Such assertions are impossible in the case of nationalism, which by its nature is particularistic and inseparable from individual nations. French nationalism and Italian nationalism do not differ on points of doctrine, as variant Marxisms do; instead they are wholly separate things, albeit parallel. French nationalism is all about France, and Italian nationalism all about Italy; they have different heroes, different symbols, each peculiar to their own nation, not transferrable to any other.
Even more, nationalism, argues Anderson, is inherently mystical. He points to such embodiments as Tombs of the Unknown Soldier. "If one tries to imagine, say, a Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a cenotaph for fallen Liberals. Is a sense of absurdity avoidable?" The Unknown Soldiers are revered in their respective countries not because they died for a particular formal cause or doctrine, but because they died for their country, for a community.
Anderson calls these "imagined communities," because in fact almost all nation-states are far too large to form any sort of community in the real sense; whoever is buried in, say, France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, very few French people would have come from the same neighborhood, or know the same streets and families the Unknowns once did. It is an act of mystical imagination for the French in general to think of him as "one of us." Anderson's concern is with how these imagined communities come into being as something large numbers of people feel attached to strongly enough to die for them.
The challenge he faces is that, by his own account, the types of links that give rise to national feelings vary enormously. Three characteristic examples will demonstrate the problem: Latin America (which he uses as his primary example of the formation of "first nations"), Hungary, and Indonesia.
The republics of Latin America (excluding Brazil) all derive from a common colonial past, that ...