Central Points in

Benedict Anderson’s
Imagined Communitites

By:
Sarah J. Epperson

For:
Dr. Peter Sluglett
History 4440

September 22, 2009

Question: What principal points is Benedict Anderson making in Imagined Com-
munities?

Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities centers around three major points. First,
Anderson explains that imagined communities in Europe found root in the cultural changes
of Europe in the 17th century. Secondly, he emphasizes the crucial role of print-capitalism
in further supporting the emergence of nationalism. Finally, Anderson contends that while
nationalism’s spread across the globe did not conclude with uniform results, themes of estab-
lishing unique national identities through language, grievances over condition, and secular
pilgrimage are common among all nations in their genesis.
It is necessary, however, to first deduce what Anderson means when he speaks of the
enigmatic idea of a “nation” in order to understand his other points. In his own words,
“[a nation] is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign”.1 Anderson further explains that what he means by “imagined”, “limited” and
“sovereign” is not to imply that these communities are fanciful, or not rooted in reality in
some way. On the contrary, Anderson’s opinion is that nationalism is borne out of actual
events and developments across the globe that are not arbitrary or invented, thus “imagined”,
to Anderson is to denote creation in a positive sense. In “limited”, he means that nations
are not all encompassing, and to denote a sense of uniqueness of nations, that they exist
among other nations with their own characteristics. To imagine a nation is also to imagine
.sovereign., a concept that in itself shows its tie to Enlightenment thought. For the nation,
not the monarch, to be sovereign is to take authority and sacredness away from the monarchy
and place the nation directly under God, if such a thing is desired. These three concepts, of
the nation being imagined, limited and sovereign, are central to understanding Anderson’s
larger arguments about the nature of nationalism.
1
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities p.6

1
 The first main point Anderson makes is that the seeds of nationalism were sown in the
religious and social changes of the 17th and 18th centuries. Understanding the origins of
nationalism in this context is an important point to understand as people needed to re-
imagine their relationship to language and the arrangement of power structures before they
could imagine notions of community in the sense Anderson describes it. This shift was
effected by the loss of Latin’s lonely role as the language of God and intellectual questioning
of the divine right of kings by Enlightenment thinkers.
In Christian Europe, Latin was regarded as a sacred language, the language through
which God spoke to human creation. Thus, those who had access to Latin had access to the
word of God. This is crucial because religion was the center of European life, commanding
authority and respect from the people. Therefore, the few bilingual elite who knew Latin
could control much of the political and social climate in Europe through their religious
authority. As Bibles and other books began to be printed and distributed, the hegemony that
Latin readers and the Catholic Church had on religious interactions eroded. This brought up
questions about the legitimacy of the Catholic Church and the authority it bestowed upon
leaders, as it no longer held a monopoly on the word of God. The result was that individual
identity and community was no longer necessarily defined by religion.
In addition to the changing relationships occurring as Latin and Catholicism lost sway,
concepts of power and authority also changed during the 17th and 18th century. Prior
to concepts of imagined communities like nations, states were understood as being defined
by local centers of power. The territory extending from that center dissolved into other
territories held by other centers of power, lacking defined borders.2 With developments in
social theory such as that provided by Enlightenment thinkers, the legitimacy of the powers
holding these centers diminished upon questioning, leaving a vacuum for other interpretations
of how states and their borders are composed. This doubt of old hierarchical power structures
2
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities p.19

2
was further compounded by the religious changes already mentioned.
The next of Anderson’s main points would be that of print-capitalism’s role in nation-
alism. While previous relationships between individuals relied on kinship and religion as
discussed earlier, printed language allowed for an imagined community to come into being
based on the less inclusive criterion of language. This happened through the sharing of
experience through print, the newfound fixity of language and the development of literary
heritages.
Fixity in language is a relatively new development. Without consistent conference of
linguistic conventions texts lost conformity to the original as they passed from generation
to generation. With the increased accuracy of mechanized printing, artefacts accumulated
from repeated copying was greatly reduced. The significance of this is not merely that texts
would maintain their original form longer and be readable by successive generations, but that
individuals could look back upon their language, feeling it had an ancient and meaningful
quality to it. This sense of depth in language brought pride, further invisibly together the
individuals who shared language.
Print, especially newspapers, also assisted in the establishment of community among
popultions by allowing people to share information about events happening around them,
thus viewing one another and their lives as similar. Also important was that these newspapers
allowed people to establish connections with each other based on print-languages despite the
fact that the languages they spoke at home may very well have been mutually unintelligible.
In addition to the publishing of newspapers, stories of local interest such as Noli Me Tangere
3
in the Philippines also helped to establish common identity among readers. The printing
of literature such as this served as a medium through which communities could share not
only local events, but also recognize one another on a more personal and emotional level.
In developing a unique character to their communities via literature, it helped to establish
3
Anderson, Imagined Communities p.26

3
a common cultural heritage as well that would aid in defining themselves in nationalistic
terms.
After print-capitalism, Imagined Communities explores the progress of nationalism across
the globe in three waves, the first being the creole populations of the New World. In re-
gards to this first wave, Anderson asks the question why would colonists wish to break from
4
the motherland to whom they were attached? There was no one cause for this even-
tual development, but a confluence of contributing factors; the effect of print-capitalism,
discrimination against creoles by their motherlands resulting in shared secular pilgrimages,
and disgruntlement over intrusion by the motherland into their affairs. The creole popula-
tions in the Americas that Anderson discusses were not kick-started in their path towards
nationalism by being united under a language unique from their motherlands, though this
is not to say that print-capitalism did not help them to imagine themselves as a community
separate from Europe. By reading newspapers and sharing literature, they developed their
own linguistic flavor in addition to seeing their sphere of events as distinct from Europe. In
reading their own colonial newspapers, over time they naturally saw themselves as operating
in a different sphere, sharing the same discontent with European rule. The second defining
characteristic of the creole experience was that their motherlands negatively characterized
them based on their extra-European birth. Creoles were barred from reaching high offices in
5
the colony let alone serving in the metropole, an event replicated later in Asia and Africa.
This feeling of discrimination was compounded by disagreements over governance between
creoles and European officials. The creole populations resented the intrusion of European
power in colonial affairs, such as slavery and trade. By suffering under the same yoke, creoles
bonded further. Thus, creation of communities through print, language and shared grievance
created a nationalism in places like Argentina, the U.S.A., and Colombia, were sufficient to
4
Anderson, Imagined Communities p. 50
5
Anderson, Imagined Communities p.57

4
break their ties with Europe and seek independence.
Following the New World, the Old World began down the path to nationalism. Europe
shared much with the ex-colonies in the Americas, but there were differences. For one,
tensions boiled around linguistic differences, an issue that did not exist in the New World.
Also, societies in Europe could look West for nationalist models, something the creoles
6
certainly did not have. Europe also shared in the experiences of the creoles in that
Europe was also aided in imagining their communities through government and academic
institutions that further defined groups based on racial and linguistic criteria, their own
secular pilgrimages to institutions that fortified identity and created connections among
fellow students and bureaucrats. Also, much nationalist fervor was a reaction to ill treatment
by the old regimes, as the creoles had reacted to the European powers.
The root of language’s importance in the development of European nationalism goes
back to one of Anderson’s earlier points; the importance of Latin losing status as the sacred
language. This development contributed to the general flattening of hierarchy among the
plethora of languages being used in Europe. Anderson describes the fallout best, “If all
languages now shared a common (intra-)mundane status, then all were in principle equally
worth of study and admiration” (p.71) The significance of this drastic shift in attitude
towards vernaculars is that it shored up the legitimacy of vernaculars who now were able
to claim that their languages, and the cultural heritage they carried, was on par with Latin
or any other language. Language was now more important that just communication, it
gave one a link to something bigger than oneself; an imagined community. Academic study
turned inwards based on this impulse, being conducted in vernaculars rather than in classical
languages. Suddenly there was much to say about languages like Ukrainian or Hungarian
that had received little interest previously. As a result, by the middle of the 18th century,
people could read the classics not in just in Latin or Greek but in their own tongue. (p.72)
6
Anderson Imagined Communities p. 67

