Imagined Communities: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

In this chapter, which was the conclusion to the book’s original version, Anderson returns to the place where he started: the wars among China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. He cites historian Tom Nairn’s argument that the “impersonal” British state became the basis for subsequent ones that copied it and applies this idea to the thinking of Marxist states, who copy one another’s models of revolution—if only because they are the only available models, and even if they are relatively unsuccessful. Specifically, these models are Russia and China. Cambodia is “an extreme modular transfer of [such a concept of] ‘revolution,’” and Vietnam of “nationalism,” as demonstrated by the country’s name. There was early debate over whether it should be “Nam Viet” (South Viet) or “Viet Nam” (South of Viet), with “Viet” referring to the Southern Chinese province of Yueh. The latter name stuck, with people conveniently forgetting its original, derivative meaning.

Ultimately, Vietnam and Cambodia’s revolutions both seemed to spring out of nowhere and were possible only because of piracy—following in other nations’ footsteps in “‘planning revolution’ and ‘imagining the nation.’” Just 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 new regimes to distinguish themselves from the old, even when they use the old regime’s buildings, institutions, and records. And in fact new regimes also imitate and elevate old dynasties. Anderson makes sure to distinguish between the leaderships of nations and the comparatively powerless people in whose name the leaderships so often claim to speak.

Anderson concludes that “China, Vietnam, and Cambodia are not in the least unique,” and that as a result it is only logical to expect that “inter-socialist wars” will continue. Resting on platitudes about Marxist countries’ inevitable solidarity or opposition to nationalism only hides the truth and gets in the way of “learn[ing] the real, and imagined, experience of the past.” In closing, Anderson cites the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who described history as an angel being blown away from heaven, looking backwards at the “one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” that is human history, and which he is powerless to change. “The Angel is immortal,” Anderson concludes, “and our faces are turned towards the obscurity ahead.”