Imagined Communities
This book has made me start thinking about the relationship between nations and myself. After gaining such a comprehensive understanding of the origins of nations, it has provided me with a different perspective on the events occurring on this land of Taiwan, especially regarding political issues. When facing the fervor of fellow citizens on specific issues, I will try to understand it and reflect through the essence of nationalism. By attempting to transcend the framework of nationalism, many problems will be resolved.
In the author’s epilogue, the spread of translations of this book, originally written in English, suggests that the alliance between print-capitalism and the past ultimately destroyed the church’s Latin hegemony and catalyzed the vernacular nationalist movements’ force, which remains strong five hundred years later. This view aligns with my thoughts on English after reading this book. Despite wanting to fully understand the author’s ideas by borrowing the English version, I found my ability insufficient, with almost every page containing unfamiliar terms. Comparing it with the Chinese translation revealed its importance. I hope to continue improving my English in the future, using this new era’s Latin to understand the world better and enhance my thinking.
Notes
A nation is an imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because even the smallest nation has members who will never know most of their fellow members, but in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. Nations are imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. They are imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age when Enlightenment and revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Nations dream of being free, and the gauge and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.
The ancient conception of time differs from the modern one. At the close of the Middle Ages, the notion of “homogeneous, empty time” began to form. Ancient people saw time as finite and ending, whereas modern people see time as infinite and foreseeable. Religion once had the power to explain everything, but as its influence waned, the imagined community of nationalism began to fill this void, providing a new way to understand death.
Print-capitalism, alongside the diversity and determinism of language, indirectly led to the formation of nation-states. After the saturation of Latin books, capitalist-driven printers started publishing books written in vernacular languages to reach a larger population. The success of the Reformation, which also benefited from print-capitalism, saw Martin Luther become the first bestselling author known for his books. As Latin transformed and specific vernaculars used by monarchs spread unintentionally, a new form of imagined community became possible.
Why is South America divided into many countries despite all speaking Spanish? The influence of American independence and French revolutionary republicanism was significant, with Venezuela’s first republic constitution heavily inspired by the American constitution. Additionally, between the 16th and 18th centuries, each region was a relatively independent administrative unit of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish crown limited the power and status of Creoles to strengthen control, restricting their paths to advancement within the empire. Newspapers, in a very natural and even non-political way, created an imagined community of common belonging among a specific combination of readers. Economic interests, liberalism, and the Enlightenment did not offer a new ideological framework; instead, Creole officials on pilgrimage and local Creole printers played decisive historical roles.
The independence movements in the Americas inspired European nationalist movements. The French Revolution later became the exemplar of national movements, although its leaders and goals were diverse and complex (once it occurred, it entered the cumulative memory of print). As Europe discovered it was not the center of the world, the sacred language of Latin gradually declined, and regional vernaculars began to rise, reflecting and promoting the localization of power. The independence movements in North and South America were widely disseminated through print media and became blueprints for European national independence movements.
Official nationalism emerged as empires sought to unify governance and consolidate central control by choosing one language as the official language, often inciting opposition from non-speakers of that language. Empires used official nationalism to counter these oppositions and solidify domestic rule. For example, the Austrian Empire’s promotion of German as the official language sparked strong resistance from non-German-speaking groups like the Hungarians. Similarly, Hungary faced opposition and conflict when implementing Magyarization policies. Additionally, King Rama VI of Thailand promoted universal education to prevent potential Chinese rebellion, aiming to strengthen national identity and modernization. However, official nationalism contained inherent contradictions, which over time often led to the awakening and resistance of native elites (who also could not hold positions in the colonial mother country), further complicated by the nationalization of the imperial mother country itself, ultimately shaking the empire’s foundations.
The final wave saw the rise of nation-states in Asia and Africa, occurring in European powers’ colonies in these regions. Official nationalism combined with old empires propelled the consciousness of nation-states in the colonies. For example, the Russian Empire’s policy of “Russification” aimed to assimilate various nationalities, but these policies instead fostered local national consciousness. The experiences of nation-states established in Europe and America in the previous century served as models. The colonial bureaucratic systems, education systems, and other modern facilities inadvertently helped the colonized peoples imagine their borders and identity, forming the basis for establishing nation-states. The author compares the developments of Indonesia and Indochina. In Indonesia, Dutch colonizers established a relatively unified education system and bureaucracy, with promotions leading to the colonial capital, fostering a unified national consciousness and eventually leading to a unified Indonesia. In contrast, French colonialists in Indochina failed to establish a unified education and promotion system, leading to the region’s post-independence fragmentation into several small countries.
Patriotism is inspired by language and culture, allowing individuals to join a nation through naturalization; racism is determined by perceived inherent, unchangeable traits, making it exclusive. Since the nation is seen as both historically inevitable and an imagined community, it presents itself as both open and closed. However, the roots of racism lie in class ideology, aimed more at internal oppression and domination than external warfare. As an argument, reverse racism rarely appears in anti-colonial movements, indicating that these movements mainly focus on overthrowing colonial rule rather than establishing new structures of racial oppression.
Official nationalism was initially a policy to protect empires. When revolutionaries gained state power, these new leaders often inherited the national apparatus from the previous regime and amplified official nationalism. This is because revolutionaries needed to utilize existing state structures and resources to consolidate their new regime.
Censuses, maps, and museums are colonial governments’ imagined projections of the land, strongly influencing the establishment of nation-states in former colonies. Colonial governments’ censuses systematically categorized ethnicities and races, maps provided a tangible shape of the nation, and the rise of museums and colonial archaeology reinterpreted monuments as secular symbols of colonial governmental authority.
Since nations have no clear origin, their history is written retrospectively, inevitably involving the remembering and forgetting of certain aspects. Even violent deaths must be remembered/forgotten as “our own.”
(This reflection was translated by GPT.)