5
Individuals then developed an even stronger connection to one another through language
as not only a means of communication, but as a means by which they established cultural
connections through shared academic and literary heritage. These linguistic developments
also had political consequences. As Latin was replaced by vernaculars in matters of state,
business, science and academia, society itself was increasingly defined by language. This is
a paralell to the bureaucratic pilgrimages of the New World and of the Asiatic and African
colonies. Communities of similar language speakers, now operated in the same institutions
with their local language, enforcing the boundary between themselves and other institutions
in other regions. Individuals and literature were no longer interchangeable with other regions
as the baseline of Latin was no longer there. Additionally, religious similarities eroded as
Latin was not always shared there either, especially as Protestantism rose to prominence.
With defined boundaries based on vernacular usage, and a new variance in religious practice
in Europe, regions housing people who shared a common experience on both fronts banded
together to form nationalist movements, as happened in places like Ukraine and Finland.
7
Sharing language and experience helped populations distinguish themselves from other
European powers just as the creoles had set themselves apart from Europe.
The final wave of nationalism to sweep the globe occurred in the colonies of Asia and
Africa. The emergence of nationalism there would be greatly defined by the discrimination
they suffered under European powers, but their brand of nationalism would also be expedited
into existence by European technology and governance including print-capitalism and the
connections forged by shared pilgrimages through colonial bureacracies.
When European powers set out from Europe and set up spheres of control in Asia and
Africa, they were establishing themselves in places with an already existing multiplicity of
ethnicities and language groupings. These groups were often initially mutually ignorant of
one another, or where they did know of one another, relationships were frequently hostile.
7
Anderson Imagined Communities p. 74-75

6
How then, did these populations that were so internally dissimilar come together with notions
of shared fraternity and nationhood sufficient to shrug off their colonizing powers within a
relatively short period of time?
According to Anderson, they were influenced by print-capitalism in a similar manner to
the first two waves. He uses the example of Malaysia/Malaya quite frequently to explain
the theme of print-capitalism’s influence on colonial populations. In the case of the English
colony that would become Malaysia, there were many different languages and dialects within
those language, many of them mutually incomprehensible. However, many people knew
administrative-Malay at least to a limited extent. As the need for a mutually comprehensible
language grew, so did the sophistication and usage of administrative languages. While
at the beginning of the colonial period in Malaya, few if anybody spoke administrative-
Malay (bahasa Melayu) as their first language, it eventually became the national language
of Malaysia. Ex-colonial holdings in Africa experienced a similar situation, though they
often co-opted European languages for official purposes and kept their own native language
for home use. Western Africa is an example of this, where the citizenry is polyglot, speaking
a European language in addition to one or more local vernaculars.
Asian and African communities also developed their own literature as had the first two
waves. Literature was also a means by which colonized populations could express their
resentment of the colonizing forces, as well as express their community identity. Anderson
gives the excellent example of Semarang Hitam, a story of a young man who embodies
Indonesian frustration with Dutch occupation.8
However, printing and the rise of administrative languages alone could not bridge the gap
between the diverse populations of places like Indonesia without additional forces. Anderson
explains that social cohesion took place also as a result of colonial rule. People in colonized
8
Anderson, Imagined Communities p. 30-32

7
areas he explains also underwent a bureaucratic pilgrimage within colonies.9 Being denied
access to positions of power in the metropole, they instead found meaning in the comradeship
shared by other colonial people who were sent to the same cities in the colony for education
and ended up working in the same bureaucratic centers. This created a common identity
among individuals who otherwise came from dissimilar backgrounds. Thus, a place such as
Indonesia was able to construct a mutual imagined community partially from the shared
experiences of traveling bureaucrats and from the rise of shared languages.
To conclude, Anderson’s book Imagined Communities brings up three principal points.
First, the concept of nation was aided by social and economic changes during the 17th
century, specifically Enlightenment thought, the decline of Latin, and the emergence of
capitalism. Second, print-capitalism provided the vehicle through which individuals could
imagine their communities and establish the necessary mental and communicative ties with
one another to make those imaginings real. Third, the actual spread of nationalism occurred
in three waves that all experienced nationalistic sentiment rising from the influence of print-
capitalism, shared grievances, and shared secular pilgrimages.

9
Anderson, Imagined Communities p.114

8
References

[1] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London, New York, Verso, Revised Edition,
2006