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Official Nationalism
New Guinea is the world’s second-largest island (after Greenland), which is located in western Melanesia, due north of central Australia. Formerly occupied by the Dutch, Germans, and British, it is now divided in half by a straight line, with the western half belonging to Indonesia and the eastern half to the independent state of Papua New Guinea. In his penultimate chapter, Anderson uses New Guinea’s conversion into a symbol of Indonesian nationalism, despite its significant differences from the rest of Indonesia, to show how states use logos to build a sense of imagined community among people who fall under their territorial sovereignty.
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New Guinea Term Timeline in Imagined Communities
The timeline below shows where the term New Guinea appears in Imagined Communities. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 10: Census, Map, Museum
...reproducible,” “instantly recognizable, [and] everywhere visible” symbol of a country. For instance, the half of New Guinea nominally occupied by the Dutch was “utterly remote,” irrelevant to the nationalist struggle, and completely...
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West New Guinea has transformed into a symbol of Indonesia’s independence and an integral part of the nation...
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