileged certain languages, creating new languages of power granting certain classes more authority than others. Where older states had been organized based on God or a divine head, nations were now organized based on shared language. Print-capitalism was also important because the expansion of the book market contributed to the vernacularization of languages and to the mass production of Bibles.
Although many would think the origin of nationalism to be Europe, the origin of nationalism actually first started in Latin American Countries. With Europe’s history and linguistic diversity, many expect them to be the model of nationalism. Anderson seems particularly concerned with how these Spanish, or Creole communities developed a nation-ness before Europe. There were many factors of Creole history that contributed to the creation of nationalism. In my opinion, the biggest factor was that members of the Creole community, who were under Spanish authority, were limited to administrative units. This means that Creole members could go wherever they wanted to inside their unit, but were restricted from going to other administrative units. For example, they couldn’t go back to Spain. However, these administrative units had the ability to create meaning through religion, which helped create a unified apparatus or power. So what did they do? They established an American identity first, and then a national identity second.
Now that a model of nationalism was established, Europe was ready for the transformation. National liberation movements in the Americas and the age of nationalism in Europe coincided with each other. Both these new nationalisms used print languages to increase political importance and distinguish class formations. This is where an imagined community is formed. Members were designated into different classes, were nobility ruled, and people could relate to each other through print capitalism. Although members in the community might not know each other, they could visualize other members being like them and having the same attributes. They started printing newspapers in the Americas with “world events”, which would then reach the nobility back in Europe and the imagined community of nation-states became models for Europe.
After “new nationalism” had developed in the Americas, the development of “official nationalism” began in Europe in the middle of the 19th century. Official nationalism also spread to and was most popular in empires, such as Russia, England, and Japan. Not only was Europe developing an imagined community, but other nations were too. The Russian Empire is well known for their sense of official nationalism. Anderson also points out how the British Empire sought to anglicisize its colonies. This means that some colony members could not serve in Britain, or in other parts of the empire. This is contradictory! Because the British policy of Anglicization created so many English-speaking functionaries who could not really be English because they could not serve in England itself. So, this process of official nationalism ended up making the original nation distinct from its colonies. This brought the last wave of nationalism which was the transformation of colonial-state to the national state. It was a response to a new global imperialism, made possible by achievements of industrial capitalism. In addition, this last wave arose in a period of world history in which the nation was becoming an international norm and in which it became possible to model nationess in a more complex way than before. Anderson also goes into detail about different revolutions in world history, such as those in Vietnam, Kampuchea, and China. Anderson suggests that these are contemporary exhibits of nationalism, but mature examples (in which two centuries of nationalism has already occurred for models). Nationalism has adapted and transformed throughout history, according to different centuries, political powers, economies, and social structures. As a result, the “imagined community” has spread throughout every society in the contemporary world.