Imagined Communities: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Anderson moves on from American nationalisms between 1760-1830 to European nationalisms from 1820-1920, which he says had two distinctive characteristics: the importance of “national print-languages” and the ability to model after previous revolutions and “consciously aspire[]” to nationhood.

The notion that language, territory, and nation could be linked grew out from the historical creation of a distinction between antiquity and modernity, which, like the “‘discovery’ of grandiose civilizations” in Asia and the Americas, made it “possible to think of Europe as only one among many civilizations, and not necessarily the Chosen or the best.” Language studies revealed that non-European languages were older and made it clear that Europe’s “old sacred languages” were really just like any other. “Since now none [of the languages] belonged to God,” Anderson explains, “their new owners [were] each language’s native speakers—and readers.” This allowed vernacular languages to gain official and even literary status in place of Latin and Greek, due to the efforts of not only grammarians and lexicographers but also fiction writers, classical composers, and of course the “reading classes” themselves.

These “reading classes” were fairly small for most of the 19th century but grew substantially because of two factors. First was the bureaucratization of European governments, which meant many middle-class people had to read in order to work as colonial administrators. Second was the creation of a capitalist bourgeoisie, which, unlike the old aristocracy, did not define itself by personal or blood relations, but rather by recognizing its members’ shared economic interests, even if they lived across the country from one another. They could maintain these connections only through print, and so while “an illiterate nobility could still act as a nobility,” in contrast “an illiterate bourgeoisie is scarcely imaginable.”

Of course, “the philological revolution” did not equally affect all these groups in every instance, but it still did mean that Latin was effectively replaced by vernaculars across Europe. This happened more quickly in Western European countries that were more linguistically homogeneous and quicker to repress minority languages, and more slowly in places like Austria-Hungary, where various groups fought to advance their vernaculars at the expense of others. Similarly, each nationalism formed with the influence of its local upper classes, which varied greatly in the source and magnitude of their power. The most common formation “was a coalition of lesser gentries, academics, professionals, and businessmen, in which the first often provided leaders of ‘standing,’ the second and third myths, poetry, newspapers, and ideological formulations, and the last money and marketing facilities.” And in general the spread of literacy allowed the masses to join the nationalist revolution.

In closing, Anderson returns to the second factor he introduced at the beginning of this chapter, which will be the subject of the following one: piracy, essentially meaning that Europeans copied the “‘model’ of ‘the’ independent national state” provided by previous revolutions and widely available by the middle of the 19th century. An important facet of this piracy was the notion that “the ultimate locus of sovereignty” would be the people themselves—all of them—which helped account for “the ‘populist’ character of the early European nationalisms.”