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Course of Study: HIST2981. The White Nile: Conflict, Power and Identity,
1820-2006
Name of Designated Person authorising scanning: Stephen Atkinson
Title: Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. (1991) Extracts from introduction, and chapters
2, 3 and 7. In Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of
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Introduction

Perhaps \vithout being Illuch noticed yet. a fundanlcntal tranSf()nl1ation in the history of Marxisnl and Marxist movements is upon us. Its
ITIOst visible signs are the recent ""oars bet\veen Vietnam. Calnbodia
and China. These \vars are of \vorld-historical inlponance because
they are the first to occur bet\veen reginles \\hose independence and
revolutionarv credentials are undeniable, and because none of the
belligerents has nlade n10re than the nlost perfunctory atten1pts to
the bloodshed in terms of a recognizable J/,lrxist theoretical
perspective. While it \vas still just possible to interpret the Sino-So\'iet
border clashes of 1969. and the Soviet 111ilitarv interventions in
C;ennany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (196H). and l\Jghanistan (1980) in tenl1S of - according to taste - 'social inlperialisI1l.
.detending socialisrTI,' etc .. no one. I inlagine, seriously believes that
such vocabularies have much bearing on \vhat has occurred In
Indochina.
If the Vietnamese invasion and occupatIon of Cambodia In
Decenlber 1978 and January 1979 represented the first lm:\?c-s(Lllc
[(lllt'C1ltioflal tHlr \vaged by one revolutionary Marxist regime against
another. t China's assault on Vietnam in February rapidly contlnned

1. Thili fonnulation is chosen "Imply to emphasize the s(ale .md the lityle of the
tighting. not to assi!-,'11 hlame , To ;l\'oid possihle
It should be ",ud th.lt
the I )l'cemhcr 197H invasion L'Te\\' out of ,lrnled cia,hc" betwl'cn P.lrtlS,lIl<; of the

IMAGINED C()MMUNITIES

the precedent. ()nly the most trusting \vould dare \vager that in the
declining years of this century any signifIcant outbreak of inter-state
and the
- let alone the
hostilities \vill necessarilv find the
smaller socialist states - supporting, or fIghting on, the same side. Who
can be confident that Yugoslavia and Albania \vill not one day COllIe
to bIo\\Ts? Those variegated groups \\'ho seek a \vithdra\val of the Red
Anny fron1 its encan1pn1ents in Eastern Europe should relllind
then1sclves of the degree to \vhich its ovef\\Ohehning presence has,
since 1945. ruled out arnled conflict between the region's Marxist
regtmes.
Such considerations Sef\T to underline the fact that since World
War II evef\T successful revolution has defined itself in l1ational tenns
- the People 's
of China, the Socialist H. epublic ot
Vietnam. and so forth - and. in so doing. has grounded itselt
fimlly in a territorial and social space inherited fron1 the prerevolutionary past. Conversely, the fact that the Soviet Union shares \\'ith
the United KingdoI11 of C;reat Britain and Northern Ireland the rare
distinction of refusing nationality in its naIl1ing suggests that it is as
much the legatee of the prenational dynastic states of the nineteenth
century as the precursor of a t\venty-tlrst century internationalist
order. Eric Hobsba\Vn1 is perfectly correct in stating that Marxist
movements and states have tended to becollle national not onIv,
in foml but in substance, i.e .. nationalist. There is nothing to suggest

.-

two revolutIonary
going back
as far as 1971. After April
1977, border raids, initiated by the Camhodi,lI1\, hut qlllckly followed hy the
Vietnamese, grl'\' in size and ,cope. culIllin,ning III the major VIetnamese
incursion of December 1977. None of thc,e raid". howevn, aimed at overthrowing enemy rq..,rimes or occupying Llrge territOrIes, nor were the numhers of
troop" involved (ompJrahle to tho-.e deployed III I )ecembcr 197H. The contro\Oer.-.y ovcr the causes of the war j .. most thoughtfully pursued in: Stt'phl'n P.
Heder. 'The K,lI11pucheJn-Vietnat11ese Conflict.' in David W. P. Elhott. ed.,
Thf 71l1rd [,ldo(hi1ljl Co,!{1ia. pp. 21-()7: Anthony Barnett. 'Intef-Communi"t
Conflicts and Vietnam.' Bul/eti" l?( COll(cmfd .15il111 S(11011,..\, 11: 4 (OctohcrDecember 1<)7<)). pp. 2-<): and Laura Summers. 'In Matters of War and
Sociahsm Anthony BarIlctt \\;ould Shame and Honour Kampuchea Too Much.'
ibido, pp. 1(}-1 H.
2. Anyone who has doubts about the UK ... claIms to such parity with the USSR
'ihould ask himself what nationality Its name
Great Bnto-lrish?

