What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality - the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to the nation - has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa. This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.

本尼迪剋特・安德森：康乃爾大學國際研究院阿倫・L・賓尼約伯（Aaron L.Binenjorb）講座教授，是全球知名的東南亞研究學者。除《想象的共同體》外，其他著作還有：《比較的幽靈：民族主義、東南亞與全球》、《革命時期的爪哇》、《美國殖民時期的暹羅政治與文學》和《語言與權力：探索印尼的政治文化》等。