Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Imagined Communities, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nation as Imagined Community
Language, Publishing, and Identity
Centralization, Technology, and Power
Piracy and the Uses of History
Summary
Analysis
Anderson begins by noting that ethnicity had nothing to do with 19th-century monarchies—virtually every one ruled over ethnic groups besides its own—and that each dynasty turned the local vernacular into its administrative language as “a matter of unselfconscious inheritance or convenience.” In parallel, languages became the basis of specific imagined communities. So the same language could be at once the dynasty’s “universal-imperial” language and the people’s “particular-national” one, and dynasties had to choose between promoting different languages and satisfying the groups who spoke them. When they moved toward a single language and “a beckoning national identification,” becoming representatives for their populations rather than untouchable rulers, each dynasty gained both legitimacy and a possibility of being ousted. Of course, this whole process was a response to “the popular national movements” that grew from the 1820s onward, and ultimately was merely “the empire [trying] to appear attractive in national drag.”
The rise of nationalism, Anderson emphasizes, also meant the rise of ethnicity as a politically relevant category. Although many contemporary readers might assume that old European monarchies never had to deal with ethnicity because they were homogeneous, in fact this was not at all the case: monarchies and empires were often diverse, but because there was no question of the people ever ruling themselves, it never mattered whether the people shared ethnic ties with one another or their rulers. Here, Anderson begins to separate two strains of nationalism: top-down “official” policy (which turned vernacular languages into “universal-imperial” symbols of the state and its power) and bottom-up “popular” movements by people who wanted to take power into their own hands (and who saw their language as representing their “particular-national” identity, the imagined community on the basis of which they claimed independence). Anderson notes that the first, official nationalism, strategically stole the tools of the second, popular nationalism, which posed a threat to it. That is, when the people demanded representation, monarchies and empires did everything possible (including adopting the people’s language) to make it look like they were the representatives that were being called for (even though they clearly were not). Official nationalism, then, is a sinister example of what Anderson calls “piracy”: states copied revolutionaries to paint themselves as the solution rather than the problem.
Themes
Anderson offers a few examples of official nationalism in European empires. As of 1832, the Russian Empire was full of various languages and ethnicities, with (for example) many provinces dominated by German, while the St. Petersburg court spoke French. Over the next century, it gradually “Russified” itself and its subjects through policy changes that eliminated other languages over the course of some 70 years, attracting rebellions in response.
The Russian Empire switched from French to Russian in an attempt to keep up with the times and recast its absolute monarchs as legitimate representatives of the people. But it is clear that both the “people” themselves and the monarch’s status as a “representative” for them were tenuous, constructed realities at best: there was no unified “Russian” people ruled by the “Russian” Empire, whose rulers did not even speak Russian.
Themes
Secondly, Anderson looks at the British Empire. On the one hand, Scotland inadvertently Anglicized itself by learning English, suppressing native Gaelic languages, and linking its economy, governance, and education system to London. On the other hand, the elite classes from the British Empire’s “grab-bag of primarily tropical possessions”—including even the majority-white ones—were unable to do this and were instead confined to work in their own colonies, despite being forced to learn British ways and educate themselves in England first. For Anderson, this is damning proof of “the inner incompatibility of empire and nation.”
The British Empire is like the Russian Empire because both forced a language on the peoples they ruled—the British forced Scotland and many of their overseas colonies to speak English. But the British Empire is also distinct because it elevated Scotland above virtually all the rest of its colonies (to the point that Scotland, along with Wales and Northern Ireland, became an integral part of the “United Kingdom” after the end of the Empire). Anderson thinks “empire and nation” are fundamentally “incompatible” because the nation relies on the idea of a people governing itself, and the empire relies on the idea of a single group governing a large number of different and distant ones.