INTRODUCTION

that this trend \\rill not continue.,3 Nor is the tendency confined to
the socialist \vorId. Almost every year the United Nations admits
new nlcmbers. And many
nations,' once thought fully consolidated, find thenlselves challenged by 'sub' -nationalisms \\Tithin
their borders - nationalisnls \\rhich, naturally, dreanl of shedding this
sub-ness one happy day. The reality is quite plain: the 'end of the
era of nationalisIll,' so long prophesied. is not remotely in sight..
Indeed, nation-ness is the n10st universally legitimate value in the
political life of our time.
But if the facts are clear. their explanation reIllains a nlatter of
long-standing dispute. Nation. nationality. nationalisI11 - all have
proved notoriously difficult to define. let alone to analyse In contrast
to the ilnn1ense influence that nationalism has exerted on the nl0dern
\vorId, plausible theory about it is conspicuously Ineagre. Hugh
Seton-Watson. author of far the best and most comprehensive
English-language text on nationalism. and heir to a vast tradition
of liberal historiography and social science. sadly observes:
I anl
dril'ell to the conclusion that no "scientific definition" of the nation
can be devised; yet the phenomenon has existed and exists. ,4 Tom
Nain1, author of the path-breaking The Break-up
Britain, and heir
to the scarcely less vast tradition of Marxist historiography and social
theory of nationalis1l1 represents
science. candidly remarks:
Marxisnl's great historical failure.''=; But even this contession is
sonle\vhat misleading, insofar as it can be taken to inlply the
regrettable outconle of a long, self-conscious search tor theoretical
clarity. It \vould be nlorc exact to say that nationalism has proved an
uncolnfortablc allomaly for Marxist theory and. precisely tor that
reason, has been largely elided, rather than contronted. Ho\\" else to
explain Marx' s failure to explicate the crucial adjective in his
nle1l10rable tonnulation of 1H4H:
proletariat of each country

.l Eric Hob"bawlll. 'Some Reflections on "The Break-up of Britain" ' ..\"fH' 4ti
(Septetnber-()ctoher 1l)77). p. 13.
4. See his .\"ari<lllS arid SftltfS. p. 5. Emphasis added.
5. See his 'The Modern Janus' .."""'eH' Lt:ti Rel,iel4', l)4 (November-Dccetnber 1475),
p. 3. This essay is included unchanged in Thc' Bre'lk-up Britai" as chapter l) (pp. 32lJRl'l'ieu'. ] 05

(3).

IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

must, of course, first of all settle matters with its OUJtl bourgeoisie ,?6
How else to account for the use, for over a century, of the concept
"national bourgeoisie' without any serious attempt to justify theoretically the relevance of the adjective? Why is this segmentation of the
bourgeoisie - a \vorld-class insofar as it is defined in terms of the
relations of production - theoretically significant?
The ainl of this book is to offer some tentative suggestions for a
nlore satisfactory interpretation of the "anomaly' of nationalisnl. My
sense is that on this topic both Marxist and liberal theory have beconle
etiolated in a late Ptolelllaic effort to 'save the phenolllena'; and that a
reorientation of perspective in. as it were, a Copernican spirit is
urgently required. My point of departure is that nationality, or, as
one might prefer to put it in vie\\' of that word's multiple significations,
nation-ness, as \vell as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular
killd. To understand them properly we need to consider carefully how
they have conle into historical being, in what ways their nleanings have
changed over tinle, and why, today, they command such profound
emotional legitimacy. I \vill be trying to argue that the creation of these
7
artefacts towards the end of the' eighteenth century was the spontaneous distillation of a complex crossing' of discrete historical forces;
but that, once created. they becanle 'Inodular,' capable of being
transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a great
variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations. I will also
attempt to sho\v \vhy these particular cultural artefacts have aroused
such deep attachlllents.

