Warfare, Resistance, and Nationalism, Essay Example

Anderson’s account begins with the observation that the conflicts between the ostensibly Marxist regimes of Vietnam and Cambodia, and then the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam, demonstrate the ongoing importance of nationalism and the nation-state (1). What follows is a remarkable survey of the world before the nation-state: the world of pre-modern, early modern, and even relatively recently modern dynastic states and city-states. Anderson examines sacral communities, i.e. Christendom, the Islamic Ummah, the Middle Kingdom, and the Buddhist world, observing that these united many cultures in meaningful ways long before modern nationalism, and thus constitute a type of imagined community (12).

Anderson argues that the disruption of this older, pre-national world as it existed in Western Europe, occurred due to a mixture of forces, both top-down and bottom-up. Printing, Anderson observes, already undergoing a precipitous expansion by the time of the Reformation, mushroomed as a consequence of the Reformation (39). Importantly, the printing of the Reformation was overwhelmingly vernacular, which helped to undermine the traditional stranglehold of the Latin-using Roman Catholic Church (39). At the same time, the political and cultural pluralism of Europe meant that it was all the more possible for the Protestant ‘heretics’ to succeed in securing the patronage of the rulers of a number of states. Martin Luther himself, of course, was famously protected by German princes who wanted to challenge the preeminence of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. Moreover, these state formations were themselves undergoing processes of centralization (39-43).

The next part of Anderson’s argument is that despite the relative success of early modern European royal absolutism, sacral monarchy began to lose its automatic legitimacy in Western Europe (21). Anderson disavows the need to explore the reasons for this in greater depth, but his argument might be better served by so doing: after all, while he correctly identifies the momentousness of the revolution marked by the execution of England’s Charles I in 1649, what about the successful career of that paragon of Baroque absolutists, King Louis XIV of France? (21). Anderson also identifies print capitalism as the key means of establishing vernaculars, which in turn provided the basis of national consciousness (43-45). This part of the argument seems to be on firmer ground, though I thought it could have used more consideration of class. Anderson further argues, and shows solid evidence for, that the birth of new nation-states in Spain’s Western Empire resulted from long-standing patterns of administrative divisions, coupled with rising tensions between local creole elites and Madrid as a result of the continued privileging of peninsulares and the increased exploitation of the empire by Spain (47-54). These factors, coupled with Enlightenment, liberal ideas percolating in from Europe, bred revolt in Spain’s American empire in the early 19^th century, ultimately resulting in the creation of new, independent states (49-55).

Scott provides a fascinating look at state-making projects and resistance in peripheries in Southeast Asia. The overall argument is that although the early Southeast Asian states were small, and relatively low-capacity compared with the classic states of Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China etc., they were able to serve as centers for concentrations of people and the agriculture to feed them (1-7). Scott specifically criticizes what he calls the “standard civilizational narrative” depicting “rude barbarians” drawn to civilization by the peace and abundance it offered (7). According to Scott, early states in Southeast Asia and elsewhere were war-making machines of political subjugation, and “much, if not most, of the population of the early states was unfree” (7). Particularly in the Southeast Asian context, Scott argues that instead of seeing the many hill peoples as barbarians who have not yet been reached by civilization, they should be seen as peoples who have chosen to opt out of the state (9, 325-327). Scott is right, in my view, to emphasize the degree to which these peoples of ‘Zomia’ have chosen an alternative to life under one of the region’s state formations: his case is very well-argued, and supports his conclusion that ‘Zomian’ peoples have chosen to resist the encroachments of state formations.

However, I cannot help but question the veracity of the picture Scott paints of early states and their putatively un-free populations. While I readily agree that early states were overwhelmingly dominated by their elites, and that they often functioned as war-making machines, it is also important to look at the forces that may have contributed to the choice of those who opted for ‘civilization’ as defined by state formations. The central dynamic of class relations in early states is generally taken to be that of an elite that profits from the extraction of a surplus from a non-elite population, and Scott concurs for the Southeast Asian context. While exploitative, the mere fact that over time state governance in Southeast Asia expanded (albeit with many reversals) begs the question as to whether or not many subjects of these states might have found the ‘protection’ to be of some advantage. States attempt to monopolize ‘legitimate’ force, suppressing banditry and mounting defenses against invaders, including other states and ‘barbarians.’ They also attempt to provide a certain law and order, establishing law codes to punish criminals. While not trying to minimize the inherently exploitative aspects of historic states in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, I question whether Scott’s portrayal fully captures the incentives that successful state formations, including those of Southeast Asia, might give their subjects for continuing to opt in.

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. The Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 1983. New York: Verso, 2006. Print.

Scott, James C. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.