Imagined Communities: Reflections On The Origin And Spread Of Nationalism

In contrast to the national liberation movements in the Americas, language was a central element in the development of European nationalisms. The rise of nationalism in Europe began roughly as the revolutionary era that created independent nation-states in the Western Hemisphere concluded. The century of European nationalism, lasting approximately from 1820-1920, saw the collapse of dynastic empires (for example, the Austro-Hungarian and Russian monarchies) and the birth of many ethnic nationalisms. These nationalisms were marked by the critical role of vernacular languages as expressions of national identity. In contrast to the nationalist movements in the New World, they were also characterized by their populist politics, which engaged the lower classes in the struggle for national independence.

Global exploration and the acquisition of colonial empires by the European powers during the 17th and 18thcenturies gave birth to the scientific study of languages at the start of the 19thcentury. The new science of philology, through comparative studies of grammars and vocabularies, was able to classify languages into related groups and construct a family tree of European and Asian languages. Comparative linguistics had a democratizing effect on the study of languages. Stripping the old sacred languages (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) of their privileged position, it elevated the vernacular languages to an equal footing worthy of study. Anderson argues that the “energetic activities of these professional [linguists] were central to the shaping of nineteenth-century European nationalisms in complete contrast to the situation in the Americas between 1770 and 1830” (71).

The “philological revolution” of the 18th and 19thcenturies led to the publication of official grammars and histories of vernacular languages and literatures, such as modern Greek, Czech, Rumanian, Hungarian and Ukrainian. Universities in each of these homelands played a fundamental role in raising the prestige of the national language. The study of folklore, legend, myth, and epic poetry composed in the vernacular stimulated contemporary literary efforts, including nationalist poems and novels that glorified the new sense of national identity. This literary and linguistic nationalism coincided with and fostered nationalist political movements across Europe. As Anderson observes:

[T]he leaders of the burgeoning Finnish nationalist movement were ‘persons whose profession largely consisted of the handling of language: writers, teachers, pastors, and lawyers. The study of folklore and […] popular epic poetry went together with the publications of grammars and dictionaries, and led to the appearance of periodicals [in] which stronger political demands could be advanced’” (74-5).

Increased literacy among European urban and rural populations strengthened their imagination of the national communities to which they belonged, though different sociopolitical conditions influenced the form of popular nationalist movements in each of these countries. In countries with a large and well-established bourgeoisie, nationalism united (and drew strength from) several social groups. It was typical, Anderson writes:

[to find] 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 (79).

At the same time, increased literacy made it easier to arouse popular support for the nationalist cause, as the language of the masses became elevated to the status of a print-language, and, in some cases, the language of administration within a country.

Finally, nationalism in Europe benefited from the model provided by earlier independence movements in the Americas and by the French Revolution. These historical experiences, taken together, exemplified the idea of the nation as a republic comprised of a community of citizens. Anderson argues that “by the second decade of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, a ‘model’ of ‘the’ independent national state was available for pirating” by other states (81). This blueprint provided a collection of concepts and political realities:

nation-states, republican institutions, common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags and anthems, etc., and the liquidation of their conceptual opposites: dynastic empires, monarchical institutions, absolutisms […] inherited nobilities, serfdoms [etc.] (81).

This model of the nation influenced the character of European national movements, giving them a more populist and progressive quality than in the Americas.

The great wave of popular nationalisms that swept Europe in the 19thcentury posed a serious challenge to rulers, particularly in the dynastic monarchies. Russia, Great Britain, Austro-Hungary, and other states responded to popular nationalist movements with what Anderson terms “official nationalism.” Official nationalism involved a set of conservative and often reactionary policies by ruling groups to co-opt the idea of nationalism in order to preserve their dynastic powers. In Chapter Six, Anderson examines the coordination of official nationalism and imperialism in Russia, Great Britain, and Japan. He also describes the political challenges of embracing the national idea (and using a vernacular administrative language) for a backward-looking, multi-ethnic and polyglot realm like the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Anderson defines official nationalism as “an anticipatory strategy adopted by dominant groups which are threatened with marginalization or exclusion from an emerging nationally-imagined community” (101). For European monarchs, the threat that popular nationalism posed to the legitimacy of their regimes was real. Many of the ruling heads of Europe in the nineteenth-century were related through the intermarriage of royal families. Members of the same dynastic houses frequently ruled in different, occasionally rivalrous, states. Moreover, many monarchs had little relation to the nationality (or nationalities) of the territories they ruled. Anderson points out that Great Britain hasn’t been ruled by an ‘English’ dynasty since before the Norman invasion in the 11thcentury. If Bourbons ruled in both France and Spain, what nationality should they be assigned?

The legitimacy of many of the European dynasties, therefore, had nothing to do with nationality. Faced with the progressive spirit of popular nationalism and its demands for political autonomy, official nationalism was an attempt to naturalize these dynasties by defining themselves more and more in national terms. This effort to legitimize the dynastic orders was problematic, however, since the ideas of sovereign nation and conquering empire are fundamentally incompatible.

Official nationalism was thus rife with racism and concealed contradictions. In Anglicizing its empire, Great Britain imposed its culture, educational system, and the English language upon its colonies. However, the colonized, educated natives of India, east Africa, and other British possessions were not accorded equal status in the national seat of empire and were instead marginalized by the English, politically, economically, and socially. The “Russification” of the Russian empire involved the suppression of non-Russian ethnic groups and their languages. While this policy was advantageous to the Russian nationalist cause, its primary aim was to preserve the imperial dynasty by uniting Russian nationalist energies behind the Czar’s throne. The Russian revolution of 1905, Anderson contends, was as much a revolt of the non-Russian masses against Russification as the class-struggle of the proletariat and bourgeoisie against the Czar.

In Austro-Hungary, a polyglot empire without serious imperial ambitions, official nationalism forced an uneasy choice upon the monarchy. Late to abandon Latin as the administrative language of the empire and join other European states using a vernacular as its language-of-power, the selection of German as the state-language of Austro-Hungary offended its non-German populations. Anderson argues that by the middle of the 19thcentury:

German increasingly acquired a double-status [in the Austro-Hungarian empire]: ‘universal-imperial’ and ‘particular-national.’ The more the dynasty pressed German in its first capacity, the more it appeared to be siding with its German-speaking subjects, and the more it aroused antipathy among the rest (85).

By the same token, if the Habsburg monarch made concessions to the Hungarian language, this affronted his German-speaking subjects, and undermined the effort to unify the empire. This irremediable situation underscores the basic incompatibility of the multi-ethnic empire and the idea of the nation.

Appropriating the mantle of a national identity helped legitimize the European dynastic houses, which had long relied on their antiquity and supposed sacredness to establish their ruling credentials. However, nationalism also meant that the monarch now ruled as a representative of the people, not by divine right. This meant he could, theoretically at least, betray the people’s interest. An inconceivable idea during the dynasty’s heyday, it led to the forced abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II after Germany’s defeat in World War I.

Official nationalism was a policy imported by non-European states, such as imperial Japan and the kingdom of Siam, during the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. In Japan, it helped serve the expansionist policy that led to imperial adventures in Korea, China, and the western Pacific, culminating in World War II. In Siam (Thailand), a country without imperial ambitions, official nationalism took the form of suppressing immigrant Chinese guest-workers who were viewed as a republican threat to the monarchy.