(l. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 77,C Cotnrmmist .Hatl!/l'stO. in the Selected I'Vorks.
I, p. 45.
added. In any theoretical exegesis, the words 'of course' should flash
red lights before the transported reader.
7. As Aira Kemilainen note'l. the t\\.in 'foundmg fathers' of academic scholarship
on nationalism, Hans Kohn and Carleton Hayes, argued persuasively for this dating.
Their conclusions have, I think, not been seriously disputed except by nationalist
ideologues in particular COUJltries. Kemilainen also observes that the word 'nationalism'
did not come into wide general use until the end of the nineteenth century. It did not
occur. tor example. in many standard nineteenth century lexicons. If Adam Smith
conjured with the wealth of ,nations,' he meant by the tenn no more than 'societies' or
'states.' Aira Kcmilaincn, .,Oationalism, pp. 1n. 33, 3nd 4H-49.

I NTR() DU (:TI()N

C()NCEPTS ANI) I)EFI NITI ONS

Before addressing the questions raised above. it seems advisable to

consider briefly the concept of 'nation' and offer a workable definition. 'Theorists of nationalisll1 have often been perplexed. not to say
irritated. by these three paradoxes: (1) The objective 1110demity of
nations to the historian's eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes
of nationalists. (2) The fomlal universality of nationality as a sociocultural concept - in the 1110dern vvorld everyone can. should. will
'have' a nationality. as he or she 'has' a gender - vs. the irremediable
particularity of its concrete 11lanifestations. such that. by definition.
'C;reek' nationality is sui generis. (3) The 'political' po\ver of
natiollalisllls vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence.
In other \vords. unlike rnost other iSIllS. nationalisnl has never
produced its 0\\,11 grand thinkers: no Hobbeses. T ocquevilles.
Marxes. or Webers. This 'enlptiness' easily gives rise. alllong cosn10politan and polylingual intellectuals. to a certain condescension.
Like C;ertrude Stein in the face of ()akland. one can rather quickly
conclude that there is 'no there there'. It is characteristic that even so
sYll1pathetic a student of nationalislll as T on1 Nairn can nonetheless
\vrite that: '"Nationalisll1" is the pathology of lllodem developmental
history. as inescapable as "neurosis" in the individuaL \vith llluch the
sa1l1e essential an1biguity attaching to it. a sinlilar built-in capacity for
descent into denlentia. rooted in the dilclllnlas of helplessness thrust
upon 1110st of the \\'orId (the equivalent of infantilislll for societies)
and largely incurable.,H
Part of the difficulty is that one tends unconsciously to hypostasize the existence of Nationalislll-\\'ith-a-big-N (rather as onc
Il1ight Age-\vith-a-capital-A) and then to
'it' as 111 ideology.
(Note that if everyone has an age. Age is
an analytical
expression.) It \vould. I think. Illake things easier if one treated it as
if it belonged v;ith 'kinship' and 'religion', rather than \\'ith
'liberalistll' or 'fascis111.
In an anthropolobTica1 spirit. then, I propose the tollo\ving

H. 71u' Brcuk-ul' (?f Brituill. p . .159.

IMAGINED C(}MMUNITIES

definition of the nation: It IS an imagined political community - and

imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.
It is ima,Rilled because the members of even the smallest nation \vill
never kno\v n10st of their fellow-nlembcrs, nleet thenl, or even hear
of them, yet in the nlinds of each lives the iInage of their
COlnnlunion. l) Renan referred to this inlagining in his suavely
back-handed \vay \vhen he \\Tote that 'Or ressence d'une nation
est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en comnlun, et
que tous aient oublic bien des choses.' 111 With a certain ferocity
Gellner makes a conlparable point \"hen he rules that 'Nationalisnl is
not the a\vakening of nations to self-consciousness: it ;lll'Ctlts nations
\vhere they do not exist. ,11 The dra\vback to this fornlulation,
ho\vever. is that Gellner is so anxious to sho\v that nationalism
masquerades under false pretences that he assimilates 'invention' to
'fabrication' and 'falsity', rather than to 'itnagining' and 'creation'. In
this \vay he implies that 'true' comnlunities exist \vhich can be
advantageously juxtaposed to nations. In tact, all communities larger
than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even
these) are imagined Communities are to be distinguished, not by
their falsity/genuineness. but by the style in \vhich they arc inlagined, Javanese villagers have ahvays kno\vn that they are connected
to people they have never seen. but these ties were once imagined
particularistically - as indefinitely stretchable nets of kinship and
clientship. Until quite recently. the Javanese language had no \\lord
meaning the abstraction 'society.' We IHa), today think of the
French aristocracy of the c1llciCll n:t!iml' as a
but surely It \vas

