Nationalism is the central theme of Imagined Communities. As the subtitle of the book indicates, Anderson’s aim is to explain the origins and spread of nationalism—and the nation-state—throughout the globe over the past two-and-a-half centuries. He identifies three main historical phases of national independence movements: the “creole pioneers” of North and South America, lasting from the 1770s through the first few decades of the nineteenth-century; the European phase, which lasted roughly from 1820-1920; and the “last wave” of nation-states that arose from the breakup of the European colonial empires in the period following World War II. The nationalisms that inspired these movements each involved distinctive ways of imagining and realizing the national community as a result of their different geographical, historical, political, linguistic, and cultural circumstances.

Anderson’s historical account and analysis of nationalism relies on his definition of the nation as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). The national community is socially constructed; it requires an act of imagination by its members to achieve reality. This act of imagining the nation involves a sense of their simultaneous participation in the national life and their consciousness of sharing a national heritage, values, and destiny. One carries an image of the shared, national community within oneself even though this community is made up of people who are largely anonymous to each other.