Imagined Communities Reflections Revised Edition

What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality – the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to a nation – has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality.

Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.

This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.

{Anderson} is Professor of Government and Asian Studies at Cornell University and a specialist on Indonesia. The illogical and bitterly hostile nationalisms of contemporary South East Asia provide his Leitmotif, but most of the text is concerned with other periods and other parts of the map. . . . The book is about the 'idea' of the nation state; how and where it came into being; how it is used by power-hungry politicians as a justification for their nefarious actions. It is a fascinating topic. Anderson's knowledge of a vast range of relevant historical literature is most impressive; his presentation of the gist of it both masterly and lucid. New Statesman

A view of Islamic civilization that runs counter to that provided by 19th-century Western Orientalists and 20th-century Islamic fundamentalists. The novels cover a vast period, beginning with the conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century, via the liberation of Jerusalem by the armies of Saladin in the 12th century, to the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa, and explores the way communities were created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing, and the birth of vernacular languages-of-state. Anderson revisits these fundamental ideas, showing how their relevance has been tested by the events of the past two decades.

Benedict Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorp Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is editor of the journal Indonesia and author of Java in a Time of Revolution, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World and Imagined Communities.

Introduction -- Cultural roots -- The origins of national consciousness -- Creole pioneers -- Old languages, new models -- Official nationalism and imperialism -- The last wave -- Patriotism and racism -- The angel of history -- Census, map, museum -- Memory and forgetting.