Themes
Anderson’s third and final example of official nationalism is the restoration of the Meiji oligarchy in Japan, which retook power in 1868 and immediately began dissolving class distinctions and trying to unify what later became the national territory. In a matter of decades, their success “turn[ed] Japan into an independent military power” on par with those of Europe. Japan’s homogeneity and isolation contributed to its sense of a danger from Europe’s growing empires, and its desire to copy these European dynasties led it to “aggressive imperialist” policies that ravaged Asia. At the turn of the 20th century, after all, “great nations” were understood as synonymous with “global conquerors.”
Japan’s sincere desire to “pirate” nationalism—to follow in the footsteps of its European official nationalist predecessors both in order to establish itself and in order to defend itself against possible encroachment—led it to build a brutal, expansionist empire. This sequence of events exemplifies the dangers of assuming a political strategy is justified, correct, or effective just because it is common or accepted. The collective imitation of European empires not only made “great nations” mean “global conquerors,” but it also prevented governments from seeing, criticizing, or stopping the ways these empires brutally violated the sovereignty of non-European peoples.
Themes
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Anderson next turns from “these three varied cases of ‘official nationalism’” to two smaller states that followed in these larger empires’ footsteps in order to defend themselves. First, the king of Siam (Thailand) built up his diplomatic position and began importing Chinese laborers to build infrastructure. His British-educated son took over in 1910 and turned against the Chinese, who were moving away from the dynastic model. These two monarchs used nationalism to prevent their “marginalization or exclusion from an emerging nationally-imagined community” (the Empires forming around them).
Thailand, like Japan, copied European nationalism—but on a much smaller scale, in an attempt to maintain its independence. This again reinforces Anderson’s thesis that nationalism is a cultural form: Thailand needed to win respect by speaking the language of European empires, as it were, by showing them that it was capable of keeping up with them and governing itself in ways they considered legitimate.
Themes
Similarly, the ethnic Hungarian (Magyar) elite running their province under German rule spent 60 years uncertain about whether to allow Hungarian to become their principal language, and only a few years after they successfully made it so, a popular nationalist rebellion overthrew them. The “official” imperial nationalists regained power after a few years, and trouble at the capital in Vienna gave them much more autonomy in Hungary, which they in turn used to ensure the ethnic Hungarian gentry had all the government jobs. “Later than almost anywhere else,” the ruling Hapsburgs continued to believe their dynasty was sanctioned by God, and they even allied with socialists who wanted a “United States of Great Austria” (in part because its territorial continuity with the empire would lend it legitimacy).
The Magyars copied other European empires by using the tools of official nationalism despite their provincial status and relative lack of power. Of course, the fact that they lost their power shows that popular and official nationalism are essentially opposite, even if they use comparable strategies. But once they reestablished power, they effectively finished the transition from monarchy to (monarchy-approved) nation, all within the context of the Hapsburgs’ relatively backward concept of their own power and desire to hold onto the structure of empire.
Themes
Anderson concludes this chapter by summarizing his argument. The “official nationalisms” followed “popular linguistic-nationalisms” as “power-groups” tried to hold onto their control when faced with the rise of “popular imagined communities.” These official nationalisms arose beyond Europe and beyond the major empires, but always “concealed a discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm.” The rulers tried to tell their subjects that they were all the same, even if the rulers were British and the subjects were Indian, for example. Ultimately, the subjects always ended up knowing better, and since their colonies have achieved their independence, the old ruling classes in the imperial center have admitted that their “official nationalism” was self-serving and strategic but continued to fantasize about running empires.
In all, Anderson’s argument about piracy has two primary forms: first, some countries copied others’ forms of nationalism, and second, governments copied popular nationalisms to hold onto power and challenge the political potential of revolutionary movements. Anderson’s emphasis on the inherent contradiction between nationalism, on the one hand, and monarchy, empire, and dynasty, on the other, indicates that the former has always been bound to overtake the latter (as his next chapter will address). But Europeans’ nostalgia for empire also shows that, for those in power, accepting or erasing this contradiction is straightforward—one can easily learn to believe that one’s own group deserves popular sovereignty as a nation, while other groups are inferior and should be ruled by external powers.
Themes
