Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of NationalismVerso, 1991 - 224 pages What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality—the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to the nation—has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa. This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old. |
Table des matières
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
| 37 | |
| 47 | |
| 67 | |
| 83 | |
The Last Wave | 113 |
Patriotism and Racism | 141 |
The Angel of History | 155 |
Census Map Museum | 163 |
Memory and Forgetting | 187 |
Bibliography | 207 |
Index | 213 |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
administrative already American antiquity appeared Asia became become British capitalism census central chapter Chinese Christian civil colonial comparable conception consciousness continuity course created creole cultural developed Dutch dynastic earlier early East educational effect eighteenth century empire English Europe European example existed fact France French German groups hand idea imagined imagined community imperial important independence Indian Indonesian Italy language largely late later Latin less linguistic living Magyar Marxism means military movements nationalist native naturally never newspaper nineteenth century noted numbers official official nationalism original particular perhaps political popular population possible produced realm reason regime religious revolutionary ruled schools sense shows Siam social society Southeast Spanish speak successful territories traditional turn United University vernacular Vietnamese Western young
Fréquemment cités
Page 146 - But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow!
Page 147 - ... with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already out-lasted their monuments, and mechanical preservations.
Page 146 - Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning ; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast...
Page 146 - Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory ; We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory.
Page x - Whose gend'ring offspring quickly learn'd to bow, And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough ; From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came, With neither name nor nation, speech or fame...
Page 35 - It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull. Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion.
Page 91 - We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern ; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
Page 6 - In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-toface contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.
Page 149 - The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations: outside history.
Page 86 - Ages, or, to put it another way, for stretching the short, tight, skin of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire.