Imagined Communities

by

Benedict Anderson

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Official Nationalism Term Analysis

Official nationalism refers to a ruling class’s efforts to arouse nationalist sentiment among the public. It is often used as a means of holding on to power in response to threats posed by popular nationalism, but it is also sometimes used to garner support for existing leaders, policy agendas, or imperialist ambitions. Anderson notes that this is an inevitably contradictory policy, especially when an imperial power sings its own praises in the countries it has conquered or when a leader tells oppressed people that they must agree with their government in order to count as patriotic. But official nationalism’s ability to divert attention from the missteps of a ruling party and suppress dissent through patriotism make it particularly effective, to the point that it has become a standard ideology for contemporary nations.

Official Nationalism Quotes in Imagined Communities

The Imagined Communities quotes below are all either spoken by Official Nationalism or refer to Official Nationalism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

Insofar as all dynasts by mid-century were using some vernacular as language-of-state, and also because of the rapidly rising prestige all over Europe of the national idea, there was a discernible tendency among the Euro-Mediterranean monarchies to sidle towards a beckoning national identification. Romanovs discovered they were Great Russians, Hanoverians that they were English, Hohenzollerns that they were Germans—and with rather more difficulty their cousins turned Romanian, Greek, and so forth. On the one hand, these new identifications shored up legitimacies which, in an age of capitalism, scepticism, and science, could less and less safely rest on putative sacrality and sheer antiquity. On the other hand, they posed new dangers. If Kaiser Wilhelm II cast himself as “No. 1 German,” he implicitly conceded that he was one among many of the same kind as himself, that he had a representative function, and therefore could, in principle, be a traitor to his fellow-Germans (something inconceivable in the dynasty’s heyday. Traitor to whom or to what?).

Related Characters: Benedict Anderson (speaker)
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Thus the model of official nationalism assumes its relevance above all at the moment when revolutionaries successfully take control of the state, and are for the first time in a position to use the power of the state in pursuit of their visions. The relevance is all the greater insofar as even the most determinedly radical revolutionaries always, to some degree, inherit the state from the fallen regime.

Related Characters: Benedict Anderson (speaker)
Page Number: 159
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

In the original edition of Imagined Communities I wrote that so often in the “nation-building” policies of the new states one sees both a genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm, and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative regulations, and so forth. My short-sighted assumption then was that official nationalism in the colonized worlds of Asia and Africa was modelled directly on that of the dynastic states of nineteenth-century Europe. Subsequent reflection has persuaded me that this view was hasty and superficial, and that the immediate genealogy should be traced to the imaginings of the colonial state. At first sight, this conclusion may seem surprising, since colonial states were typically anti-nationalist, and often violently so. But if one looks beneath colonial ideologies and policies to the grammar in which, from the mid nineteenth century, they were deployed, the lineage becomes decidedly more clear.

Related Characters: Benedict Anderson (speaker)
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
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Official Nationalism Term Timeline in Imagined Communities

The timeline below shows where the term Official Nationalism appears in Imagined Communities. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: Official Nationalism and Imperialism
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Language, Publishing, and Identity Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
Anderson offers a few examples of official nationalism in European empires. As of 1832, the Russian Empire was full of various languages and... (full context)
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
Anderson’s third and final example of official nationalism is the restoration of the Meiji oligarchy in Japan, which retook power in 1868 and... (full context)
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
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... (full context)
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
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... (full context)
Chapter 7: The Last Wave
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
...mostly outside Europe but still used European languages in government. They combined popular nationalism with official nationalism , and are still largely works in progress. And they preserved the borders drawn by... (full context)
Language, Publishing, and Identity Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
...the same news, and leaders are also aware of how to use “systems modelled on official nationalism ’s; elections, party organizations, and cultural celebrations” to make people feel like citizens. Although language... (full context)
Chapter 8: Patriotism and Racism
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
...nations. In empires, racism arose when the upper classes tried to replace popular nationalism with official nationalism , and because the bourgeoisie could pretend to be nobility in colonies, performing “capitalism in... (full context)
Chapter 9: The Angel of History
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
...as Cambodia’s genocidal atrocities were largely the result of its government replicating Soviet models, “ official nationalism ” has become a standard state policy whenever a new regime takes power. This allows... (full context)
Chapter 10: Census, Map, Museum
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
Piracy and the Uses of History Theme Icon
...of Imagined Communities, Anderson begins by throwing out his previous argument that African and Asian official nationalisms were “modelled directly on that of the dynastic states of nineteenth-century Europe.” Instead, he thinks... (full context)
The Nation as Imagined Community Theme Icon
Centralization, Technology, and Power Theme Icon
Anderson sees “two final avatars of the map” as crucial precursors to post-independence official nationalisms . First is the way Europeans used maps to justify their rule, claiming to have... (full context)