Y. er Seton-W 3 to;,o 11 , .'at;(l1/.'i (lI11i States. p . .i: 'All that I can find to
i!'
a
number of people In .} community consider tlH.'mo;,ehTo;,
na Oll exists when J
to t()nl1 cl nation. or hehavc J'; if they f()mlCd one. We may translate 'consider
thelllsehTS' ao;, 'imagine them.;elves.'
10. Enlcst Rcnan, 'Qu'cst-ce qu'unc nation?' in OElIl'res COmplftfs. 1, p.
He
adds: 'tout citoyen fran\aio;, dait Jyoir ouhlic 1.1 Saint-Bartht'1cmy. lcs massacres du Midi
an XlIIe sit-ell'. 11 n'y a pas en France dix tamille<; qui pui"o;,ent ttHlnlir la preuye cl'une
origine franque ... '
11. Emest Gellner. T7zOIlrhr mzd Chml{Jc, o. 1h9. Enlohasis added.
tl

I NTR()DU CTl()N

illlagined this v.:ay on Iy very late. - To the question 'Who is the

(:Olnte de X?' the nOrInal ans\\'er \vould have been, not 'a tnember
of the aristocracy: hut 'the lord of X,' 'the uncle of the Baronne de
Y,' or 'a client of the I)uc de Z.'
The nation is in1ah"ned as limited because even the largest of them,
encolnpassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic,
boundaries, beyond \vhich lie other nations. No nation imagines itself
coterIninous \,"jth Illankind . The nl0st messianic nationalists do not
dreanl of a day \\'hen all the ll1enlbers of the hun1an race will join their
nation in the \vay that it \vas possible, in certain epochs, for, say,
C:hristial1s to dreanl of a \\'ho11y Christian planet.
It is inlah"ned as slJl'Crc(l?l1 because the concept \\'as born in an age in
\\'hich Enlightenlllent and Revolution \vere destroying the legitimacy
of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to
lllatllrity at a stage of hUlnan history \\hen even the most devout
adherents of any universal religion \\'ere inescapably confronted \vith
the living pitlr(7lism of such rdibrions, and the allon10rphism bet\veen
each 6ith's ontological claill1s and territorial stretch, nations dreatn of
being trcc, and. if under God, directly so. The gage and etnblem of this
frl'cdoIl1 is the so\'ereign state.
Finally. it is inlahrined as a (l>11l11ltHlit)'. because, regardless of the actual
inequality and exploitation that l11ay prevail in each. the nation is ah\1ays
conceived as a deep. horizontal cOIl1radcship Ultitnatcly it is this
fratcrnity that 111akcs it possible, o\'er the past t\\'o centuries, for so
nlany Inillions of people. not so Il1uch to kill, as \\'illingly to die for such
lil11itcd inlaginings.
These deaths bring liS ahruptly 6ce to t:lce \\'ith the central problem
posed hy nationalisnl: \\'hat l11akes the shrunkl'J1 ilnaginings of recent
history (scarcely l110rc than t\vo centuries) generate such colossal
J believe that the beginnings of an ans\vcr lie in the cultural
roots of nationalisnl.

12. Hob'lb,l\\'I1l, t(lr cx.1Il1pk. 'tixt< it by '3ymg that ill 17H9 it llumblTcd about
-to(),OOO ill .1 popUlatlOIl uf 2.'.()OO.Ot)O. (Scc hi, '171('
p. 7H), But would
thb st30,ticll pICture {If the Ilobles . . e h,lH' bccn lI11agilubk under tht' at/cicl!

