Imagined Communities

Anderson argues that people join together under a singular national identity because of the egalitarian notion that in their struggles for the country, all its peoples will come together as one. "[The nation] is an imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (Anderson 7). This imagined fraternal bond is what causes greatly different peoples to be willing to unite under a single flag in their fight for a goal.

According to Anderson, recent international conflicts are notable in that they have been driven by nationalistic ideals. "The great wars of this century are extraordinary not so much in the unprecedented scale on which they permitted people to kill, as in the colossal numbers persuaded to lay down their lives" (Anderson 144). To Anderson, this idea of nationalism as a primary cause of military service is a relatively new one.