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How did nationalism emerge as a new kind of imagined community and what processes spread it?

According to Benedict Anderson, a nation can be defined as ‘an imagined political community where imagined is both inherently limited and sovereign.’ He believed that a nation was not a tangible or physical thing but rather an imagined idea that gave people a sense of belonging. He believed that nations are imagined ideas because at no circumstance will citizens of a particular nation meet, interact or know each other at a personal level. In his line of thinking, Anderson imagined that for a nation to exist physically, its citizens must have the capacity to know each other. He was determined to illustrate that nationalism was a social construct that that allowed people to have a commonality feel about each other even in circumstances where they do not recognize it. Anderson made an effort to trace the origin of nationalism and the emergence of nations as new communities.

In his arguments, Anderson identifies the historical reasons that led to the emergence of nationalism. He points out the several cultural factors that led to the emergence of nationalism such as the shift religious based communities, the decline of Latin as an administrative and sacred language, the fall of monarchies, the emergence of vernacular languages and the emergence of a modern secular society. He argues that the decline of religious-based communities across Europe led to the need for new communities to replace it. As a result, nationalism emergence as communities that took the place of religious communities leading to the establishment of nations. Language became center around which people would organize. As people of different vernaculars aligned themselves together, their bonds became strong and they developed a sense of belonging and this was the perquisites of modern nationalism.

Anderson also highlights technological developments as a contributor to nationalism in the 18th and 19th century. In the chapter ‘The Origin of National Consciousness,’ he holds that the convergence of diversity of vernacular languages, capitalism and printing helped create national consciousness. He holds that the emergence of a capitalist society coupled with the print media helped to disseminate nationalistic ideas across Europe. The print media helped create a readership culture and helped entrench the small languages into small communities that later became administrative units. The spread of the print media across Europe also helped to accelerate the fall of Latin as an acceptable universal language which in the end helped unify small communities based on linguistic similarities.

Chapter 7 of the book sees Anderson analyze the post-World War 2 nationalism. In this chapter titled ‘The Last Wave,’ he argues that the end of the 2nd World War resulted in the disintegration of the remaining European Empires. The nations that emerged after the war were characteristic of a blend of diverse and complex nationalism that came before them. Anderson does not think that racism was a result of nationalistic ideas but rather a by-product of class distinctions. In chapter ten, he focuses on the instruments and tools that were used for administration and control that nations adopted. The last chapter of the book sees Anderson explain how nations construct narratives that help define their identity while subverting specific historical facts and assimilate events and figures that help them pre-date their national belonging and consciousness. He also argues that the process of colonialism helped to spread nationalism across the globe. As communities tried to resist their colonizers, they helped erase indigenous identities and establish new ones based on new ideologies.

Work Cited

Anderson, Benedict. “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.” The New Social Theory Reader. Routledge, 2020. 282-288.