IMAGINED <:OMMUNITIES

everyday life. As \\'ith

AJe Tangere, fiction seeps quietly and
continuously into reality, creating that remarkable confidence ot
C0I11Il1Unity in anonymity \vhich is the hallmark of modern nations.
Betore proceeding to a discussion of the specific origins of nationalisI11,
it nlay be useful to recapitulate the main propositions put forward thus
far. Essentially, I have been arguing that the very possibility of inlagining
the nation only arose historically \\'hen, and where, three fundamental
cultural conceptions, all of great antiquity, lost their axionlatic grip on
men's Illlnds. The tlrst of these \\'as the idea that a particular scriptlanguage offered privileged access to ontological truth, precisely because
it \\'as an inseparable part of that truth. It \\"as this idea that called into
being the great transcontinental sodalities of Christendom, the Islamic
U111111ah, and the rest. Second \\"as the belief that society \\'as naturally
organized around and under high centres - I1lonarchs who were persons
apart fro III other hUIl1an beings and \vho ruled by some fonn of
cosn1010gical (divine) dispensation. Human loyalties \vere necessarily
hierarchical and centripetal because the ruler, like the sacred script. was a
node of access to being and inherent in it. Third \vas a conception of
temporality in \vhich cosmology and history were indistinguishable, the
origins of the \vorld and of 111en essentially identical. COll1bined, these
ideas rooted hunlan lives fimliy in the very nature of things, giving
certain Jneaning to the everyday fatalities of existence (above all death,
loss. and servitude) and offering, in various \\'ays, redemption froll1
thenl.
The slo\\', uneven decline of these interlinked certainties, tlrst in
Western Europe, later else\\'here, under the impact of econol1uc
change, .discoveries' (social and scientific), and the development of
increasingly rapid communications, drove a harsh \vedge bet\veen
cosmology and history. No surprise then that the search was on, so
to speak, for a new \\,7ay of linking fraternity, po\ver and time nleaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor
made it more fruitful, than print-capitalisn1, \vhich made it possible for
rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to
relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways.

IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

2.1

ronlanization.
The Soviet authorities follo\ved SUIt, first \vith
an an ti- ISlalllic . anti-Persian COlllpulsory rOlnanization, then. in
24
Stalin \ 193()s, \vith a Russifying conlpulsory Cyrillicization.
We can Sllnlnlarize the conclusions to be dra\vn from the argulllCnt thus
tar by saying that the convergence of capitalis111 and print technology on
the tatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a nc\\t'
fonn of ilnagined conlmllnity. \vhich in its basic morphology set the
stage f()r the modem nation. The potential stretch of these comlllunities
\vas inherently linuted, and. at the sanle tinle, bore none but the tnost
fortuitous relationship to existing political boundaries (\vhich \vere, on
the \vhole. the high\vater marks of dynastic expansionisms).
Yet it is obvious that \\t'hile today almost all nl0dern self-conceived
nations - and also nation-states - have 'national print-languages'. many
of thenl have these languages in comlnon, and in others only a tiny
traction of the population 'uses' the national language in conversation or
on paper. The nation-states of Spanish America or those of the AngloSaxon fanlily' are conspicuous examples of the first outcome; many excolonial states, particularly in Atnca, of the second. In other \vords. the
concrete fonl1ation of contemporary nation-states is by no n1<:ans
isornorphic \\t'ith the deternlinate reach of particular print-languages.
To account tor the discontinuity-in-connectedness bet\veen printlanguages, national consciousness. and nation-states, it is necessary to
turn to the large cluster of ne\\' politica1 entities that sprang up in the
Western hell1isphere bet\veen 1776 and 1R3H, all of \vhich sdt:"
consciously defined thenlsclves as nations, and, \vith the interesting
exception of Brazil. as (non-dynastic) republics. For not only \vere they
historically the first such states to ell1erge on the \vorld stage. and
therefore inevitably provided the first real models of \vhat such states
should 'look like,' but their nUlnbers and contemporary births otTer
fruitful ground for conlparative enquiry.

23. Ham Kohn. "Dl!' Age <?r .'\"at;(",alism. p. ) OH. It is probably only tair to add th.u
Kcmal also hoped therehy to
Turkish nationalism WIth the modem. romanized
:::ivilization of Westem Europe"
24" Scton- Watson . .'\"at;01lS a"d Sta'ics. p" 3) 7.

