Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson

     In so many other books, I had seen references to Imagined Communities, but my immediate cause for reading the book was listening to Timothy Snyder's lectures on the formation of the Ukrainian state, in which he mentioned the book. So I finally picked it up and read it all in one day. Obviously I thought it was very interesting, and despite having heard a lot about it, there were a lot of insights in the book that I hadn't heard of by reference before. In the book, Anderson says he is trying to deal with three paradoxes:

(1) the objective modernity of nations to the historian's eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of the nationalists. (2) The formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept--in the modern world everyone can, should, will 'have' a nationality, as he or she 'has' a gender--vs. the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations, such that, by definition, 'Greek' nationality is sui generis. (3) The 'political' power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence. In other words, unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbes, Tocquevilles, Maxes, or Webers. This 'emptiness' easily gives rise, among cosmopolitan and polylingual intellectuals, to a certain condescension.

Anderson defines the nation as "an imagined political community--and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign." Limited because no nation claims to be universal over all people on earth, like Christianity may promote itself as the one true world religion. Sovereign because the nation claims legitimacy over the people that belong to it. And a community because, regardless of whatever inequalities it has, the nation is conceived as a comradeship that inspires its members to kill and die for it. 

    Anderson argues that nationalism arose from three primary causes. First, the rise of vernacular languages and the declining belief in the idea that some local languages were insufficient for scholarly or diplomatic communications lead to more pride in the nascent nation. Second, the end of the legitimacy of dynastic monarchs leads to people believing that they are the sovereigns, rather than the subjects. And third, the printing press made it possible for people to standardize their languages, schedules, and other parts of daily life so that people transitioned from isolated communities into larger societies. But there are also some more particular causes. One big one is that colonized peoples developed nationalism in response to the nationalism/racism of their colonizers, who wouldn't let them rise through the ranks in empires. So when an Indian civil servant realized he couldn't make it to the Raj's highest levels, or the Spanish criollo realized that peninsulares would always be favored, they developed their own nationalistic ideas.

    I would say one of the most interesting discussions in the book is that of Latin American nationalism. It is interesting because it comes earlier than most traditional histories of nationalism start, and it also has colonial and bourgeoisie narratives that make it similar to a lot of other national sentiments worldwide. It makes a lot of sense when you consider that American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and Spanish America both initially felt like Englishmen and Spaniards, but then realized they didn't have the same rights. So even absent a linguistic difference, the bourgeoisie of each place developed national identity based on their state or provincial borders due to subordination to those born in the "mother country." So there's something interesting there about how those early ingroup-outgroup biases are felt by the outsider and lead to the outsider developing a stronger national identity than the insiders may have hd to begin with. Then, comparing the Latin American nationalism that emerged in the 18th century to 19th and 20th century nationalism in the Old World, and there are two big differences that Anderson notes. The Old World nationalisms generally involved "national print-languages," whereas the New World nationalisms emerged without distinguishing the languages of the colonists from the mother countries. And the Old World nationalists could also work from visible models from the New World and the French Revolution.

    The natural conclusion, I think, from the way nationalism spreads, is that nationalism begets nationalism. When one group of people become a nation and exclude others, those others that interact with them will start to develop or accelerate in developing their own group identity. That is a big contrast with socialism, which we could probably say is the other major force of the last two centuries in competition with nationalism, as people decide whether their class or their nation is their most important identity. Nationalism creates a need for a parallel nationalism in those it does and does not protect, as everyone wants the benefits. Socialism, on the other hand, sort of defeats its own purpose. By providing a higher standard of living for the lower classes, socialism reduces the desire of poorer people for more redistribution. Nationalism does just the opposite since it generally offers only immaterial benefits to those who are "members" of the nation. But maybe there is something to be said for how socialism in one state will lead to a stronger state, which could encourage other surrounding states to strengthen themselves as well. Not sure that I can really articulate this that well, but it feels like the historical record shows nations forming in response to other nations, and that doesn't appear to happen with socialism, communism, or redistributionism generally.

    The thing I would most like to ask Anderson about if he was alive today is about the comparison between the printing press and the World Wide Web. He cites McLuhan and Eisenstein a lot about the printing press, and says that "Print-language is what invents nationalism, not a particular language per se." By bringing everyone in contact with one another, lots of linguistic identities form into national identities based on who we can communicate with. As English dominates as a world-wide language and the Web brings us all together in communication, it will be interesting to see if technology continues to separate the nations as blocks, fragments them further, or brings people together in even larger identities.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• The first Ukrainian grammar appeared in 1819, only 17 years after the first Russian one.
• I thought it was interesting that Anderson identified the global government as changing from the Congress of Berlin to the League of Nations, implicitly recognizing the primacy of the nation after WWI. Also interesting as a moment in history because WWI led to the toppling of several super-national empires in Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany/Prussia; and then WWII's end led to even more national liberation movements from the French an English colonies. Reading the book really makes it apparent that national feeling is the driving political force of the 20th century, and it is not over.