46

THE LAST WAVE

and the political risks of Germanizing \vere plain. Legal panty

between German, French, and Italian \vas thus the obverse side
of the coin of S\yiss neutralitv. 52
All of the preceding evidence indicates that S\viss nationalisnl is
best understood as part of the 'last \vave'. If Hughes is right in dating
its birth to 1HY 1, it is not nluch more than a decade older than
Bunl1ese or Indonesian nationalism. In other \vords, it arose in that
period of \vorld history in \\"hich the nation \vas becoming an
international norm, and in \vhich it \vas possible to 'nl0del' nationness
in a lnuch n10re cOlllplcx \\'ay than hitherto. If the conservative
political. and bac k\vard socio-econolnic, structure of S\vitzerland
'delayed' the rise of nationalisn1,5_' the tact that its pre-nl0dem
political institutions \vere non-dynastic and non-nlonarchical helped
to prevent the excesses of official nationalisn1 (contrast the case of
Siarll discussed in Chapter 0). Finally. as in the case of the Southeast
Asian exaInples, the appearance of S\viss nationalism on the eve of the
C0I11nlUnications revolution of the t\ventieth century made it possible
and practical to 'represent' the imagined cOlnnlunity in \\rays that did
not require linguistic uniformity.
In conclusion. it Inay be \vorth restating the general argument of this
chapter. The 'last \yave' of nationalisms. most of them in the colonial
territories of Asia and Africa. \vas in its origins a response to the ne\\"style global inlperialis111 nlade possible by the achievements of
industrial capitalis111. As Marx put it in his inilnitable \vay: 'The
need of a constantly expanding nlarket for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the \vhole face of the globe .. 54 But capitalis111 had
also. not least hy its dissenlination of print. helped to create popular.
vernacular-based nationalislns in Europe. \\'hich to different degrees
undcnnined the age-old dynastic principle. and egged into selfRomamch".; elcv,1tion in 1(}37 scarcely
the
calculation.
The social c;tnlCture of
was ,llso backward. but
aristocrats sat
inside a huge polycthnic dynastic empire. in which their putative languagc-grour
t()rmed merely ,1 minority, Jlbl'it a very llllportant one. Slllall, republican Switzerland\
ari<;tocratic oligarchy \\",b never threatened in the same way.
Marx Jnd Engds. 'n/(' C(Jl11mlItlISr .\1.w!f'sr(J. p. 37. Who but Marx: would ha\'('
described this world-transfonlllng das" as hcing 'chased'?
1:lU

IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

naturalization every dynasty positioned to do so. Official nationalisn1

- weld of the ne\v national and old dynastic principles (the British
Ernpire) - led in turn to ,vhat, tor convenience, one can call
'Russification' in the extra-European colonies. This ideological tendency rlleshed neatly \vith practical exigencies. The late-nineteenthcentury empires ,vere too large and too far-flung to be nIled by a
handful of nationals. Moreover, in tandenl ,vith capitalisnl the state
was rapidly 111ultiplying its functions, in both the 111etropoles and the
colonies. Con1bined, these forces generated 'Russifying' schoolsyster11S intended in part to produce the required subordinate cadres
tor state and corporate bureaucracies. These school-systen1s, centralized
and standardized, created quite ne'v pilgrin1ages ,vhich typically had
their Romes in the various colonial capitals, for the nations hidden at
the core of the empires would permit no more in\vard ascension.
Usually. but by no nleans ahvays, these educational pilgrimages were
paralleled, or replicated, in the administrative sphere. The interlock
ben.veen particular educational and administrative pilgrimages provided
the territorial base tor ne\\! 'imagined conununities' in \vhich natives
could corne to see them,elves as 'nationals'. The expansion of the
colonial state ,vruch, so to speak, invited 'natives' into schools and
offices, and of colonial capitalism \vruch, as it ,vere. excluded thern from
boardrooms, meant that to an unprecedented extent the key early
spokesmen for colonial nationalism ,vere lonely. bilingual
unattached to sturdy local bourgeoisies.
As bilingual intelligentsias. ho\vever, and above all as early-tw'entiethcentury intelligentsias. they had access, inside the classroorn and outside,
to models of nation, nation-ness, and nationalisn1 distilled frorll the
turbulent, chaotic experiences of more than a century of Anlerican and
European history. These n10dels, in turn. helped to give shape to a
thousand inchoate dreams. In varying cOlnbinations, the lessons of
creole, vernacular and official nationalisnl were copied, adapted, and
improved upon. Finally, as \vith increasing speed capitalisnl transfi)nlled
the means of physical and intellectual comn1unication, the intelligentsias
found ways to bypass print in propagating the irllagined conlmunity, not
merely to illiterate n1asses. but even to literate Inasses rcadillg different
languages.

14{)